Projects

Project One - Toy Concepts

The goal of this project is to come up with 3 toy concepts that fulfill certain requirements. No physical prototype is needed for this project, but a web site must be completed to present out design. My 3 projects can be accessed through this link. Through this project I discovered that no design comes out the same on paper when it is in the brainstorm stage. Several "kinks" will always manage to work themselves into the final proposal and questions of how it is user-friendly, safe, or fool proof will always come up in any discussion of your designs, especially if they are made for infants. I also learned a great deal on presentation methods since this was the first time I presented in this class.

Project Two - Manufacturing Processes

This project is our first big group project. We were to explore different Prototyping methods. Each group was assigned a part that belongs to a simple device. Each group must find and propose the suitable Prototyping method for it. Our group was assigned the solid side of this device, and the most suitable method we picked was to mill it out of wax on a CNC milling machine. A web report was done on this project and can be seen here. Through this project I learned how hard and time consuming it is to get a prototype designed made here in Carnegie Mellon university, especially when you have to program the CNC machine yourself. But I also discovered that it is no impossible. The staff is quite approachable and the cost is covered by the class (usually). I also gained and extensive amount of knowledge on the CNC milling process, as well as other Prototyping methods. In addition I experienced the joy of holding the final product of hard work and pain staking labor and knowing we did a good job. When the project was finally put together and I was able to crank the and make the propellor move it was an amazing experience. I have never participated in a massive project that required so many people to communicate with each other. I was witnessing an amazing feat of engineering.

Project Three - Outreach Activity

This is another group project with the goal of designing and building a working exhibit for the Carnegie Science Museum. During the first brainstorming and idea sharing I have learned that because of the deferent disciplines of the team members, out ideas are fundamentally different, and that a lot of compromise will have to be done. Although during the first in class presentations, it seems that not a lot of groups were sure on what they were doing. This made me feel better since we were not solid on our concepts as well. I learned that the design process can be slow and tedious if you don't come up with anything during brainstorming. We did not even have out final design when we had the first in class prototype testing. Other teams had pretty set designs then, so we were pressed to change and improve. This experience taught me the pressure that will come with engineering such as deadlines. From this first "prototype" we have, we scrapped the idea and changed it and decided to go with other things. This was a perfect example of how a design can change rapidly throughout the process. I guess that's why they need to rapidly prototype parts, they need to know if this design will work or not and move on. We finally decided on a design and made a decent model of it. But as soon as we tested it we quickly discovered everything that's wrong with our concepts. We discovered that the motorized parts were extraneous and children we not getting as much control of the device we hoped for, and that most of the electronic designs we made were not working. This is what became my biggest discovery of this whole semester: TESTING is the key to all your success and failure of your project! I also learned that although most kids are enthusiastic about science, there are always some who don't seem to care and needs special care and persuasion to do things you want them to do. We were also required to rapid prototype a part of the project. This was my first opportunity to use the FDM machine, and I had to make the part in IronCAD. This taught me a lot about Tolerance, since when the part was made it didn't seem to fit where we wanted it to. We had to shave a lot of the shape away for it to fit, and I should have accounted for the varying shape and size of the slot. In the final class presentations, I was surprised to see how everyone's projects improved dramatically, everyone's activity seems to work, and some were actually good enough to be really life class activities. It was again humbling but very inspiring since some of them were really good and I would have never thought of doing something like that.

Finally its teh time for Meeting of the Minds, the day where we display our projects for the research symposium. Humility seems to be a common theme of what I learned so far, and it is no different today. I observed alot of other projects, and they are all both confident and sucessful. I especially like the pixel project. Later heard that originally they did not have such an interesting way (the M&M's) and that they changed it a few days before that day. Originally I was gonna leave after one hour, thinking that it would be a slow day, but so many people were there that we were quite busy in showing everyone what our project is about. This was my first "science fair" type event and I really got some more experience.