Do any other engineers feel they're "rusty"? How do you freshen up your skills?

[joay11]

After 20 years of experience as a mechanical "designer", I've never really truly challenged my analytical engineering abilities. 20 years removed from receiving a BSME even much of my termanology has become hazy; I found myself looking up the definition for Poisson's ratio and hoop stress recently. I'm a very strong designer but I'm embarrassed to call myself an "Engineer". How might I freshen up my skills relatively quickly (without taking long courses)? I need to freshening up on mechanics/strength of materials and (metal) materials science.

 

[JohnRBaker]

This topic would seem to be more appropriate if it were posted in the "How to improve Myself to Get Ahead in My Work" forum, found at:

http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=731

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[Artisi]

Be an active participant in Eng-Tips

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)

 

[zdas04]

Active at eng-tips.com helped me a lot. Deciding to develop and teach a class was a huge help.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[rb1957]

look into MIT opencourseware, crack open a book ...

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[JStephen]

Start in on a PE license, you'll find yourself studying all sorts of stuff you haven't even thought about since college.

 

[boyze]

reopen your strength of materials book if you still have it. If not, used ones are cheap. The other suggestions are also good.

I've been doing analysis and managing groups of analytical/design folks (structural, thermal, vibration, flow, noise, etc.) for most of my many year career and I still have to open a book, fire up a search engine, etc. to either relearn something or many times learn something new

Have Fun!

James A. Pike

http://www.xl4sim.com

http://www.erieztechnologies.com

 

[chicopee]

Yeah, I agree with JStephen, as there are courses offered by local institutions to prepare engineers for their PE licenses and the whole gamut of four years of engineering courses is reviewed in a few week time frame. Such program disciplines you to follow through on your studies because you had to pay for it. I, personally, attended such program offered by RPI in Hartford, CT. back in the late 70's; the program helped.

 

[LittleInch]

First off, don't denigrate 20 years of designing. One way of doing this is to try and figure out how you would prepare training material for your discipline. You will find out you know much more than you think. This allows you to see which areas you either defer to someone else, e.g stress analysis and where your missing knowledge is. If you have access to technical reports in these areas for your projects or can request them, it will be easier to apply the theory to something you are familiar with. Areas you don't know or struggle with, ask the engineer responsible to explain it to you. Some are better at this than others and this site amongst others can help.

If you are good at explaining to others what you do, either internally or outside commercial training organisations may use you and then you get to attend the rest if the course for free...

My motto: Learn something new every day

Also: There's usually a good reason why everyone does it that way

 

[IRstuff]

I agree with the ET participation bit. I never took Thermo in college, and everything I've learned is almost a direct consequence of attempting to answer and learning from questions posed in the Heat Transfer forum. Obviously, though, you will find that you only learn what you're interested in, but there are so many forums that there's got to be something here that gets your mental juices flowing.

TTFN
faq731-376

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