Final Reflection: Adam

ME 250 is by far the best course I have taken yet. I really enjoyed all aspects of this course, except for the long hours required toward the last third of the semester. It was awesome to start off with a rough sketch and refine it over and over again until we were standing there at the competition with a finished product. One of the most thrilling parts to me was when we took all the individual components we made and assembled them, and they all fit, and looked just like the CAD assembly. I've worked a lot in cad before, and made a lot of projects before, but this class took it to the next level, and it was so cool to see the fruit of our labor coming together.

I really enjoyed working through the design process, and collaborating with the team to refine our ideas. Our team worked really well together, and everyone brought a unique set of skills to the table. I tend to try to do everything in group projects, and to think that all my ideas are the best, but it was great to work with a team where I had confidence in everyone, and we each were able to point out the strengths and weaknesses of each other's designs honestly. We never had any personality conflicts in our group, which is a significant indicator of the quality of group we had, and really contributed to the success of our design.

I really enjoyed getting in the shop and making stuff, although at times it seemed like I never left the place. One thing I learned is that tight tolerances are a HUGE expense timewise. We would have benefited by reducing the precision of a lot of our machined tolerances. Overall I am happy with our quality of machining, although each of us made our share of screw-ups... some more major than others. For instance, I dropped and bent both of the axles on my way to press them. Some persuasion from the orange mallet fixed them though.

I think we could have improved aspects of our design had we spent some more time in the 250 shop with the GSI's while we were doing CAD. I think we could have saved time by identifying design errors ahead of time, rather than discovering them during manufacturing and having to change designs on the fly.

I think the course is well laid out, and I think that the time given for manufacturing is adequate, but looking back, we should have started sooner, and spent more time early on. One other thing we had trouble with is relying on dimensions given on the manufacturer's drawings for some of the kit parts. In a future course, I would emphasize that the dimensions are probably not accurate, and that students should spend some time measuring the kit components.

The GSI's for this course were very helpful in the design process. I'd especially like to thank Nassim for his help in lab, and to Davor for really pushing us relentlessly to make us perfect our design (although having most of our design ideas shot down was frustrating at points, but I think it resulted in a better machine)

Thanks to John and Mike, this is a superb class, and really interested me in the design process.