Final Post

ME 250 has taught me a lot about the overall design and manufacturing process. Coming into this class, the only design experience I had had been the CAD classes I had taken in high school and my ENGR 101 course. In the past I would have maybe come up with rough CAD drawing, devoid of any details, and used it as a guideline, adjusting the design on the fly, then make a final drawing that matches what we built. However, this project was the first where I've been part of a team that actually developed working plans, and the proceed to make custom parts, rather than gerry-rigging pre-made components to make a passable machine. This was the first time I have focused on often overlooked parts like screws and bushings. I learned how important it is design for these, and how big a difference they can make.

Once we got out of the design phase, I learned an entirely different set of skills. Before this class, my manufacturing skills were limited to use of the band saw and drill press. Now I can say that I am capable of using a mill, lathe, and laser cutter. As a team, I feel like we did a good job of playing towards our strengths. Once we each settled into our roles, we got our work done quite efficiently. Teamwork was critical to this process, each of us had to rely on the others in order for us to finish on time. Had the CAD, or the manufacturing, or assembly lagged, we may not have had completed our machine. Even when we did suffer some sort of setback, we worked as a team to get through it, by putting in extra time out of class or in the shop.

This class gave me a better sense of how much time it takes to design and build a working machine. This was clearly not something that we could not have procrastinate on. We had to work around scheduling conflicts and shop times, we managed to get all of our work done and find time when it counted, like the Monday before the competition when our motor were not working and our couplings didn't work. We found the time to re-solder the motors and fix our coupling shafts. In the end we manage to get everything together and do well in the scoring round.

I think the course is well put together. I thought that the progression made a lot of sense though I would have liked to move the time line up slightly in order to get more manufacturing time. I found that the amount of time we got to actually build, test, and adjust our machine was very limited, it would have been nice to work out more of the kinks before the competition. This might of allowed us to remake certain components which we may have discovered could have been made better. I also think it may have helped me if we had more CAD labs, although I already knew Autocad, I would have liked to have had more experience with Solidworks.