Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course-A New Experience with Discipline "Project"
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Int. J. Mech. Eng. Autom. International Journal of
Volume 1, Number 1, 2014, pp. 47-55 Mechanical Engineering
Received: May 13, 2014; Published: July 25, 2014 and Automation
Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New
Experience with Discipline “Project”
Aparecido Carlos Gonçalves1 and Samuel José Casarin2
1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, UNESP-University of State of Sao Paulo, IlhaSolteira, SP 15385-000, Brazil
2. Production Engineering and Quality, UNIFEG, Guaxupe, MG 37800-000, Brazil
Abstract: The students, in “Project of Mechanical System” discipline, are almost engineers and are interested in seeing the final results
of their projects instead of only drawing them. Here it is related an experience with the group from second semester of 2012 of
Mechanical Engineering in DEM-FEIS-UNESP (Department of Mechanical Engineering-Faculty of Engineering of
IlhaSolteira-University of State of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil). Some practical cases were presented to students to solve. The students
helped a pharmacist to project and construct an elevator to a second floor in a pharmacy of manipulation. They also had to project and
construct an off road vehicle to a Brazilian National Student Competition and to project a planetary reducer. The students were asked to
present alternatives, to discuss preliminary project, to work in groups and to fabricate what they have projected. During the construction,
they remembered discipline like machinery, welding and maintenance, beyond others. The evaluation of the course by the students and
by us was excellent. Details of the development and student performance are presented in this paper.
Key words: Engineering education, design, AutoCAD, project.
the preoccupation on environment and the ethic. All of
1. Introduction
it with the necessity of a solid basic formation capable
In the early 1950’s, a committee on evaluation of to make the trainee absorb news technologies that
engineering education of the American Society for continuously appears.
Engineering Education stated that training for the Based in this guideline, we tried to innovate and
creative and practical phases of economics design, present a new experience with student from last year of
involving analysis, synthesis, development, and mechanical course from our college.
engineering research is the most distinctive feature of According to a real need, the students had to discuss
professional engineering education [1]. and present solutions.
Although these goals were stated nearly 50 years ago,
2. Preview Discussion
they are valid today. Since diagnosis is required for
many problems, particularly in upper-division courses, Varies topics have been studied for different authors
most students become reasonably proficient at it also. like creativity, questionnaire for teachers, knowledge,
The guideline approved by Brazilian Education improvisation, etc.
Ministry, in the Resolution number 11/2002 for According to Hueter [2], the creativity increases in
engineering courses was intensively discussed before elementary school up to an age of about eight and then
being approved. It was elaborated based on giving a steadily decreases with further schooling. At about
humanistic formation to Mechanical Engineer beyond eight years, old children become very aware of the
opinions of other people. It becomes important for
Corresponding author: Aparecido Carlos Gonçalves,
associate professor, research field: tribology, biolubricant, them to fit in and to use objects for “what they are
ferrograhpy, machine design. E-mail: cido@dem.feis.unesp.br.
48 Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project”
supposed to be used for”. The result is a decline of where conventional thinking particularly within a
creativity that continues through college. creative context is not working. It is also used to
According to Simon [3], experts have about 50,000 develop new ways of working that can be spontaneous
chunks of specialized knowledge and patterns stored in and innovative [10].
their brain in a readily accessible fashion. The expert Lave and Wenger [11] argued for a focus on the
has the knowledge linked in some form and does not whole person, within the social context and the
store disconnected facts. Exercises, which require sociocultural community, where learning is seen as a
students to develop trees or networks, can help then process of participation in “communities of practice”.
form appropriate linkages [4]. Accumulation of this In mentoring, the relation between the mentor and the
linked knowledge requires a lot of years. Since it is not mentee comes into focus.
feasible to accumulate this much information in four or
3. Some Thinking
five years, producing experts is not a realistic goal for
engineering education. How the novices who start Years goes and one of the most talked comment in
college differ from experts has been the topic of some articles about engineering is that professionals
studies like in Refs. [5, 6]. graduated in this course are versatile, adaptive to other
In a research, Gore and Gitlin [7] asked teachers to functions not specifically to engineering and with a
respond to questionnaires and interviews regarding solid formation in exact science (mathematical and
their views of educational research. They found that physical, more specifically) and so those professionals
these teachers dismissed educational research because develop a privileged capacity of logical reasoning and
they did not find it practically applicable to their are desired for a lot of company.
classroom situations, and they felt that the researchers The topics that take care of basic content are
did not take into account the specific contexts in which Scientific and Technological Methodology,
their findings would be applied. Teachers in this study Communication and Expression, Computer Science,
also believed that educational researchers lack Graphic Expression, Mathematics, Physics,
credibility because they are divorced from the real Phenomenon’s of Transport, Mechanics of the Solids,
work of teaching, and that research is inaccessible to Applied Electricity, Chemistry, Science and
them because of the overly technical format in which it Technology of the Materials, Administration,
is presented. Rose [8] noted that for the majority of Economy, Humanities, Social Sciences and
teachers, their research remains a process that appears Citizenship.
removed from their everyday practice. Engineering education focuses heavily on problem
A complexity science sensibility calls the attention solving, but many professors teach content and then
to the need to allow for improvisation: a readiness to expect students to solve problems automatically
genuinely entertain new ideas and alternative approaches. without being shown the process involved. In our
Too often teachers willingly submit to being told what opinion, an explicit discussion of problem-solving
to do. However, this is not the sort of learning that methods and problem-solving hints should be included
should be expected from professionals, and should not in every engineering class. The school has some degree
be the sort of learning one accepts from the teachers. If of freedom to work and some freedom is given to
inquiry is a defining feature of professional practice, teacher.
then the generative space created by improvisation is In working problems, students need to practice
essential for the emergence of complexity [9]. defining problems and drawing sketches. The
Improvisation is often used to help solve problems differences between a student’s sketch and that of an
Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project” 49
expert should be delineated, and the student should be engineer some ability. Among those abilities are
required to redraw the sketch. Students also need to notions of order of greatness, high general culture to
practice paraphrasing the problem statement and realize the solution of engineering in the global context
looking at different ways to interpret the problem. and enough knowledge linked to actual reality.
Cognitive psychologists are in general agreement What follows is the description of an innovative
that there are generalizable problem-solving skills, but experience in second semester of 2009 of Mechanical
that problem solving is also very dependent upon the Engineering in DEM-FEIS-UNESP (Department of
knowledge required to solve the problem [12]. Of all Mechanical Engineering-Faculty of Engineering of
prerequisites, knowledge and motivation are the most IlhaSolteira-University of State of Sao Paulo, Sao
important. Confidence is also important, so professor Paulo, Brazil).
should encourage students and serve as models of
3.1 Innovative Experience
persistence in solving problems.
In an organization level, a small percentage of what Teaching engineering is very difficult because
is learned is used in new projects [13]. Less than 20% students are interested in practical cases, especially
of what we have learned in our most recent project is those in the last year of the course. The discipline
then applied to the next one. The established way of “Project of Mechanical System” faces this problem
learning the job of project management is by working since it involves theoretical topics. In our opinion,
alongside more senior colleagues. It is only after a solid ways must be found to involve the engineering student
foundation of experience has been obtained, that one in genuine design experience.
begins to be sent on specialized training courses [13]. Learning topics like creativity, models, product and
The experience from his colleagues, bosses and other society, classification of project, planning of
agents associated with projects in which he participates production and execution, structure of project,
[13]. economic project, design, project for easy maintenance,
Undergraduate students in mechanical engineering patent, brainstorming, etc. are difficult for students to
will face cases where they will need more than just a get involved since they are almost an engineer and are
solid technical background to be successful. They will interested in practical cases. We noticed some lack of
be asked to design, to interact effectively with people interest in theoretical topics and the need of some
of any social and educational backgrounds. Not only practical project to motivate the students. We are used
knowledge of engineering but mathematics, science to giving them some machine, machine element, or
and experience in engineering solving problem and some device to be projected. This part gets their
system design will be criteria for students to be able to attention more than the theoretical topics, but they
communicate effectively. One effective response to cannot see the result of their project. As a pharmacist
these calls for reform is a curriculum that engages was constructing a second floor in a pharmacy of
students in “real words” experience [14]. manipulation in our town, and asked us to help him to
Those students often have neither the expertise nor project and construct an elevator, we decided to
the experience to acquire or design a technological delegate the job to students from Department of
solution that is suited to their mission. They thus need Mechanical Engineering of Unesp-IlhaSolteira. We
the help of people with strong technical back grounds also gave them the task of projecting and constructing
[14]. an off road vehicle to a Brazilian National Student
As a teacher of mechanical course program we think Competition and to project a planetary reducer.
that the program must be elaborated in order to give the The first problem faced by students is the inexperience
50 Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project” and the scare. They are trained to solve problems of execution process, preliminary project and detailed created by professors or by book authors. When we project, we tried to show them that as engineer they presented a real case, they felt like engineer under the would work in-group because most of the time, umbrella of the teacher. They could fail without factories let the responsibility of solutions to a group of problem. people and not to a person. At this case, a procedure is As at the five periods of Mechanical Engineering necessary in order to have the best individual creativity course, I teach “Material Resistance I” discipline for process. We talked about project technique like the students and in the ninth period, I teach “Project of brainstorming, synectics, artificial intelligence, Mechanical System” discipline, I know all the students’ analogy and others. names before this last discipline. So I decided not to get Working like a boss in an industry, I asked them to the signature of them inside the Mechanical Design bring the correct design until the last day from printing Class during that semester. They assigned the presence their grade. So they worked under pressure as in real list by themselves. After the final of each class, I took life and out of the normal work period. Like a manager notes in my private list who had attended the class. So I I observed the complete situation. I saw who was not tried to let them free to decide what and when to do the attending to the class and who was working inside each proposed project. The case was as follow. group. The owner of the pharmacy had bought a motor with We divided them in small group of five people and a small reducer according to miss information. The we asked them to project the elevator without motor was 1/8 CV with a nominal rotation of 1,620 rpm researching anything and anywhere. They should and 110/220 V. The reducer had a transversal axis with project without any previous knowledge and any a reduction of 1:60. previous start point. There was no previous existing We explained that in a project the final product elevator, like the one we intended to project, in their should be the response or the solution of an individual brain. or collective necessity. The client can declare his We motivated each group to present preliminary necessity in terms of product that desire to buy; solutions. One of those solutions is showed in Fig. 1 although his real necessity is, normally, the service that where we decided not to translate the notations. the product can render. Before beginning the study of solution, it is necessary that the problem to be solved by the product (elevator) be totally identified and stated. The necessity of our client was, then, an elevator for a manipulation’s pharmacy that should work in a clean ambient, without noise, not expensive, with easy maintenance, with some equipment already acquired by him. The charging box should pass by a hole of 360 × 320 mm let in the corner of wall when the second floor was constructed. So, they should work according to the need of the client which could not be the best solution by an elevator for this purpose. Working with the Assimow [15] model, that is, study Fig. 1 Sketch of first preliminary project presented.
Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project” 51
That solution was presented by one of the group and best solution was nearest a solution presented by the
we raffled one to make a Brainstorming on that. group three. The preliminary solution of this group was
Problem like noise, dirty and difficulty of maintenance modified not substantially. Fig. 2 presents some
were pointed and the preliminary projected was drawing of the elevator.
modified. Every piece was drawn in detail, including the
Everybody gave opinions and the first idea was electrical parts, and a report was generated. Everybody
rejected. It was adopted an assembly with steel cable was responsible for at least one drawing. Every
instead of a belt or chain drive transmission. drawing was corrected by at least one student. Every
As the steel cable pulls the charging box up or down, wrong drawing was pointed, discussed and corrected.
the small weight of the empty charging box could let A maintenance manual and an elevator catalog were
the steel not stretched and not winded correctly on the also generated. They had to plan the production.
drum. So the drive pulley transmits the movement to
3.2 Results
steel cable by friction, and the adequate tensile happens.
To keep this tensile there is a regulation in the inferior After being submitted for a long period to the old
pulley system, assembled together a spring that avoid minimum curriculum, the graduation mechanical
the cable loosening when the temperature give up or courses became regulated by its national guidelines
excessive tensile in cold days. that in general lines, establish the “necessary minimum”
The transmission system by friction together the in order to a course to works with authorization of the
spring also work as an emergency system since in case Brazilian Ministry of the Education inside of a type of
of obstruction of the elevator there would be a sliding quality pattern.
of the steel cable on the pulley that would avoid The education institution has the opportunity to
excessive load on steel cable and on the motor-reducer. develop a project where some variables as teaching
After the Brainstorming everybody agreed that the methodologies and evaluation can be differentiated (for
Universidade Estadual Paulista Universidade Estadual Paulista
"J鷏io de Mesquita Filho" "J鷏io de Mesquita Filho"
UNESPCampus Ilha Solteira
Projetos de Sistemas Mec鈔 icos
UNESPCampus Ilha Solteira
Projetos de Sistemas Mec鈔 icos
T蚑ULO: Carro T蚑 ULO: REDUTOR
Escala: 1:2 Cotas: Mil韒 etros Escala: 1:3 Cotas: Mil韒 etros
(a) (b)
Fig. 2 Mechanical drawing of elevator. (a) Car; (b) reducer.
52 Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project”
abilities and competences); the structuring of the main the time in class room, favoring the individual and the
curriculum can obey the traditional pattern of group work.
disciplines or be in module format, with or without Following those guideline we tried to teacher the
partial certifications. In case the institution offers more discipline in an innovative manner. The groups got
than an engineering course, the courses can be grouped very involved in the project and the discipline had the
in nucleus where the first years can be common to all best results since we teach it. The group could see the
courses (it is a revival of an old model). The legislation, result of their work in the end of the course and the
for its time, still allows enlarging such flexibility in the theoretical topics could be showed as they projected the
development of the pedagogic project with the elevator and the vehicle beside the project of the
utilization of up to 20% of course hours in supervised planetary reducer.
trainings and complementary activities. Below presented in Figs. 3 and 4 are the students
Each course of Mechanical Engineering should involving in the vehicle construction and in the elevator
possess a pedagogic project that demonstrates clearly construction.
how the group of foreseen activities will guarantee the Everybody was involved in the construction of the
wanted profile of its graduated student and the elevator. To avoid a big number of people inside the
development of the competences and expected abilities. pharmacy, we divided again the student in small group.
Emphasis should be given to the need of being reduced One group was responsible to go to the pharmacy to
(a) (b)
Fig. 3 Construction of the vehicle. (a) Students curving a tube for the structure; (b) the mounted structure.
(a) (b)
Fig. 4 (a) Elevator panel; (b) elevator panel mounting.
Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project” 53
take some measurement, other to construct, another to Fig. 5 shows some pictures of the elevator.
assembly the elevator, other to buy some piece, etc. Given in the same discipline the constructed vehicle,
They had to remember some discipline to do the on one competition is presented below in Fig. 6.
electrical parts. During the construction they also Fig. 7 shows a planetary reducer projected by a
remembered discipline like machinery, welding and group of student with the catalog. During the next
maintenance, beyond others. They had to specify roller semesters, we will discuss and fabricate it in a better
bearing, learn how to make a maintenance manual, how possible manner.
to make a product catalog and how to make a project
4. Conclusions
report.
The elevator is constructed since the end of 2012 and The graduation course in Mechanical Engineering
until today presented no problem. The ambient inside forms the engineer with a generalist, humanist, critic
the pharmacy is clean; there is no contamination with and reflexive formation, qualified to absorb and
oil and no noise. develop new technologies, stimulating its critical and
(a) (b)
Fig. 5 (a) Elevator box on the first floor; (b) elevator on the ground floor, with the inferior part without protection.
(a) (b)
Fig. 6 Constructed vehicle on a competition. (a) A group of motivated student mounting the vehicle for the competition; (b)
the vehicle on an endurance.
54 Last Year of Mechanical Engineering Course—A New Experience with Discipline “Project”
Fig. 7 Planetary reducer projected by a group of student.
and creative performance in the identification and
Acknowledgments
resolution of problems, considering its political,
economic, social, environmental and cultural aspects, We thank all the students from Department of
with ethical and humanistic vision, in attendance to the Mechanical Engineering of Unesp-IlhaSolteira and the
demands of the society. owner of the pharmacy that let us to get some picture in
We agree that during the project phase, once the his ownership. We also thank FAPESP, CNPq,
problem has been completed, students should be FUNDUNESP and FINEP for financial supports
required to check their results and evaluate them versus during our researches.
internal and external criteria. After the problem has This paper was first electronically published on the
been graded, some mechanism for ensuring that ABCM-Brazilian Association of Mechanical Sciences:
students learn from their mistakes is required. Proceedings of 21st International Congress of
In this experience with the practical cases, we noted Mechanical Engineering (COBEM 2011), October
that an individual can get impressed by the knowledge 24-28, 2011, Natal, RN, Brazil, available online at
or judgment of others and fail in exercising your own http://www.abcm.org.br/eventos/anais-de-eventos.
creativity. Some students are afraid of giving opinion.
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