Reflections: Chao

Mechanical Engineering 250 is the most time intensive course that I have ever taken. The amount of time I spent designing, building, and improvising my team’s robot completely overshadowed all my other day to day activities during the last two months. Although I spent a disproportionate amount of time on this course, I have learned many new and important things about the design and manufacturing process.

Before I took this class, I thought that meeting a deadline is simply a matter of starting the project earlier and spreading out the workload more evenly throughout its timeline. However, I quickly found out that there are things beyond my control that will delay the project and put it in jeopardy of not meeting the deadline. I encountered this situation many times throughout the design and manufacturing processes and had to make very quick improvisations. My team was extremely fortunate that all of our improvisations worked.

Another important lesson that I learned is that the design process is never finished. Even though my team’s robot is already turned in and graded, there are many things that can be improved. I thought of most of the improvements after my team’s robot played a round in the arena. If the course was set up to allow teams to go through multiple design revisions, our robot would have performed much better in the arena. Although building multiple revisions of a robot is very costly, I feel like this is the only way to accurately pinpoint every part that needs improvement. There are just too many things that SolidWorks cannot simulate.

Although this course teaches people the design and manufacturing process very well, there are a few improvements that can be made. Opening up the machine shop on weekends would have helped my team significantly. It seemed like there was always a shortage of machine shop time during the last two months. Moving the shop training sessions from the beginning of the semester to the week right before the machine shop opened to ME250 would have allowed teams to be more efficient with the shop tools. John and Bob were bombarded with simple questions during the first week that the machine shop opened to students. Most of those questions were answered during the very forgettable shop training. Instead of giving each team a kit of parts, Professor Hart or the GSIs should just give each team a 200 dollar budget to spend on parts. There were many things in our kit of parts that my team didn’t use, but we had to spend a ton of money on things that we actually needed. Finally, the things that caused the most headaches for my team were the changes to the rules and arena. Please don’t change the rules of the game halfway through the design process next time.

Even though there are many small imperfections with this year’s ME250 course, I’m glad I took it. This is the first course that I’ve taken were the students actually design and build something as an engineer. I can’t wait to see what kinds of things I get to build next semester in ME350.

Reflection: Andrew Farron

At the beginning of the school year I was contemplating engineering majors, unable to decide the best career for my personality and passions.  As my first mechanical engineering class, ME 250 has confirmed my thoughts on perusing this exciting and hands on field.  My skills and true love for the designing, manufacturing, teamwork, and competing really came apparent in the countless hours my teammates and I spent developing and driving our quarter-finalist, Denard Robinson inspired slotbot machine.

Before this course, I had never used any tools or machinery past table saws and hand drills.  The combination of learning and discussing processes in lecture with hours of hands-on time in the shop provided a great opportunity to hone my machining knowledge and skills.  The labs were also very helpful with understanding motors, torque and velocity ratios, and the bike lab’s gear ratios.  The CAD labs proved much more useful than I had ever imaged and the design process was certainly vital, tedious and slightly underestimated.  Luckily I had a teammate with great skills in these programs and enough dedication to make up for the parts drawings that we may have never completed!

With a recent promotion to student project manager at my current research position with the Center for Business Acceleration and Incubation Studies, and the teamwork oriented class of ME 250, I have greatly increased my ability to divide tasks, plan meetings, and make deadlines.  Hitting a few minor lacks in communication, my teammates and I really strengthened our management and team organization skills.  Patrick did a fantastic job organizing meetings and shop times, and Yong and Chow developed and maintained much of the ctools and blogspot team pages.  I find that at both work and in class, keeping a friendly, positive attitude is crucial to a project’s success.  I was very lucky to have such a flexible, motivated, kind, and positive team! 

Now that I am nearly completed with my final assignment for ME 250!!!, I can reflect on the overall organization and execution of the design and manufacturing class.  Firs t of all, I was amazed at how well the class timed out.  I thought the due dates and milestones were accurately placed to keep us all going at 110%.  I must admit, I am very thankful I wasn’t taking any more engineering courses this semester because my teammates and I were forced to spend an overwhelming amount of more time on this four credit class than the others.  It was very rewarding and beneficial, but balancing research, other classes, work, and happiness proved very difficult.  I understanding we are a top university for our engineering programs, but there are many, many other aspects to our time at this school.  All in all it was a great personal accomplishment, but may have put slight excess stress on my teammates and myself.

As mentioned before, I could have  done a few things  differently to increase my success in this class. First of all, I should have set more time aside for team meetings and CAD assignments.  It always seemed to surprise me at how tedious each task was and I should have paid better attention to Davor’s CAD labs to improve my skills and efficiency in this area.

I find my semester in ME 250 to be a very successful one.  I have made great new friends, leaned new skills and background knowledge that will stay with me for the rest of my engineering career.  Thank you for the effort and organization that went behind making this class as exciting as it was!

Reflection: Patrick Lawless

                  ME 250 was a learning experience for me and my teammates. While I learned how to organize group meetings, the importance of scheduling and creativity, I also developed lifelong skills on the mill, lathe and other machines.

                  Throughout the entire class, I learned the importance of communication and scheduling. My team and I quickly found out that we could not design our slotbot overnight. I began constructing to-do lists for my team’s shop time and lists for our meetings. The to-do lists improved the efficiency of our machine shop time and we were able to pull everything together at the end of the semester and build a successful slotbot. I also found that my team and I occasionally had difficulties communicating with eachother. After a couple of weeks we decided to develop a private ctools page for our Team. The ctools workspace allowed us to all communicate without all being in the same room. We could also share files and updated Solidworks designs on the ctools webpage. ME 250 gave me the necessary skills to communicate effectively with my team.

                  In ME 250 I learned a lot about machining that I did not know before the class. I became skilled with the lathe and the mill. I also found the water jet machine in the DOW building very interesting. I made multiple parts on the mill and lathe and it was a great experience. I learned the importance of designing a part that can even be manufactured. I also learned the importance of tolerances and how tolerances are a part of everything. ME 250 taught me the way to design a part within the realms of possibility and how to create the part.

                  Overall I thought ME 250 was a worthwhile class. I was exposed to Solidworks and machines that I would not have had the opportunity to use if I did not take ME 250. Even though all Mechanical Engineers have to take the class I would recommend ME 250 to anyone that wants to develop their teamwork skills and learn how to use the machine shop. 

All Said and Done!

What a semester it's been! Now that our slotbot and contest have been completed, we will now take a few moments to reflect on our project.  First of all, I'd like to congratulate ourselves on our quarterfinals finish! Team shoelace was seeded tenth of 28 teams and finished around 7th place.  Our locking mechanism worked wonderfully, successfully blocking all other teams from scoring in the slot.  Our demise came when our conveyer seemingly compressed the balls better than moving them.  With four wheels and a very taught belt, the power needed to deliver enough torque and speed simply wasn't all there.  We scored an average of about 30 grams, but it just wasn't enough to compete with the weighted balls placed on the top of the arena.  Our manufacturing was very accurate, allowing us to make precision parts, and creating our entire machine to fit within the space-restricted slot.  Nearly minutes before the due date, our kevlar string kept breaking when we tried to launch the spring-powered bullet, so we replaced it with Denard Robinson's shoelace, signed by the man himeslf.  Not only did this shoelace do the job we were needing, but added some remarkable style to our bot.  All in all, we are very proud of ourselves and teammates on successfully completing this semester's ME250 slotbot project!

Team Video

It's about that time!

As we near the last couple days left before the project's deadline, our team's to-do list is finally shrinking in size!  We spent Saturday in the machine shop finishing some of last components and features of our conveyor.  During this time, we did run into a few small problems which need to be addressed in the shop on Monday.  First of all, our rack for dropping the conveyor isn't gluing well with the backplate support that we made.  We may decide to go without the backplate or find another way of connecting the two.  Secondly, we still need to cut the tops of the conveyor plates so the whole module fits in the constraints.  We still have yet to cut and fasten the belt, an this must be done precisely to prevent slack in the belt.  We must lastly mount the motor and battery pack and test the machine to make sure all the parts function properly. The race to the finish has begun!!!

completed slotbot design

The slotbot is basically done. All that's left is manufacturing the parts and putting it all together. The bullet is fully extended out to open the flipper in this picture.

constraints

The picture is the starting zone, flipper, top mounting holes, and our slotbot all layered on top of each other. This constraints page sets the dimensions for all of our parts and the optimum angle and location for our gun.

Schedule - Corrected Link

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By22PtzkcSjeNmRlMWEzMDQtMjAzNS00Y2FkLTlhNmUtYWZjYTI5MTU2MGYz&authkey=CNfaqbMD&hl=en

Bill of Materials

The bill of materials needed for MS8 are saved as a google doc. Here is the link:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By22PtzkcSjeNzBiZTVhMzItMjU3OC00YWZjLWJmN2MtYTcwMTA1NTExZjEz&authkey=CIzJrI8D&hl=en

Schedule

Our schedule for the semester has been on our ctools site.  The link for the excel file is https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0By22PtzkcSjeNmRlMWEzMDQtMjAzNS00Y2FkLTlhNmUtYWZjYTI5MTU2MGYz&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

Meeting Minutes Sun. Nov 21 2010

We met at Mojo CLC from 5 PM to finalize our plans for MS 7 and MS 8 due before the Thanksgiving break.
Last friday(two days ago), we finished manufacturing 1 tensioner, rollers(1 gear, 1 drive, 2 normal), and 4 angle stock.
Tomorrow(Mon), in the machine shop, we will be using the Lathe #3 from noon to 2PM. We will finish rack axle, motor plate, bullet, barrel, and spring plates.

Lab Times This Week

Howdy boys,

We have reserved time in the workshop for today (Thursday) from 6pm-8pm and Friday 11:30-2pm.  We also signed up for the water cutter on Wednesday of next week. The parts arrived at my house today and we should be able to make nearly all of of major components before break. See you guys tonight!

Andrew

Meeting Nov. 15 2010

Today in class, we built the rest of the gear boxes. And the gun and barrel designs were more specified. After talking with Davor, we made the gun more practical.
In the evening meeting at Mojo from 6 PM, we studied for the Midterm on the following day.

Good luck on your/my Midterm!

Meeting on Nov.13

We had team meeting from 5 pm to 8 pm to discuss about the gun design specifications and to order materials necessary for further manufacturing.

New Conveyor design

Schedule for the Rest of the Week

Wednesday: Meet to finalize ALL aspects of design. (i.e. couplings, gears, mounts, motors)

Complete the homework questions possible without us completely finishing lab.

Thursday: Finish last part of motor lab, complete number one of homework.

Friday: Rise and shine, we're meeting at the workshop at 11:30am until 2:00pm to construct the motor mountings and reinforcement block for the conveyer.  We can also begin to reinforce the racks with some aluminum backing.

Saturday: Go Blue! Shoelace for Heisman!

Sunday: Trip to the hardware and scrap metal stores.  We need to purchase parts and order whatever we can't find in the store.

CTools Team Page

Our team has created our own CTools page to help with organization, the link is provided below.
https://ctools.umich.edu/portal/site/4aab08e1-8fb1-42aa-a309-ef6f393e0490