Category Archives: MECH Coursework

Crunch Times

Gruezi alles,

While I wait for my train to depart for Paris, nursing an espresso and thoroughly enjoying European life, I thought I’d write about the crunch time that usually happens around this time of year at UBC. If escaping to another continent isn’t an option (sorry Nick and Davey), there are a number of other strategies to get through the combination of MECH2/MECH3, and design team involvement.

For MECH2:

Like the tides, the periods of time before tests and competition deadlines roll by predictably every year. The key is to plan ahead and anticipate them from month one. This can be hard if you feel like you’re just barely able to keep your head above water, like I felt in MECH2.

While the course schedule might be unfamiliar, the MECH staff do a great job laying out the schedule as accurately as possible. Fall semester is a settling-in period, but by winter break you should be able to see your spring schedule and while your design team work may have been slow as teams ramp up, spring semester is always a rush. Make sure you take an hour or so to look through all your weeks and weekends, identify where big tests/deliverables lie, and front-load your design team work as much as possible. No one wants to be wrestling with SOLIDWORKS while attempting to absorb test material. In fact, I’d recommend pushing your team/project to reach every checkpoint as early as possible. The “unknown unknowns” that inevitably come up with design team work are always better managed the week before deadline, rather than at 5:00 am the day of.

For MECH3/3.5:

As you progress and gain a bit of experience in design teams, you’ll likely start speking to sponsors and manufacturing partners to get your parts made. Here are a few key things to know about design team manufacturing:

Give sponsors as much lead time as possible, for both courtesy and project management sake. Sponsors donate their time and effort (and money) to help us out, meaning real customer POs will always run first. While a simple part may take only an hour to machine out, giving many weeks of lead-time allows your sponsor to optimize their machine schedules. CNC machines aren’t cheap and need to be running near-constantly to turn profits these days. This courtesy also reflects positively on your project management skills!

Invariably, engineering changes will come up as certain fillets or cuts can’t be done on their equipment. You might spend weeks thinking you’ve polished your part, only to find out it’s not machinable. Try your best to consider the limitations set by your particular machinist/manufacturer at the very beginning of design; many of them post their machine capabilities and model numbers on their website. No one wants to spend hours milling out a variable-radius fillet because it “fits your aesthetic.”

Design team work has been the most memorable experiences I’ve had in MECH. The unexpected challenges might incite a bit of terror in the midst of school, but I look back on them with endearment. Sick, twisted endearment.

Next posts will be dedicated to my Coordinated International Experience in Switzerland. Trust me, you want to look into this option.

Tschuss,
Jason

What It Has Been Like to Be Involved in Mech and Be The President of Club Mech

Last year, I decided to set goals to help me improve as a person and a professional. I knew that something that has always mattered to me is being able to help and contribute to my Mech community. As such, I decided to run for the position of UBC Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Club President (Club Mech) and was elected. Since then, I have been trying really hard to improve the connections with the department, help out wherever I can to increase the sense of community within students, and represent our student body as best as I can. It has not been as easy task, as it requires a lot of time commitment in meetings to help resolve student concerns, and volunteer work to develop activities that help our students.

Some of this year’s activities included professional development events related to what Building Science is and how Mechanical Engineers could follow this path by doing a masters, fun parties to socialize, selling amazing merchandise, providing feedback to improve our academic curriculum, helping our graduates obtain their Iron Ring, and giving our professors fun socks to remember us by; what a great time it has been planning these activities with my team!

Despite the long hours, being the Club Mech president has been one of the most amazing and memorable experiences in my undergraduate career, especially because I had an amazing team who was supportive, kind, dedicated and caring. If it wasn’t for them, I would not have been able to push through the hard and stressful moments. I want to say to them that I am thankful for your hard work and I appreciate everything you did. Thank you UBC Mechanical Engineering Department for caring so much about your undergraduate students. You are committed to educating the future engineers of Canada and that shows every day.

If you have the chance, make sure to join Club Mech and continue developing good relationships with faculty, staff and students.

Feel free to ask me any questions any time at ambassadors@mech.ubc.ca.

Until next time!

Diana Nino

Tips for Capstone Design

Hi, how are all of you doing in Term 2? There is only one more month before the end of classes! This is my last semester at UBC and I know it will be a busy one because I am planning for life after graduation, and working away on my Capstone project. You can read more about what a Capstone Design project is here.

Let me tell you a bit about the scope of my project, before giving you some tips for success in Capstone. I am working in a team of five members. We are doing a system design of a gas turbine engine based on an existing automotive turbocharger for Professor Pat Kirchen. The purpose of our project is to demonstrate the working concept of the Brayton Cycle for potential use in undergraduate MECH courses related to thermodynamics. As a Thermofluids student, I enjoy the nature of my project as it requires integration of some mechanical design, thermodynamics, heat transfer, and instrumentation. The challenge is learning, testing, and completing this project within the timeline of Capstone while balancing a full year of courses.

If you are a future fourth year engineering student, these might be some things to watch out for and do that will make your Capstone experience more enjoyable:

Choose a project with topic(s) that you are truly excited about. Your team and you will put in a lot of hours throughout the course of the project, so you want to make sure you are going to enjoy spending your time on a project that interests you.
Put in time at the beginning of the project to understand the scope. Almost all capstone projects require more time than the planned work outline. Be sure to review the scope with your client to see if you can simplify it. In most cases, it is better to deliver a few, well tested deliverables that meet functional requirements than pieces of various components.
The design process and documentation you learn to create in MECH 2 and 3 are building blocks for the design Dossiers. Learn to use the Dossiers as a framework for organizing your project, and customize it as needed to better suit your style of project. You should definitely discuss this with your project supervisor.
Find mentors in addition to your project supervisor and client who might be able to advise you on specific topics related to your projects. Some people are experts in their work field and have years of experience understanding what works, and what doesn’t. It will save you time to by talking to these people and asking questions.
Most capstone teams are four, or five members in size. You have to learn to work in parallel so you can tackle the breadth of the project. If you work in series (e.g. everyone working on one subsystem together at the same time), you will not be able to complete your project on time. You will also not be able to identify problems such as incompatible subsystems earlier in the project.

These are just some tips I’ve accumulated from my experience with Capstone. Although everything is very general, these are things you might forget during the chaos of the project.

Let me know below if you have any questions about Capstone. Or, if you another current Capstone student, please feel free to comment below about your experience and helpful tips.

Cheers,

Arthi

MECH3/3.5 Recap

How is it already January? Einstein described the warping of time surrounding massive objects; clocks that appear faster further away from clocks on our planet. Surely, the engineering buildings at UBC produce their own temporal acceleration too.

For skimmers, here’s the briefing of the below paragraphs:

I’d suggest joining a maximum of one design team and one professional organization during full time studies.
Don’t underestimate the return to school after co-op; MECH3 assignments can sneak up on you.
MECH3.5 is an exercise in time management and team dynamics. These factors are complementary and will provide compounding reductions in stress, if appreciated.
For those interested in the CIE process starting around 3rd year, check out Kirsten Meng’s excellent post about it.

I meant to provide updates on the MECH3/3.5 experience in real-time, but I’ve repeated the mistake of overloading my plate at this wild undergraduate buffet. For those that enjoy the variety of extracurriculars, it can be a real struggle pacing yourself around UBC’s wide range of options.

MECH3 returns to the traditional semester course schedule students are accustomed to. At first glance it seems to indicate an easier semester for those returning from co-op; there’s a good amount of review at the beginning of term. However, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security (like I was). Without the weekly quizzes and frantic project timelines, I had a slow start to regular studying and homework. My midterm grades were an effective wake-up call, but with only one or two assessments per course, I could’ve had a much easier time ahead of the final had I been more proactive.

Lesson learned – Navvy-stokes and transient heat transfer problems laugh in the face of cramming.

MECH3.5 was a very different beast. Group work has its ups and downs, but it’s so important to develop an awareness of team dynamics and how to massage them to the group’s benefit. I had heard complaints of the unrealistic objectives and lack of prototyping in MECH328, but the opportunity to dig deeper into designing a product made it enjoyable. I also lucked out with the powerhouse team I was assigned (nearly all of them dedicated design team members, hint hint).

I’ll write one more post on study semesters and design teams, then catch up on my current adventures on exchange in Europe. I figure we can talk flights and packing, then the first few days. Spoiler: It’s been *amazing*.

Capstone and Its Challenges

Being a MECH student requires a lot of commitment and drive; especially when you are developing your Capstone Design project in a short period of time. Capstone is the final graduating requirement for UBC’s mechanical engineering students. Student teams choose from a pool of projects from different industry clients such as the ones shown here. These projects challenge students to apply knowledge and skills learned throughout their degree to real world problems.

The Capstone project I decided to pursue was with the AMS /SEEDS Sustainability Initiative. The project’s main objectives were to design, manufacture and implement a vertical axis wind-powered turbine that collects, transforms, and stores wind energy. It will then provide output power to charge at least one cell phone device around the UBC Plaza, while educating the public about sustainable energy methods and building a sense of community by providing seating space.

Over the past four months, my team and I have been working on collecting and understanding the needs and requirements from the client to find out the final goals of the project. This is no easy task as it requires a lot of hours of communication and meetings with not only the client, but other stakeholders.

Needs and requirements are explored and found at almost every stage of the project, because the more you research, the more they appear. For example, the sculpture had to be aesthetically pleasing while collecting energy, it had to be at least 12 feet tall so that users couldn’t reach the upper system, and it had to also have a seating area to increase community building. So far, the project is on the early stages due to having multiple major systems such as the electrical connection, the shape of the sculpture and the shape and manufacturing of the airfoils, that need to be defined and worked on, which makes this task harder. This capstone project is a combination of multiple individual capstone projects- since our project is in the public realm that means that every design we create needs to be approved by a certified professional Engineer, so that it meets the right safety standards. This not only makes it more intense, but also increases our budget; there are a lot of things to account for.

With all of these challenges we are trying our best, and we are hoping all the hours and constant work we are putting into developing this project pays off in the end. I will let you know how it all goes a couple months from now. Feel free to ask me any questions any time at ambassadors@mech.ubc.ca.

Until next time!

Diana Nino

End of the year! And hello to the last part of my final year in Mech!

Hello everyone,

It has been a long time since I last updated you about my life as a Mech. I am officially a fourth year student and soon to be graduate. Yay! I can tell you that I am super excited about accomplishing this goal in my life; it has been a long, hard, but overall happy road.

I came to this realization because the other day during an event called the UBC Applied Science Open House. On this day, all the engineering departments at UBC have booths in the Kaiser Building to show high school and first year students what each department has to offer. Every booth had students, professors and staff who talked about the focus of the department, projects and curriculum. We ran great demostrations such as a 1920’s National Gas engine, student teams’ projects, as well as interactive activities for everyone to participate. If you have never attended this event, make sure you come and visit us next time!

As a work learn student in the Mech Student Services office, I helped in the planning and organization of this event. I was also one of the students who volunteered to talk to prospective students, which made me think about the reasons why I chose Mech, and what I have learned over the last few years. One of the most interesting questions prospective students asked me was: “What would be a piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to go into Mech?” This is a big question –it encompasses all these years of hard work, sacrifices and dedication.

After giving it some thought, I can honestly say that studying Mechanical Engineering tests you in almost every level in life; from personal, mental and physical to professional. In order to succeed, you will have to learn to balance studying, with personal, family, and friends time. It sometimes requires sacrifice and dedication, but all of this has been worth it for me because I was able to learn a lot. If this is really what you want to study, make sure this career motivates and guides you towards your passion in life. If learning about how the world works makes you satisfied and adds to a piece to your puzzle, then you should become a Mechanical Engineering and come to UBC MECH. MECH at UBC will make you learn about yourself, while also learning about cool things in the world, such as how to design a real boat from scratch (Mech 488).

Well, it is almost the end of this term and I getting ready to write my some of my last finals. Feel free to ask me any questions any time at ambassadors@mech.ubc.ca.

Until next time!

Diana Nino

HERE WE GO… AGAIN

Same place, new voice.

As I read Ashley’s old back-to-school post, I found myself nodding at every word like they were the grains of truth. Indeed, because I’m taking the same courses (minus 2, add another), I feel like I should discuss another very important aspect of back-to-school: how to absorb the most out of my 4^th year of Mechanical Engineering.

(My lovely coworkers from YVR)

(My first tour for Mechanical Engineering Student Services)

First, I should mention I’m coming back from 16 MONTHS of Co-op, where I worked under senior engineers and helped them complete their projects. Why is that important? One word-transitioning. Back-to-school to most of you may be leaving the comforts of the summer sun, but for me, it’s also a call-back to homework, assignment deadlines, and study nights.

So I asked myself, “How do I prepare for this?” How do I take the work ethics and skills that I’ve gained in Co-op and fully utilize them in school? Well, to kick off any good project, you must have visions, so I created visions for this semester:

Ace my courses (using the work ethics from Co-op!)
Build a support network (be inspirational and positive like my Co-op supervisors!)
Learn new things (using the drive from Co-op!)

Then I set down the steps to achieve my visions. For the first one, “acing my courses”, I followed one simple rule: “know what you should be learning”. If there’s anything I learned from Co-op, it is the value of self-directed progress. To elaborate, this means you shouldn’t need your supervisor to check up on you every hour, or even, every day. When I was in Co-op, my supervisor would go on one week vacations! At first I was afraid that the small amount of work would make me slack off, but then I quickly learned that by checking on my own progress every day. For example, I jotted down tasks on the log book and then reviewed their completion by the end of the day, the sense of fulfillment and autonomy I had achieved was much greater than any approval my supervisor could give. How can I apply this to my studies? Get a log book. Know what the learning objectives are for each course. At the end of each week, follow-up with yourself: “how comfortable am I with this material?” If you don’t understand something in lectures, quickly jot it down in a log book so you can review them after class. Take this piece of advice with a grain of salt, but from my Co-op experience, anything you don’t understand can be taught by Google! Aside from that, Co-op taught me the importance of a well-designed work environment to your ability to concentrate and be productive. Half a month before school started, I set-up the most productive work station at my dorm. This includes a good lighting, big desk, dual monitors, printer, and stationary at the ready.

The second vision is not as straight forward. Building a network of inspirational and positive people requires time and energy. When I was still in Co-op, I learned a lot about team-building, and I’m taking it back to school. Like working on a project, you have to be communicative and supportive. Be open and honest about life and you’ll be surprised how strong your connection becomes. When I am in the right mental attitude, I found myself quickly surrounded by people who are giving and generous. These people include team members from student design team, supervisor and coworkers form work-learn, new exchange friends, and first year friends. When you build a solid network, you feel more confident about challenging assignments, quizzes and exams. When you struggle together, the victory is just so much sweeter!

Lastly, I want to talk about how Co-op has motivated me to learn new things. I remember the first day I started working at Vancouver International Airport, I was handed a project scope and told I’ll be running the project. Unexperienced as I was, I quickly learned to reach out to resources (senior coworkers, the YVR intranet) and to learn from past projects (for permits, specifications, etc). With that strategy, I was able to accomplish new tasks and in the end, successfully finishing the project at YVR. This semester, I’m planning to or have already reached out to friends with more experience to learn new skills like graphic design, event photography, and 3D scanning.

So there you go! That is how Co-op could actually make your transition back to school so much easier. More importantly, my Co-op experience has had a positive effect on my ability to absorb my fourth year in UBC Mechanical Engineering!

Since I am preparing myself for a semester abroad (in DENMARK), I will be writing about that in my next blog! Let me know if there’s any subject in particular you would like to hear about. And of course, email me if you wish to connect!

Let’s own this semester together,

Kirsten

Mental shifts and Start of Semester Rush

Hi everyone!

Listen, I get it. There’s a lot of reading to do in this program. I’ll try to break things down into thematic sections below so you can get to what interests you the most.

My predecessors have written about their academic experiences and course details in past posts (see September 2016 here), so I thought I’d write about the extracurricular side of things. Most of these posts will focus on topics related to co-op, design teams, and exchange experiences.

A. Choosing a Design Team

September arrives a bit differently every year. In MECH2, you’re corralled on-campus a week before everyone else, giving you the opportunity to strut around like you own the place or grieve uncontrollably for the loss of lazy summer days. It’s also recruitment season for our design teams, of which there are many.

You’ll see various info sessions and application forms posted across social media. How does one possibly decide which team would be the right fit? What if you like rockets and submarines equally? Here are a few tips from my own experiences:

While there are natural fits for students that are determined to get into one particular industry, for those that are unsure, find a team with projects that will best develop your engineering skills. I didn’t grow up as a hard-core gearhead for example, but I knew Formula did the kinds of analyses and design work that interested me and that made it easier to stay committed to their projects.
Prioritize a team with a dynamic that matches your personality. Team and work dynamics can make a huge difference in morale and learning. It’s one of the first things people bring up about their co-op jobs, for example.
The foundations of engineering are present in any student team to some degree, so if you’re set on learning about fluid dynamics, or continuum mechanics, you aren’t limited to just one team that offers that sort of work. Ask each design team about their potential projects!

B. School vs Co-op mindsets

Every semester following a co-op term has been a struggle for me. Co-op terms have typically ended the week right before school starts up again and the extra mental load of school took some time to adjust to.
While many of my colleagues swore they’d review course material, excuses ran wild in the weeks leading up to September. Summers are hard, man; how do you fit course review in between hikes, road trips, and satisfying your Instagram followers? I’m guilty of missing this resolution too, but I feel it’s important in a program like ours, where upcoming material builds heavily from previous.
And it’s not only good for learning sake, but for work ethic too. It gets your brain in the habit of staying alert past clocking-out of your shift. While we all endeavour to sleep at a reasonable hour, late night study sessions are all too common come midterm season.

What are some of your own challenges as school rolls back around? Let me know in the comments below. Also if you have any questions regarding student teams, interviews, typical work, etc., I’ll try to get to them before the next post.

Happy studying for now,
Jason

The End to a Crazy Week!

Hi guys, its Diana again; and yes, I am alive!

If you read my last post, you know that I just had reading break. The first two of days were great because I had the chance to get a good amount of sleep. Throughout the break, I studied and did assignments almost every day. They were very long so, I had little time to study the material for the three midterms I had this week. Anyway, I know I put a lot of effort and tried my hardest, so I am sure they will be okay.

My crazy week started by writing a midterm almost every day. Things went okay and by 12 pm Thursday I was finally free to focus on WiSE 2017; my networking event. I have to say I am extremely proud of the amount of effort and work my amazing committee and I put into making this event a success. The feedback from it has been very good. It was definitely the happiest point of my week. Organizing an event for more than a hundred people really requires a lot of responsibility, but knowing that all of your attendees enjoyed it makes all the effort worth it.

Since finishing Mech 2, I haven’t had that many super busy weeks, so the past week was a bit of a surprise. I can’t say I miss it! On the bright side, I learned a lot about myself during that week, and for the most part I managed my time effectively. This is one of the invaluable skills you learn in Mech.

Reading Week is finally here

I am very excited about reading break. I look forward to sleep and taking a well-deserved rest. So far this week has been great, but tomorrow is my first Mechanical Engineering Lab Tour. For this tour, I will be taking the students to some of our awesome labs:

The Anechoic Chamber: The Anechoic Chamber is a fundamental test facility for acoustical research. It is quite unusual both physically and acoustically. Its surfaces are made of highly sound absorptive glass-fibre wedges, creating an almost completely sound-reflection-free environment. Currently, the chamber contains two microphone-array acoustical antennas being used to localize sources of sound — in particular, on musical instruments.

MAL (Manufacturing and Automatization Lab): conducts research in the mechanics and dynamics of metal cutting operations, spindle design and analysis, micro-machining, virtual simulation of machining operations and CNC machine tools; design and digital control of high speed feed drives; precision machining, sensor assisted intelligent machining; and chatter stability of cutting processes. The academic articles published out of this lab receive the highest citation in the world in the field of manufacturing.

Although I consider myself a pretty “easy to talk to” type of person, I have to admit my strength isn’t necessarily public speaking. So, even though I am a bit scared, I am excited for this opportunity because I have the chance to learn something new and take on a challenge. I know it will be a good tour – I should know, I prepared all the logistics of the tour to make sure it is a success.

If you are interested in attending one of our future lab tours send an email to: studentassistant@mech.ubc.ca to save a spot. Our next tour will be on March 24^th from 10:30 am – 12:30 pm, and includes an academic advising session.

Once this tour is over, I am going to relax for a week. . . because the week after my life is going to be crazy! I have three midterms and two assignments during that week. But wait there is more… I will also be the MC for the Women in Engineering Networking Event, for WiSE 2017! This a yearly event for which I am also the chair this year. WiSE 2017 is an amazing opportunity for female students to network with well experienced female professionals in industry and academia. So as you can see, I really need a couple days off!

See you next time!