Over the course of the fall 2010 semester, I learned a great deal about design and manufacturing in mechanical engineering 250. The hands on experiences with the mill, lathe, and water jet were a great learning experience that convinced me I made the right decision by transferring into the mechanical engineering department. Prior to this semester I had no experience using any of these machines (or a band saw or drill press), and I now feel confident that I could use these machines in tandem to machine any of the parts I saw during the slot bots II competition.
This course helped me develop my team work and thought process a great deal. Almost every assignment forced me to think outside of the box, while I was also taking pause at every step to consider my teammates thoughts on the same subject and how those could be combined with my own. I am now, at this course's conclusion, a much more creative and understanding person.
The time that this course required was far and away more than any of the other four credit courses I've ever taken at the University of Michigan. The strong competition for hours in the shop was hard to manage, especially because my teammates and I had conflicting schedules very often. There was more than one occasion where no more than two of us could make it to the shop at the same time on any given day. The way that the MS were structured helped me a lot, because it really forced me to do work ahead of time and make sure I was prepared for the next step in the course.
The biggest problem that my team had was that we thought too much about what other teams would do. Our slot bot was able to move about all the axes that we intended it to, and all of its modules were able to function. The problem was that we dedicated too much time to these modules being able to meet resistance, and not enough time to making sure that they would function in the absence of resistance. A good example of this is our front arm, which did not make contact with the flipper all of the time. When it did, it was strong enough that it was able to hold the flipper even when other teams were pushing against it, something that happened twice during the slot bots II competition. When the front arm missed however, we were unable to score, which ended up being the reason we were knocked out of the slot bots II competition.
To improve the course I would have GSIs (or others with shop knowledge) help the students use the various machines in the shop for the first couple weeks much more than they did this semester. Before I started doing any shop work this semester, the extent of my experience in the shop was the training I registered for in September. With everything going on in the shop Bob and John only had so much time to spare, and over the first couple weeks much of my time in the shop was used on figuring out simple things. Small imperfections that my teammates and I made while machining which could have been avoided ended up requiring the remachining of many parts later on in the semester.
If I could have changed the way this semester has gone, I would have improved my performance by starting every MS and every piece of shop work earlier. 99% of the problems my team and I encountered were not problems that we would have ever predicted, and while we usually thought we were ahead of schedule, one setback could set us back as much as a day on any given MS. I would also have made sure to have applied more of what I learned in lecture to my machine from a much earlier date.
Mechanical engineering 250 was a challenging course. At times, I wanted to rip my hair out, stopping only when I realized that it may never grow back if I did. The saving grace was that at the end of each assignment and MS, and ultimately at the end of the course, it was always rewarding to see the finished product in front of me. I had a great time over the course of the semester, and I learned a lot about design, manufacturing, teamwork, and myself that I will be sure to remember over my future coursework and life experiences.
Thank you for the a great semester,
~Kazem Alidoost
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