What I’ve learned
Design and Manufacturing
Throughout this course I’ve learned a lot about design techniques and manufacturing processes. I found the design process outlined by this course to be very effective. Specifically the flowchart showing the development of strategies then concepts then modules then components. I found the Pugh Chart to be effective, although it seems that you could arrange the weighting and functional requirements to favor your favorite strategy/concept. The Pugh Chart did help our team choose a table and slot scoring strategy with individual, simplistic modules. One mistake I made at the beginning of the design process was designing modules without keeping the kit components in mind. We had to make several revisions to each module because we didn’t have the right materials or we designed parts that couldn’t be manufactured.
During the manufacturing I learned the use of each machine and how to operate them. I learned that the drill press isn’t very accurate.
Teamwork and Management
Every team needs a leader, not to make every important decision, but to keep track of the progress of the team and delegate tasks. At the beginning of the semester our team had no direction. When we met we wasted a lot of time and tried to do every part of each assignment together. When we got stuck we would sit around and wait till someone came up with an answer. For most of our meetings one or more members showed up late or not even at all. After the design review I decided to try to reorganize to make our team more efficient and productive. For the second half of the semester I tried split up each of our assignments and delegate. I tried to keep our meetings shorter and on topic. I also encourage everyone to hold each other accountable for tardiness.
How the course can be improved
I have a few complaints about the course. I think the slotbot project is not a good choice for a first year design course. I think the project was not focused enough. Most teams tried to accomplish too much. I noticed that many teams had two or more modules that were dependent of each other. In the seeding round only 11 teams out of 28 scored. There were 17 team who failed to score a single squash ball. How many of those teams could have been successful if they just made one module: a car that pushes balls across the top of the table. We were encouraged to focus on a defensive and offensive design. What’s the point of defense if you can’t score? It was made clear that we need to push the flipper within the slot before we score. Obviously very few groups of sophomores can develop a mobile dual-purposed module. I also got the impression that during the design process few teams knew every rule, for example starting zone. I would have rather spent the term focusing on a smaller project and doing a better job.
How you could have improved your performance in the course
I could have improved my performance by choosing a simpler design. There is so much course information for this class: details of assignments, 70+ slide lectures, rules, kit, past blogs. I would have done better to keep track of all the course information in an organized way. I wish our team had done everything a little bit ahead of schedule. I would have done better to attend every lecture.
I also could have improved my score by plugging in the correct wires during the seeding round.
Conclusion
I enjoyed this class. I was extremely upset when our team got disqualified during the competition. I was surprised how much I could care about a robot. It shows how just how much hard work our team put into this class. I would like to thank all my teammates. I think if we had a catch phrase for our group it would be “Guys... there is a problem.” I would like to thank all of the professors, especially Mark for being so helpful and easy going during lab.
Goodbye ME250!
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