Anything For A Quiet Life? Working At An Established Company
Editor’s Note: We’re doing a theme-week (starting mid-week, yes) here at Engineer Blogs about how engineering roles change as the company changes. Obviously there are some differences in what an engineer is expected to do in a fledgling company versus a near-death company. Our writers will detail a company (or multiple companies) they have worked in and how their role fit in with their organization. Let’s talk about the principle of Established. The very word inspires… nothing. It raises images of crusty librarians, besuited commuters in trains escaping the teenaged family, judges in wigs, stasis. Yet those very images are perfect camoflage for the turmoil going on behind the scenes – and turmoil is interesting whichever way it is bubbling. So, yes, I’d like to write about my experiences at an established company. How established? Very established. My company’s founder worked alongside Henry Ford himself, supplying him with parts made…
Science Depends on Engineering
Earlier this week, I tweeted about a new paper where an ultrathin (~3 atomic layers) silica glass film was grown on graphene. The group was attempting to study graphene grown on copper-coated quartz, but an air leak changed the reaction conditions, and ended up with pretty cool results. While it’s an impressive result in it’s own right, the structure was predicted in 1932, and it’s amazing how much they look alike. My original reaction to this paper was to geek out over how well theory predicted the results, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the most impressive part was the fact the authors could create the image of the material in the first place. The imaging technology depends on engineers. The bottom image above was taken using annular dark field scanning transmission microscopy, which requires some very complicated and very precise equipment. The STEM used in…
Engineering Comics (That Aren’t Dilbert)
As I’m still getting over a rather nasty cold, I’ve spent more time than usual poking aimlessly around the internet. One of the things I do on vacation or while sick is try and catch up on the various webcomics I like. Here are a few of my favorites that relate to science and/or engineering. Angela Melick is a Canadian sustainability engineer, and responsible for the beautiful and funny comic Wasted Talent. She covers many aspects of life as an engineering student/early career engineer with great humor, from getting your P.Eng certification to the personalities of engineers to excessive acronym usage. Being Canadian, there are also hockey jokes. Randall Munroe’s incredibly popular xkcd covers physics and computer science with occasional engineering references (just one more…). While he’s now a professional webcomic artist, he used to work for NASA as a roboticist. The art is minimalist, instead relying on wit and humor. Be sure to read…
Open Source Hardware | OSHW
The big event that happened last week for me was the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Summit 2011 (OHS). So this week I want to review the interesting talks that took place and what it means to me as a electronics design engineer. I’m guessing I am not the first or last to review the event, Jeremy Blum was at the event and you can check out his review on element14. So keep an eye out for other reviews too. I was unfortunately not at the summit physically, but like thousands of others, I watched online via uStream. Not the greatest way to watch as the slides were all blurred but free. There was some 20+ talks given by people with a range of experience in OSHW, all with equal interest; however, my favourites were as follows: The team (Jurgen and Alison) from OHANDA were the first to catch my eye…
Sensitivity
No matter what kind of engineer you are, or what systems you are working on, your projects will have sensitivities. In simplistic terms, sensitivity is a measure of how much changing an input will vary the output. From a mathematical point of view, you can assign coefficients to describe how important each input is, and generate a model of your process. From a practical point of view, this means it’s important to understand which factors in the project you are working on are the critical factors. For instance, let’s take making biscuits as an engineering project. Making basic biscuits is a fairly simple, well-known process. There are only a few ingredients, it only takes one bowl, and cooking only involves popping them in the oven. So what parameters do we have in our process? For the purposes of the example, let’s make a short list (although there can be many more):…
School Competition Pt3 – Awards Day
Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking about the Schools Contest held by Chelmsford Engineering Society (CES). The first week I explained the basic background of the contest and then how I take part in the judging process. Well this week its awards time and we get to see who has won! Once again our hosts are Anglia Ruskin University who help out lots with this and other CES events. There was also lots of support from the sponsors including my company ebm-papst UK Ltd who also supply one of the trophies (full list of sponsors at end). The award winners came along and one again put on a great show of the work they have done. For me like some of the other judges it was our first opportunity to see some of them or have a long chat about the work. Its hard to take in 50…
Wafer Doctoring
I used to work in a wafer fab. I was a process engineer, shuffling 300mm wafers along as they got dry etched (the step that eats away at the various layers of silicon, oxide, metal or whatever other nasty stuff they put on wafers these days). I haven’t worked there in about 3 years now, as I got out of the wafer slingin’ game and now work with the products made in fabs. (system level electrical engineering) I don’t think about my old job much, but I always seem to while talking to doctors. I can’t help but compare the experiences of being a doctor, specifically an ER doctor, to taking care of wafers and dealing with issues that arise. Now, I’m not trying to say that these are similar in importance (believe me, I wouldn’t have gotten out of the wafer business if I thought it was anywhere as…
Can a design be too robust?
I went to lunch with a former boss last week and we were talking about the ins and outs of learning from your mistakes and certifying a design. He works on electronics boxes and does a decent amount of thermal, torque and vibration analysis on every single box before it goes into the field. When one of his boxes was on a piece of equipment that catastrophically failed recently, they took it off and ran it on a shake table. Then they tested it again and it still worked. He told me he was criticized for having typically overdesigned boxes. What does honey have to do with this? Well honey is one of the few foods (maybe only food) that if it’s sealed, unfiltered and without additives it can last a very long time. It never really goes bad, though it can ferment if not properly sealed. Engineers are always looking…
The mother of modern management and the cost benefit of having many children
Lillian Gilbreth is known as the mother of modern management and the first lady of engineering, but most people are more familiar with her simply because she was a mother…of twelve children. In fact, two of her children wrote a memoir of their childhood called “Cheaper by the Dozen.” I am sorry to say I haven’t read the story, but I have read a bit about Gilbreth herself. A few of us have been discussing how we never intended to get into engineer, sort of fell into it. I imagine that’s what happened with Gilbreth. Her father never felt that women needed to have college degrees because they were only going to raise families, but he allowed her to attend UC Berkeley where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in literature. When she graduated with her BA in 1900, she was the first woman to speak at a…