Instructor

Shantanu Tripathi

Section

S1

Semester

Autumn ‘21

Course Difficulty

Since there is no specific course content, the difficulty entirely depends on the project problem statement of your choice

Time Commitment Required

Extremely self-driven and flexible, however, for a good project, one should be prepared to put in at least 5-6 ‘team hours’ every week.

Grading Policy and Statistics

The entire team would be awarded the same grade, unless the team members specifically mentioned otherwise.
The top two teams from the Shark Tank were given AA, the next two were given AB. Almost all the others that submitted a half-decent project got a BB or BC.

Attendance Policy

None, however one had to fill feedback for the weekly presentations within a few hours of the class. Also, attending weekly review sessions with the TAs and professor is highly recommended.

Pre-requisites

The entire ME curriculum until the final year is the pre-requisite for the course, across all specializations. Further, it is strongly preferable that at least one member of the team has a working knowledge of simulation software including but not limited to ANSYS, SolidWORKS, ADAMS and Autodesk Fusion 360. Basic business fundamentals and prior experience in making presentations and pitch decks would also benefit the teams, since most teams do well on the technical front.

Evaluation Scheme

60% - Entrepreneurial Project (including proposal, prelim design report, detailed design report, pitch deck and Shark Tank video)
15% - 3 presentations
20% - Reverse engineering
5% - Presentation feedback
A large majority of the course was peer reviewed.

Topics Covered in the Course

3 topic presentations (15%) were to be chosen from a pool of the following topics. Teams were to sign-up on FCFS basis. Try picking up bonus presentations for extra credit if available.
Reverse engineering, engineering requirements, mechanics, material selection, failure (ductile, brittle, fatigue, thermal, corrosion), FMEA, design for X (reliability, manufacturability, cost/weight, environment), part selection
Link/chassis design, wear, screws, nuts, bolts, welds, rivets, fits, other joints, joint design, friction, lubrication, bearings, gears, shafts and keys, belts and chains, pulleys and ropes
Prototyping and testing, sensors, actuators, controllers
Standardization, tolerance, design optimization

Most of the topics were quite generic and the emphasis was on presentation skills rather than the specifics of the content. Teams were encouraged to use memes, real world case studies, photos and videos to make the presentations interactive.

Teaching Style

There was no instruction, in fact, the professor calls himself a ‘facilitator’

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

Reverse Engineering Assignments: One had to select a household appliance and reverse engineer it, build a CAD of the individual parts, assemble it, perform FMEA, stress analysis and dynamics simulations and finally make a detailed report. This was done across two assignments collectively worth 20%. Teams that posted their work on LinkedIn received bonus marks.
Project: The gist of the course, work effectively begins from day 1. Teams of 6-8 must come up with a start-up idea with a reasonable amount of engineering element and if possible, a widespread impact. Over the course of the semester, they are supposed to design, test and manufacture the product (manufacture wasn’t possible online) and come up with a business case for their product and a pitch deck. The team must then present at a Shark Tank where the other members of the class are the sharks. Teams are effectively left by themselves throughout the semester, although there a bunch of intermediate checkpoints, including report submissions and review meetings. Your final grade in the project is effectively proportional to the investment received in the Shark Tank.

Feedback on Exams

None

Course Highlights

Clearly the Shark Tank, as close to the real thing as it gets :). The professor gave each student (read, investor) a fixed amount of arbitrary currency and each investor had to spend it entirely on the teams during the Shark Tank. This led to a lot of interesting discussions on which investment opportunity would be the best, quite unexpected from a mech core course :-p.

Course Importance

If you have a good tech startup idea, this may be the perfect opportunity to showcase it to the world. The professor has a lot of industry contacts and at times, was willing to push some of the startup ideas in class to actual investors.
For the others, it’s an extremely unconventional yet fun experience that pushes you out of your comfort zone. And by the end, you’re left with a great set of public speaking, presentation and business skills.

Going Forward

None

References Used

None

Other Remarks

None

Interesting relevant links

None

Review By: Aditya Iyengar