In theory, I should have loved this class. It embodies everything that I want to do with the rest of my life. There is something amazing that happens when you take an idea and make it reality. There is a sense of pride you get from creating something with your own hands and watching it take form. Or that has been my experience.
This class wasn’t like that for me. I left everyday feeling frustrated with what had to be done and the time we had to finish it. I understand that there is certain amount of benefit that can be had from letting people figure things out on their own, but in a class like this, where the time is limited, a bit more structure would have been beneficial. It takes experience to realize what sort of ideas work and what ways of doing things are most efficient. Teams without that experience were at a disadvantage. If you’ve never been in a situation like this class before it is easy to write off some things during the design process. The way we wrote off the time that it would take use to drop our platform or the moment arm on the rack and pinion (Both of which came back to haunt us in the end). It would have been nice for those with the experience that we lacked to inform us of our misconceptions, to take us aside and say “look at this, will it actually work the way you expect it too?” . It is reasonable to expect us to do most things on our own but this is still only a 200 level class, and it should have been taken into consideration that not everyone knew exactly what they were doing.
Although this class it wasn’t my first experience with the design process it was my first chance to work in a machine shop setting, my first chance to work with CAD and the first time I’ve ever had to deal with motors and their limitations in when I thought about a design. I found working CAD to be very beneficial in visualize a design, and overall I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. If I could design in CAD for the rest of my life I would be happy, that program works the way that my brain thinks. Although I had experience with hand tools I had never worked in a machine shop setting before. I definitely learned a lot, but I know that I have only scratched the surface of knowledge in this area. There is definitely more that could have been done in this area before we were set loose to manufacture our own parts. The two lab periods we took to actually use the machines in small groups was more beneficial than the machine shop training. Doing hands on activities instead of simply feeding us the information makes the processes stick a lot better and would keep us from needing to ask simple questions later on.
If I had to take this class again, knowing what I do now, I would have done things a little differently. I don’t think that our strategy is bad, having the ability to score when the opponent locked the flipper is a valuable idea, but the design we chose poorly executed this strategy. Looking at the most successful teams most of them had multiple one module, one that controlled the flipper and one that worked on the top of the arena. Smaller robots were easier to maneuver and those that were best manufactured used pulleys and belts instead of Kevlar thread. However, despite our bot’s obvious flaws, I am proud of what we accomplished as a team. There were some times where we struggled and some times where we excelled but we all worked hard to make our robot functional in the end.
I had high expectations for this class. I thought it was going to be an experience that confirmed that I made the right choice in deciding to be a mechanical engineer. But I can’t say it did. Things seemed disorganized on a regular basis (especially for the motor lab) and the constant alteration to the rules throughout the class was a bit frustrating. With a bit more organization this class has the potential to be something incredible. But I regret to say that it is not there yet.
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