Individual Reflection - Tyler Brown

Design: This class introduced me to the formal design process for coming up with a solution to a problem. I learned the technique of starting with a strategy and working all the way down to component selection. Prior to taking this class I had completed three co-op terms with Toyota Motor Engineering and Manufacturing. I worked in the Body Engineering department and had extensive experience with CAD tools like Inventor, AutoCAD, ProEngineer and CATIA. During my work experience I was always working on very large scale projects. The things I designed were used to manufacture full size trucks and SUVs. This class taught me the importance of being able to design on a much smaller scale. The size of the Slotbots arena presented a challenge that I had never encountered before. Our team had very good individual ideas for how to play Slotbots, the challenge came in consolidating all of the good ideas into a single design that we could actually build to compete. I learned that it takes time to come up with a design that will achieve your goals. We spent many hours together as a team talking about our ideas before we finally came up with a design. After we had finalized our design we spent even more time making tweaks to it to improve it and make it more effective to help us win the game. I learned that spending a lot of time at the front end of the design process makes the rest of the steps easier as you progress toward a final product.

Manufacturing: After working on a project at Toyota it would be approved by my manager and then handed over to a machinist to be manufactured. I spent a lot of time working with the machinists to understand how to make my designs easier for them to manufacture. I think that this experience helped our team come up with a design that would follow our design intent and be easier to manufacture. I gained extensive knowledge of the Mill and Lathe during this course along with some general knowledge of the Laser Cutter and Water Jet. I already knew how to use many of the hand and power tools in the shop but I definitely became proficient in their use as the term progressed. Perhaps the most valuable thing that I learned about manufacturing during this course is the importance of setting tolerances. When our team finalized our design we had to go back and determine what our tolerances should be. For some of our less critical parts it was not a problem if they were off by 0.10 mm. For our more important parts we made sure they were within a 0.01 mm tolerance.

Teamwork: I learned a lot about teamwork during this course. The most important thing was that I had to let other people take some of the responsibility for the team. I think that this has made me a better teammate because I realized that I do not have to micromanage every aspect of a project. Our team worked very well together because we each had some sort of experience that we could bring to the table. We were able to depend on each other for help if we were not familiar with something.

Time Management: Since the project had such a short build period we definitely had to be efficient with our time. I was in charge of signing our team up for machines in the shop. We all spent many late nights and early mornings machining parts for our modules. During the first half of the course we spent a lot of time focused on our design. Sometimes we would get discouraged because it seemed like we were taking forever to come up with a final design. I think that this extra effort definitely paid off because we would not have been able to win the competition if it had not been for those long hours in the library spent revising our design.

How to improve the course: At times it seemed like there was some confusion between what Prof. Hart and Mike were saying and what the GSIs were saying. The only other thing that I could complain about would be the length of time it took to finalize the starting configuration of the arena. I didn’t really mind because our team built our slot module with capability for multiple positions. I think most of the bumps in the road can be attributed to the new semester with new students and the overhaul of the Slotbots arena so I don’t want to dwell on the problems encountered during the course. Overall I thought the course was well put together and I learned a lot from it. It is by far the best course that I have taken so far because I learned a lot of new things and had a lot of fun with my team while we worked on our project.

How I could have improved my performance: I know that I definitely could have done better on some of the individual assignments and the exam. I think that if I would have put more time into some of the individual homework and exam preparation that I would be more satisfied with my final grade in the course. I know that our team scored very well on all of our team assignments because we all put a lot of effort into them. I am very proud of the fact that I can say that our team won the Slotbots competition even if it does not have an impact on our overall grade.