Nelson Final Post

I learned so much this semester in ME 250. I learned how much hard work it is to design and manufacture a machine to carry out a certain task. I feel that as a team we put forth a lot of effort into our project and as a result we had a very good machine. We won the first round of the competition and probably should have won the second, so I would consider our machine a success.

In 250 I learned the design process how we are given a task and parameters for the task and we use strategies, concepts, modules, and then components to final end up with a finished machine. We do this a little at a time starting with broad strategies and narrowing down to the final components. I also learned how to do basic CAD modeling. I wish I spent more time on this when we were designing our machine, because I feel that this is a very good skill to have when I move into the work force. I did gain very valuable skills in manufacturing though. I spent a lot of time in the machine shop learning the best ways to manufacture certain parts. I also gained experience working with large power tools. I feel that this knowledge will help me out later in my career.

I always knew that time management was very important to projects like this. I didn’t realize that it was this important until this semester though. I learned that certain people where better at certain things. Like in our group some people where good at CAD some people where good and machining, and some where good at coming up with concepts/ideas. I found that the most efficient way to run the team was to have team members do what they were good at. This made us very efficient when we figured this out. I like to get homework/assignments done earlier than most college students, and some on my team would have rather worked on an assignment a day or two before it is due. This obviously bothered me at first, but I realized that that is when some people work the best and sometimes we don’t have all the information we need to do an assignment as early as I would like to. So basically I learned how to deal with team member’s strength’s and weakness’s. When you can figure these out for people you can become a very efficient team.

I feel that in this course one of the biggest problems was finding mill time towards the end of the semester when everyone needed one. I understand that the machine shop is ordering another mill and that will help a lot next semester. I believe that there is enough total mill team available to the class, but some teams I think would sign up once a day for the entire week. Which is fine if that team needs that much time and uses it. A lot of times when I found out when I had free time to come into the machine shop I would go to sign up and nothing would be open, but I find out the next day that nobody showed up for a team during their lab session. We are allowed to take their spot after 15 minutes, but I have lots of other things to do in a day and I can’t plan on showing up to the machine shop with only the chance of getting on the mill. However I did end up finding time to get all the milling done, but I had to skip some classes to do this.