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Hi, my name is Faith. Let me show you the life of a Mechatronic Engineering student in DCU.

Semester 1 - 2019

Hey guys,

My name is Faith and I am a third year Mechatronic Engineering student in DCU. It should be an interesting year this year so I can’t wait to take you along for the ride!

Mechatronic engineering. Yes, it does sound like a transformer (but honestly it could get you to that stage). Mechatronics means half of your classes are Mechanical and half are Electronics, hence the Mechatronics.

The mechanical side shows you the design aspects of physical objects, whether that be how machines move, materials, heat, and thermodynamics and even how to design awesome mechanical things yourself!

The electronics side brings you into understanding and designing circuits, coding, and computers! So far, I have worked a lot with circuits and components, learned to code in C, C++, Java and Assembly Language and even work with generators, transformers, and microcontrollers!

Mechatronics is very much a combination of both sides and I love it! Electronics is really coming into anything nowadays, from robotics to self-driving cars, the future is wide for mechatronics!

DCU offer courses in “Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering”, “Electronic and Computer Engineering” and “Mechatronic Engineering” here if you would like more information: https://www.dcu.ie/engineering_and_computing/eng_direct.shtml

Weekly Recap

W1

Week 1 is one of the best weeks in every year of college (except maybe 1st year due to nervousness!). You get to see all your friends again in one place, there are lots of events run by the Students Union to get everyone back into the college term and get to start new and exciting modules! 

In my first week, I went to Freshers Fair (lots of free stuff!), returned to my favourite club: Rock Climbing and found out about my projects for the year ahead; the Fireman Challenge, the ESB Challenge, Mobile Robotics, and New Enterprise Development. All of the above are very exciting and you will definitely see more about these in future blogs!

W2

The first few weeks really gives you an insight into what you will be up to in the year ahead. 

The DCU Clubs and Societies Fair was this week. The fair gives all the clubs and societies in DCU whether they are new or old to recruit new members and show off who they are and what they do. This year, I decided to join quite a few; DCU Rock Climbing Club, DCU Drama, DCU Engineering Society, DCU SPARC (Space and Robotics Club) and Fotosoc (Photography). Most of them run awesome casual events where you can go once, which is perfect with my heavy workload for the year!

In terms of academics, a lot of my subjects/modules dived right in this week. I had my Electromechanical Systems lab (see photo below) working with motors, transformers and generators, started work on my Product Design project: “The Fireman Challenge”. This is probably the most exciting of all of my projects. The brief is to design a mechanism to climb a ladder while holding (and not spilling) a cup or beaker of water! My team spent the week discussing possible solutions, doing some research and analyzing the parts we are required to use(see photo below).

Finally, this week officially began the beginning of our preparations for INTRA (DCU’s integrated work placement programme) with some presentations from 4th-year students about their placements and from our INTRA supervisor. In my second semester this year, I will go out into a workplace as an intern for 6 months as part of my course! DCU is very helpful with this and they have provided us with a portal to apply for jobs on so fingers crossed that I will get something good.