Trevor's Reflection

This class for me really could not compare to any other class I have ever taken. It was not the same sort of book-study, knowledge based class I am used to, but rather an actual application of all the engineering techniques we've learned. It reminded me a lot of FIRST robotics (which I competed on in high school). As such, it was a VERY enjoyable class, and an educational experience. I felt as though I got a glimpse of what "real world" engineering is, and can see what a potential career path in Mechanical Engineering would be like as a result of this class.

Two things in particular were very enjoyable for me. The first one was the CAD phase of the project. Due to prior experience with Solidworks, and even certification, I was able to jump right in to the CAD designing! I felt as though I had all the know-how about part-naming conventions, drawing templates, and other fine details of the Solidworks software, and was excited to put them to use. I did not expect to learn anything new about CAD at this point, but was surprised when I started discovering new things about using CAD for design, and how to coordinate large-scale projects with plenty of files and subfolders. I emerged from this experience far more comfortable with Solidworks than I had thought I would! My other favorite thing about this class was watching the project come together. It's one thing to see a 3D model on a computer, but its entirely different to see it actually come to life before your eyes! The process of watching all of these parts become a reality, and seeing the final product, is an incredible thing to witness. It is because of this that I think I really want to become a professional Engineer! Our final product was nearly exactly what we had all looked at on the computer screen a month or so earlier, but it was interesting to see the little modifications that we had made along the way. For example, we added a bearing to hold the screw on our linkage system in place, added a limit switch on the conveyor system to direct constant power to our planetary motor, and designed and machined a new part to mount our rack-and-pinion lowering system.

Working in a group on such a long-term, large-scale project was definitely an interesting experience, that I think we all benefited from. One interesting thing to watch was that our design was constantly changing in completely unexpected ways during the first month or so of the class. Our final design, safe to say, was not what any of us had initially imagined. While coordinating with other people on the design can be difficult at times, it leads to new, innovative ideas from all members of the team, that when brought together, result in a far greater and more efficient design than any of us could have concocted individually! Anyway, we all put in a lot of work to this project, from start to finish. At the start of the term, we had great communication and planning, and worked very cohesively together. While this became a little more disorganized towards the end of the term, I still look at our team as a whole and see an overall hard working, cohesive group of people. I feel that I especially put in a lot of work to the CAD and designing phase, but not as much in the machining and assembling. Overall I would like to think I was a valuable member of the team, and I think that my group members enjoyed working with me, as I have with them.

I think the class is a HUGE asset to students who are studying to become engineers. Having a large-scale group project like this in order to design and build a machine from scratch is necessary in order to train new engineers. However, I really thought this class could have been planned out a little better. I would have preferred to have split into groups sooner in the class, for several reasons. A lot of the initial concept work and designing was repeated after we split into groups, which ended up wasting time. Also, by having to share all of our ideas and designs with the whole class for the first several weeks, I felt like most people ended up with very similar strategies. I also would have allowed more machine time, perhaps by splitting into groups and starting the whole project earlier, because a lot of people were crunched for time in this phase.

Finally, I want to briefly address the lectures. I personally did not feel like I gained nearly as much from the lectures as from the project. However, the lectures were designed to teach basic concepts, that many engineers have not yet been exposed to, whereas I felt as though I had been exposed to most of it before. Unfortunately I don't see any way to run lectures aside from teaching the basics of all the topics for this class, but my one recommendation would be to condense the information in the lectures. There were far too many slides for too little of information, and it felt confusing and chaotic at times. But all in all, it was a great class, I learned a lot, and I am glad for the experience! I had awesome group members, amazing GSIs, and apparently a sweet design that won us the "Best Mechanical Design" award! :)