Fall 2022 Mechanical Engineering Design Symposium

Our project this semester was a lot of fun, and I think we all learned a great deal about sheet metal manufacturing in the process. We also had an awesome client, TA, and faculty advisor.  Courses like manufacturing processes & metals (313 & 314 I believe) helped in the design process, but we still encountered many situations where we had to problem solve on the fly. I believe there is more to be said about how this project helped build skills to organize and lead other projects in my other courses/career.

-Team member Matt Greenapple

I enjoyed working on this project. I especially liked working with Professor Negrut and learning more about the work the SBEL does. Since we built a rover, ME courses like Circuits was a huge help. We also had a lot of analysis and calculations so Statics, Dynamics, Mechanics of Materials were also helpful classes. I actually decided to continue on to grad school and get a master’s in simulation and modeling. This had a lot to do with working with Professor Negrut and his lab.

-Team member Cal Schroeder

The project was full of its challenges but was very rewarding to finish. We had a lot of fun designing and prototyping to bring our ideas to life. This project led in nicely with what I want to do in the future; design engineering and project management. This was design heavy as well as problem management and workaround. I think I will use a lot of what I learned in the future. After graduation I am working for BRP in Sturtevant, WI. I will be a design engineer there working on their Manitou Pontoon Line. 

-Team member Andrew Zeman

The greatest skills I can draw from this course have to do with project management. Getting the chance to work with a group of people focused on a task is an invaluable opportunity as well. To utilize the knowledge and experience of our teammates as well as that of our faculty advisors, we had to sufficiently understand our project. Throughout the project, we had to set and meet goals when our understanding was in flux.  Knowing what questions to ask and how to find those solutions is what engineering is all about, and getting that practical, hands-on opportunity is something unique to this course.

– Team member David Bondi

I think that this project has taught me to not be afraid of just trying an idea even if I think it could fail. Often times from coursework we learn that there are right and wrong answers, but when it comes to solving a complex fabrication and design problem those answers aren’t so clear and you can save yourself time by trying different ideas opposed to worrying about every small detail.

-Team member John Steinbergs

Read more about the Rowing Pains team.

I enjoyed how this project was an optimization problem between the environment and energy production; two things that often conflict. It was a unique project that has no clear-cut solution so we developed tools to help us, or others evaluate this type of system in the future. Thinking about problems in terms of a system of variables was a valuable skill for this project that I learned in many of my classes. No one parameter could be changed for this project without altering something else. We had to weight each option and compare multiple possible outcomes.

-Sun Kissed team member

During these two semesters, we built these two robot systems from scratch. We really appreciate this project that gave us the chance to work with teammates that share the same interests and passion in robotics. By working on this project, we were able to apply the theoretical concepts learned in ME courses in the real world, like the Arduino programming taught in ME201, CAD modeling from ME231 and 331, and feedback control in ME601. Moreover, we were able to teach ourselves necessary skills, such as computer vision, in order to achieve the robot’s autonomous control. The software debugging processes also reinforced our problem solving ability and research skill. 

-Badgercopter team members