Individual Reflection from Marc Hensel

Individual Reflection

Marc Hensel

The Team Formerly Known as Prince

ME 250 has been a good educational experience with respect to the engineering and manufacturing processes, as well as with respect to teamwork, time management, and “reading the fine print.” I had no experience with CAD prior to this class, so it was obviously a lot of new material. During the work early on in the semester, I feel like I learned a lot about the design process and the manufacturing process independently of one another. We covered engineering drawings, which was very important in my mind, and basic manufacturing processes and concepts. Much later on in the semester, once we started to work on our projects on a regular basis, a number of nuances relating these topics came into light. There are many things that must be taken into account when designing a part that are not always clear until you actually try to make it. Holes can be exact size, oversize for clearance, or undersized significantly for tapping. Some things have to line up with each other, and some things will interfere with each other if they line up.

In addition to the relationship between designs and manufacturing processes, I feel that I also learned a lot of specifics about things like gears and bearings or specific manufacturing processes like computerized machining or molding. Although we did not get to see any of these in action, seeing the results in examples, as well as examples of large scale products which use the processes, was interesting at the very least.

Another topic that I felt this course helped me learn about was teamwork. The presentation we had on it was interesting, but actually being in a group was the most beneficial. Everybody is good and bad at different things, and likes or does not like doing different things. There are many different aspects of the whole process of making an idea into a physical, working object, and it is very important for the benefit of both the group and for the project that the team is diverse and there is at least one person good at everything necessary. For example, if every person is good at design but not particularly proficient at machining or documentation, then it will be difficult to meet all the requirements of the project.

One final thing that I learned a lot about from ME 250 was reading the fine print, per se, and figuring out what needs to be done without constant reminders from the professors/GSIs. Many assignments were laid out in one large statement or several small documents and we were expected to complete each part without much further direction, which I imagine is more like what actual product design jobs are like. This particular skill/realization has been very helpful this semester in making sure everything is done on time and adequately.

The most challenging thing about this class, aside from the fine print, was the fact that it is so bottom heavy and so much is due towards the end of the semester. Planning ahead to finish everything on time is difficult. I think that this is not something that the staff can really improve on, short of making more progress assignments and really stressing that we have to get stuff done early. This also ties into our performance and my personal performance. If I, and my team by extension, had started on things earlier and been more on top of everything in general it would have certainly been easier. My only other critique is that some of the grading is unclear or the requirements do not make sense. For example, when 3 manufactured parts were due, requiring 3 different processes and 2 materials seemed unnecessary and difficult to accomplish. We actually changed our design in order to meet these requirements at such an early date.

Otherwise, this was a very interesting class that affirmed my choice of Mechanical Engineering