Hands vs. Heads
We’ve had a few posts recently about jobs recently. Chris’s Weekend Journal said that degrees shouldn’t be necessary to obtain jobs (though they can help) and Sam followed up with a question about ways to establish your pedigree outside of a university degree. I agree with the opinion that it is harder for a non-degreed engineer to get a job as an engineer. The way I have often seen this structured is that the non-degreed engineer gets the job called “technician” where s/he builds for the engineer with the degree. There is a general perception around technical positions, validated by lower salaries and position, that working with one’s hands is less valuable than working with one’s head. People who build the prototypes are valued less than those that design the prototypes/ first articles. Never mind that the technician often needs to re-engineer around the engineer who may be great theoretically, but less…
Emergency in Slow-Mo
It’s been lovely, warm, though humid and thundery few days here in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Perfect for midday ‘Mahlzeit‘ cycling to lunch, for grabbing a coffee, some wifi rays and working outside, perfect for stopping production. Uh, say what? You’ll go easy on me, I hope, for not providing you with news as it breaks, I was never cut out to be a journalist. There was an alas fatal explosion that claimed two lives at a chemical factory owned by Evonik in Marl, Germany on March 31st this year. The plant and its workforce produced an acid compound called cyclododecatriene, or CDT to its friends. Its friends are, among others, producers of the polymer PA12, a variant of the Nylon™ family, for which CDT is a crucial chemical stepping stone. The Marl factory is one of only four large producers of CDT in the world, so its loss has knocked out a significant chunk of global…
Weekend Journal — You Don’t Need Permission
Though I’m an engineer, I don’t necessarily consider myself a natural tinkerer. Sure, I started out that way, as most kids do. My childhood inspirations included Legos, Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets and lots of toys that are precursors to engineering. But as I got older, I didn’t step into many of the other stereotypical “future engineer” activities. I never learned how to change a car’s oil or do regular maintenance. I never framed a house or similar structures. I never built a computer from components at the store (though this is obviously more relevant around the time I grew up vs 20 years prior). I never got a ham license or had a 200 in 1 electronics kit, two things that almost guarantee a future as an electrical engineer. So what gives? My parents were both very supporting and continue to be to this day. And I regularly worked on…
Bring Back Manufacturing
Recently, there has been a significant amount of rhetoric by President Obama on how we need to re-establish manufacturing in the United States. This topic was front-and-center in the State of the Union speech in January. Additionally, President Obama has been touring the country, speaking at universities, businesses, campaign stops, and fundraisers about how we can boost our economy by emphasizing manufacturing. The President, thankfully, has backed this initiative with a serious amount of funding. Much of the following information is paraphrased from Manufacturing.Gov, the website detailing the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. In a nutshell, the government is looking to fund up to 15 Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation in the next year backed by up to $1 Billion in funding. The pilot institute, with a focus on Additive Manufacturing, will be funded using FY2012 funds, meaning it will be awarded before the end of September. These Institutes will primarily…
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…
Topics In Engineering And Outsourcing That Scare Me
When I was job hunting a few months ago, I decided I was less interested in aerospace/defense and more interested in working in consumer product development. I was particularly interested in working at a consulting firm, because the variety of work appealed to me. The thought of working on a single product line for years on end…did not have much appeal. At many of the product design and consulting firms where I interviewed, I encountered a disturbing trend. I had been peripherally aware of it, but finally encountered face to face: Not many consumer products are engineered in the United States. At one firm, for example, I saw a design for a new model blender. The firm had handled the industrial design, essentially designing the appearance of the blender, it’s contours and colors and the shape and number of it’s knobs. A factory in China, they told me, would do…
Why It’s Still Necessary to Build Real Hardware
CAD modeling, virtual prototyping, and 3-d printing all have their place; but at the end of the day, You Still Need to Build Real Hardware. In this post, I’ll share a few examples of my own hard won knowledge that no book or classroom lecture ever covered. The real lessons of the day came from some time in the shop with experienced and very talented machinists. I was doing work designing a socket drive to connect a steel shafted motor to an aluminum component. The socket and motor were both modeled in CAD, tolerance stackups were taken into account, and we had something like a .0025″ clearance between the walls of the socket and the drive shaft. The parts came from the machine shop, and like a little kid on Christmas, I tore open the packaging and started putting parts together. We put the mechanism (and associated motor) through it’s paces and…