Individual Reflection - Tasha Stearns

During the course of ME 250, I learned a lot about the complexities of working in a group and learning how to use a multitude of new technologies, including SolidWorks and all the machines we used to manufacture our robot. It was incredibly chaotic and time consuming, so this is a grand opportunity for me to sit down and make sense of it all.

Now that I’ve actually gone through the process, the charts used to explain how we should approach this project make more sense. To make an effective product, you need to consider what exactly it needs to do and how it should do it. These are very important decisions to make because they are the foundation for the rest of the project and should be given an appropriate amount of time for thought. As for teamwork, this semester gave me an important lesson: not everyone will contribute the same amount of work. This isn’t a bad thing, it is just the realization that there needs to be a group leader, or at least someone to focus the whole group. Generally this person will have the best idea of the overall project so they must bear the responsibility of guiding the rest of the group. While some positions in the team have slightly more responsibilities, they are still comparable to each other. In order for the group to function with cohesion, everyone needs to be involved, whether that simply means being at the meetings to follow the progress so that they may input later or that the person is giving a lot of ideas for the project. Either way, it is essential. While it is very important to have roles in the team and recognize that some are weightier than others, it is also very important to have a time line. The time line is the basis for time management, and although it seems trivial in the beginning it is also a very, very important concept to have down.

In terms of manufacturing, I have learned the lesson of (as Bob would call it) KIS: Keep It Simple. When designing in CAD it is easy to forget the physical limitations imposed by the way we manufacture the parts. Each hole takes time to place with the precision needed, and the same goes for every other feature we need to manufacture into the parts. It is also very easy to overlook small but important details, such as: when placing holes you must also consider the radius of the bolt head/nut or any other fastener.

With these lessons, it is easy to look in hindsight and point out where we messed up and how we could have done things much more efficiently. In the beginning it seemed like we had so much time to design our robot, so the reality didn’t hit us until much later. We didn’t use our copious amount of time in the beginning to adequately plan out and design our project. We failed to realize that what we needed to do was get a solid idea of our robot in place and turn that idea into reality first through SolidWorks and then manufacturing. SolidWorks is the place where we can iron out all the small details of our robot, which we did, but it happened much later than when we needed it to happen. Most of our problems stemmed from the fact that we didn’t plan accordingly and use our time wisely in the beginning.