Engineer versus Designer 16

[dextermech]

I'm 6 years out of college (BSME). During those 6 years, I was (and still am) titled a "Mechanical Engineer", but 99% of what I've done has been design work, NOT full blown engineering with lots of calculations, FEA, that sort of stuff. My worry is that if I change jobs, I will have nowhere near the skills and knowledge necessary to be hired as a "real" engineer. Certainly I am not the first person to have this happen to them. Any advice to give? Thanks! Very worried...

 

[ee2002]

dextermech,

What area of mechanical are you in? Are you in the construction industry where you are designing HVAC plans for buidings? If so, I would suggest that you get your "design" experience to the level of being capable of taking a job from start to finish. I provide electrical plans for construction and there are not a hell of a lot of calculations that are required in this industry. It's definitley not rocket science, but instead a matter of being well versed in the code so that you know what is required and what is not in a given design.

It would be good if you were more specific about what you do in your job.

 

[IRstuff]

So who is doing this at your company? Ask for more responsibility. If you don't ask, how will they know waht you want?

TTFN

 

[dextermech]

I design plastics auxillary machinery. I am doing the most advanced job in my small family run company right now. I can do a machine from start to finish, but it really feels like practical design more than engineering to me...

 

[MikeHalloran]

Plastics machinery doesn't have to fly, or float. It has to withstand a lot of force without breaking, and without bending much, and survive the occasional caress of a forklift.

Occasional detailed analysis might give you a better handle on where the 'rules of thumb' come from, but you really have no incentive to reduce the machinery's mass. In fact, other things being equal, astute buyers will prefer heavier machinery, just because that usually correlates to trouble free service.

You could go looking for work, right where you are. Do you have chronic unexplained field failures in any part of your product? Unexpectedly short bearing life would be a symptom. You might not know about it if it happens outside the warranty. Look for aftermarket traffic in replacement parts that shouldn't need replacing. Dig deep, analyze everything, find the real root cause, improve the product.

Or design something on the side. Like model airplanes or engines, or anything that strikes your fancy, just to keep your brain working. If you can get money for it, that keeps you in beer. If you can't, you have a hobby.

I would _not_ advise giving up a good job, or even a mediocre job, just because it doesn't challenge you in every possible way. Make lemonade.

Oh, yeah. I find this scary, but in some places, the calculations and FEA are done by designers, who happened to be sitting in front of the fast computers when the Pro/E salesman slithered through. The engineers were downsized to pay for the Pro/E. They'd be happy to take designer jobs. They'd be ecstatic to take your job.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[Beggar]

Well said, Mike.

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[dextermech]

Mike,

So you're saying that if I can make a good salary doing what I consider relatively easy practical design work I should NOT give up my job for a more "engineer-like" job at say a biomedical company?

My main question is whether or not after my only 6 years of employment doing design work I will even be able to get back into engineering or if I will be "found out" by my co-workers right away at the new company. Maybe I'm selling myself short, not sure. Very concerned though.

 

[Twoballcane]

“Occasional detailed analysis might give you a better handle on where the 'rules of thumb' come from,”

Mike has a great point. Im sure that there are moving parts that exert forces, induced vibration, shock amplifications, high temps that may reek havoc with electronics …etc. You should do some spot detailed analysis so you can say with confidence things like “e.g. this aluminum part is only seeing 10ksi of stress so there is a factor of safety of 3.5 which is acceptable, the forced frequency is 250 hz and the part attached has a resonant frequency of 275 hz so these two may be coupling which is bad, the electrionics attached to this wall requires that wall to be at 35degC and I am calculating that the wall is 25degC worst case this is acceptable, in shipping there is a 50g shock load can the machine handle that?…etc”.

You should do the spot calculations just so you can get a bigger picture of the product not just the nuts and bolts. Start with simple cases like cantilevers, sin vibrations, simple thermal circuits, small shock loads…etc. This will give you so much more insight that you might catch a problem before it goes to the manufacturing floor.

Good luck


Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."

 

[Twoballcane]

oh also, i have a pet peev about people who say "I have a gut feeling that this is ok" with out showing me the numbers to back that up. Those are some famous last words in design.

Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."

 

[Beggar]

I guess I don't understand why you think "design" is not "engineering." What do you suppose those folks at the biomedical companies are doing? I can tell you: They are designing (and testing and producing) biomedical products.

Regarding "lots of calculations" and "FEA analysis", that's often the easy part. The difficult part is sometimes coming up with a mechanism that does what you want it to, finding a suitable material for a given application, designing a part that can be produced at a reasonable cost, and developing a test plan to determine the expected life of your components and what kind of warranty your company can afford to offer.

I think you've got a very simplistic view of what constitutes engineering.

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[Beggar]

I would add that six years into your career is a good time to start looking for your next job, either inside your company or at another one.

I'd guess that you've stopped learning much new stuff at this point.

Your (unstated) concern about stagnation is valid.

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[Beggar]

Another thought: Are you working as a design engineer or as a designer?

Hunt through this site and you'll find plenty of threads that dissect the differences.

If you're working as the latter, you should get out as soon as possible.

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[dextermech]

Beggar,

I'm not sure what I am, or more importantly what industry would clasify me as. I design machinery using Solidworks. I do the mechanical design and the electrical design. I size all the components. I even personally test a lot of stuff. My job isn't just nuts n' bolts but it's far far from (for example) what the guy who designed the SSME's for the space shuttle did. I almost feel that I might actually be overpaid in the eyes of the industry. I was going to post my salary but it just doesn't feel right.

As far as the other posts, some are helpful but others seem to be missing the mark, as if my initial question was not actually read? Maybe people are suggesting that I turn my job into more of an engineering job by analyzing my designs more?

 

[IRstuff]

Your OP: "full blown engineering with lots of calculations, FEA, that sort of stuff."

If that's your desire, then you can either do as part of your current job, do it on the side, or do it at another job, which appears to be a summary of most of the posts.

And if you feel that you're stagnating, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I get the feeling that you're whining about your lot in life and apparently waiting for someone to drop a golden opportunity on your doorstep. Yes, if your current skill set is inadequate, you'll have difficulty finding another job at the same salary or same level. Would you expect anything else? If you think that you need to expand your horizons, take a class, move to another position, take a paycut, or whatever.

You're an engineer; you've found a problem, now design a solution. Your last post is interesting, but so what? The question is WHAT YOU WANT TO BE. If you've read other postings on other threads, you'll find that most engineers don't do that much math anyway, and there are engineers who ONLY do FEA. Do you even know if FEA is what you want to do?

TTFN

 

[dextermech]

To those who positively contrbuted here: thank you very much.

 

[EddyC]

There are forms of engineering where formal calculations and CAE/FEA are not required. Many of the folks where I currently work just punch a couple of numbers in a calculator and say: "Its OK". They don't even bother to write anything down. I have a buddy who is a good engineer and he doesn't like doing FEA. I am a poorer engineer than him, but I like to do FEA. Things to think about.

 

[Heckler]

Oh, yeah. I find this scary, but in some places, the calculations and FEA are done by designers, who happened to be sitting in front of the fast computers when the Pro/E salesman slithered through. The engineers were downsized to pay for the Pro/E. They'd be happy to take designer jobs. They'd be ecstatic to take your job.

I find this all to be true in this day of high powered desk top computers and CAE applications. I worked with a designer that thought he was an engineer. He had an ego which was something similar to "small mans complex" and his design work suffered greatly.

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

Never argue with an idiot. They'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience every time.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Uh, dex, IR clearly read your first post, and I'm sure he thought long and hard before giving you that whack on the side of the head. Please accept it in the positive way it was intended.

You probably need to leave it, just to realize that you have a dream job. In biomed and aerospace, you'd _never_ get to design/engineer an entire machine, or even all of one piece of a machine.

[
True story: A former aerospace designer once became part of my team. He had spent eight years, designing brackets that hold the fuel lines on the left side of a particular jet engine model. He had never seen an actual engine up close, never visited a test cell, never even seen a drawing of the other side of the engine, or of any other engine, never designed a bracket for any other purpose, never designed anything but those damn brackets. He was actually a great designer, but it took a while to re- expand his world.
]

I tried FEA once; bought a limited license, beat on it hard enough to find a bug in the program, had some nice email exchanges with the guy who wrote it. He said it shouldn't take more than three years of doing nothing but FEA to get comfortable with it. I decided that I sure didn't want to do just one thing for any length of time, and I found FEA rather tedious. Later I discovered that every other senior ME at my then employer had also quietly bought a FEA package, beat on it, and decided that he didn't want to become the company FEA guy, either.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[dextermech]

Thanks Mike. I'm fully aware that I might in fact have the best job I can have (without moving anyway) and might not even realize it, might never realize it unless I change jobs. That's actually my biggest fear, that I change jobs and realize that my first job was actually a "dream" job. I'm in the process now of aggressively exploring my options. Actually posting on here is my first step.

 

[JStephen]

I have little experience with FEA. However, as best I can tell, in the engineering world, many of the guys that do FEA don't do much else- it's sort of a specialty of it's own. I wouldn't assume that was a critical part of your engineering experience, if you're working in a job where it is not required.

Through the years, I have noticed that many jobs are written to require experience with a specific software- such as Solidworks. That qualifies you for jobs that a lot of other people aren't qualified for. And it'll disqualify you for a lot of jobs that want some other specific software.

I have also found, that just because a job is done by a "designer" who is not an engineer, doesn't meant it OUGHT to be done that way. That can wind up to be an "engineering without a license" situation. Engineering requires knowledge and experience, but does not necessarily involve complexity.

If you do get into FEA, if you just do a bit of it now and again, that experience probably won't count for much either.

You may want to looking into get licensed (for prestige purposes). You may want to look into continuing education of fields of interest to you just for future reference.