Jason Cassell's Individual Reflection

This semester in ME 250 has really been a great experience. Coming into this class I really did not know anything about the many machines that adorn the machine shop and which must be used in order to create a vehicle for our competition. I learned about the proper way to use the mill and the lathe. Bob Coury and Mark Stock were very eager to help when problems arose and when it was just confusing how to use one of the machines. I learned how to properly select drill sizes, how to use the drill chart, how to tap holes, as well as the entire design process. This class showed me just how important it is to have a good strategy. You could have a vehicle which executes your strategy perfectly, but if the strategy is flawed you will not win in the competition. Now I know why we spent so much time at the beginning of the semester creating different strategies because the strategy you select at the beginning of the semester can limit or boost the capabilites of your final machine.

This class really reinforced my time management skills. Throughout the term our team usually had two people at a time working in the shop outside of class time. At first it was very difficult to make the simplest parts for the vehicle because I was not used to using the machines. As the term progressed I became more comfortable using the machines and making parts took less time. I definitely gained a much better feeling of the proper way to use machines and tools in the shop. Every week we had to plan out who was going to the shop and when. This class is also balanced with 3 other classes so it was very important to make sure that I left enough time to get all my work done in every class. As team captain, I signed our team up on the machine shop website for the use of the mill and lathe.

ME 250 also showed just how important team work is. One person could not possibly complete the entire project. Every one must contribute which lightens the load and makes it possible to finish and make a great vehicle. Our group disagreed sometimes about certain aspects of the design of our vehicle but we eventually always came to an accord and were able to create a vehicle to execute our strategy.

In this class I also learned about many design principles and technical terms in the lectures. Under the leadership of Mike and Albert I learned about principles such as resolution, exact constraint, Saint Venant's principle, Occam's razor, and many others. Also I learned about many different parts such as different types of screws, bearings, and even about pillow blocks. Learning about SolidWorks was also very helpful. Jean was a great GSI and was very helpful whenever questions arose about SolidWorks or the design of our vehicle.

To improve the class the structures of lectures could be changed. Most of the information could be simply read off the slides so lecture could sometimes seem tedious, perhaps there could be more informative videos showing the design principles in action instead of mostly definitions. When videos were shown they were mostly very interesting while other information such as definitions was less interesting. Also the lectures could probably be 1 hour instead of 1.5 hrs which seems like a long time considering the lectures could be condensed to 1 hour. Also in the competition I was under the impression that intentional contact was illegal before a point is scored for the team initiating contact. Some teams actually had a strategy of initiating illegal contact. For next semester maybe the rules could be made more clear or disqualifications should be handed out because the rules clearly restrict that type of a strategy.

I could have improved my performance in this course by spending more time in the machine shop. Our vehicle was not too complicated, but by utilizing a different strategy the vehicle could have had a different design which would have enabled it to retrieve red sand filled balls in addition to the black squash balls. This design would be more complicated, but would have more potential for points and this machine would also require more hours in the shop and it would result in a more successful machine. Overall, this class was really informative as well as organized and I feel I have moved one step closer to being an engineer.