Rope Climbing Machine Competition In A Systems Design Course

In this paper, the design competition component of a junior level systems design course (ME 316) is presented. The course is the first of a sequence of design courses in the curriculum. The competition involves design of rope climbing machines by student teams. Details of this design project are explained. Also, an approach developed to assess the contribution of an individual student to the project while working as a team member is presented. Introduction Washington State University (WSU) has four campuses. The main campus is located in eastern Washington in Pullman. The newest branch campus of the university is in Vancouver WA. The campus serves southwest Washington and the greater Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. In Fall 1997, the first engineering curriculum leading to the Bachelor of Science in Manufacturing Engineering was introduced on the new campus. The course of study is based on the Mechanical Engineering degree at the main campus in Pullman, but focuses on manufacturing processes and technologies in greater depth to provide the skills needed for advanced manufacturing. The emphasis is on mechanical engineering applied to manufacturing. Only the junior and senior courses of the four year degree program are offered on the new campus. The curriculum contains several courses that constitute a sequence of design courses. The first one of these is ME 316 "Systems Design." The main emphasis of ME 316 is on design as a process rather than design of a specific part such as a gear. It covers basic design tools such as Gantt charts, the house of quality, as well as engineering statistics, engineering economics, P ge 534.1 product safety, design criteria, etc. From this point of view, it is just like many other such courses available in mechanical engineering curricula around the nation. ME 316 is also one of the two courses of the curriculum designated as "writing in the major." Therefore, written and oral communication skills are emphasized throughout the course. Students’ learning experiences are improved if they are given a chance to apply the concepts introduced in a course. In ME 316 this is accomplished by a design project assignment. It was important that the project involved design and construction of an actual product so that an environment where students could experience working in teams, establishing design specifications, dealing with cost and manufacturing constraints, and scheduling could be created. However, finding a product that is not too complicated and at the same time not too trivial was challenging because (1) this is the first design course at the junior level and students do not have a lot of design experience and knowledge yet, (2) the product must not require expensive parts since the students must pay for any parts they use in the design, (3) the design and fabrication of the product must be completed in six weeks and, (4) the product must not require any machining since the Manufacturing Engineering program currently has no machine shops until the new Engineering and Life Sciences building construction is finished in summer of 2000. In the last two offerings of the course, design of a rope climbing machine was used as the project in ME 316. This product met all of the constraints above and proved to be fun and challenging, yet it was not overwhelming for the junior students. In the following sections, details of this project as well as an approach developed to assess the contribution of an individual student to the project while working as a team member will be explained. But first, the course content will be briefly reviewed. Course Content ME 316 Systems Design is a three semester-credit course introducing the engineering design and decision making process. The main topics are: • Technical writing and oral presentation, • Introduction to design process, • Design process terminology, • Reverse engineering, • Design process and planning (Gantt chart), • Development of engineering specifications (house of quality), • Concept generation, evaluation and selection (decision matrix), • Modeling, analysis and simulation, • Engineering statistics, • Engineering economics, • Human factors. As mentioned before, ME 316 is one of the "writing in the major" courses in the curriculum. Therefore, the course starts with a detailed study of written communication forms used in P ge 534.2 engineering such as memoranda, proposals, progress reports and engineering reports. Also, details of how to prepare and deliver a successful oral presentation are covered. During the semester the students receive two major assignments. The first one is a reverse engineering assignment. They are grouped into teams and each team is given a product such as an electric pencil sharpener or an electric stapler to be reverse engineered using the functional decomposition method. At the end of this assignment, they give an oral presentation and submit a technical report written following a format guideline. Rope climbing machine design project The second major assignment given in the course is the rope climbing machine design project. Students are asked to form teams of two or three.