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The worst drawings I have ever seen

Straightedge

Hot Rolled
Joined
Mar 17, 2009
Location
Germany/California
These drawings came from a PhD mechanical engineer at the University of Central Florida. This thing is apparently something like a paint stirrer, except for mixing gases in a tank. It's as if this guy has never even seen a drawing. Both pages are "View 1." The approach to dimensioning is...uh...unique. Looking at the isometric views, there are 1/4-20 threads going into the edge of 3/16" material. It's to be made from "weldable 7xxx aluminum or Grade 9 Tiatnium [sic] alloy," but the second page says it's 6061.

I think this design sets a new bar for "not even wrong." Anybody got drawings that could compete with these?

Worst drawing page1.jpg

Worst drawing page2.jpg
 
That print does suck, but having used different cad /cam packages, I can see what looks like the guy is just not familiar with the drafting aspect. For example, IMO, solidworks is pretty damn easy to dimension a part, while Pro-E / Creo could be a pita to dimension something with 'proper' annotations. That said, I had zero formal training with either, so it might be there and I didn't know where to look....
 
Pffft, While that may not be professionally drawn I have to say I have had plenty worse than that. Kinda looks like the "Engineer" didn't have access to a good CAD. I can see it may be a poor design by the holes punching out the walls but at least it does show it. He just needs to be more clear on the material.
 
I've seen worse.

Did anyone take some time to talk with the person to give some pointers?

Mechanical engineering schools are not drafting schools. Rightly or wrongly most engineering students spend most of their time in abstract. The first job they get is often a rude awakening.

When I came out of school into my first design job I was thankful for the old guy who sat down with me and took a couple of hours to explain things. I was never a jerk to suppliers and always asked for their input with some of my early work. Even if the supplier was wrong about a criticism I always listened.

After awhile you get better.
 
Best I ever saw was a grad student, assembly drawing, two hex head bolts, sitting neatly together with the flats touching...
 
Seems like a simple enough part that with a few more quick emails back and forth you could have it figured out. I think simple or non critical parts just get rushed over a lot of times.

If I was your customer (or potential customer) and knew that you were posting drawings on a public forum, I would certainly send my business elsewhere...just something to think about. Bad drawing or not.
 
Seems like a simple enough part that with a few more quick emails back and forth you could have it figured out. I think simple or non critical parts just get rushed over a lot of times.

If I was your customer (or potential customer) and knew that you were posting drawings on a public forum, I would certainly send my business elsewhere...just something to think about. Bad drawing or not.

I'm not sharing their drawings: these belong to my company! We contracted with the university and paid up front to have them design a small system, including a pressure vessel (not shown) that complies with the ASME code. The drawings for the vessel are as hopelessly wrong as for this component. I sent the drawings to a PE at an ASME-certified shop who said there is no chance they would ever consider code-stamping a vessel based on the design. A vessel inspector at the National Board said the design was so far out of compliance with the code that the designer obviously has almost no understanding of the requirements. If we weren't so busy, we would have handled it ourselves. Now, after burning 2+ months, it turns out that we get to design the system ourselves anyway.
 
Sometimes there's gold in those hand drawn crappy drawings with extra decimal places and no tolerances. Help somebody get what they really need and you might have a thankful customer for life. Of course, sometimes they just suck at life...
 
I hope it wasn't much, and I hope you got a refund.

It's embarrassing to say how much we paid. The lab this came from published some good stuff in the last few years and we wanted to leverage their expertise...or at least the expertise we believed they had. They said the system had some subtle details that were proprietary, so they couldn't give us any information without a contract. We bit. We're working on getting some reimbursement.

Chalk up one more payment of tuition to the School of Life...:)
 








 
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