Colin Menapace

Individual Reflection

This semester I really felt that I learned a lot of useful information in ME 250. It was a great sophomore mechanical engineering class because it allowed students to get a ton of hands on design and manufacturing work outside of the classroom. Before taking this class I had an extremely limited amount of CAD experience and this class really allowed me to learn a lot and allowed me to spend enough time using the software on my own to become comfortable with it. Although I thought the actually labs that were planned for Solidworks could have been organized a bit more efficiently. They had a ton of information in them, but the way the labs were arranged made it so the GSI had to be constantly rushing to attempt to complete the lab. And although many students had prior experience and were able to breeze through much of the lab, others needed a lot of time and some individual attention which made classes extremely hectic. That being said I thought our GSI, Davor, did a really incredible job trying to meet everyone’s needs equally and keep everyone on track. If the labs were made to be slightly shorter and the pdf’s were arranged in a more organized style I think these labs could be extremely helpful. It would also be extremely helpful if the class would be broken into teams a week or two sooner to allow teams to use this lab time to being constructing their designs while still participating in the lab. This would allow team members to help each other instead of the GSI’s trying to pay attention to twenty computer screens at once. These lab periods were very helpful to me and I was able to learn a lot of useful and constructive skills. Learning how to design parts and complete assemblies made constructing and testing our machine so much easier and we couldn’t of compiled all our ideas and designs without it.

Lectures in this class were also very helpful in teaching the steps of the design process and the characteristics of many of the standard materials that we used in this class. This class was really great because it allowed us to use many different and unique mechanical devices in our machines which then resulted in a wide variety of designs. The lectures were very helpful in supplying us with the background information necessary to then plan out and calculate designs using these features. The lectures on things such as springs, screws, bushings, bearings, and pulleys were very helpful in sparking our creative mind during the design process. Although I thought many of these lectures could have been condensed to allow for more time in the manufacturing process. Or this stage could have been arranged slightly different to allow us to work with these components as at team as the instructors were demonstrating them.

The manufacturing portion of this class was possibly the most educational and informative portion of the entire class. Being able to get into the machine shop and work as a team on all the parts that we have designed ourselves really allowed us to learn through experience which for me is always the most efficient way of learning. Nothing replaces the experience of actually making the part and positioning it on your device, then realizing some slight modifications need to be made. And this experience in the shop really allows us to work through the problem solving processes of being an engineer and working with a design team. When the team would hit a snag we were able to meet up and discuss the problem and the best and most efficient solution to our problem. The machine shop instructors were also very helpful. It was great being able to think about the manufacturing processes that were at your disposal and being able to discuss this process with an instructor to get his suggestions and learn some of the tricks of the trade that they have acquired over the years. Jon and Bob seem extremely experienced and professional almost always have a helpful suggestion on the perfect way to conduct different machining operations. If lectures could be condensed to allow us two or three more manufacturing periods with Bob and Jon it would be really helpful in planning our designs.

As a whole I thought our team worked extremely well over the course of the semester. Being able to work as a team was very helpful and interesting because it gave the class more of a real world design feel. We had to consider the ideas and abilities of the entire group and work out team conflicts. This gave the project a company-like feel and will be very helpful in our futures as engineers.