Final Documentation
This ME 250 is, by far, the most informative engineering class I have taken so far. Instead of focusing on theory and formulas, this class immersed me in the true essence of engineering. To me, engineering is about having an aim, visualizing a series of steps or solutions to achieve that aim, and formalizing something palpable to complete the objective. This essentially is what this class aimed to do and hence has opened my eyes to engineering. Now, I am able to look beyond the formulas and theory, and actually be able to see the real world application of mechanical engineering.
What I learnt in ME 250
Design and Manufacturing:
I initially felt that designing a machine to accomplish our objective was time consuming. But as I found out, manufacturing the machine was worst. It is while manufacturing that I saw firsthand all the imperfections of our design, some of which were too late to correct. Most importantly, I saw the issues that were taken for granted of, and hence never discussed, during the design process. Yes, even now, I feel that the manufacturing process is more arduous than the design process, but if proper planning was done during the design process, the manufacturing process would be a lot smoother.
Ways to Improve:
For my next design class, I am sure that the design process my team undertakes would be a lot more comprehensive. This class gives us a great insight on what it would be like once a team moves from the designing process to the manufacturing process. With this insight and experience, I believe that I would be able to make more accurate predictions of potential stumbling blocks and try to avoid them early on.
Teamwork:
For a class like ME 250, teamwork is imperative for a team to complete their objectives. There are just simply too man y components to this class, like designing, planning, manufacturing parts, assembling parts and troubleshooting concepts. I have learnt that it is so much more efficient to ‘divide and conquer’ rather than have all members focused on one aspect of the class at a time. To accomplish this, each member has to know their strengths and weakness, and focus on tasks that exemplify their strengths. For example, I enjoyed man managing and assembling parts. Hence, I tried to gain a bird’s eye view of the entire process so that I could delegate jobs quickly and swiftly. On top of that, I took special focus on assembling or disassembling my team’s machine.
As my team tried to maintain high levels of teamwork, I learnt the importance of actually having a plan. It truly aids the delegation of work as well as the prompt completion of processes. There are many potential stumbling blocks to disrupt a team’s plan, like needing to queue for an hour to use the band saw, and it is up to the team to be sharp enough to acknowledge that it more efficient to focus their energy on another important aspect of the project before using the band saw later when the queue is shorter.
Ways to improve:
It would best serve the team if the character of each member is known to everyone within the team. I feel the best way to achieve this is to organize a social outing where the entire team can relax and get to really know each other. For example, organizing a pizza party would be social enough an event for team mates to become friends and hopefully in the future be able to work together.
The roles of each team member, in general, should be made know to the team. To improve, I would have ‘interviewed’ each team member to find out their likes or fortes and try to allocate jobs to them based on their strengths.
Time Management
In this class, there is definitely a time constraint, and to overcome this, proper time management has to be practiced. To me, proper time management takes place when a team spends the right amount of time on each aspect of the project. I have learnt that in order to do this, the team has to be very clear of its long term goals. For this class, teams have roughly two weeks to complete the MCM, and a week from the completion of the MCM to the presentation of the machine. This means that teams have a week to complete all other ‘non-MCM’ modules. Problems arise when the MCM takes up 50% of total required work and the other modules take up the other 50%. Teams would then have half the time to complete their other modules than the time they had to complete their MCM. Proper time management would let them know that it is just simply not feasible to cramp the completion of the other modules to the last week, and this risks the completion of the project, not to mention that testing is also another important aspect teams have to take into consideration.
This is the important of having a long term plan, and ensuring that the rest of the team is aware of this plan. Only then can proper time management be undertaken, removing the scenario of needing to cramp a bulk of work to the last minute.
Ways to improve:
During my Engr 100 days, we had a plan in black and white to adhere to. I feel if I had done the exact same thing in this class, my team and I would have a better conceptual understanding of what is required from each of us as the weeks progress.
Testing
From this course, I have learnt that certain issues, like the shortcomings of my team’s machine, are realized only during testing. This shows that regardless how much planning and precaution was done before the manufacturing of the machine, only from testing the machine in a real world scenario can one actually be sure of the quality of the machine.
For example, it was only through testing that my team and I realized that the way we transmitted the torque from the motor to the rotating shaft was not feasible. Also, it was only through testing that we realized that one strain of Kevlar string was not enough to withstand the tension applied onto it.
The fact is, all these inefficiencies would not have been realized if testing was not done. It is important that the team’s time manage properly and leave ample amounts of time to put their machines through rigorous testing.
Ways to improve:
I believe that at least a week of testing would be ideal to spot errors and change them. Whilst I believe it might be difficult to complete the machine and have a week to spare to test, my team should have expedited the process of manufacturing, and at the same time not compromise quality, to leave as much time as possible to put our machine through vigorous testing.
Calculations and Estimations
From this class, I have seen firsthand how an inaccurate measurement of 0.5mm can have disastrous effects on the machine. Most of the students have not assembled anything from scratch before, and based on calculations from other engineering classes, 0.001m is not significant and is commonly rounded down.
Now take the arena table for example, me team wanted to fit the arm of our machine into the compartment with the PPBs. The gap of that compartment is 41 mm and the width of our arm was manufactured to be 40.5mm. Initially, we thought that our arm will have no problems entering the slot since mathematically, it is thinner. However, due to the non-ideal nature of this project, our arm had troubles fitting into the slot, let alone rotating in it.
Hence, I have learnt that more leeway to calculations has to be given, and that it is not feasible to fit an arm of a machine that is 40.5mm wide into a slot that is 41mm wide especially if the arm needs to move within the slot. It would be more sensible to manufacture the arm to a width of 39.5mm at most.
Ways to improve:
When designing, we should be walked through the process of assembling the entire machine. By doing so, we can pinpoint areas of our machine where the calculations would be flawed in a real world scenario.
Pointers for the class:
More personal attention from GSI during design process
As I have realized, the concept that my team has chosen did not best suit this competition. We wanted to utilize a rotating arm that could extend as well. This means that the entire mechanism that extends the arm has to be rotated along with the balls. We initially thought that this concept could be created easily which unfortunately was not the case.
The fact is, my team made the effort to make calculations in ideal scenarios, but making the actual machine was a hassle and many problems arose due to the accuracy the machine requires. Many factors can be attributed to my team’s problems, like carelessness or failure to do research. However, I feel that my members and I are just too inexperienced to be able to foresee most of the potential stumbling blocks when we manufactured the machine.
I feel if there are more interaction between faculty and each individual group, like GSI meeting with each individual group to discuss their design in fair amounts of detail, I believe valuable information can be imparted to the students. For example, a GSI could say, ‘ please be weary of this component of your design as it requires high amounts of precision and many problems like ‘so and so’ could arise’. After all, most of the students in ME 250 have not taken a design class before and would probably need help during the design process if the class requires students to come out with a concept that has to work perfectly.
Time Commitment
This class aims to accomplish a lot by providing students an amazing learning experience. And I believe that this class is an amazing learning experience that would gear me up for upper level design classes. The catch is that students have to be put through hours and hours of work throughout the semester, and being students, they would obviously find it least desirable, even if the knowledge they acquire is priceless.
I feel that if the enthusiasm of students can tapped into and manipulated, not only will they be able to enjoy the class more, but with more enjoyment, the possible lessons learnt from the experiences in ME 250 would have a more profound effect
What the Class did Well:
Informative
As I said above, the class was ridiculously informative and I did open my eyes to the essence of engineering. Throughout the semester, my focus in engineering moved from mathematics and equations to linkages, pulleys, bearings and other important engineering tools. HW 4 & 5 was the start of it.
HW 4 allowed students to mix the real world side of engineering, by requiring us to analyze in detail the body of a bicycle, with the mathematical side of engineering, by requiring us to us the knowledge acquired during lab to make calculations.
HW 5 simply showed how complicated it is to transmit torque generated from a motor to a shaft. I honestly never knew how a simple process like this requires large amounts of precautions for the process to work efficiently, like bearings to prevent misalignment and the existence of radial forces. There are certain kinds of information that can only be acquired from viewing an apparatus at work, and this is one good example.
Hands-on Approach
There are some lessons that can only be learnt from actually performing a task, in this case building a machine. This hands-on approach requires students to see the repercussions of their ideas and design concepts. From there, students would be able to assess the quality of their ideas and acknowledge the ideas’ strengths and weaknesses.
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