Reflection John Doherty

This is the second time I am taking this class, but my first time in University of Michigan, and I can tell the entire experience is a whole lot different. From the lecture to the lab of what we learnt in class really helped me to understand, the process that goes into designing and manufacturing of the everyday things we use.

This class has taught me to understand the importance of teamwork in projects and also how to understand people while working in a team, combining people’s ideas to build a more effective and efficient device. The Machine shop section also built my confidence in using the machine because we had to make the entire vehicle from scratch, which I believe was a good idea. The Integration of the lecture materials and the hands on activates in the lab was amazing. It was good that we were able to get hands on feel on the things we were taught it class. I also understood the importance of drawings during manufacturing, and how planning to manufacture apiece before going to the lab helps saves time, and how sketching out your idea helps people to understand it better.

Some other things I learnt the hard way, it’s that you should always build a prototype of your machine because it helps to expose the hidden mistakes that we as a team might not have thought of. I also learnt that the importance of machine speeds and materials types during machining, it makes a huge difference when the final axle is made and because you lathed it at a higher speed that was required, the materials expanded due to heat generation and can no longer fit into the bearing or bushing. I also learnt that imagination is the key, adding features to simple mechanisms to increase its adaptability.

Also making using software like CAD might not be as accurate as we think, we should also take into consideration your machining skills, because tolerance is very importance and affects the final assembly. 

 I believe the course is great the only the thing is that the amount of work put between the milestone should be emphasized on a bit more and the exams times should be increased because, there was just so much information required for us in the exam and I discovered that the grading was done pretty fairly but, if it was explained to us before the exam that you don’t really have to go into deep explanations on your answers that would have saved me a lot of time to work on other things. I looked at a friends exam and for the Question requiring use to talk about the properties of machines I wrote a lot explaining my ideas and it summed up to be about a page and my friends who wrote a couple of sentences got the same points as I didn’t and for the Question about the design I wrote a couple of sentences and he wrote a whole lot and we still got the same credit, I think before the exam students should be aware of this because it helps save time. But that apart the integration of hands on materials with what is learnt is excellent and I encourage all design classes to adopt the Idea.