Things they don’t tell you in the books so I’m asking you lot

[Adam McCulloughParticipant @adammccullough31948]

Regarding graduate Engineers, I agree to a large extent with the observations made above.

I successfully finished my Masters in Engineering at Oxford six years ago, having worked extremely hard to do so.  The course is considered one of the toughest degrees you can do, anywhere and in any subject, and from my experiences with other young Engineers since then I’m convinced that it comfortably surpasses in breadth and depth all but perhaps a dozen other Engineering courses in the UK.

However, the truth is that a good Engineering degree now is 95% hard, hard maths and the student is only given a basic grounding in the practical fields of application of the skills they’ve learned.  It is assumed that you’ll be smart enough to find your way from there.

Unfortunately this approach produces thousands of people like me!  As a fresh graduate I could have derived and solved the equations that govern, for example, multicylinder engine balancing or video noise shaping or high frequency digital switching or the layout of reinforcing fibres in a composite panel or magnetic resonance imaging.  But if you stood us in front of a real engine most of my fellow graduates wouldn’t have known where to start.

Some things were, I think, done nicely.  I started my first year in the drawing office and wasn’t allowed to progress until I’d completed a large number of exercises and convinced the tutor that I could communicate with pen and paper.  Only then was I allowed into the CAD lab, and so on.

But I did precious little “real” mechanical design-build-test work in all the time I was there.  We made 20″ model bridges (sheet alloy and pop rivets) and squashed them in a large press (mine weighed about 1.5kg and bore well over 1t in shear – I’ve still got it at home).  I made and squashed a cantilevered steel beam (spot welded MS sheet), some reinforced concrete beams and columns, an axial compressor, a vacuum nozzle, a torsion bar suspension, some sliding, press and shrink fit test pieces in brass and steel on the lathe, a few other test pieces on the milling machine, we did some basic heat treatment and press forging and that’s about all I can remember. Anything but the most rudimentary workshop skills just were not part of the course, and mechanical was only one amongst many modules; there are similar lists of small projects in electronic, software, thermodynamics, fluids etc. not to mention the 25-30 odd hours a week of straight-up maths.

I think the simple fact is that Engineering graduates nowadays are not trained to be able to independently design and create a physical solution; we are trained to analyse and solve complex technical problems on paper.  Doubtless there are good reasons behind this, but there are also unfortunate consequences as several here have observed.  Detaching us from the nuts and bolts of the matter can leave many unable to properly visualise how real physical objects are created and interact.  I’m better than most purely because I like making things with my hands, but I’m still privately a little in awe of one of my girlfriend’s relatives who finished his toolmaking apprenticeship a year or so ago (with receipt of a national award for the same) and has probably already forgotten more than I’ll ever know about metalwork!

Adam

Edited By Adam McCullough on 17/11/2010 23:30:45

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

Sorry Andrew, that should be .200″ off dia/ .100″ DOC, Hp 1 1/2 Taiwanese hp, 240rpm. The  cross slide dial reads diameter, was suprised when I did a jod on a friends Myford and found its dial read DOC, put on .020, and started , hell that seems an awful deep cut.I think the feed rate is.0035″/rev.  Ian S C   ps remember at school watching in awe as the Chipmaster easily took off .500 DOC no trouble, with great coils of blue steel going every were, us kid were only allowed to watch.

Edited By Ian S C on 18/11/2010 01:32:24

[Sam StonesParticipant @samstones42903]

Adam’s posting is to be commended, so “Well done, Adam!”

The fact is, unless we can demonstrate our competence as a genius, or have become a professional student, there probably isn’t enough time in our lives to qualify in `Everything’.

In spite of my part-time study occupying all of fifteen years, sliced into two by National Service, I was (let’s say) `lucky enough’ to serve a six year toolmaking apprenticeship before I landed my ambition of becoming a draughtsman. I didn’t really enjoy the higher mathematics which came as an essential impediment(?), granting us a better understanding of beam theory or allowing us to weave and manoeuvre our way through engineering proofs.

As time went by, I was also lucky enough to begin mixing with people at all levels. Bog mechanics to CEO’s, there was always something to learn, or someone to learn from. Now, with anecdotes galore, I could easily write books full of the stuff.

Before clockin-off, one of my favourites stems from when, as a fairly recently promoted technical service officer smartly dressed for the occasion, I was `advised’ by the works manager of a plastics factory as he dashed past me that :-

“All your theory goes down the drain in this factory, you know!?”

With his overcoat flapping in his slip-stream, this manager had blustered past me about half a dozen times on his way to and from his office. Presumably that was necessary to keep the wheels turning? But, how did he know that I was an academic, or anything else about me for that matter?

Soon after his startling revelation, the moulding machine `jammed’.

Then, as if it were standard practice, four or five of his operators took hold and began swinging on a long length of 6×4 timber, trying to free the machine. That was the moment when it was pertinent for me to leave discretely, wondering if a drain had blocked.

Now, at least, I know what DOC means! Thanks again Nick.

Ian (S C),

The penny has just dropped on another `strange’ event, and (Norman), the reason that DOC went straight over my head.

I didn’t know that some lathes are graduated for “off diameter”, as opposed to DOC.

 

While using a toolmaker friend’s lathe a few weeks ago, (when I was machining the bell of my skeleton clock), the coordinates I had generated for the spherical surface were producing the wrong profile. Now I can see the error of my ways having, (without knowing it), only ever used DOC. Luckily, he had a spherical turning attachment, but until now, I haven’t understood where my error had occurred.

So would OD = OFF DIAMETER? Or am I entitled to accept that it’s still short for OUTSIDE DIAMETER?

By the way, watch out for those big coils of blue steel. They have been known to find their way inside trousers.

Is a FLU wot smoke guzup?

 

Regards to all,

 

Sam

[Anonymous]

Ian: Pheweeee; had me worried there for a moment. For roughing on 2″ diameter soft steel I’ll use around 370rpm, 0.1″ DOC and 0.01″/rev feedrate. That gives a power required at the tool of 2.3hp; my lathe is a nominal 3hp. Certainly makes the motor change note!

 

Sam: I concur that OD means outside diameter; at least it’s not one of those annoying TLAs

 

Adam: Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your academic success; even if it was at the ‘other place’. Having supervised undergraduates for the Cambridge Tripos I can confirm that the Tripos is also heavily mathematical.

 

I might be inclined to say that, to some extent, any situation amenable to a closed analytic solution probably wasn’t worth analysing in the first place.   A corollary of that is that what is taught on engineering courses is perhaps influenced by what can be easily examined at the end. But then I’m just an old cynic.

 

One thing that doesn’t seem to be taught are the real aspects of engineering design, which include:

 

You’ve got X time to get it designed

 

It has to cost less than Y

 

We’ve only got 32 slots on the assembly machine, so you can only use 32 different components

We can’t get that part or material in the time available, use something else

 

We just moved the goalposts – it gets much more ‘interesting’ when the shape of ball, and hence the whole set of game rules, gets changed

 

Ain’t engineering fun! 

Regards,

 

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 18/11/2010 11:47:47

[Adam McCulloughParticipant @adammccullough31948]

Posted by Andrew Johnston on 18/11/2010 11:47:18:

Adam: Welcome to the forum and congratulations on your academic success; even if it was at the ‘other place’. Having supervised undergraduates for the Cambridge Tripos I can confirm that the Tripos is also heavily mathematical.

 

I might be inclined to say that, to some extent, any situation amenable to a closed analytic solution probably wasn’t worth analysing in the first place.   A corollary of that is that what is taught on engineering courses is perhaps influenced by what can be easily examined at the end. But then I’m just an old cynic.

 

One thing that doesn’t seem to be taught are the real aspects of engineering design

Thanks Andrew!  Of course from my point of view it’s the Tabs who went to the “other place”

Regardless, there are good reasons why Cambridge and Imperial are considered Oxford’s superiors where Engineering is concerned.  I have many Fenland friends and have even helped a couple out with their Vacation work on occasion!

Regarding analytic solutions and real life Engineering, I’m reminded of something one of my tutors battered into us in my first year; it went roughly as follows:

 

One major difference between an Engineer and a physicist or a mathematician or any other pure scientist is that there are times when it is reasonable to state that there is no calculable solution to a scientific problem, due to lack of a suitable method, lack of information or simple mathematical impracticality of calculating the correct solution.  An Engineer usually has no such luxury, and must therefore constantly decide where to approximate, what factors are significant and indeed when to find a clever way to change the domain or avoid the problem entirely.  Our job is to find a decent, workable, efficient solution in a reasonable timeframe and within the constraints of the job, rather than to provide the theoretically “correct” answer…

And on a similar note:

Art and science have their meeting point in method.

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Adam

Edited By Adam McCullough on 18/11/2010 14:55:05

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Having some kowledge of what goes on in microprocessor software design, it’s much the same.

 

Computer science courses teach the proper way to do things, and advocate C. The real experts know when to drop into assembler and use some mighty fine tricks to shave off a few critical clock cycles.

 

Neil

[Author]

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