Kim Angelakis
Final Reflection
_________________________________________________________________________________
ME250 has been a very rewarding class. I feel as though my knowledge of the
material for the class increased exponentially when we began to manufacture our
robot. It was an extremely long
process but each step was crucial to the success of our final product. I felt as though this class is the
first class that has been one hundred percent applicable to our future in
mechanical engineering. _________________________________________________________________________________
The
biggest difficulty I had with this class was my lack of prior knowledge of the
material. Many people coming into
250 have worked in the Wilson Center, on a design or formula team, had an
internship that requires machining knowledge, and other backgrounds in this
area. Having no experience in this
field made it very difficult to keep up with the lectures. It also made it hard when we had to
begin machining our robots. Bob
and Mark in the machine shop were extremely helpful. We would not have been able to complete our robot without
them. They helped to show us how
to use the machines, explain what order to manufacture and assemble things in,
welded pieces of our project, and helped us with many other aspects of our
project. It was unfortunate that I
could not learn as much from the lectures because I was missing the basic
knowledge needed to follow them from the beginning.
I
think it was essential for our team to follow the design process. I learned how important each step was
including the earlier design steps.
These steps allow you to find the best possible design and strategy as
well as to catch possible problems before they arise. I did not realize when I was doing the first steps how much
they would actually play into our final design.
I
would have had an even better experience in this class if I had gone in the
beginning to either my GSI or one of the professors to get a general
explanation of the topics. This
way I would have been able to understand more and learn more from each of the
lectures. I also could have spent
more time on the first steps of the design process to possibly come up with
even better ideas.
I
also think that it would have helped to go over the different functions of the
motors in context with our robots.
We also could have used more advice on our coupling system before
creating it. This was our biggest
problem. We eventually got it to
work, but the plastic coupling was definitely not ideal for our robot. It would
have helped us immensely to research this more before choosing the plastic
coupling that was suggested in the supplemental assembly lecture.
It
was good that there was an emphasis placed on working with teams and how useful
this skill would be in the future.
This is not only a skill for mechanical engineering but a life skill no
matter what you end up doing. I
think that uncovering our own learning style as well as other people’s learning
styles was very important for the function of our team. It was also interesting to discover our
personality types in conjunction with how our team worked together.
This
class was a lot of work but extremely rewarding when we finally finished. This has been the longest project I
have worked on academically and to see it finally complete was gratifying. I know that all of the skills I
learned, from the team dynamic to how to use the machines, I will use in the
future.
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