Spencer's Self-Evaluation

During the course of the semester I learned a lot of different things. During the design and manufacturing phase, I learned that designing is much more important than the actual manufacturing. I feel this way because without a good plan then you are basically going to be wasting time in the machine shop. At the same time the design process is about compromise. You could want a cool and unique machine, but you may have to compromise creativity for reality. Basically, is this idea possible and if so will it work with all the constraints. The reality also deals with the ability to manufacture the piece. I learned that the best thing to do while machining is to double check. As Bob would say, "Measure twice and cut once." Machining is about precision and with precision comes time, I learned that it take a long time to make something how you planned. Because of this, in the design process it is good to not over-tolerance a piece so that it is actually possible to make.
The compromising from the design aspect also goes along with being a good teammate. Your teammates might not like your idea or you might not like theirs, and you will have to be able to make a compromise and maybe use an idea of yours or theirs on another part of the project. With that said, I also learned that you have to be able to take criticism, and give constructive criticism. Without these traits there will be no team chemistry and it will be difficult to complete the project.
As stated before, machining takes a long time. More than I would have ever anticipated, this was the main thing I learned about the time management portion of a design project. It was very difficult to balance this work load with all the other classes I had going on, but I survived.
But the greatest asset I gained for ME 240 was the experience. It was my first design class and a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. But because of this I do feel I will be more prepared for my future design classes and able to manage them more easily.
This course could be improved in a number of ways. As mentioned before, it was a very heavy load, maybe lighten the load or spread out the assignments more reasonably. For the assignments, it was never very clear on what we were going to be graded on, I felt we just lost points and never knew really why. I am aware that this is the first time this was ever done, but hopefully in the future it is a little more organized. We were designing things before we had the rules, so it just felt like those ideas were pointless in the grand scheme of things. I think this is already fixed now that the arena is built and basic rules are set, but I think there needs to be fewer constraints. I would suggest allowing the robots to be touching a few balls at the start. This would lead to more unique and interesting designs because the teams wouldn't have to worry about deploying it into the slot and can use that extra motor for something else like a shooter, catapult, etc. On the day of the competition, I think you should have the teams transfer their own robots, because ours was broken when we got there and I heard some other team's were too. It wouldn't have affected the outcome but I felt cheated since the machine was working the day before.
To improve my performance I could have taken more time on some of the homeworks, and actually done all of them. Maybe spend more time during the designing phase and measured everything carefully to make sure there were no interferences on the final machine. If this would have been done, then there would have been no way that the machine would have broken on the transfer over.