Course Reflection

Marc-Andre Henry

When I first signed up for ME250 I was excited that I was finally going to be able to apply what I learned in my other classes to create something. I was previously informed that this class would be a lot of work, so I knew that I would have to commit a lot of time. The purpose of this class was to teach us the design process, manufacturing methods, team work, and engineering. I had previous design and manufacturing experience and this class further refined my skills. I had previous CAD experience, but it was nice to learn a new program. This class helped me learn how to design parts that were producible by inexperienced machinists. I learned a lot about bearings and linkages in lecture which was useful in designing our project. I found out that CAD can take a very long time and sometimes, you have to make different versions of the same thing to achieve the desired results. I enjoyed learning how to use the laser cutter and water jet, because they were very useful in the building of our project. The most difficult part of this class was the fast paced build cycle. What made the limited time especially difficult was the limited shop time. I also learned how to design within constraints (Rules) and a budget. As a team we had to adapt to each other’s class schedule and personal lives. Being in a team like this is a great experience, but it also requires a lot of patience and time. If I were to start over, I would force my team to finish earlier and test the hell out of our machine. I would find a better way to manage my time and become more efficient.

Even though I learned a lot, I feel that the class could be improved. I felt that we spent too much time going over the design process and creativity. We should have formed groups earlier and started the project a few weeks before the time we actually started it. I think that if we were given a budget equivalent to the cost of the provided kit, then teams could have been more creative in their design. A lot of the provided parts were not very useful and I feel as if teams could have chosen to use better motors and gear boxes. Another problem I found was that the provided tables were not built like in CAD and were substancaily different and caused our team many problems and caused our machine to fail. Another thing I did not like was that the rules kept getting changed which made it difficult to finalize a design and it ended up costing use time. I wish we could have done the motor lab earlier so that it could have been useful to our design process. The bike lab was not necessary and we could do without. If more time were given to test, more of the teams would have been successful at competition including ours. So basically the things that I think need to be improved are to start the project earlier, let each team chose its resources, and to have a competition table built to specifications. Overall this class was a lot of work, but I did learn a lot so I think it was a success.