Objective: Our team’s project was to brainstorm, design, construct, and test a compound machine that moves a 1000-gram weight 5 inches vertically and utilizes at least five simple machines.
Learning Target: The student will work in a group to effectively demonstrate simple machines and calculate their respective mechanical advantages.
Reflection: I learned a variety of technical and soft skills, but I feel the most important one I learned was project management. Although the primary objective of this project was to complete the objective, it was structured in such a way that we as students could practice working in an environment more similar to that of real-life engineers through systems engineering. I learned how to effectively work in a team, assess my teammates’ strengths, and assign them roles that best fit their abilities. I was also exposed to different scheduling methods such as a Gantt chart to keep the project on track. As for the primary learning objective, I learned how to iterate on previous designs and take feedback from others to construct a working final product. I was also able to use prior knowledge and experience in CAD software (i.e. Onshape) to create technical drawings for our design, helping the rest of my team understand the build process and the various methods through which we transferred mechanical energy.
Full Isometric Drawing of Final Design:
