Mechanical Engineering 250: Design and Manufacturing is one of the most unique classes offered in the engineering school. It has taught me several important lessons and has given me great insight into the engineering profession. Unlike most of other engineering classes, ME 250 actually gave me hands on experience that you cannot simply learn by reading a book and doing homework problems. As great as this class was, there are still ways that it can improve. Overall, this was one of the better classes I have taken at the University of Michigan.
From working in the machine shop to completing the homework assignments, I felt I was constantly learning and exploring new things. Splitting up the semester into two parts with the first being based on individual performance and the second based on teamwork gave me a more in depth look into the several aspects of engineering. Formulating my own modules and concepts during the first part let me explore my creativity while understanding the different facets of the game a lot better. Meanwhile the homework assignments let us challenge our conceptual skills and made us consider the mathematical aspect of the planning stage. More importantly I learned that even if you are or will be eventually working with a team on a project, it is key for you to formulate your ideas and opinions about the game that you can later debate about with your team members. In order for brain storming to be most effective, each team member needs to have his or her own concepts that are unique in their own ways. Also, it was important that we learn about the basic engineering concepts prior to working in a team setting. Although we did learn about several of the engineering concepts later in the semester, it was important that the professors established somewhat of a base that we could use to fabricate the ideas for our robot.
As important as the first part of the semester was, the second part was equally if not more important. We not only got to work in a team setting but also received extensive experience in the shop. The initial part of this segment involved receiving training for the shop and spending countless hours designing our robot. Even though the training we received went over the basic parts of the machines, we weren’t able to create any complex parts similar to those we could be using on our robot. I feel like if we received some more training on the machines, the building of the robots could’ve gone more smoothly. Also, I learned that the designing stage of a product is almost more important than the actual manufacturing part. If the parts have been designed accurately then their manufacturing should not require a lot of time. We did not understand this at the time and were severely troubled during the manufacturing stage. Moreover, our time management wasn’t ideal either. We hindered our progress by delaying several of the major decisions. This delay in our schedule caused us to push back our manufacturing, which did not help us in the long run. Although we finished our project on time, our manufacturing was not up to par. Regardless, I learned a lot about the manufacturing process and working with machines to engineer parts. Since I didn’t have any experience working in the shop, essentially was new to me.
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