In ME 250 this semester, we were immersed in the world of design and manufacturing from day one. We learned all there is to know about mechanical components, the design process, SolidWorks, and plenty other areas of the Mechanical Engineering world. Specifically, we learned how to develop an appropriate design, starting with the development of a strategy, then coming up with appropriate concepts to implement said strategy, and then finally how to create modules for those concepts in order to successfully complete a task. Secondly, I learned a lot about time management from this course. Our team started off a little shaky in the organizational category, but we pulled our act together once the deadline approached and were able to learn what it takes to manage a group, organize meetings, and successfully achieve desired results at each meeting. After an internship this summer, I learned that being able to work with a team is probably the most valuable skill to have in the workplace. It allows for seamless meetings and creates an environment for people to get work done in an efficient manner. Overall, I am happy that I took this course, even though it was an incredible amount of work.
In terms of the class, I felt that the workload was a large amount, and it was very top heavy towards the end of the semester. With this, and being a Computer Engineering senior taking the course for fun, I found that the work being mostly towards the end of the semester made it very difficult to focus on all of my classes. I found myself putting much more time towards this class than anything else and I had hoped to not have to do that. Fortunately it paid off and my team completed our robot in time. But that being said, I believe that this class could be improved in many ways. I believe that from the beginning the workload should be stressed. I think that having the labs reorganized would also be of great benefit. I found that the bike lab had nothing to do with design and manufacturing, nor did it help in any way when working on our robot. More so, I believe that creating drawings of the parts and coming up with successful manufacturing plans should be more stressed because it is very hard to get things approved late in the semester. Secondly, I think that there should be more deadlines with the project early on. It was very unreasonable for us to have to go from 50% completed on the MCM to 90% of the manufacturing completed within two days of shop time. For a 200 level class, the amount of work that you have to schedule outside of class just for meetings with GSIs is a bit much. Which leads to another point, being that for students who have class Monday through Friday, most of which being other engineering courses, it is very hard to find 2 hour blocks in schedules to get into the machine shop. Our team struggled with this for a while and I believe a reasonable solution to this is to have the shop either open later in the evenings earlier in the semester, as well as open on the weekends. It appeals much more to the students taking the class, rather than the professors and guys in the shop, which a class should be about. My final point though is that communication was often very lacking, especially for our team when we had parts that we relied on using the water jet to manufacture and it not being communicated that it hasn’t worked well this semester, and is extremely under-staffed. This almost ruined our project because our driving portion needed the water jet in order to insure accuracy.
Ultimately though, I could have done better through delegating more as the team captain, planning shop time earlier, and going to lecture more frequently. Though I must admit that I put in a huge amount of time for this course and do not feel like I gained as much from this course as you would expect for the amount of time I put in. It was a good semester, but I caution anyone taking ME250 in the future to be prepared for one of the most demanding courses offered at the school.
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