Individual Reflection - Michelle Brady

What I learned:

Design and Manufacturing:
I learned how to use a laser cutter, band saw, drill press and lathe this semester. It was really great to learn how to use these machines and get hands on experience. I learned that no matter how hard we try and how many steps we take to be precise, there are more errors than we expect, but most of the time it works out. I also learned that when designing parts, we should make things as close to a sixteenth of an inch or any marker on a ruler for something we have to measure out. It makes cutting and drilling parts much easier that way and it is easier to be accurate. I also learned that sometimes when in the early stages of the designing process, we have to work together more than the later stages so that everyone knows (or has a good idea) about what the others are doing.

Teamwork:
I thought I knew a lot about teamwork from other classes and societies, but I still learned a lot this semester. I learned the importance of making sure that everyone is on the same page and keeping each other up to date. We had a team email address and ctools page which really helped us to share information and keep each other updated when we weren't working in the same place. Google docs also helped in that we could all write in the same document without having to upload files continuously. We learned how important it was to know our schedule and our team members' schedules for the upcoming week so we could plan what we needed to, could, and wanted to accomplish that week in the shop and if we needed to sign up for any machine times. I also learned to compromise, which was not a strong suit of mine. With four people working together, we did not always have the same idea about which was the “right” way or the best way.

Time Management:
Our team really had to work on time management since our project had many components and we wanted a good amount of time to practice. We learned that most of our early expectations of how long parts would take were off. They either took less time (rare case) or more time than we had originally planned. I learned start early and work often especially in the day for the shop. When we needed help or had questions it was easier to get it earlier in the week and the day and Friday afternoon, and it was emptier then too. Therefore, we tried to schedule our work more at those times (it worked out that those times were good for us to work together) and we scheduled our other class work around those times.

How the course could be improved:
~Set the rules and give out the kit earlier in the semester - we wasted a lot of time by starting basically from scratch.
~Give more feedback on milestones and CAD assignments - I never knew how I was doing on CAD while there was still time to change the way it was submitted.
~Space out the homework, MS, and CAD assignments better at the beginning of the semester.
~Allow the teams that had milestones done ahead of time to submit them early - there were a couple times we had to wait because we needed more information before we could continue which may have set us back.
~Give out the grading criteria for CAD, milestones and homework ahead of time so we know how we can do well.
~Do the lab safety closer to the time that we will actually enter the shop - it was hard to remember everything that we had been told over a month before

How my performance could have been improved:
~I could have done better on some of the assignments had I known more about what was expected of me before submitting later assignments.
~Practicing more on CAD.
~Taken notes after each of the lab safety classes.