Final Reflection

This project ended up being a very good learning experience for me involving dealing with the wants and needs of a customer, along with advancing my skills in CAD design and 3-D printing. At the beginning of the quarter when we were picking projects the idea of creating a standiometer was immediately interesting to me. I think the fact that the description of the project was so loose and vague excited me because it showed that there would be a lot of freedom for creativity with it creation. That being said, the idea that I first had when thinking of this project was far different from the solution we found to be most fitting for our customer. Our final idea includes using ultrasonic sensors attached to a bar (which will be placed on a patients' head) and measure the distance to the ground. This was most fitting for many reasons. The pediatrics office is very cramped at some times and it would be very helpful to have a mobile device. The process is fairly efficient, giving the doctors just a little more time with the patients. We have not yet finished the completion of testing, however we hope that the bar will be very accurate compared to the normal standiometers. Even though this project seemed to make Niki Saxena very happy, I still believe we were unable to accomplish one of her most important problems. At the beginning of the quarter Niki explained that, while working with small children, it is often very hard to get them to stand up straight. She was hoping that we could find a way to measure someone that was not standing with perfect posture. While I am still proud of the product we have produced, I am disappointed that we weren’t able to give Niki a project that fully reached her expectations. Furthermore, (and in our defense) I believe the problem of making kids stand up straight to be measured is a problem that remains unsolved across the world (without the use of very advanced and expensive technology).

My main focus during this project was on the 3D CAD creation of the body for the device. This was a fairly hard task for me because I am just currently in an introductory course that teaches CAD design. Also, being the only one in the group with any sort of cad experience this task fell solely on me. At the beginning of the quarter I was very worried that I would be unable to create what we needed, however, as the quarter went on I believe a learned a lot and built on the skills that I was learning in my MECH class to complete this project. I am very proud of the device that I was able to create, however there are a few things I would do differently if I had time to do it again. I believe that this project actually showed me that I am good at CAD design and it made me excited to continue learning it in the future. This project was also the first time I have ever actually 3D printed something. Just with these first couple prints I was surprised by quite a few things involving 3D printing. One, I was amazed how precise and durable it was. I made the walls of the container 2 tenths of an inch thick (I was concerned of it breaking), however, after printing it I realized that I could have made it thinner to conserve space. I also learned that even though the printing is precise, you will probably not get everything right on the first try. I made the mistake of not giving myself enough time to reprint the device. While the mistakes I made weren’t drastic, I do wish I had time to fix them (the holes designed to assemble the parts with screws were much too small and on one part of the project I didn’t leave enough room for the screws to be put in). Overall, this task was timed perfectly with my current curriculum and I think the work I did really advanced the knowledge that I am leaning in some of my other classes. Most importantly I think this task revealed to me something that I am actually really good at and I look forward to doing more work with computer design.