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.
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