Finding a Job Building Things
I love building things. I love working with my hands, I like using power tools, I like the physical making of STUFF. (Or the tearing apart of stuff, which is a lot of fun but perhaps less productive….) And by choosing to major in mechanical engineering, I thought I was giving myself the best shot I could to find a career where I can build stuff. And now I am looking around at what my friends from undergraduate university are doing, and none of them are building things. And if I look at what my friends from graduate school are doing, none of them are building things either. Part of this has to do with what you WANT to do. Of course if your interests lie more on the modeling/simulation side of mechanical engineering, or if you are more interested in leadership roles, or in management, or in design rather…
Contact Angle Measurement
Last week I learned to use a new machine – a goniometer. One of the things a goniometer does is measure the contact angle of droplets on surfaces. You can dispense some liquid out of the dropper onto a flat surface, the vision system captures data, and the software analyzes what angle is formed between the droplet and the surface. Why is this useful? For my research, I needed to learn more about the surface properties of some materials I was interested in. If you know the contact angles of various known liquids on an unknown material, you can calculate things like the surface energy of the material. Then you can make some progress toward figuring out the work of adhesion on that surface, or the fracture energy between two surfaces. So I thought this would be easy. Put drop on surface, measure contact angle. But the key here is…
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…
School Competition Pt2 – Judgement Day
Last week I introduced the Chelmsford Engineering Society (CES) Competition for schools. As I said before, I was one of the judges, and this week, I want to report back on what I have seen and what stood out. Before I show you the entries that stood out, I first want to run though the background information about the contest so you better understand the whole day. My day started at the Marconi Building, which is on the Anglia Ruskin University complex, at 8:15am for registration. I was one of 42 judges taking part on the day. We were being supported by members of the CES, who were organising and helping log scores. We are all paired up with another engineer who we have not meet before; I was with a chap called George who, in his day, used to make TV Camera tubes before it all went solid-state. Each…
Tools of the Trade – Calipers and Micrometer
In the olden days of apprenticeships, your status in the world was built on your set of tools. While you were an apprentice, you started saving your money and acquiring your collection of tools, and when you had a full set and were ready to start your own practice, you launched on the foundation of the tools you brought with you. The set of tools you needed was directly related to your field – cobblers needed shoemaking tools, blacksmiths needed forging tools. If you allow the analogy to stretch, even the young women of the time built a collection of tools – they filled hope chests with linens and tablecloths as a dowry for when they got married. And I think to some extent, this tradition of building a set of tools persists today. Machinists and auto shop guys still take great pride in their toolboxes, carpenters take loving care…
Flexure Design
I talked a couple weeks ago about how you can design fixtures and constraints for holding pieces in precise alignment. But not always do you want machine pieces to hold still – sometimes you want them to move. If you want pieces to move a long way (also called “large range of motion”), you can use things like bearings, slides, and gears. But because I work in the precision world, often I want things to move only a small amount – a millimeter or less. (This is much the same as you would use bolts or clamps for fixturing a non-precise machine, but I need to use kinematic couplings for micrometer precision). So I thought today I would talk about designing flexures. And because I came down a little harder than I intended on theoretical engineers last week, I’ll show the modeling I use to design a flexure. (I do…
Theoretical vs. Experimental
As we talk about cross-functional issues this week, I have to say that’s it not always communication BETWEEN engineering disciplines that causes problems. For problems like that, you just have to learn the correct lingo, and talk to the people in the other discipline, and you are good to go. If the problem is communication with a mixed discipline like controls engineering (which is people like me!), apparently the key is that we just need to make sure we keep a grip on reality! But like Chris did in his discussion of old engineers, I want to talk about a problem WITHIN a discipline. Take this all with a grain of salt; it’s just good-natured ribbing… I’m talking about theoretical engineers and experimental engineers. Now I admit that theory and experiment have different applications in every discipline, but in my world of Mechanical Engineering research, I have little use for theoretical people.…
Fixturing and Constraints
My specialty within Mechanical Engineering is Machine Design. These past couple weeks I have been designing a new machine, one that needs to be very precise. Basically the new machine is a stamping machine – I have a stamp coated with an ink, then I apply a force to press the stamp onto a substrate and transfer the inked pattern. The trick is that the two pieces (the stamp and the substrate) need to be carefully aligned so that the pattern ends up in the right place. The tolerance is pretty tight – I have to be within +/- 2 micrometers. It occurs to me that this specific design problem is part of the more general issue of fixturing and constraints. It’s a pretty common situation as engineer that you have one piece which needs to be aligned relative to another piece. So how do you do it? Well it…
Fantasy Curriculum
This post probably won’t win me any favors with faculty in other engineering disciplines but it’s something I think should be investigated as a possible method to improve the undergraduate curriculum (particularly in ME). Since I’m a ME by background, I’ll stick with that curriculum because I know it better than others, but this thought process is probably adaptable to EE, civil, and a few other core engineering disciplines. Most of the courses in a typical ME curriculum center around solid mechanics, dynamics, thermo, some materials, some design, and some lab classes. And with those classes, you generally have to take a few physics classes, a bunch of math/statistics, probably a chemistry, and probably an electrical/controls course. Now here’s the big change. For ME students, all of the engineering/physics/chemistry classes should be taught by ME faculty, not within their own departments. Wait a few seconds to let that seep in……
Cynicism and Engineering Salaries
If there’s anything I’ve gained from corporate America it’s realism and bitterness in abundance. Chris just wrote an excellent post on the expectations for starting salaries in electrical engineering. His curve for how an engineer’s salary might start out comparitively high but then flatten out over time is spot on. Chris gives some good numbers that are fairly reasonable for a mechanical engineer as well. Back before this recession the average graduate with a BS from my institution (which ranks fairly well, but not in the top 10 or anything crazy) was about 55k. Most of these graduates would be taking jobs in high cost metropolitan areas so this might run a bit high compared to other places. And there are several great comments on the post. An old engineer discusses the importance of training in the latest technology and how companies often try to squeeze employees out if they…