ME250 was a great experience for multiple reasons, probably the main one being able to get into the shop and work on projects hands on, as opposed to a theoretical class. The ability to learn to use the mill, lathe, and other instruments will definitely come in useful not only in future classes but in life as well. Although, this part of the class was simultaneously the worst as well. The amount of red tape and guidelines and timetables to work around was detrimental to the progress of our bot. It was difficult to get the majority of the group together during one timeslot, groups were signing up for slots they didn’t use, and there was not enough time overall to work in the shop. Towards the end of the project, I found myself, as well as my group members, skipping all our morning classes, working from opening hours of the shop until 4 or 5pm. No matter how much time is spent making a CAD of the bot, the real problems don’t arise until the team is able to get into the shop and create the needed parts. If the class was able to get into the shop earlier in the semester and start work, I think the quality of the bots would have improved greatly.
The lecture part of the class seemed somewhat irrelevant. Sure it was interesting to learn about the different types of bearings, springs, machining specs, and CAD guidelines, and no doubt this will come in useful as an ME major, less time could have been spent learning about equations and calculations. I don’t think there was one time where calculations came in useful during our bot assembly, except for assignments. Sounds a bit naïve, but there are just so many constraints to take into account, there are generally no useful accurate approximations or estimations that could be made. As I said above, I’d like to emphasize the need to get into the lab as soon as possible and actually test these constraints as to get a feel for them as opposed to just having theoretical numbers.
I feel as though I’ve gotten a better grasp on time and team management skills. This class definitely presented a real challenge of working together with the whole team, especially having assignments due just a few days apart and all the restrictions put upon shop hours. No matter, we learned to work with what we had, and were fairly content as a team at our finished product. There is still a general consensus that this course had a lot of material and not enough time.
I’d like to make one final note about the remote controller trim. If there is a way to disable this function on the controller, or have it permanently calibrated, this would save a lot of frustration for future teams. I believe this was singlehandedly the reason our bot didn’t move on competition day.
Overall, ME250 was a great learning experience and I’m happy about our team’s design and execution. I had a great time working with CAD, the machine shop, and my team members. Best of luck to future teams!
-Roman Novitski
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