Looking back at the course as a whole I wish I could do it over again, with the change of doing things slightly differently. I learned a lot with regards to design and manufacturing, some during lecture, but most of what I learned came from working in the shop on our slotbot. Before this class, I had never used a mill or a lathe. Learning how to use these machines will be an integral factor in my success here as a Mechanical Engineer as I certainly will be using them in subsequent design classes. I also learned a lot about the manufacturing process, mostly in terms of the order that these processes be done.
Learning how to use SolidWorks was fun. I thoroughly enjoy working on CAD and was able to pick up SolidWorks pretty quickly as I have prior experience with AutoCad Inventor. These programs are very similar and I found it very interesting to learn another as there is not one program that is used in the industry.
Being that this is the first semester of slotbots II it is understandable that there were aspects that needed improvement. The biggest, as many other students have probably stated is the amount of time spent in the beginning of the semester on the creative process. I agree that creativity is important, but learning more about the design process and the resources available to us would have moved the final stage of manufacturing along more quickly. I also think that creating teams earlier and opening the machine shop earlier would be beneficial. And if it is a concern that teams will not take advantage of this time, a stricter requirement of attended shop hours for each team should be enforced.
The most beneficial part of the lectures for me was the material relating to our actual project i.e. couplings, gears, bearings/bushings. I would have liked to see more material presented that we could use on our project. Things like how to use the machines, safety tips, good practice for machining, like which edges to measure from and use the edge finder on, center drilling, and mounting pieces in vices. I am sure many teams had to make major changes in their machines because they were not able to do something that they needed to or simply because when they tried to it did not work and ruined their material
A good way to avoid this is to have more in-shop assignments like we had mid-way through the semester during the beginning weeks when the work load is very small. After everyone is trained having these assignments would help open people up to all of the available processes. From personal experience I know that Josh and I did not once use an end milling bit, simply because we really didn't know how. We just stuck to using the band saw and then filing our pieces smooth.
Overall I think the course material was good aside from learning too much about industry processes like "cold-rolling" and steel types and not enough information relevant to our project.
I was also disappointed in the power supplies used because they were not reliable because some rounds our car would drive just fine and others it would barely move. stronger motor could also be used because as this competition is much more complicated than slotbots I more elaborate bots were created that required more power.
My performance in the class could have been improved by knowing more about how our gearboxes performed under loading. It seemed that when we included our timing belt/pulley assembly it made our wheels harder to turn and consequently harder for our motor to deliver our desired output. I could have also performed better had I known more of the machining principles before entering the shop seeing as our group spent the whole first week making and remaking wheel shafts because we were making holes the wrong size, tapping them wrong, or bending them in the arbor press.
This course has taught me many things and I enjoyed the project. I did not have much contact with Sei Jin but Davor and Mark were both really good GSIs.
I look forward to ME 350 and as I believe it was Toby who said it, I will probably regret suggesting more manufacturing time for the 250 students. But if it makes for a higher scoring and more exciting competition than that sounds good to me.
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