I felt I learned the most during the YoYo project and labs due to their interactive nature. Not only was I able to learn how to use MasterCAM, CNC machines, and the injection molding machine, but I also got to experiment by changing parameters and dimensions to see how they affected the parts produced. For readings and lectures, I felt I was exposed to a lot of different manufacturing tools and techniques, but that I didn't really learn anything from them because hardly any time was spent on any one topic. I feel that if readings were assigned to give us a rough idea of the topic, and then the lecture went into more focused detail, I would have learned a lot more. I would have liked to learn about process planning, variation and process control, cost, and 3D printing, in more detail.
Joey Campion:
I think the lectures where we had physical examples to pass around were most helpful. I can still remember the types of chips, additive manufacturing examples, and injection molding samples (good and bad) that we passed around. I think a hands on approach for meche type minds is most effective. I would have liked the readings to be posted online. Sifting through emails to get to them is a pain, especially because the format is sometimes unclear. Plus, you could get ahead in reading if they were posted earlier.
Sarah Fay:
There are two areas of 2.008 that I imagine will be most often addressed for improvement in these evaluations, the clarity of instructions and the grading scheme. I would like to touch on these as well. As our team worked through the deliverables, we came across a lot of questions about what we were supposed to complete and how we were supposed to do that. We ended up sending a lot of questions to various 2.008 staff members when we were stuck, which was probably unpleasant for them as well as nerve-racking for us. Many of our questions were about what our Mastercam toolpaths should be and what tools were available to us, as some of the examples and the paperweight assignment did not always directly translate to our molds. We also discovered some of the tasks we needed to do late in the game, like machining the yo-yo sleeves and initial shafts, making the poster, reaming different holes on the molds, and making 50 yo-yos despite sometimes having 10/100 parts be unusable do to process variation testing. We recovered from all of our questions and situations, but having these remote pieces of the project more clearly lined out on stellar could reduce stress and email traffic.
My concerns with the grading scheme are small. I understand that about half of grade for the class should be based on the lab work and the other half on the class/lecture work. I would prefer to have two tests instead of one, but I might be in a minority. I just found it hard to study so much information for a test worth so much in the middle of the semester, particularly because it was moved up a week and a half in the semester. While I was not a fan of the reading quizzes, I do see the value in having something that motivates students to come to class and do the reading. I find reading challenging, and because I read so slowly, I did not always have the time to read before class. I also am a student who would come to class no matter what, so I feel like the learning of the “nerd” work should be done there. I also feel like for the amount of work dedicated to the yo-yo project, a relatively small portion of our grade depends on it. Again though, I do understand the reasoning behind the current grading scheme. Overall, this class was my favorite of the semester. It was an appropriate amount of work and a whole lot of fun. I felt I learned a lot about manufacturing processes that I didn’t know before and that will be useful in the future. Thank you for all your hard work.
Rohan Kulkarni:
2.008 was a great experience that taught me many useful concepts. I actually ended up using what I learned during an interview for my externship. I found the design for manufacturing sections particularly helpful. As far as improvements, reading quizzes did little to incentivize the reading as we didn't know how we were doing. Better guidelines for deliverables would have been appreciated ( especially in solid works dimensioning). I found the parts about process and operations control particularly interesting but lacking depth.
Kirsten Lim:
Overall, I really enjoyed the class. My favorite lectures were definitely the ones from Stroud about the case studies of manufacturing processes. I thought that many of the lectures still blew through the material content, so I think covering less topics in more depth would be useful. Particularly processes which many of us don't have much physical intuition about such as some of the welding processes, micromachining, and casting. Additionally, I think some of the lectures in micromachining had too much content, and should be split up into more lectures. Lastly, I think having more resources that we could use to produce some of the deliverables would be useful. Often times, our team had to find additional resources or email the TAs. However, this problem will likely be solve by the team blogs in the future. One last note about the grading, I think the project should be a larger portion of the grade. A lot of practical experience is gained through the project, and I think it should be a greater percentage of our grade.
Kirsten Lim:
Overall, I really enjoyed the class. My favorite lectures were definitely the ones from Stroud about the case studies of manufacturing processes. I thought that many of the lectures still blew through the material content, so I think covering less topics in more depth would be useful. Particularly processes which many of us don't have much physical intuition about such as some of the welding processes, micromachining, and casting. Additionally, I think some of the lectures in micromachining had too much content, and should be split up into more lectures. Lastly, I think having more resources that we could use to produce some of the deliverables would be useful. Often times, our team had to find additional resources or email the TAs. However, this problem will likely be solve by the team blogs in the future. One last note about the grading, I think the project should be a larger portion of the grade. A lot of practical experience is gained through the project, and I think it should be a greater percentage of our grade.
Nathan Spielberg:
I found the process of conception to manufacturing of a product, in our case a yoyo, a very valuable and rewarding experience. Many other programs do not get a chance to do this but it was a great experience to see how we can design something with manufacturing in mind, learn how to design molds for our parts, run all of the machines to make our parts, and then assemble our finished products. I found the material very interesting but if anything not as in depth as I would of liked. The class seemed like it covered a ton of material but skimmed over some processes just for the reason of not having time, and at sometimes I feel like more of a focus may have been useful. I would like to see assembly lines or collective integration of manufacturing processes addressed more in depth in the future. We learn about lots of processes but I think an additional lecture talking about how they all can be integrated in forming an optimized assembly line for example would be helpful. I thought machine vision could have been covered less in depth, maybe even for just half a lecture. Overall I liked the course because of the broad introduction to a variety of important manufacturing concepts and this class has made me realize that I want to take manufacturing classes in the future.
Steve Sullivan:
I think that there should be less pset work early in the semeseter when so much else is going on with the manufacturing of the molds / paperweights. I would also preferred more psets in place of the lecture quizzes, which I felt were too difficult. I liked the 3d printing lectures and would have appreciated more lectures on up and coming technology. I found myself learning Mastercam more easily when running through it and getting help from Dave, but usually fell behind when he gave a lecture to the whole class. I also learned Mastercam well from the guides posted on the course locker. More of these guides would have been helpful.
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