My feelings towards ME250 are bittersweet now that the competition is over and our team finally has a chance to catch our breath, and perhaps spend some more time in our other classes. I leave this class with no regrets; I cannot emphasize enough how much I have learned about the design process and manufacturing this semester. At the start of ME250, I had never used a machine much less even been in a machine shop; the same goes for making CAD models and drawings. These tasks seem so simple now and I feel more than adequately prepared for a future design and manufacturing class.
Besides the skills necessary for design and manufacturing, the lessons I have learned in teamwork and time management are probably even more valuable. Because of the big time requirement of ME250, I had much less time to spend on my other classes than I had anticipated. Although the task of designing and manufacturing a machine in a month’s time seemed daunting and unrealistic, it had to be done so we made it happen. We had a few bumps in the road along the way, but the schedule we were required to maintain helped us stay on task and meet our deadlines. This is where teamwork played a giant role; without team unity, I feel we probably would not have accomplished as much as we did. ME250 has shown me the true strength of working in a team. Members of a team may have different ideas and personalities, but once the strengths of each member are brought together, so much can be accomplished.
The homework assignments for this class seemed well beyond our skill level and covered topics that were not discussed in lecture. Many of the requirements for assignments were also unclear and the grading quite ambiguous. While the lectures covered a massive amount of material, I feel the information would have been more useful if there was less depth and more focus on how the concepts would be used for our design project. Some of the topics covered in homework at the beginning of the semester were concepts I learned months later in my ME211 course. The exam was too long and I feel would have been better situated if we took it after we had done some manufacturing. The FRDPARRCs, although tedious, were an excellent way to get us thinking about our design. However, they would have been more beneficial if the rules and kit contents for the competition were given much sooner. Many of my initial designs were thrown out because they violated some rules that were nonexistent when we were designing.
The biggest struggle for me was my exam performance. Time was probably my biggest issue as I wasn’t sure how to allot my time for each problem. I also felt very inexperienced with the manufacturing questions on the exam because all the processes were very theoretical to me (we hadn’t yet done any manufacturing).
Overall, I am thoroughly satisfied with this class. If I could change one thing, I would throw out the homework sets because they did not benefit me in any way. This class was a giant leap from the previous terms of ME250 where their projects consisted of making static objects. I often imagined how nice it would be to have a project as simple as that; however, I am much happier with my situation because designing our dynamic machine was undoubtedly more exciting to make and the manufacturing and assembly was fun once we had a control of the concepts.
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