OUR REFLECTIONS
Isabel Ugedo
I’m an ECE major and don’t have a lot of experience with mechanical courses, so I didn’t know what to expect when I signed up for “Design For Manufacturability”. In retrospective, it has been very different from my other courses, in the sense that much of the work we are asked to complete is not guided. We are left to our own devices, and it has been a very positive experience to work in groups to come up with possible solutions and answers. The group work aspect has been my favorite part of the course, and it has made the heavy workload seem more manageable. It has also helped me learn how to reach compromises and allow for multiple views on a given issue, which I believe is very important in any professional setting.
Regarding the course content, I have learned a lot about manufacturing and design methods. The course material is structured in a way which manages to combine and apply basic fluid dynamics, heat transfer and statistic tools to the topic in hand. I have taken these classes before and understand the concepts from a theoretical point of view, but it has given me a new point of view to re learn them applied to specific real-world problems.
For me, the main challenge of this class was the work load, and always having unrelated projects due at the same time. As I mentioned before, having lab groups was a great support system and I’m very happy about getting the chance to work with people who were always accessible and willing to help, including the TAs. The other difficulty I found was occasionally not knowing how to begin to address a miniproject question or not being able to find any mention of the topic online.
Finally, I really appreciated the chance to interact with the actual machines and 3D printers, and to manufacture our own designs. The labs were always interesting and kept you active, which in my opinion is the best way to learn.
María Pilar Galainena Marín
When registering for this course from Spain, I did not expect it to be like this. I thought that, as in my home university, it would be more theoretical. As my major is not ME but ECE, I wasn´t really excited about what I thought I was going to do in this course. But I arrived at Urbana-Champaign and went to the first class of ME 270, from which I left very surprised. When the professor explained us how we were going to work, I started being interested about the course. In my opinion, having such a lot of laboratory hours and team projects is much more efficient for students if they want to embrace the concepts explained in class. However, as I am not used to this way of working, I had some problems during the semester. Whenever I was not able to find the information required for the mini projects I got really frustrated, but as I didn´t give up I overcame that situations. All these moments have taught me not just new things about design for manufacturability I didn´t know before, but also to be constant in my work. As for the main project, it has taught me how to work in a group. In our case, each member of the team has contributed by sharing their best ideas and using their own skills to obtain the best result. Finally, I think that the knowledge acquired in ME 270 can be applied in real life engineering practice, and not only in projects about mechanics but in very one. The fact of having something that should be improved is something we might have to deal with in our future, and I think that the way of doing it we have learned in this course is the best one to achieve good results.
Matthew Stoll
For me, ME 270 was a pretty tough class. But there were things that I did well in the class that made it easier to do well and things I did that made it harder to do well in the class. One of my strengths in the class was my ability to do outside research. Whenever a mini project required me to do outside research, which was pretty often, I managed to find my information quickly and use it well.Another thing I was able to do well was communicate with other people in the class. If I or my group had a question, we always sought out our fellow peers to see if they could help us. We also helped other groups with their questions when we could. Finally, I was able to communicate with my group very well. The group you have is the group you have for the rest of the year so it is important to communicate with them. Having this strength allowed me to understand what I needed to do to help not only my team succeed, but my self succeed. If you do well, your team does well (and vise-versa). A big weakness that I had that made the class a but more difficult was that I had a tendency to procrastinate. Doing this pushes more on you in a shorter amount of time causing an unnecessary amount of stress on yourself. For me that would sometimes occur and at the end of the day, it was unnecessary and could have been easily resolved.
This class has also taught me a lot of content that I did not think I could learn in one short semester. I learned about 3D printing, machining, casting, molding, joints, sheet metal forming, forging, and composites all in this semester’s time. One major way that I learned this material was through doing the mini projects. These had a broad range of questions that helped me understand the core of the topic, mostly through outside research. The hands on aspect of the labs also helped me learn the material as well. The final way I learned the material was through the lectures. The professor was very enthusiastic and always made connections to the real world in every topic I learned. This was arguably the best way I learned these topics.
The highlights of the course were learning about the many different ways you can manufacture something and putting them to use in lab. This had a “theoretical” aspect to it and then a very practical use when it came to lab. This was nice to see because it was encouraging to learn something and be able to actually do it. The biggest challenge in the course was keeping up with the workload. A lot of the work was time consuming and allocating enough time to do the work as well as executing on the plan was easily the hardest part.
The main way I plan on using the knowledge I gained in this course in my real life engineering practices is by having it as background knowledge. Being able to know how something is manufactured and how you can improve it is so advantageous. If I decide to pursue a career in the design field, I can refer back to my knowledge in this class to help me succeed.
Rafael Cicogna Santos
I am Junior taking ME 270, something which is not common here at UIUC. However, I chose to do so because I heard rumors that the engineering knowledge obtained from attending UIUC for an extra year would make me appreciate the class more. I came in expecting the class to be a lot of work, but not conceptually difficult, which I quickly realized was true.
For each of the specific subject areas of the course I was able to apply my previous knowledge as well as learn a great amount. My favorite two chapters of the course were design for manufacturability and design for assembly because they are the most applicable to the career I would like to pursue. For design for manufacturing, I mainly learned the main concepts and how to be more conscientious when creating my own designs. The same applies for design for assembly, which later turned out to be the main focus of our main project improvements.
Other sections of the course which were relevant to my learning were the additive manufacturing, metal casting, injection molding, welding, machining and tolerances, statistical design of experiments, and sheet metal work. For additive manufacturing, I was able to learn about new methods of 3D printing which I did not know existed, as well as learn better design practices when designing a product for 3D printing. For metal casting, I was able to learn about gates, pouring speed and pressure, cooling time, and many other concepts. For injection molding, I was able to physically understand how the entire process works and how each variable (such as gate diameter) plays a role in the quality of the final product. For welding, machining, sheet metal work, and tolerance analysis, I was able to review all of the concepts which I learned throughout my internship during the summer, as well as learn some new tricks. Finally, statistical design of experiment is a concept which I was not familiar with, so this section of the course was the most difficult. The main take-away I have from that section of the course is how to approach problems with a experimental methodology of testing and statistically drawing conclusions, mainly using the "2k Factorial Design" method.
Overall, my main strengths throughout this course were my previous knowledge and experiences, and my main weaknesses were my inability to devote more time to the class. Finally, my experiences with ME 270 were tough at times. However, the concepts learned have already (and will certainly be) applied to multiple other areas of my engineering career.