Coming into this class, I brought 5 years of laboratory work experience from Prof. Wooldridge’s Lab. During my time there, I have dealt with several of the topics covered in this class. For 3 years, I worked on assembling a single cylinder optical engine from just a head donated from ford and helped perform HCCI experiments. My intuition has taken me very far, but I have gotten to a point in my education that I must fully understand the theory to understand the big picture and not just know what works and what doesn’t. Realizing that the class is targeted for students with almost no experience in this topic, I was worried that I wouldn’t find the class engaging enough. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised with the vast range of topics covered and particularly with the depth and complexity that they were covered in. Often, I found myself asking weather it was too much for kids that were seeing this for the first time, but I selfishly indulged in extending my education. This class properly develops fundamental concepts and creates a good foundation for future design and manufacturing classes to come.

This class has definitely a lot of work associated with it. It is very easy to lose track of how much time you have spent in a design project. This can cause potential problems for the student in other classes. One way to fix this problem is by setting guidelines and expectations ahead of time. It is not easy to quantify how much work one must do in a design class to get an A. Since we are not building the perfect slot bot to enter into a million dollar competition, it would have been nice to know where the shortcuts could have been taken. My biggest issue with the class was the lack of knowledge ahead of time, specifically grading rubrics and expectations. I am sure that things are going to be much smoother the second time around that this class gets taught.

It is very interesting to consider how many different concepts and equations were covered in lecture, but were never explicitly applied in assignment and deliverables. I was actually disappointed in a way. I do not believe the examination in this class was what it should have been. I felt that our exam was not necessarily hard, but extremely long. I would have expected a single design problem with multiple parts within the design problem that would force the student to utilize motor, projectile motion, and friction equations (etc.). Essentially keep part I of the exam and incorporate part II within the design problem. Instead of writing a manufacturing plan for a nut, how about pick a component from the machine you just designed in part I. I wanted the exam to test the innovative and critical thinking abilities of a student.

I believe that this class should be subdivided into two classes. There should almost be an ME 150 that freshmen can take…perhaps in replacement to ENG 100? The proposed ME 150 class would feature a more involved shop-training program with carefully chosen manufacturing projects as homework assignments. This would certify that students actually know how to use a manufacturing machine and are able to better design components once they know the manufacturing processes and their limitations. This can only come through experience. ME 150 should focus on more fundamental concept like the design principles we learned and hand sketching and a good solid introduction to CAD. Then ME 250 students can hit the ground running. Harder equations and tougher design criteria will be able to be incorporated. Engineering analysis can be more inclusive. Design standards can be raised. Having a slot bot competition and trying to cram essentially this ME150 class and ME250 class made it so weaker students never really got fully involved because they felt this class was in over their head.

In summary, I come out with positive experiences from this class. It is the closest thing to a robotics building class I have taken to date and thus it was very exciting.

-Dimitris Assanis