I came into ME250 thinking that I couldn’t learn much from the class that I didn’t know already. After all, I had been on my High School’s robotics team for four years, had build robots much more complex than SlotBots, and already knew AutoCAD. What else could there be? As I quickly found out, a lot of things.
Although the lectures did cover a lot of topics with which I were already familiar, they included a lot of new, often conceptual, material that I had not dealt with before. Hearing the Fundamental Principles defined pulled together a lot of things that I kind of knew, and allowed me to implement them more intentionally. Tolerancing and dimensioning fall under this same category, and learning the formal definitions (and doing the practice examples) really helped me appreciate them more. The sections about the process of design and analyzing functional requirements seemed boring at first, but a few weeks later I found myself using them during the planning of a completely unrelated team project.
This course also improved by CAD skills, mainly in the area of good practices and helpful tricks. Although I had experience in modeling and assembling in AutoCAD, I had never been taught simple things like dimensioning to midpoints, extruding along reference planes, or mating parts so they can be easily updated. By the end of the process, I had even overcome my reservations about SolidWorks and began to enjoy working with (and appreciating) the software.
Manufacturability was probably the biggest thing I learned from this class, and was done though painful trial-and-error. Personally working on the mill, lathe, break, laser cutter, and drill press allowed me to better appreciate what processes were actually possible, and how a great concept in the computer might turn out to be a nightmare to produce. Take for example our chute module: The plywood parts seemed to assemble well, but the glued joints were not strong enough. As a result, we had to painstakingly drill and countersink dozens of holes for screws by hand. Similarly, the bent metal for the chute itself featured many convoluted bends that SolidWorks was happy to visualize, but actually took creative use of the press shear and violent use of a mallet to produce. From these hands-on experiences, I will be able to design better parts in future projects, which will reduce the amount of time and money I have to sink into the project.
Teamwork and team building were areas that I definitely developed in over the course of this class, but not to the degree that I wanted. Team Chaos Theory was formed under less-than-ideal circumstances – instead of four people who really wanted to work together uniting, two groups of two people ended up with incomplete groups and combined out of necessity. I had intended to talk to people in my lab section to get a group of four friendly people assembled before teams were due, but the call to formation occurred earlier than I thought it would.
There was immediate tension on the team, mainly because Josh and I didn’t exactly get along. We have two very different personalities, and this created tension in the design process. We both had a lot of ideas, and reconciling them required a lot of face-to-face negotiation. After this process, the team splintered back into two groups, with each taking on one of the modules. This was, in my opinion, our biggest mistake. I believe that both modules could have been a lot better if we’d had all four sets of eyes looking over the CAD models and physical assemblies instead of just two.
Possibly the biggest example of where this schism caused problems was the design of the chute superstructure. Matt and I chose to manufacture it out of wood because we had initially thought we would not need waterjet cutting and ceded the team’s time on the machine to Josh and Cam. When w changed our design and suddenly needed different side plates, we were left with no time to waterjet them, and no material to make it out of. We ended up getting additional waterjet time and trading for materials for part of the module, but had the entire team been involved we could have made the change earlier and adjusted our machining schedules accordingly.
If I were to go back and do this course again, I would start by coming in with a much more open mind. I would actively seek out a team that I “clicked” with, and would have encouraged the team to stay unified and involved with all aspects of design and construction. I also would have stuck to a much more proactive schedule, as we nearly ran out of time at the end.
I didn’t have many problems with the way this course was run. One thing that I would like to see for future years is better motors, as a majority of teams that went to the arena were simply unable to function due to lack of available torque. This made the preceding weeks of hard work feel somewhat meaningless. If better motors are not possible, then a lecture section about steering and skidding would be a good idea. Additionally, I think there should be milestones inserted between the current MS7 and MS8, and between the current MS8 and MS9. This would force teams to stick to a schedule and be proactive about their design and construction process, and would help prevent the sort of logjam that occurred in the shop towards the end of the build cycle.
Overall, ME250 was a very enjoyable class. Professors Hart and Umbriac were very knowledgeable in their subject fields, and clearly showed their enthusiasm for the process. Mark was very helpful in the design process, and served as a valued sounding board and moderator for our process. Although our robot did not win, the process of designing and building it served as a valuable educational experience. I look forward to taking ME350 next fall!
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