implmex
Diamond
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2002
- Location
- Vancouver BC Canada
Good morning All:
I have a new engineer to break in at the office of one of my long term customers.
Here's the back story.
There's a piezo switch that goes into a plastic panel for a communications application.
The switch has a round body with a thread and nut and a round flange so you can cinch the nut up from the back to hold the switch in the panel.
The switch comes from the switch store with a skinny oring in case you need to seal the switch for some reason.
This application doesn't need it, so the oring is discarded.
The panel is molded and the opening is too big for the switch, so I make a flanged bushing out of Delrin that's a push fit into the panel and fills up the gap.
I've made thousands over the years with never a complaint.
New engineer, hired fresh out of school, sees the assembly and doesn't like it...he wants the oring in place to seal the joint between the switch and the insert.
So I get a new design with a chamfer on it that's supposed to crush the oring just enough to make it seal.
He's specified a ridiculously tight tolerance on the chamfer that will be a bear to certify to...simple to program and cut but complicated and expensive to measure.
These are 75 cent parts, turned and parted off the bar in one op on the lathe, so they are as round as the stress release of the Delrin allows, and pushing them into the panel forces them as round as the panel hole is.
The kicker is that I cannot see any point to this exercise and the predecessor engineer (now retired) who first designed the assembly couldn't either.
There is a speaker grille with perforations not an inch from the switch that gives full and free access to the innards.
There is a totally unsealed insert just pushed into the panel in which the switch sits.
There are other perforations in the panel for screws and lights and etc etc, none of which are sealed in any way.
So my question to you all:
Do I just do what he wants, charge accordingly and let the shock of the new price be the educational tool that brings him to appreciate the folly of his desire?
Do I argue with him and point out how ineffective his design is for achieving his presumed goal?
What would you do?...I'm not an electrical engineer, and I don't pretend to be one, so my default position is to recognize I don't have the responsibility to determine the fitness of the design unless I'm invited to participate.
After all, there are often very good reasons for an inconvenient design and it's pretty presumptuous for a machinist to just jump in and essentially call the engineer an idiot if he doesn't know the full picture.
Who knows, maybe a customer of the OEM is driving the design, or there's something else to consider.
All opinions are welcome.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining
I have a new engineer to break in at the office of one of my long term customers.
Here's the back story.
There's a piezo switch that goes into a plastic panel for a communications application.
The switch has a round body with a thread and nut and a round flange so you can cinch the nut up from the back to hold the switch in the panel.
The switch comes from the switch store with a skinny oring in case you need to seal the switch for some reason.
This application doesn't need it, so the oring is discarded.
The panel is molded and the opening is too big for the switch, so I make a flanged bushing out of Delrin that's a push fit into the panel and fills up the gap.
I've made thousands over the years with never a complaint.
New engineer, hired fresh out of school, sees the assembly and doesn't like it...he wants the oring in place to seal the joint between the switch and the insert.
So I get a new design with a chamfer on it that's supposed to crush the oring just enough to make it seal.
He's specified a ridiculously tight tolerance on the chamfer that will be a bear to certify to...simple to program and cut but complicated and expensive to measure.
These are 75 cent parts, turned and parted off the bar in one op on the lathe, so they are as round as the stress release of the Delrin allows, and pushing them into the panel forces them as round as the panel hole is.
The kicker is that I cannot see any point to this exercise and the predecessor engineer (now retired) who first designed the assembly couldn't either.
There is a speaker grille with perforations not an inch from the switch that gives full and free access to the innards.
There is a totally unsealed insert just pushed into the panel in which the switch sits.
There are other perforations in the panel for screws and lights and etc etc, none of which are sealed in any way.
So my question to you all:
Do I just do what he wants, charge accordingly and let the shock of the new price be the educational tool that brings him to appreciate the folly of his desire?
Do I argue with him and point out how ineffective his design is for achieving his presumed goal?
What would you do?...I'm not an electrical engineer, and I don't pretend to be one, so my default position is to recognize I don't have the responsibility to determine the fitness of the design unless I'm invited to participate.
After all, there are often very good reasons for an inconvenient design and it's pretty presumptuous for a machinist to just jump in and essentially call the engineer an idiot if he doesn't know the full picture.
Who knows, maybe a customer of the OEM is driving the design, or there's something else to consider.
All opinions are welcome.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining