ME 2110 Book notes

Chapter 1: Introduction to Mechanical Design

Mechanical design is a process that engineering teams use to
generate products that will satisfy the needs of customers
Designs are continuously refined
Involves information gathering, design modifications,
improvements, revisions, development of alternatives,
evaluations, failures, and hopefully success
Nonlinear
Product lifecycle contains 8 phases
o Problem understanding
o Specification development
o Conceptual design
o Detail design
o Production planning
o Manufacturing
o Useful lifespan
o Recycling
Mechanical design activities largely occur in the first 6 phases
Phases are concerned with fundamental functions of the product
and general description of how the function can be performed
o Phase 1: design team must study customer needs and
understand limitations of the design space
o Phase 2: create list of performance specifications that the
product must achieve
o Phase 3: develop conceptual designs that can perform the
necessary functions
o Phase 4: refine design and develop detailed production
drawings
o Phase 5: team develop a production plan
o Phase 6: manufacturing of the product
Chapter 2: Understanding Customer Needs
Everything revolves around customer needs
2.1: Problem understanding form
Contains 3 parts for the engineers to complete
o List of customer needs obtained by interviewing customer
or reviewing a list of customer requirements
o List of engineering requirements that the design team will
use to design the product
o Matrix that is used to relate the two lists

Once completed theyll have a better understanding of the

design problem
If row is blanks: customer need is not being addressed by the
engineering requirements
If column is blank: customers do not care about an engineering
requirement so team can either reduce or eliminate
2.2: Quality Function Deployment
Planning process for ensuring that your product has the
necessary qualities to satisfy your customer needs
House of Quality
o Tool of QFD
o Centered on the problem understanding form (customer
needs, engineering requirements, and their relationships)
o Customer needs are assigned an importance value to
assess the importance of each need
o Evaluation of competitors meeting customer needs
o Correlation matrix between the engineering requirements
o Requirements affect each other
o Can prioritize requirements
o Leads design team towards performance specifications and
necessary functions of the product
Chapter 3: Product Functions
Break product functions down into subfunctions to focus on each
tasks one at a time.
o Creates a need for a function tree
3.1: Function Trees
Allows team to break product functionality down into the simpler
components to generate conceptual solutions for accomplishing
the necessary functions and see how they relate to each other
3.2: Function Block Diagrams
Tool for showing functional relationship between sub-functions
Once diagram is created, can move and combine functions to
create alternative functional relationships
Good way to explore design space and produce alternate designs
3.3 Solution Function Tables
Generate solution principles or generate approaches for
performing each of the functions
Chapter 4: Specification Development
Product specification are performance requirements that your
product must meet or exceed
o Expressed with numbers or unit
4.1: Specification Sheets
Requirements can be:

o Demands: must be achieved

o Wishes: goals that should be achieved if possible
Sources of the requirements come from:
o Standard customer expectation of the product
o project management
o design team
o legal requirements
o governing bodies
4.2 Specification Categories
specification list for a product provides a set of numerical targets
that the design team can work towards
focus the design effort by clarifying the product functionality and
identifying the most challenging performance requirements
After team has identified the required product functions and
established target values for the functions in a specification list,
then they can generate conceptual designs
o Simple sketches of possible solutions for required functions
o Grouped together to form alternative designs
Chapter 5: Conceptual Design
Preliminary step in this process is the formation of function trees
and function tables
5.1 Morphological chart
Collection of possible design solutions for each of the required
sub-functions of the product. Displayed in graphical form
o Product sub-functions in the first column and then
corresponding solutions in the columns to the right
o Solutions combined to create conceptual designs
5.2 Design tradeoffs
Improving performance in one area will decrease performance in
another
o Can be displayed graphically
Decisions driven by customer needs
5.3 Concept evaluation
Take customer needs into account
Design matrix using the customer needs from the HOQ to rank
how well the various design alternatives satisfy the customer
requirements
1st level matrix
o simple comparison between the alternative designs and a
standard benchmark design
o matrix evaluates each alt design against the customer
needs based on a scale
nd
2 level

3rd level
o created by adding in the importance value for each of the
criteria

Chapter 9 Teamwork
steps to optimize a design team
o make good use of teammates
o develop systems for assigning task responsibility
o defining an orderly procedure for communication among
team members
o developing a system for evaluating your teammate
9.1
Team optimization
o Successful design teams is organized in a way so the
project tasks are aligned with team member skills
o Avoid overspecialization for educational projects
9.2 Team communication
Need clear management structure that defines team member
responsibilities
Each member needs to operate successfully
Teams should assign a project manager: job is to oversee the
interactions of the team members and ensure that the team
makes sufficient progress
Communication should be professional, specific, and brief
Specify what tasks each of you is expected to complete and due
dates
Specify which team member receives completed work on each
task
9.2.1 Email and Efficiency
Email good for presenting simple information and helps keep
long-term records of such administrative events
Present rules and definitions
Email is bad for
o Conducting policy discussion
o Explaining systems
o Solving large problems
o Resolving conflicts
o Could decrease efficiency
9.3 Peer evaluation
Holds team members accountable for their work
Should be done carefully and anonymously

Supervisor must review, look for trouble areas, and facilitate

team chemistry
Use some type of numerical value system

Chapter 10: images in Technical Communication

Explaining and justifying your designs
Tool you used to display your design ideas and explain how your
design addresses customer needs.
Uses words and images
3 part challenge
o prepare images that accurately represent your ideas
o develop a verbal explanation of your ideas
o integrate the visual and verbal accounts of your work in a
presentation that is brief, specific, and direct
10.1 Images
basic categories
o photographs
o drawings
o graphs
related text: explain the display and call attention to the
important info
o cite all labeled components
o describe how the system works and roles of each
component in the systems operation
guidelines for integrating images with text
o place image and its explanation on the same page or as
close as possible
o use same terms in the image labels and in the text
description
o use logical organization to describe your images
Captions:
o Needs short descriptive caption that allows a ready to
identify the figure and quickly return to the text that they
were reading
o Short
10.1.1 Photographs
How to display photographs
o Select photos with the following characteristics
Simplicity: the object of interest should dominate the
image, and clutter should be avoided
High contrast: the individual subcomponents of the
system should be easily distinguishable

Label: should add labels to your photographs, when

the accompanying text discusses components that
are shown in your photograph
Grayscale: your reports will commonly be copied in
black and white, so you should use photographs that
will be clear when color distinctions have been lost
Get best results when:
o Use camera with good lens
o Eliminate clutter
o Create contrast with good lighting
o Work from close range
10.1.2 Drawings
Most common form of design communication
Concept drawing and measured drawings
Concept drawings: used in early stages of the design process
when you need to explain your ideas to your team and customer
o Present complete and recognizable systems without
detailed measurements
o Illustrate quality and functionality of proposed designs
o You should
Present a complete-system drawing before you
present component or subsystem drawings
Label your drawings using descriptive terms
Differentiate components by varying line weights and
patterns
Measured drawings: used to fabricate components; display
dimensions by isolating components
10.1.3 Describing Drawings
Give complete explanation of the display (Speaking to Figures)
o Cite the figure by number
o State what the figure displays
o Recite the labeled components, commenting briefly on
their functions of sequence of operation
o Discuss the figure making a point
Device drawings: explain the advantages of the device
Photographs: explain how the device is operated
When compiling drawings into reports
o Number figures in the order that they are cited in the text
o Integrate citations into the sentences, like this Figure 1
presents
o Avoid parenthetical figure citations like The tennis ball is
launched by a catapult (Figure 1).
o Cite and explain each figure individually

o Avoid group citations such as this The design components

are shown in figures 12-19
o Attach landscape-oriented figures with the bottom on the
figure on the readers right-hand side
10.1.4 Graphs
Graphs specialized figure that is used to display data and
compare sets of data; provide visual representation of trends in
large data sets; can compare experimental data with predictions
Design graphs so data dominates the visual field by
o Maximize area of data being shown
o Eliminate gridlines
o Clearly describe axes with labels and give
dimensions/measurements units
o Label lines and symbols
o Use large fonts in the legends and axis labels
o Use consistent fonts and font sizes
o Distinguish lines and markers on your plots by varying line
patterns and weights
o Make markers used to distinguish data points large
o Dont connect data points with a line if there are few points
o When showing several graphs, use lines and markers
consistently throughout
10.2 Equations
When displaying an equation, you should place it alone on a line,
accompanied by an equation number
Center them horizontally and have equation numbers to the right
on the same line
Use LaTeX, MathType, or Microsoft Equation Editor for special
editing
Presentation of the equation is a 3-step process
o Citation
o Display
o Definition
To ensure the equation presentation flows well, follow these
guidelines
o Don not use tiny fonts in the equation. Use fonts consistent
with rest of the document
o Play your equation display on the page where you cite and
discuss it