ME 250 was
definitely one of the more interesting classes that I have taken at The
University of Michigan thus far. It was the first class that allowed me to take
advantage of real design and manufacturing, which is something that I have
always been fond of since a little child. If I had to describe design and manufacturing
(in general), I would say that it all boils down to creativity, time
management, and simplicity.
The design aspect of the course
caught me off guard because I have never used any sort of computer-aided design
modeling in my life before, so using SolidWorks was a change for me. It really
tests your ability to creatively come up with an idea that can physically be
manufactured, as opposed to a wild one that isn’t exactly feasible. Then,
taking those ideas and refining them down to modules was something else that
was new to me. I had never done this before so being able to do so now proved a
worthy experience for me.
Manufacturing parts was also a new
experience for me. We learned how to use most of the machines in the Mechanical
Engineering Machine Shop, and then we were allowed to use them to manufacture
our own parts. Manufacturing our own parts made me realize that designing a
part isn’t about how complex a part is, but rather about how efficient you can
be with the simplest design. I learned that simplicity is key because the more
complex a part is, the more ways it can malfunction and fail.
Teamwork on a project like this was
entirely new to me. I feel like I definitely benefited from this course because
it taught me valuable lessons in regards to being a part of a team. Everyone
has a shared responsibility, so everyone is expected to carry his or her own
weight throughout the project. As far as time management goes, this course
showed me that working around peoples’ schedules is extremely tough because everybody
has different things going on at different times. It is extremely important to
organize set meeting dates every week as opposed to winging it every week. Our
team had issues with meetings at first, but once we laid the hammer down and organized
set times, we flowed a lot better towards the end (except for the actual end).
The end of the course proved to be
one of the busiest time crunches I have ever experienced. There was just too
much work to be done in too short of a time, but we somehow managed to complete
our robot.
To be honest, there are too many
ways in which this course can be improved. First of all, the task of having an
inexperienced team design a robot and manufacture it from scratch within 3
months is just too tough to be done (Unless the robot design is very simple and
requires little work). There really isn’t any way to make this aspect of it
easier. Also, a lot of the lectures proved useless to me, especially the ones
about hole sizing and etc. The information provided to us was just too
difficult to absorb mainly because I feel as if we had no basis to build the
information off of. It was just free-floating information, so as a result, I
did not retain much of it. A lot of the lessons I learned were through
experience, not lecture information. Also, some deadlines were too ridiculous.
For example, one of the final Milestone assignments where we had to go from
having 50% of our MCM’s done to nearly 100% of our MCM’s done over break
(within 2 working days) was absolutely ridiculous. The grading for these
Milestones proved to be too harsh, so I feel as if these assignments should
either be worth less, or should be omitted entirely. On top of that, the shop
times weren’t very convenient for our team (and many others as far as I know).
The shop should definitely be open later because a lot of people still have
class during current peak machining times, and as a result a lot of teams don’t
get to register for shop time because of it.
Personally, there is a lot that I
could have done better to improve my performance on this team. For one, I
should have studied a little harder for the midterm. Although I feel as if the
time constraint on the midterm was inane, there is much more I could have reviewed
prior to taking it. Also, I should have managed my time better for team meetings;
that definitely would have made a difference. There are also other ways I could
have improved my score but were not under my discretion. If we had later shop
times, then I could have made more towards the beginning because my schedule
often didn’t free up until after 6 or 7 on most days (4 out of 5 weekdays). I
would highly suggest that any student who plans on taking this course should
reconsider his or her schedule before committing to this class. For a 200 level
course this class was definitely too much of a time commitment.
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