Taking ME250 has given me plenty of
moments to experience and learn many things, both good and bad. Relating to
design and manufacturing, I expected the design process would be a tiring and a
tedious one, which it was, but I never expected such complexity to be involved,
such as the Pugh charts. I do agree the chart and the other introduced methods
aided students in designing and planning the robot. Getting my first hands on
experience with the different machines in the shop was very beneficial and
exciting as well.
Being
completely honest with no exaggeration, this teamwork was incredibly surprising
simply because it is one of the best group experiences ever. Never before I had everybody so
well behaved and cooperative with each other. Every past group I have been a
part of always had a member with an issue about a random problem, but the
synergy in this team was simply awesome. I suppose there were a couple of
moments when time could have been spent more efficiently but the prior
discussed meetings and teamwork always got our assignments and manufacturing finished
ahead of time, at worst on time. Everybody in this team put in the, effort, nobody ever wasted time to the point where he was clearly seen as a slacker, and fighting never occurred.
This
course is definitely an important part for an undergraduate engineer to grow
and learn. With that said, the course introduced the majority of what the students
needed to know. However there was also an unusual amount of knowledge not
needed in my opinion, or at least taught at an awkward time. The way it was
organized, a midterm appeared around manufacturing time which was to test a
vast amount of numerous tiny facts and material relating to things the students
was to work with. I am not saying this is completely useless so it should be
removed from the course, but seeing it take a chunk of time and not have as
much value as I thought bothered me. That precious time could have been used to
double check and trouble the machine.
Consequently
this team’s strategy and design had a simple plan with a simple solution. However,
more time would have allowed this team to test the motors earlier and the tower
during labs should have a guided box or area to indicate where it will actually
be during the competition. The gearbox and motors not being in synced bothered
this team’s machine during its performance which could have been fixed with more
testing time. Moreover the strategy to move around the tower to score balls
from the ledges was supposed to open on all sides, but limited to no pathways
around the back. There appeared to be no room for the machine to travel through
there. With the way the arm was designed to work on one side, our machine was
going to be at a huge disadvantage depending on which side it would have got to
start on. The tower position on the arena misled a lot of teams.
I
found it interesting that the past semester’s videos of the competition showed
students that very few teams went for the tower ledge and wave field balls. As
a result most teams thought there were going to be unique and have an advantage
in the competition by going for those. To everybody’s surprise this was not the
case and some matches even had two teams with extremely similar machines and
strategies, such as ours.
Nevertheless
this course is definitely one of the more exciting ones instead of the usual
conceptual and test taking classes. The working experience and competition is something
unique other classes cannot provide. Personally though, I would wish the Stamps
auditorium would not be used for lectures. Although the size could be useful,
the setting for the class in the morning is too dark and similar to a kind of
theater, making it tiring and difficult to concentrate during lectures. Having
another room or diving into smaller sections would be an improvement in my
opinion and would definitely help gaining more focus. I truly hope the future x50 and x95 courses will be just as beneficial, interesting, and worthwhile.
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