Overall I thought ME 250 was a great course. Going into the class I had slim to none experience working with metal, however in high school I had constructed many projects out of wood. At first working with metal scared me, I thought it would be much more difficult than wood and take much longer. However in this course I learned how to cut and shape metal (primarily aluminum) and get it to perform in a way I expected it to. I learned that metal is a much more reliable material than wood and while there some challenges to making it, with careful planning it can do much more than wood ever could.
Upon entering this course my approach to designing was to try something and see if it worked, if it didn’t adjust the design and make it better. However this course forced me to learn the value of taking the time to analyze a design in order to produce a better finished product. It is not always the best idea to jump with both feet in, and as I learned in the machine shop, without a proper drawing producing parts is almost impossible. Many errors in this project could have been accounted for with better initial preparation. However there is value to building a part in the shop, as limitations in a design are imposed with certain manufacturing techniques. For example, when designing the axle for our machine initially there was one single tapped hole through half of the axle for the set screw. But in order to tap the hole, clearance had to made through the entire axle, therefore I had to increase the hole depth to go through the entire axle. This just shows that both designing and manufacturing is important, because while you can design for most everything, there will always be one little glitch (if not many) that has to fixed after construction. Yet a good design will eliminate most of these glitches and produce a better functioning machine.
Another very important aspect of this course was teamwork. I was fortunate enough to have an amazing team; everyone on it was hardworking and exceeded my initial expectations. As a team we were able to decide upon an initial design, deciding what was too outlandish and what would work as expected. This method worked very well as we ended up going with a fairly simple machine, going after the balls on the front table and on top of the tower. What surprised me in the competition is that no other team was able to successfully score a ball from any other area of the arena besides the front table. This just shows that our team was able to come to a realistic final design and one that performed exactly to our expectations. Also working as a team taught me the importance of organization as we always had to work on the project together, and plan in advance when we wanted to work in the machine shop. I feel this is a very important life skill, because being organized saves lots of time in the long run.
While I learned a lot from this course there were areas to be improved upon. I felt that there was a lot of down time at the beginning of the semester during the planning session and the end was very rushed. Designing is important but it did not need to take as long as it did, and some of the deadlines could have been pushed forward in order to give more machining time at the end of the semester. But I did think the course was taught very well and the competition at the end was the highlight of my semester.
In conclusion I thought that this was a very valuable course and learned many new skills. This class taught me how to problem solve real world problems as well theoretical, but I know I will retain the practical knowledge I learned from this class for a long time. In terms of individual performance, I do not think I could have done much better as we ranked first in seeding and second overall in the competition. This course was a great benefit to me; I gained more confidence in my choice of mechanical engineering as a major and eagerly await design courses in the future.
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