Individual Reflection - Jackson Matheson

Design: This course helped me to learn a good deal more about design. I learned better ways to go about solving a problem by breaking things down from broad ideas to individual aspects. Having milestones throughout the course where we took our ideas to more and more detailed and specific levels made learning this design process easy. And looking to the CAD part of the design process was great. I've always enjoyed that part of the design process and have taken drafting and CAD classes in the past. This class, however, was the first time I had done 3D CAD in such detail. This part of the class might have been the most difficult. Having to plan out every single dimension and hole was a challenge but was a great way to learn how to plan out everything ahead. Once my team and I had our CAD done our work in the machine shop was much more efficient.

Manufacturing: This class was the first time I have ever manufactured to this scale. On various projects in the past I have used bandsaws, drill presses, soldering irons, power tools, and other simple tools but only used them to a certain degree. The time spent in the machine shop for this course helped make me gain a better understanding of how to use those tools as well as how to use the mill, lathe, laser cutter, and water jet. At first I struggled using these machines and learning the names of all the tools associated with them but by the last week of the course the time spent in the machine shop felt a lot smoother. I knew what I needed for each of the machines I was using, I knew how to use the drill chart to figure out bits and taps, and I knew how to zero the machines for measurements and use them correctly for what I needed to do. Granted there are still plenty of things about each of the machines that I don't know how to do or struggle with but I feel like I have greatly improved since the start of the course.

Teamwork and Time Management: This course was a great course to promote teamwork skills and proper time management. My team and I had to work around various time commitments we had outside of class and use our time wisely. A lot of times we had major time conflicts but by organizing our time so that we could work in separate groups throughout the day helped us to get stuff done. Then, whenever we were able to all work together, we did our best to plan out what we had to do so we could work efficiently. We did our best to make sure that everyone had their own job to do and their own way to help move the project along and contribute. With that I really enjoyed working with this team and feel that, despite getting off track from time to time, we worked well together and were able to do a good job overall even if we made a few errors here and there.

Improving The Course: The one major thing about this course where I see a need for improvement is that we need to be let into the machine shop earlier. I don't know if we weren't given enough time in the shop or if it was partly because one of the other ME design courses was in there past their deadline but a lot of teams including ours had difficulty getting machining done on time because of this. Now while this is good practice for the real world for trying to plan for the unexpected, it made the course very difficult because often times we weren't able to get everything done to how we wanted it on time. This problem was most evident in the beginning when the machine shop was being shared for multiple classes. Also, having the rules being completely determined from the start would have helped to make planning a lot easier. The fact that things in the rules kept changing made it hard to keep up with what was going on and what we could and couldn't do.

Improving My Performance In The Course: I think my biggest weakness in the course was that I had a hard time remembering everything from lecture. There was so much material to remember along with all the design and planning we had to do. If I had reviewed the lecture slides more or even done a little online reading I may have been able to do better on the homeworks and the exam as well as possibly come up with ways that we could have bettered our machine. Other than that, having a day or two more in the machine shop or having more time to test on the arena (with the proper ball configuration) would have greatly helped us to do better on our project overall.