Allie's Reflection
,It it hard to put into words, how much I am going to miss the memories, people, and information I have learned in my time I have spent in engineering. But the most important thing I will always remember is to never back down when faced with a problem, to be a problem solver, an engineer, is to keep coming up with solutions until your problem is fixed. Our capstone project, was a perfect example of this process and while it came with many challenges it pushed not only Lizzie and myself, but our whole class, causing us to become better students and engineers. When tasked with a project like this it can be overwhelming, and it was hard for us to decide on a topic, but once we had developed an idea we believed in, we hit the ground running! Both Lizzie and I have been looking forward to working together on this project and creating a product of our own for so long! As we explored our problem we began to create our own design ideas and sketches, which caused us to become more invested into making our dream a reality. When it came time for construction, I'm gonna be honest I didn't think we were going to be able to create such an amazing piece, but meeting Jeffery Auxer and learning how to blow glass was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had! The blown glass elements brought our prototype to the next level and caused me to love our product even more! Of course there are a few improvements we would love to make to our design, for our first time developing an idea and crafting it into reality I could not be more proud! I am so thankful for this class and project and I have learned so many valuable lessons that will stay with me throughout my life!
Lizzie's Reflection
When we began this project, we had absolutely no idea how to begin. Community interviews were our first step. This process helped tremendously as we found our idea and everything else fell into place. We then began by creating a Gnatt chart to guide us and keep us on track. This was very helpful and motivational because Allie and I both like to be proactive. Starting with research, we found previous products and patents and knew exactly what we were going to go for. The next step in our process was drawing up some ideas and a final sketch consisting of a hose timer. We went through many different timers until we found one that would work for us. We then contacted Jeffery Auxer, the local glass blower who helped us create our design. He created an amazing glass vase and stem, although the stem was too large we used it as a back up/alternate vase. The next issue we had was connecting the timer to our vase, which many adapters were needed for. This was a bit of an eyesore, so we tried to find a solution and used a foam cuff to hide them. A PVC pipe was used in place of the stem and a handmade washer was used as a water regulator. Allie and I were very worried it was going to be too large, so we got a huge plant to make it look smaller, and with any prototype, our future improvements came with many ideas. With a lack of time and money our prototype was not the exact design we were going for, but it turned out pretty amazing and we could not have been happier. Allie and I have been dreaming of this project sense our freshman year and it felt like all of our hard work had finally paid off.