Name of Assignment: Smaller Hydraulic Brace Subject: Advanced Engineering Facilitator/Teacher: Mr. Hazlet
In this assignment, I had to work on improving aspects of the hydraulic arm project my class did last year for the sophomores this year using 3D printing. I chose to work on supports/bracing for the cylinders that make up the hydraulics.
I feel that I used my thinking and problem-solving skills and interpersonal skills. I used thinking and problem-solving when designing the brace. I had never done something like this before, so not only did I have to put a lot of different measurements together to create my own idea, I also had to get comfortable using the OnShape 3D design program. I used interpersonal skills when choosing what I wanted to work on improving, as this is an assignment that everyone in the class is working on. We had to communicate with each other on what parts we each wanted to work on, discussing how they were going to work together, learning from each other's mistakes, and telling each other what printers we planned on using if more than one person was using the 3D printers at any given time.
This assignment is really difficult and took me the entirety of first quarter to successfully complete. The fact that I completed this project with something that was as successful as it is makes me very happy and I feel very accomplished.
Doing this required a lot of thinking and problem-solving because I had to do this completely from scratch, with no reference or existing contraption to improve upon and little idea of how to work OnShape. I also had to learn how to use Makerbot, which is the printing software we use in the shop.
I went through a number of prototypes, none of which were usable, because either the design was flawed, the printer messed something up, or I broke it trying to remove it from either the build plate or the raft. Sometimes people would take or move the things I'd printed, so there was the added frustration of trying to locate my prints after a few days and they wouldn't be where I had left them.
I would probably research something close to my idea to see how it was modeled to get ideas, rather than having to think up ideas that may or may not already exist so that I save some time.
This really expanded my knowledge of OnShape, despite having worked with it for the first time almost three years before this. It let me take what I already knew (no matter how little) and turn it into something that I could actually use and succeed with.
The skills that I've learned while making this has made the rest of this project series easier as I don't have to learn OnShape while I try to figure out how to make these parts usable.