Final ME 170 Project

So we just finished our final project for ME 170. For this project, we had to make an assembly of parts, where at least one part moved relative to another. We were allowed to make something that already exists, but we had to make some modification or improvement to it. We chose to make a toy Transformer, which unfolded from a flashy sports car into a Transformer robot whose arms and legs detached to reveal markers inside. It was a pretty cool concept, and definitely went beyond what was expected. Since this project was so challenging, it took us well over 100 hours in the EWS labs to finish, including some really late nights and an all-nighter. It turned out well, however, so hopefully it was worth it. We do really feel that we have a good grasp of ProE Wildfire now.

To make our project, we used a similar approach to the Ark of the Covenant (see my earlier post for info on that). This was another "artistic" design, but instead of making one design, we had to make 2 that fit together in both positions! We decided to simplify things greatly by making the Transformer just open its doors and have the arms fold out, and the legs slide out of the rear of the car. This was a lot easier than the actual Transformer toys (though still quite challenging). The first thing we worked on was making the basic frame of the car. To that, we added doors, wheels, and a bottom. Then we had to make the hinges and parts of the actual Transformer, which is when we ran into trouble. We had made the sides of the car on an 85º angle, which meant the doors had to be on that angle as well. The hinges, however, had to be vertical, otherwise the doors would open at an upward angle, which would not work. While we could have just made the sides of the door vertical, we wanted to retain the visual appeal and realistic appearance of an actual car, so we stuck it out and after countless hours and many attempts, finally got the door to fit onto the car without any interference.

We dealt with many other problems on the way, but after it all came together we hit another roadblock: engineering drawings. These drawings show the dimensions of all the parts we made. That means the more complicated the part, the more convoluted the drawing, because it has more dimensions to show on the same 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. Most of the parts weren't too bad, but when it came time to dimension the car body, with its many curves, extrusions, and holes, it took some clever organizing and about 4 pages of drawings to show everything we needed to show.

All in all, I think this was another successful project. We definitely set the bar high with our difficult design, but just like our last project, it really shows that we put as much effort into it as we did. Making markers that fit into a robot that can fold into a car is no small feat, especially when you have to stay up until 5 am every night for a week to get it done, but we're really proud of our work in this class!

Rube Goldberg Society

For the past few months, I have been participating in the Rube Goldberg Society. We are designing and building a Rube Goldberg machine to compete in nationals in March. For those who don't know, a Rube Goldberg machine is a complicated device that performs a simple task very inefficiently. This year, the task is to dispense hand sanitizer, and the theme of our machine is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So far, we have only built a few parts for it, but hopefully we'll get a lot done after break!

This has been a fun experience because I have had a chance to use all the physics I have learned and apply it in real life! While not much of the machine is built yet, what we've done has shown me that while the concepts I've learned have been helpful, the really complicated ideas don't always work out how you expect them to. For instance, one of the parts I was in charge of building was a lever, and when a car fell onto the lever, it lifted another lever up, which causes a pipe wrapped up in a "red carpet" to fall and trigger a mouse trap. You can see this in action in the video below! We had some difficulty making this, especially with finding the right weights to put on the levers and where (knowing about torque has finally come in handy!). We used a fair amount of trial-and-error, because not only did the lever have to stay horizontal before the car landed on it, it needed to lift the other lever just enough to make the pipe fall down. It took a few hours, but when we got it to work we knew it would be a great addition to the machine.

While we still have a ways to go, we have a lot of cool new ideas to try out! It seems that the coolest ideas are usually the trickiest to get to work, but I'm sure if we're creative enough we'll find a way.

Thoughts on iFoundry

So now that the semester is nearly over, I have a better realization of what the purpose of iFoundry is. Also, keeping in mind this is a pilot course, there are some aspects of iFoundry that I don't think were necessary, and some things I would add to the course.

For me, the iFoundry course has served as a better introduction into engineering than the standard ENG 100 course. I knew people in that class who gave presentations introducing themselves and stuff like that, but weren't properly introduced into their major at U of I. In that regard, I think ENG 198 did a great job. We had ELA's who gave presentations on various topics we would inevitably encounter at some point during college, and projects where we got a taste of what engineers actually do.

There are some things that I felt should be different, however. The first is timing. Now it would obviously be difficult for anyone to be able to predict how many weeks of classes it would take to build the projects we built, but we were definitely pressed for time on both projects. The first one was extended, which then cut into our time to work on the second one. The good news about project 2 was that we could work on it outside of class pretty easily, but there were issues that many groups had with getting parts they ordered in time for the next week's class. Now, my proposition to fix this is to make the ENG 198 course 2 hours long and 1 day a week. When we only had an hour to work on our project, we would waste valuable time getting out our materials and putting them away at the beginning and end of class, but having one class that is twice as long would eliminate this problem.

As for the lectures, I'm not so sure how much I actually learned from them. A lot of it was common sense (take initiative, be ethical, etc), and I honestly had hoped for information I couldn't have figured out on my own. For instance, a great lecture would be one on the things that engineers wish they had known going into college. Knowing what was coming in college would prepare us better for what was ahead. Regardless of what the lectures were about, time could be made for them by having this weekly schedule: lab, lab, lecture, lab lab, lecture, etc. This would give less lecture time and more lab time than the current course, but I think it's appropriate since I feel we learned a lot more from the labs than we did from the lectures. Also, having more time to work on labs would allow us to actually devote time to improving and optimizing our projects instead of simply getting them to work.

Overall, I am glad I took ENG 198 as opposed to ENG 100. I really do feel we learned more about Engineering at U of I, and the projects were pretty cool to work on. Most of the hiccups we ran into were simply because it is the first time this was done at U of I, and I think that over time the problems will get smoothed out.

First Mechanical Engineering Project

In my ME 170 class, we have been learning how to use the ProEngineer Wildfire software. This is basically a CAD program that allows you to make a 3-D model and engineering drawings for any part or assembly of parts you want. Most of the time, we have a lab that accompanies each week of lectures where we learn about all the different functions we can use to make our parts, but a few weeks ago we were tasked with making a creative part of our choice, which would then be rapid prototyped on the 3-D printer in the Mechanical Engineering Lab. This was really an individual project, but one of my friends is in my lab section, and we decided to make two individual parts that could then be connected to each other to make one bigger part. We decided on making a replica of the Ark of the Covenant (the biblical box containing the original stone tablets of the 10 commandments and other holy relics). Now, since the location and even the very existence of such an object is arguable, we decided to use the interpretation of what it looks like in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think we did a pretty good job...

Here's the Ark from the movie

This is the Ark that we made

To make the Ark, I used ProE to design the lid, while my friend designed the box it sits on. All in all, this took over 10 hours (each) for us to do. Obviously, the more complicated the design, the more time it takes to make, but there were a lot of aspects to this that were more complicated than we thought. For instance, this is not an assembly in which pieces must fit together and have a specific function. Rather, it is more of an artistic piece. The only thing we really had to collaborate on was the general design and making sure the lid fit on the box properly. Beyond that, we each pretty much did what we wanted. But, like I said, this is an artistic design, and ProE is more of a technical software. That meant that we had to make something look aesthetically pleasing, and then assign numbers and dimensions to it so it could be represented using the geometry from the software.

The base of the lid wasn't too difficult. I made a solid box and cut out quarter cylinders along the top and bottom edges, giving it the tapering edge. The hard part was then putting the angels on top. To make the angels, I actually started with the wings first. This was where I initially drew what I thought it should look like, then altered the dimensions of each line, arc, circle, and fillet so it was represented by a number (remember this software needs specific geometry, or strong dimensions, to work properly). Next, I put the two wings on either side of where I figured the angels should go, and made another shape that looked as close to a kneeling person as I could (this was especially difficult to do using only lines, arcs, circles and fillets). When both parts were finished, the files were sent to the lab where they use a process called stereolithography to make a prototype of our design. We just got the parts back the other day, and we're pretty happy with how it turned out! Overall, I think our final product was pretty close to what we had envisioned. We were definitely ambitious with this project, but I'm glad we worked as hard as we did on it because it paid off.

Our current (and final) project is one with at least 12 parts, with at least one moving relative to the other. Once again, we've chosen a pretty difficult design, but I'll post more about that later.