Final Post

Over this semester, 250 has become the class that I will always remember and the first real world experience into the rest of my life. It has definitely been a lot of work but to see something that was just a figment of my imagination 14 weeks ago grow into a working masterpiece, it’s really something to be proud of. I would have never expected our machine to do as well as it did, and I still believe if I didn’t run into the scoring hole, we would be walking away from this class with some cash in our pockets.

Before this class, my experience with CAD was slim to none. I basically knew what it is, what it was used for and how important and influential it would become in my future. Now I believe I can create anything with CAD and do it fast and accurately. The point of this class is to let everyone see each part of the process of creating something. If you are a designer, you have to take into account of how it will be constructed and put together. Is it feasible? It took me a while to realize this and I will take that knowledge with me forever. In the machine shop, you have to also pay attention to how you are going to make a part. Some operations have to come before others in order for you to make the part correctly. This knowledge comes from practicing. It will eventually become second nature.

This knowledge of creating and designing parts needs to be considered in the beginning design process. If time, money, abilities are factors in constructing something, you need to make a strategy and design to conquer a task that takes these factors into account. One thing I will always take with me from the competition is that simple is better. The teams that did the best could hardly do anything more than pick up the balls in the front of the table. Only one team was able to move the tower, and none could obtain the balls on the top shelf. I will take this experience with me and put getting the job done ahead of overthinking things and not finishing the way you wanted to in the end.

Teamwork is one of the most important things to have in any assignment like this. Not only do you all need to work well together, you need to like each other. There will be times when something breaks or doesn’t fit or didn’t work right, and there will be tension. The ability to recover from these setbacks is something that is not given as much value as I believe it should. If you plan ahead and manage your time wisely, you will be more capable of overcoming these setbacks. Try to imagine that the project is due 1 week before it actually is and that leaves you a whole week to make up for these obstacles.

I think that this course is well run. I think that some changes to help students would be to have more CAD labs. CAD is such an important aspect of this class and for the future that more stress needs to be allocated towards it. Also there needs to be much more demos in the machine shop. There were to many times that students didn’t know how to do something and had to ask Bob or Mark to help, which is totally okay, I just wish I knew more about the machines when I started actually making my parts. To that note, I feel that this lack of knowledge led to people taking longer than usual to make their parts. I attribute this to the lack of machining time available at the end of the semester.

I feel that I did a good job in this course. I did all the work to the best of my abilities. However I wish we had finished the machine a little earlier and focused on getting it to run right and fixing problems then just having to go with something we knew wasn’t perfect.

I will leave this class with this. If you really care about your future, pay attention in this class, because they will teach you some of the most important skills you will need to know for the rest of your life.