Perhaps this is a topic best reserved for the mfg forum but I need to rant a little.

I am in a lab studying for an exam tomorrow. My friend (who also has this exam tomorrow) is the TA for an autocad class section and is trying to help some freshman draw a 3 view drawing based from a given isometric handout. Some kind of bracket looking thing.

This future harbinger of nuclear powerplants, cars and space ships cannot (and refuses) to simply figure out whats needed by drawing it on a sheet of paper and stares with impunity on to the white screen of death.

Is it really that hard to sketch some simple part on a sheet of graph paper?

Perhaps, there is an intro to Chinese class being offered next semester. I hear Macao is a neat place.

I've been employed as an "engineer" the past dacade or so. I've conceived, designed, drawn, fabricated, machined or had someone machine, assembled, prototyped, tested, measured, documented, installed...all sorts of things for diverse employers and clients. I've done tiny DNA microarray assay widgets, a huge automated process pipeline for analyzing proteins by automated 2D-gel electrophoresis, residential and light commercial battery backup and solar integration products, and huge commercial scale photovoltaic power generation plants.

I recently designed a new product for the company I work for, a novel mounting system for solar electric panels. It's being used for more than 10 megawatts of projects the next 2 quarters, and will save the company literally millions of dollars over the commercailly available options they'd been using.

I have an art degree, communication, 2D+3D design, and a high school math degree.

I was, however, raised in a home with a lathe and mill in the basement, and parents who encouraged me to build things. I'm pushing 50, and generally find myself in a senior capacity in the mechanical side of whatever engineering or R&D group I find myself in by merit of the fact that...

~I'm the only person there who has the faintest clue how to design anything which must actually be made~

I've worked with a dozen young engineers. Degrees from good schools, best and brightest, all that. I've yet to meet one with any fundamental mechanical sense, at all.

Kids don't make stuff anymore. Model airplanes are virtually all "ARF"s - Almost Ready (to) Fly. If you really get into RC cars, the real ones you race, there's a little wrenching there, but no making stuff to speak of. Go karts? mini bikes? tree houses? hell, soapbox derby cars are essentially pre-built anymore.

What strikes me as odd about these "mechanical engineers" is the fundamental lack of interest or enthusiasm they all seem to exhibit toward mechanisms. I've got, on my desk, a piston and connecting rod out of an extremely rare and sexy Yamaha FZR750-OW01. Serious moto porn; an early exaple of a "slipper" piston, 5 valve clearances beautifully machined into the crown, and a titanium connecting rod with TiN coating. Not one of these guys who has devoted at minimum 4 years to the pursuit of knowledge of things mechanical has ever asked what it was or commented on the design, or mused about the astonishing life a connecting rod lives at 12,500 rpm.

BTW, you don't need to know 3rd angle projection anymore. SolidWorks does it for you.

I think thats the key. Most people I see that are good engineers (and scientists) like to tinker around with stuff, not just to get a paycheck.
There is still plenty of people around that do find this interesting, its just that the sheer amount of those who get a degree without ever so much as wondering what all that math is good for.


Can you post a picture of your piston. Googeling FZR750-OW01 brings up some sexy images Though I'd probably kill myself on one.

Its not so much about drawing 3D projection, it was not being able to translate a 3d picture into 3 2d pictures.

Our company just offered a design engineer job to a student who came out of college with a mechanical engineering degree in January. He turned it down as he also received an offer he preferred, from an insurance company.

Gawd, the break room in that place must be boring as hell! Could you post a pic of that rod? I have never seen a TIN coated connecting rod before.

I'm pushing 50 myself with this engineering degree. I have a Mechanical PE which I've never really used and pushed a desk around for 25 years. Risk Manager this, Safety Manager that...... Ok, some construction field work and a little design work for a few years.

So the only way to get the "Engineering Fix" was to start up a little shop at home and study how they did things 100 years ago. JimB

Welcome to the consequences of capital holders transforming a productive society into a consumptive society ( and that is not a misspelling)

CD.

Uh oh on that "pushing 50" thing.

Is everyone on this site nearly a half century old? I know I am.

Remember that drafting and mechanical engineering are not the same thing. Quite.

I do maintain that if you can't do the second, you probably won't do a good job
at the first. I learned to draft with a pencil and a T square. Three views, isometric
views. I swear I've made more money with that skill than with the college degree.
Which is an undergraduate degree majoring in physics BTW.

Jim

I'm half that figure, in grad school. Didn't have enough the first two times around.

No one teaches paper and pencil anything anymore. I think thats part of the problem.

One problem is that there aren't as many simple mechanical devices out there for kids to learn by disassembling. Used to be you could hand a kid a clock and a screwdriver, and they would learn about gears, springs, etc. Now they find a bit of plastic with some copper printed on it.

Back when I was in Jr High, we all took shop. Now finding a high school with a shop in it, is hard. Its too dangerous for the little dears.

I am finding that once they, the future engineers, do an internship at a nuke plant or a computer hardware outfit they realize they don't like "Engineering".

Naah, the problem is that people are trained to be consumers... and therefore have a job to bring money. Whatever the job is... as long as the paycheck is big.

But on the other side, megacorp have killed all possibility for passion in the workplace. Inventions bear the name of the company or some shareholders, never the name of the engineer anymore.

I work for a large research establishment, probably 70% of the people here have a degree and are working on their phd's etc. The biggest problem I see is the lack of common sense. only about 1 in 5 of em has any. Usually when asked why they designed something a certain way the answer is because they can.
Because it is easy to draw in solidworks does not mean it is easy to make.

You're just witnessing a product of the American public uneducation system.

- Leigh

As a mechanical engineer (old one), I too am amazed at what passes for an engineer today. I work for a major oil company. Our in-house engineering department began hiring alot of engineers last year from major well known US universities. I was amazed at their lack of understanding of all basic things. One young Mechanical engineer didn't know the difference between a gate and a globe valve. Another engineer did not know that Power Plants burned coal, he said, and I quote: "Don't they burn that environmentally friendly stuff". I was baffled, until I quickly realized that he was talking about natural gas. I believe the computer has does the most harm to educating our students. Much of the basics have been bypassed; take engineering graphics (drafting). This is a course that forces one to look at thing from a spatial perspective. Think of transitions; CAD programs now do this for the designer. Very few people know about Mohr's Circle anymore. Think about machining, CNC (while it is a boon for manufacturing) has changed the abilities of machinist. Many machinist apprentices had to be able to grind their own tool bits and drills. This helps the machinist understand how a cutting edge works and the importance of the angles (hence the forces that act on the tool bit). I doubt very few CNC machinist really understand how a negative rake vs. a positive rake cutting edge works.

A little while back I downloaded a 3d CAD program. Idea was to start learning how it works as I've never really touched computer design before. I played with it a few hours, I can't really figure out what I'm trying to draw on the computer unless I have it on paper. And so the program has not been used in weeks and I still know nothing of Cad design. I'll really have to force myself to learn it I think.

I'm no engineer thats for sure, but I can make what I dream up

I moonlight part-time for a guy building CNC grinders. The owner of the company previously worked 30 years for two of the most prestigious grinding machine builders. His son has a masters in Mech Eng. from MIT. His Chief Electrical Eng'r worked for Moore. They have Solidwerks, and a spiffy new CNC surface grinder. Between the three of them they cant properly size a motor to a ballscrew or design a simple motor bracket.

We back in the "toolroom" get to use a rickety Bridgeport, a drill press, and a lathe with "too speeds -- too fast and too slow." There's minimal heat and barely any light.
They cant machine any component properly on the $35,000 grinder because they dont understand, or wont accept the concept of material warping, shimming, flatness, removing burrs, tolerances, etc. It's strictly magnet on high and grind until shiny. Software is expected to compensate for every mechanical shortcoming they can throw at it.

They ask the occasional question/opinion, and I respond based upon my limited but nevertheless quality background in machine building, field service, diemaking, moldmaking, workholding, etc. I get a look of dismay at the time estimate given and steps needed to perform a requested task to it's satisfactory end. "We have no time for engineering! We ship the machine on Thursday."

Come Wednesday nothing is ready but comment is made on how the machine levelling pads (borrowed from the CNC mill , now unusable since they dropped it off the forklift during one of the twice-weekly factory reorganization moves) are the wrong color.

I could go on and on and on...

I stopped reading those articles in trade magazines that feature state-of-the art shops where everybody from the President to the Janitor works together to produce a quality product in the most efficient manner -- too depressing.

sigh.....

Ok, first things first:





There's my desk ornament. It was (I think) in the Virginia Breeze Racing OW01 when Glen Szarek set the track record at Summit Point on it in 1994, 1:18.33. That was flyin' back then.

Funny thing about about "engineering". Mainly what it consists of is going to meetings and answering emails combined with a huge dose of chasing things down for people who don't care enough about the success of the project to do it their own damn selves.

I spent the day steamed 'cause my gazillion dollar saving focus of the company's attention is stalled 'cause a half wit in procurement bought the wrong little rubber pads to put on the bottom.

48 skids, or $100k worth of the wrong ones. And I'll be the first one sacked cause I'm not cheerful enough or a "team player"

Having a good grasp of old-school drafting, a lifetime of reading machine design and McMaster catalogs, and good basic skills at layout, machining, and fabrication..THEN LEARNING SOLIDWORKS...can be a pretty huge boost to productivity. SolidWorks doesn't design anything unless you let it.

I get a LOT of calls from headhunters. Evidently they can tell from my resume' on monster.com that I actually know how to do stuff, and have done some. It's dangerous when they call and I'm feeling a little disgruntled...

what's REALLY scary about that, is that someone with all book-learning and no practical knowledge has probably been hired to be a 'consultant' or 'expert witness' (or some such) and will end up helping the insurance co. screw someone else when something he feels wasn't designed properly fails (one possible scenario of a few I can think of)....I mean, to my mind anyways, an insurance company wouldn't hire an engineer to be manager of clerical staff, for instance, they hired him BECAUSE of his engineering degree (and possibly the lack of practical knowledge is desirous as well, because then all that nasty reality stuff won't cloud his judgement when it comes to toeing the company line)

I like to think that I am one of the few ME's that have a real interest in how things are made, not how they are designed. I grew up in a town that had 450 people in it and my Dad owned a repair shop. I began working on customer's equipment when I was 9 or 10. Between the ages of 10 and 18 I had many conversations with Dad and his hired man about them F***in' engineers and what they were thinking when they made something.

When my best friend and I transfered the University we walked around campus the Friday before classes started and found where each of our classrooms were. While walking around the engineering building my friend asked if these were really the people that I was going to go to class with. He was a farmboy and knew that it just wasn't right.

A couple of years later we did our Senior Design projects. My group of three was the only group that actually built our project. One group (that had the highest GPA student in our class) did a project to reduce the manufacturing cost of a water purifying machine (table top type, like a coffee machine) for a real company. They had many suggestions. One was to replace the circulation fan with a smaller high speed fan that would move the same CFM. When the question period was opened I asked if they gave any consideration to fan noise while spec'ing out the new fan (something that I thought was important for a appliance that was designed to be put in an office). They had no answer. I asked what the estimated cost savings were to manufacture their new design. They had no clue. That was the purpose of their project!!!!. Needless to say they got an A.

Anyway I got interested in performance engine building while in college and proceeded to build a flowbench for testing cylinder head airflow from scratch, bought a milling maching, lathe, etc. I now build nationally competitive engine parts in a niche market.

I also have been able to break into the steel industry and have achieved great success there professionally. I work with local machine shops to build equipment for our business. They tell me that they like to work with me because I am constantly concerned about the easist way to build things that are still functional.

I have achieved this all at the age of 28. None of my success is because I am smarter than anyone else, better that anyone else, etc... I firmly believe that I am at were I am at today because my old man had enough sense to put a wrench in my hand when I was less that 10 years old.

I now have a wife that is expecting and hope that I am HALF the dad that he is.