I found ME 250 to be a very fun, interesting, time consuming, and sometimes annoying course. As far as the design side of the course I got a lot more exposure to a CAD system than I ever have had in the past which I really liked. Also I found the lectures to be very interesting (most of the time) and it helped show me new ways that you can do engineering analysis of a system. I felt the use of the FRDPARRC’s was a little excessive at the beginning of the semester. I felt it overly emphasized the structure needed to design something. However, at the same time I understand what the point of the FRDPARRC’s are and the need to think of all aspects of manufacturing and all potential problems when designing your machine.
As far as the manufacturing side of the course I unfortunately do not feel like I learned much at all, which is disappointing. I would have enjoyed it if we had to manufacture a machine with a lot more time put on the mill and on turning parts. The parts on our machine had very minimal use of the mill or the lathe. I had already had exposure to a drill press, band saw, shear, Al. bender, etc. However I have only had some exposure to a mill or lathe and I would have been much more excited if the mill and lathe were a more important part of the manufacturing process. I believe that the only way you can successful design something is if you have a good understanding of the manufacturing end and the machines limitations, so I would have enjoyed a much more manufacturing (mill and lathe) intensive course.
As far as teamwork goes I can’t say I learned much of anything new about teamwork. However my beliefs on teamwork were just reinforced from Eng 100 and other teamwork experiences. The use of a team is vital to make any project run smoother and with less flaws. You can use your teammates as checks if one person makes a mistake the others can catch it. Also you can accomplish tasks much faster within a team because you can split up the work load. The same thing goes for time management. It is always important to keep a schedule and do your best to stick to it. Also you should always plan ahead, that way when something unexpected happens you will have time to fix the problems. In manufacturing something I have always been a firm believer in the rule of pi. You can always expect something to take about 3 times longer than you initially expect.
One other thing that I felt was strange about this course is the schedule for the machine shop safety/training sessions. We were trained in September yet not allowed into the shop until the end of November which seems like a strange timeline for training.
As this is the first semester for the re-vamped ME 250 course I am sure there was a lot more preparation work for the course on the GSI’s and professor’s part than usual. I personally felt that the release of the rules was a little late and the rules were a little too tame. It would have been nice to have a little more freedom on design creativity. Such as the use of pneumatics; however, at the same time the amount of constraints made it more challenging to try and think of creative ways to outwit the arena. Again I understand that this was the first term for this but I still felt that the timeline for returned assignments, posted grades, and announcements at the beginning of the term was un-professional. I feel there should be an extra amount of professionalism because this is a design courses and the design courses are more like the real world situations we will be experiencing then majority of the other courses here at Michigan.
As far as how I would have improved my performance in the course. I would have designed a different type of machine so we would have done better in the contest. Looking back at it I would have designed a less traditional machine. I would have designed a machine with the same strategy as our second machine. It would pick up the heavy ball but then I would have a piece of aluminum lay down over the funnel in the back so I could drive the machine around on the 1’ ledge. Then once it passed the mid line I would park the machine there because none of the designs could reach the extra platform. With the heavy ball on the opponent’s side and off of yours you have an almost guaranteed win. Also I would have tried to stay on the schedule set for the manufacturing side of the course a little bit better. That way we would have had more time to practice and fix problems in our machine.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
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