ME250 IS AMAZING----It's a course that enables you to have some hands-on experience, ability to turn ideas into reality and it's hella fun! But don't get excited. This course will consume most of your time, starting from the design review to the end of the semester. Let's talk about the down side first.
I'm going to be brutally honest in this post. This course was very chill at first(you know, some drawings and sketches and random ideas how one's team is going to completely dominate the competition) but then it got exponentially difficult. There were many occasions in which our team worked and stayed up late; there were times when we have to get up at 8 A.M. to work in the shop. Working five hours straight on the project was fairly typical and skipping other ME classes(*cough cough* thermo) just to fix a small part to meet the MS deadlines.
I really wished we had formed our teams earlier instead of conjuring up ideas that we tend to abandon when it comes to thinking as a team. What i'm trying to say is that one person can have multiple ideas, but in the end, there can only be one. So it might have been more beneficial if we get together earlier and decide as a group that this is the strategy we are going to choose.
Unfortunately, however, we picked quite possibly the worst strategy out of the three. We decide to get balls from the slot and drive over to the other side! We had our reasons for such strategy and finally decided go with that idea. What we fail to foresee is that driving the vehicle can be a pain, unwinding the string can take forever, and having a 2 ft tall machine is another pain! Although we were able to score due to our multiple functional machine, so it was a trade-off.
Nevertheless, there was no turning back. It was half way into the semester, we had to carry it through.
As we finish manufacturing our parts, we started assembling things. This is where the nightmare of not envisioning the perfect slotbot comes in to haunt us. Our rack and pinion created an undesired moment that causes our arm to twist. Shaft for the wheel is too thin to be press fitted because we had to accommodate for the L pieces. Double gearbox was in the wrong gear ratio and thus our vehicle was not able to make over the surface bump. A thin piece of acryllic platform that literally bends due to the weight of the scoop and arm. And most troublesome of all, STRINGS! These Kevlar yarns are a pain! All these problems arise about a week(SEVEN DAYS) before the competition. We thought we were so screwed.
What separates a team of engineers from other people is the ability to solve practical problems. Your sweeper arm cannot move, so come up with a solution, and make it move. Your vehicle can't go over bumps, find a way to increase torque or friction. It was a time filled with frustration because there could be no definite answer to a problem. Despite in times of desparation and struggle, our team managed to tackle every single problem. Some attempts failed; others pathetic(Kevlar comes to mind), but those failures lead to success! We willed it through at the end. We were so proud when last minute ideas work. We learned to think under pressure and critique each other's ideas. This is a time when we(at least I did) felt pain and joy at the same time.
We find ourselves not having a life and basically living in the machine shop two weeks before the competition because we were so pressed on time. How does seven hours straight for 5~7 days sound? Mill/Lathe reserved almost everyday for 2 weeks? Having ME250 group meetings on Friday nights on multiple occasions?! IT WAS RIDICULOUS. Some teammates ended up skipping ME211, 235, and other jobs just to get things done. I ate dinner at 12:00AM once, literally, and my teammates probably have similar experiences.
Now that was pretty bad. There were good times too however. Learning how to CAD, and make engineering drawings will definitely help me in the future. Milling a piece of aluminum with a teammate and joke about everything to kill time was pretty fun! Not manufacturing correctly and provoking Bob Coury's anger was an amazing experience too! Having an awesome team that are willing to skip other important things to do ME250 helps too. Seeing that our machine was able to move pretty much paid off all the hard work even though we didn't make it too far on the arena. I'm so relieved and happy to have these teammates especially after last year's teamwork experiences.
This class is difficult(hardest class so far, I doubt it'll be topped in a while), but we all liked it. Seeing the pieces that we manufactured come together can be greatly rewarding. I hope all the other design classes(350,450 etc) will be as intense as this class, which fosters a friendly competition among the class. That was somewhat a masochistic statement, but I mean it. Working on projects is so much fun. I declared ME earlier this semester, and after taking this difficult class, it confirms my feeling that I made the right choice. =)
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