Bill of Materials

http://bit.ly/6skKi2

Final team documentation

In the end, our machine ended up working pretty well and as planned. During testing, we ran into a few issues such as the release of our ramp not working and the conveyor hooks getting caught up in certain areas, but we were able to curb these problems and get the machine running pretty smoothly. Once we had all the electrical connections figured out and figured out our in-game strategy, we became pretty confident that our machine would work well.

The main issue we had was the release of the ramp. Originally, we had planned on using a pin that would go through the pieces of the ramp and would be pulled out by a string wound around the conveyor belt’s drive axle. We figured out this would be difficult to do because of the angle between the axle and the ramp. So, we decided to use the magnets. Since our ramp was made using the 1/16” steel plate, we could use a magnet to hold the ramp up and then pull it off with a string wound around the conveyor’s axle, which would then release the ramp down into the slot.

In competition, we ended up modifying our initial in-game strategy. Originally, we were going to simply stay towards the back of our side of the arena, pick up balls, deploy the ramp, and just pick up as many balls as we could. In testing, it was found that picking up balls was a relatively slow process, so we needed something new. Zach came up with the idea of using the conveyor belt itself to basically just push balls over to the other side. He would lower the conveyor into the balls and drive the car forward, pushing many balls at one time. The strategy worked well, and we defeated our first opponent, but our second opponent (Sei Jin’s Army) was quicker to the jump than us, and they overtook us in the second round.

Our Final bill of materials link : http://bit.ly/6skKi2

Class reflection - Karan Ahuja

Me250 was not the class I thought it would be, I expected the project to be similar to the previous semesters project but it wasn’t, it was better. It’s hard to imagine how much I have learned from this, at first the project seemed extremely abstract and I had no idea how we were going to reach our final goal. The lectures and assignments helped to guide us through the whole process while teaching us various manufacturing skills, for example: how to use the lathe, band saw, mill, laser cutter and the water jet, which proved to be very useful while manufacturing parts. Building a working machine from what were simply materials a couple of weeks ago was an incredible experience.

The design process was this class was probably the most important. It taught us how to translate what a consumer wants/ is looking for in the final product into an actual design on solid works. Solid works was extremely easy, yet helpful software to use and design the machine. This class gave me a preview of how engineers actually design a product in the real world. I dint realize how difficult it was to design a product from scratch, it wasn’t hard to come up with a strategy, it wasn’t hard to come up with the functional requirement and it wasn’t hard to come up with the necessary module’s but what was hard was to put everything together. We as a team encountered various problems through our design process which made us alter our design more than 5 times throughout the time we had to design it.

Finally when it came to manufacturing we were somewhat ready to start building the machine. We had the skills necessary from all the training we took but we still did not have personal experience using the machines. At first it took us hours to figure out the machines but by the end of the semester these machines were very easy to use. Throughout the course of manufacturing we were faced by a couple of design problems, therefore we had to alter the design while building the machine. The final machine worked as expected but the module we built for it to complete its task was different than the module we originally designed.

Teamwork played an important role in designing and manufacturing the machine. It’s stunning how a group of people can collaborate and throw out a million ideas many of which were used in designing the machine. Without a team one would get stuck while designing because there wouldn’t be anyone else to back him/her up with their opinions on the design. I felt that teamwork was crucial during the manufacturing process, there were so many times when we encountered a major problem and one of us, somehow, had a solution to it. Working with a team helps as you can divide all the work required and conquer it in a smaller time frame.

Time management was the biggest issue; this class took up way too much time. For some reason no matter how much we planned ahead we always felt like there wasn’t enough time to finish. Various assignments took up unnecessary time like the bicycle assignment was kind of pointless. During the final weeks of this class I felt like I dint have enough time for my other classes, we spent about 25 hours in the lab manufacturing the machine to meet various deadlines. Although the deadlines were extremely helpful to keep us on track with the class, we should have had more time between two consecutive deadlines.

The class felt a bit disorganized, at times I felt like no one knew what was going on, for example the motor assignment took us a lot more time to finish then it was indented to. It took a whole extra lab and time outside the lab to finish it because we dint have all the materials necessary to complete the assignment. Initially at the start of the semester there were assignments due every single class, which I thought was too much work. The worst part was that some of them were not even counted for points but were worth negative points.

Overall the class felt like a mechanical engineering design class. It really added a lot to my knowledge about engineering. I felt like I was truly doing something related to my major, it made me experience the life of a mechanical engineer.

Zack's Reflection

ME250 was probably one of my most challenging and time-consuming classes this semester. It required a lot of time and dedication towards the project, especially near completion and the competition. Through this difficult design-build-test process, I learned a lot about design and manufacturing. It was interesting to see the design steps we learned in lecture being applied as we funneled down lots of broad ideas into a working machine.

Working in a team was not a new experience for me. However, as we slowly realized how difficult this project was going to be, it became more and more important to have good teamwork. With many modules and parts, dividing the work was absolutely necessary. This occurred somewhat naturally as we worked on the CAD models. Each teammate was in charge of drawing individual parts and when it came time to manufacture, we each gravitated towards producing certain parts. This worked out well as we started specializing in certain machines and helping each other in the manufacturing process. We also saw many design problems along the way and tackled them with our collective knowledge of manufacturing possibilities.

Time management was not really an issue until we had to actually start manufacturing with three parts for MS7. Before that, we did spend a lot of time on CAD, but it was much easier to individually draw parts and throw them together on an assembly. When it came to manufacturing, we had to be diligent, show up in lab, and accomplish as much as possible in each session. Towards the competition, there was a real time crunch as we jumped from three manufactured parts to a completed most-critical module and soon after that, a completed machine. Time management was important as we had to decide the days and times when we were all available to work. Sometimes, there were things that had to be taken care of individually, such as early morning water-jetting where someone had to be there and whoever was available would do it. Overall, as a team, I think we had good time management and showed discipline towards completing our machine.

One aspect of the class I think that can be improved is the rate at which the machine was expected to be completed. The jump from MS7 to MS8 and then from MS8 to MS9 was very sharp and caused a lot of stress. There could be either more time in between each of these milestones or additional smaller milestones earlier on. Perhaps there could be a three parts milestone for each module. Also I feel like we were rushed from design completion to manufacturing. I think it would be helpful to have more design lab sessions before starting to manufacture. If we had this, I believe we would’ve realized more design problems first than we did as we were manufacturing. The CAD labs were perhaps unnecessary. If the pdf directions were more in detail, we could do them by ourselves in our own time for homework and spend the lab sessions on the project. Also, it would’ve been helpful to know the kit contents earlier on. I feel that although it’s good to use wild imagination to come up with ideas initially, we spent too much time doing that. There was just too much fantasizing about far-fetched strategies and when we got the kit contents we realized the limits on our imaginations. The kit contents should’ve been available when we formed groups so we would know what parts we could actually make.

Overall, this course was good, although disorganized at some points, we completed our machine nevertheless and learned a great deal about design and manufacturing along the way.

Devin's Reflection

I came into this class as a Computer Science major looking for a tech elective spot to fill. When I heard about ME 250, a design-build-test type course, I got kind of excited. This was not something I really had not had opportunities to do in CS.

The design and manufacturing aspects of the course were something fairly new to me. Sure, I had designed things before and followed through with building them, but never had I been forced to put so much thought into the proper materials to use, how these materials would interact with each other, how several different components to one design could be used together. Further the process of talking out ideas during the planning stages was something I now recognize with a renewed importance. So often we’d find ourselves discussing one specific part; the materials to use, the best way to put them together, the best way to manufacture them. Talking through ideas like this really helped us to create the most effective design to meet the requirements we had.

Working in teams was not something I hadn’t dealt with before. I’ve had plenty of opportunities working in teams in the past and specifically in a classroom environment. My team this semester was no different. We all had our certain strengths that we brought to the table and I feel like we all did a pretty good job acknowledging these strengths, as well as the faults, and working together to get things done.

Time management is something that has always been a personal problem of mine, but I feel like the group setting is one place where I do step it up from individual assignments. Knowing that there are three other guys that depend on the work I say I’m going to get done, I want to do whatever I can not to let them down. I guess that plays into the teamwork aspect as well. Personally I know there were times when I wouldn’t be able to make a meeting so I would put in several hours ahead of time so that I could still make a positive impact on the progress of the team. I felt like the other team members worked similarly in this regard. We’re all busy as students, but we all put in some extra time individually at some point during the semester to make sure things would be progressing as planned. I think this was very important to us getting things done.

How I personally could have improved my performance in this course, I think the biggest thing for me was just the way I did my homework early on. Being a junior CS major, I really hadn’t had to do any physics and mechanical calculations in some time. I struggled and kind of just wrote it off as not as relevant for me. Thankfully, I had group members who were able to help in this regard, while I was able to help out with things I was better with like the design itself. I think had I taken a more genuine interest in some of the calculations early on I would have a better understanding of how they were used in our design – alongside the design I’d helped to create.

In terms of improving the course, I’m not sure what should be done. I think one simple thing would just be to keep all the early “mini-projects” more relevant to the course. For example, the motor testing experiment was great because it was right at a time when the groups needed to start considering how to implement their motors and get some hands on experience with them. The bike assignment on the other hand, while absolutely necessary for helping to introduce and recognize mechanical components seemed just a little out of place. It would seem more relevant if this type of assignment could be implemented using something more specific to what we were trying to create.

Also, the big surprise to me was just how much of a step up it seemed this semester was from semesters past. But that’s not a bad thing. Personally I came in just looking for a fun, interesting, hands on experience in engineering. That’s what I got, but I was also to take more from it. That’s something I’m not so sure I would’ve been able to do had this course not taken the step up it had. It’s not that it was more difficult, it’s just that it was much more challenging - specifically with time constraints towards the end of the semester. Knowing ahead of time that this course is going to be so time intensive I think is necessary for students to know when taking this class. Nevertheless, the thing is, if you raise the bar, people are going to work hard and strive to reach it. It doesn’t matter if they agree with why it was raised in the first place, they’re still going to do their best to get there. I think that best describes this class. No one expected it to be as much work as it was, but for the most part, everyone rose to the occasion and for that I think we all got much more out of it

Class Reflection - Chris Smock

I was pretty excited to take this course at the beginning of the semester. As a guy who’s always been into cars and mechanics, a class called “design and manufacturing” sounded pretty good. I like learning about things like gears, drive systems, and how I can analyze these things and better understand them so that they can be improved. I was pretty new to the in-depth design process that Professor Hart presented to us, and it was definitely an eye-opener and will really be helpful in the future.

The realm of design was probably my least favorite part of this class. Not that it was unimportant or not useful, but the depth at which we were required to criticize our own designs became frustrating at times. But in retrospect it was a good thing, because it definitely helped me think more critically about designs and things that I come up with, which I’d say is a pretty useful skill in life. Engineering is all about critical thinking, and what I learned about the design process from this class definitely added to my skill.

Manufacturing was my favorite part of the class. I’ve always been a hands-on guy, and I love working with tools to make things and getting my hands dirty. Learning about all the different manufacturing processes in lecture was great, but being able to use some of them in the shop was even better. Before this class, I’d never used a lathe or laser cutter, and I really enjoyed gaining the skills needed to use these manufacturing tools. Being able to build our team project was my favorite aspect of the class.

Speaking of the team project, teamwork was especially important for this class. As a group of four, it’s sometimes difficult to arrange meetings and things that everyone can attend, so communication amongst us was always important. Utilizing everyone’s individual talents was good, too, because we could all learn from each other and gain personal skills from working together and figuring things out as a team. I didn’t really “learn” anything about teamwork, but I’d say that what I already knew about teamwork and my abilities to work on a team were strengthened because of this class.

As a team, time management was pretty important in getting our project completed. If only one or two of us could make it to the shop at a time, we would still get things done because it doesn’t take four people to make a single part, so we all had to work together and individually to get things done. The management of our time was especially important in meeting manufacturing and homework deadlines and, as always, procrastination was proven to be a bad idea.

I spent more time on this course than I did on any other class this semester. During the last few weeks of the course, it seemed that everyone was in the shop/lab a lot. Spending 5-6 hours a day on this project was just too much, but that’s exactly what we had to do. I believe we should have been given more time for manufacturing. The time constraint that irked me the most was the transition between MS7 and MS8. We had a 5-day week to manufacture three parts, and then the week before Thanksgiving (3 days), we had to complete an entire module and have all engineering completed for the rest of the project. A crazy deadline, and we all had other things going on that week and the next (exams). As it was the first time ME250 has had such an intense project, I can understand discrepancies and slight disorganization, so hopefully it will be improved for future semesters. The motor assignment was rather frustrating because a lot of the materials required to complete it were not available to us, and our ¼” shaft didn’t fit into the bushing, so we had to waste 45 minutes trying to sand it down so it would fit. Also, what was the point of having such a long exam that nobody could possibly finish? Having all the information for the course on Google docs was a great thing for the class, as it was easy to figure out what was going on when and where.

As a whole, I really enjoyed this course. It required a lot of time and dedication, but I learned a lot and in retrospect, it was my favorite class this semester simply because it was so hands-on compared to everything else. I felt much more accomplished because of the more “instant gratification” that the class provided, and the competition was a lot of fun.

Video

Manufacturing update :

1. Waterjetted the ramp
2. lathed the rest of the axles
3. Received sprockets and chains / assembled into car
4. Attached front drive motor
5. Completed conveyer belt backing
6. Completed rest of the minor details
7. Tested machine on arena

Manufacturing pictures :

By now we have completed the car structure, the conveyor belt module.

We made all the L brackets required to put the car shell together, attached the dual motor to the car. Used E clips for the top axle. E-poxyed the top wheel to the top axle.

The link to the updated schedule is : http://bit.ly/5XGRD2

Manufacturing update :

Attached the wheels to conveyor belt / Axle , mounted axle on to car.

Lasercutted the sides on front of car

Inserted the Conveyer arm

Testing for MS7:

Used temporary wheels and belts

We manufactured four parts :

1. The conveyer belt arm (waterjet)
2. The bottom of the car shell ( laserjet)
3. Wheels (laserjet)
4. Axles ( Lathe + bandsaw)

Worked on the Motors , learned how to assemble them and tested them.

Completed the MCM on Solidworks for Ms6

Right side view of design - Modules: Car, Lift, Ramp

This is just an overall layout of our design. In white we have the main car module (also featured in detail in the post below), in red the lift module, and in purple the ramp module. The lift module will be lowered into the arena at the beginning of the contest, shortly thereafter, the ramp mechanism will be released to slide down toward the opposing side.

SolidWorks design of Main Module - Car

Pictured at right we have the main module to our whole design - the car. This acts as the housing for all other modules as well as allows the system to move forward and back along the top of the arena.

Schedule for The beers :

http://bit.ly/32lrPD

Strategy

Our design will start off on the top shelf of the arena. Our basic strategy is to lift the balls out of the slot using a conveyor / lifting mechanism. Then we deploy a ramp which will rest on the divider between the two slots. Once the balls are transported to the top of the conveyor belt, it will be dropped onto the ramp which will allow it to roll down to the opposing side. The ramp is also used as a defensive strategy as it blocks the opponent from putting anything in our slot.