Reflection by Steve Hwang

Design and Manufacturing

ME 250 is to me a valuable introduction of fundamental manufacturing and machining techniques. I did not really have any experience in machining prior to this class; although I did the basic Wilson center training and participated in a design project for Engineering 100, the experience could not compare to that of ME 250. It is difficult for me to explain all that I’ve learned because I’ve essentially started out with nothing. I’ve learned the proper way to use the mill and the lathe, and I’ve also learned how to engage in an effective and systematic design process. This class as enabled our team to design and manufacture a machine with the complexity we did not expect at the beginning of our project.

Teamwork and Time management

I felt that it had been difficult for our team to find time to meet up because of our busy schedules. It’s been especially hard for me this semester, since I’m taking full credits and classes are unfortunately very spread out. Having said that, this situation made us very efficient when working together, and I’ve learned to trust and rely on my team members when I cannot show up to the meetings.

I am very grateful to my teammates because, as the one who’s the least experienced and skilled, I have learned a lot from them in many aspects. I am especially grateful to John, who had the patience to give a beginner like me detailed instructions on milling and turning when he could’ve done the parts in no time.

Overall, teamwork time management was great. We all did the best with our time. While it was inconvenient that most of our team members live off-campus and we thus could not work together whenever we wanted to, each of us were able to effectively use our strengths and our team has thus been able to stay on schedule and finish in time.

How the class could’ve improved

Although lectures included a diverse spectrum of information on gears, springs, and other mechanical components that are indeed very useful for the project and our training as mechanical engineers, many students like me whom had little prior knowledge of the material taught in lecture felt a little thrown off by the sheer amount of information that were handed to us in each lecture. I felt that students might be able to better digest the material in lecture if the lectures were made shorter. A good approach might be to assign slides for students to read prior to lecture, then quickly go through key material during the lecture and then have some time for activities and questions.

The fact that the double gearbox was not powerful enough was a frustration, as we discovered our whole module underperformed because of it. One improvement I would suggests is to either choose a more powerful gearbox set or give students ways to know whether the gearboxes are able to support their system. For instance, past examples of weight vs. speed performance of different teams’ machines could have been given to us as references.

At last, the trainings during the first few weeks of class were not very helpful. By the time we needed to machine, lots of students have already forgotten how to use the equipments. The trainings should be moved closer to the time of machining. I also suggest instructional videos on the mill and lathe to be made and put online for students. There is really no way to remember everything just from the hour long training sessions in the shop.

How I could have improved

I should have taken fewer credits during this term. I took 18 credits and classes are very spread out. A 14 to 15 credit hour should allow for better time slots for machining outside of class time.

There are numerous other things I should’ve considered and improvements I could have made. The most important is probably paying attention to detail that are not listed in requirements. Many questions involving calculations in this class are quite open ended, and I’ve found myself missing out important things because I were not careful enough to consider those questions in realistic settings. This is certainly an important improvement I need to make to become a successful engineer.