Things I have learned in ME 250

Design and Manufacturing

The primary thing I learned about design and manufacturing is probably how to communicate my ideas to other people. I already had a lot of manufacturing experience on mills and lathes from high school robotics, and also welding and further machining skills from the Baja Team. However, several of my teammates had less experience, and I feel that I have started to learn how to explain machining processes during this class. I also learned how to make good engineering drawings that were clear because we couldn’t always communicate in person about what needed to be done. Often part of our team would be in the EPB CADing while others were machining, so clear communication was very important. I also learned about both laser and waterjet cutting, which I had not had experience with before. Both of these techniques were very useful to our design and were very cool to use. On the design side, I feel that I did learn more about all the steps taken in a design project. The lack of a a clear set of rules in the beginning of the class led to a more free and creative environment, much like what may be experienced in the real world at the very beginning of a new project. As the rules became clear, our ideas started to take a firmer shape, and we realized that we would be fairly constrained in the types of design we could pursue. As the final kit took place I also learned to be very minimalist in design because we didn’t have very much material to work with.

Teamwork

As mentioned above, I learned to communicate my ideas effectively without constant face to face communication. This became very important as our group was constantly in different places working on different parts of our project. Although we all had a good idea of our final goal, sometimes it was difficult to make specific ideas clear. It is always difficult to find a good balance between pushing your own ideas and accepting other ideas when they are better than your own, and I fell that our group did a good job at this. We mostly chose the correct places to really all get together and argue for our own ideas, but at the same time allowed personal creativity in other areas, were only certain criteria had to be met. Although we were far from perfect, I think we had a pretty good team dynamic, and the other classes we shared this semester also helped us to come together as a team when it came to crunch time.

Time Management

The most important thing I learned was that it is always the little things that will get you. Our team did a good job getting our major components drawn and manufactured early in the process, but were tripped up at the late stages because of string constraints. The string retraction, while important, was mostly left as a last minute “let’s just slap it together and it’ll work” type thing. This was very unsuccessful, and it proved to be our undoing in competition. We should have tried to find these issues early, but instead we were left scrambling as we broke thread after thread every time we tested our machine. Although we did complete everything on time, getting done a week early could have really helped our performance. However, given the time constraints we had, I believe we did the best we could and we did accomplish most of our goals on time.

How the Course can be improved

I think the major improvement would be a strict set of rules earlier. We were tripped up by rule changes several times and I feel this is unfair to the students. The rules should also have definitions for important terms, because several times we interpreted a rule one way but were later told that the Professor or GSIs interpreted it differently and had to change our design further. Finally, I think access to more metal stock would help. I think that only specialty materials should be limited, and things like Aluminum or steel bars should be available as needed to avoid partial solutions dictated by a lack of material

How I could have improved my performance

The major thing I should have done differently would be to have gone to OH or at least put more time into the HW assignments early on. Although I was very busy traveling with the sailing team, I still could have dedicated more time to them and done much better. This would be a major improvement for my grade in the course.