Haipei Zhu’s
Individual Reflection
ME
250 is named after Design and Manufacturing and I did learn a lot about them
from this course. Basically, there are three parts of this class, taking
lectures, doing HW 1 to 4, and working on our ball tower project.
The
lecture is just like a guideline of the whole class. I like the way both
professor Shih and Michal give us those lectures. We are not only introduced
the new stuff about mechanics like bearings, bushings, gears and so on but also
shown some really cool concept, like over constrain and something like that. I
do learn a lot mechanical things from lectures. Those lecture also act as
reminders for upcoming events, like milestone due or Design review and so on.
Well
for the HW 1 to 4, I sharpen my skill of software like Solidworks, CES Edupack
to build 3d models and find suitable materials for certain utility. Those
software saved our life more than once! From homework 3, I feel like I was
repairing a bike. I feel excited as I have never done that before. I am pretty
sure that I can repair my bike right since this lab. Motor lab helps me to know
better of the torque-angular velocity curve and the quality of gear box. That
is essential for choosing the right motor for our project later this semester.
The
last part: Ball tower project is the one that I really want to talk about in
this reflection. From the basic idea: lifting the arm to get balls from the
plateau to finishing the cad work, we are doing design work all as a team. As
we separate the work to each person, I am in charge of the motor choosing,
calculation of torque and gear box choosing. I did not realize how complicated
the calculation is before I really start doing that. There are so many things
that need to be taken into consideration, like friction, the mass of the every
little thing. And there is also something that you cannot even calculate, like
the sum of error, like the dynamics torque. I had a hard time to balance the turning
speed and torque the gear box can provide.
For
the Manufacturing, I learnt a lot from my teammate Miguel, who is a consultant
with a lot of experience. He knew how manufacturing works better in ME shop and
mechanical world. That is amazing to me. He showed me how to use arbor press
the first time I use it and he also teach me how to use bending and cutting
machine. I enjoyed the time working in machine shop doing cool stuff while
listening to radio music, which makes me proud of being a Mechanical Engineer.
Band saw and milling machine are what we use all the time and I do appreciate the
chance getting familiar to those fundamental manufacturing machines from this
class.
Although
we argue about some topics seriously, Julient, Miguel, Mark and I enjoy our
time being a team in ME250. We work well together: Captain Julient is in charge
of Cad modeling, Miguel is good at manufacturing and giving fresh concepts, I
am good at calculation and connecting between team members and Mark is in
charge of writing some report and data reduction. We did well in time
management and we finish our car successfully. I appreciate each member’s work
and I hope maybe we can work together in ME 350 or ME450.
Last
but not the least, I show my gratitude to our GSI: David. He helps me to answer
our question patiently and gave us a lot valuable suggestions about improving
our design. Apart from that, he grades our milestone fairly to each team with
detailed notation beside where we lose points. I appreciate his help and also
this course! It makes my life much harder when approaching to the end of the
semester but it provides me tons of fun at the same time. I think the only
thing that can be improved is hiring more nice GSIs like David!
Haipei Zhu
Team Pangaea
Me 250 2012 Winter
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