I am gay for Molemann 

 by Robin Baessler

ME 250 was a very interesting experience for me.  I transferred to U of M this semester from the ME program at Wayne State.  This is a unique approach of blending design principles to physical machines that I did not see at Wayne State.  Many times you will hear the comment “Well, it looked good on paper”.  In this class we got to experience this on a smaller scale, and learn from smaller failures before we begin to design larger machines out in the industry.  

The design Heuristics was the most fascinating lecture because it forced you to stretch your original ideas and find a way to think outside of the box.  I believe this is an absolutely necessary skill for design engineers to have, and those cards seemed to be an excellent way to strengthen that.  I do think that these design principles should have been covered in more than just one lecture.

Machine shop time was difficult to manage as it got later into the semester.  It is apparent that space is limited and there can only be so many machines in one room.  This said I think it would be beneficial to allow students to start manufacturing their projects sooner, and to keep the extended hours.  Near the end we had to sacrifice precision and use hand tools to get the job done, rather than do things right.

The one complaint that I do have about being the team leader is the lack of information the other team members have regarding the machine shop times.  Although we compiled a group class schedule, so we could easily tell when others were unavailable, it was still clumsy reserving machines.  Since they were unable to see what times were available, it created unnecessary delays and extra communication to figure out who could get on a machine and when.  If the list of reserved times could be public, and only reserving a machine left to the leader that would make the process much smoother.

This class was a very positive experience.  I was able to work with a great group of people, and Joe, and learn from some a group of professors/instructors who are passionate about what they are doing here.  Only kidding Joe, you are in that group as well.  I have felt that the concepts learned in other classes are interesting, but they do not really become exciting until you can find ways to apply them to an actual project and see them in action.  The Ball Tower Game was a great way to combine the theoretical and physical aspects of the ME program.  

The competition I am sure taught all of us a lesson in what parts of the course and our designs we thought were insignificant.  For our group, it was our castors.  Our original ones were smaller and pointed, which caused our vehicle to get stuck in the holes for the balls.  The next revision was made with a larger contact face to prevent us from getting stuck in the holes, but also had a large chamfer to help get over obstructions.  One was also made shorter than the other so the vehicle would be able to rock when driving over the hinge, and still keep the wheels in contact.  Unfortunately for us we did not learn until the semifinals that we did not evaluate every possible way to drive over the hinge as our vehicle got stuck resulting in 3^rd place.  The major lesson that I took from this course is to take extra care in designing and evaluating the smaller things in your design, because they might be the ones to leave you stranded.  

In conclusion I learned that through the power of suggestion, begging, and a little candy, a single GSI successfully got his name as a part of nearly half of the classes projects.  Now I am not really gay for Molemann, but I would definitely not disagree if someone if they said Connor likes the sound of his own name : )