Processing materials is a familiar topic as I had course work in high school that focused on processing materials such as metals and wood along with other materials such as epoxy resin. Also, in my own time working in my shop at home on cars and motors it is sometimes necessary to fabricate or process materials to ensure fitment or execute a task.
During the Learning by Doing assignments and activities I learned the ways materials are processed and why they are processed along with ways of measurement, imaging, and other methods. By measuring dimensions, taking into account the material and what is being used to process the material, laser, CNC, etc, this can now be put into machinery to process the material to specification. During the keychain activity specifically, I learned how to create the design on CAD software, transfer it to the machinery, input coordinates into the machine that allow it to locate the material for processing, and finally initiate the machine to process the material. Working with the software applications and learning how to use them, in my opinion, is the most important step as you create the design and transfer said design to the machinery, which will do the rest of the work. Without knowing how to operate and understand the software the machinery will be useless, which is why I believe that this is the most important aspect of material processing.
In the Learning by Doing class I learned the basics about how to process some materials along with a hands-on assignment where I designed and created a custom keychain. Learning about the ways of which I can have an idea, make it a design, and transfer it to a language that a computer/machinery can understand has been very helpful in under standing processing materials. Taking what I have learned into consideration I think I am now better equipped to design and fabricate anything I may need outside of the classroom due to my deeper understanding of processing materials. I think understanding the materials and following a process will in the end give a better final product that will perform better than using a different method.