BillBirch
Mechanical
- Nov 21, 2001
- 210
Recent postings give me a great cause for concern about the lack of knowledge of fundamental principals.
One guy writes that he is designing an ROV and wants buoyancy explained.
Another is designing a pump and wants to know how to calculate the moment of inertia and then discloses that he plans to use three bearings - (indeterminat loading and difficult to align).
Yet another was designing a rotating welding manipulator handling loads weighing tens of tonnes, which was eventually red flagged due to the heat that the thread was generating.
In all cases the posters referred to their solidworks designs. Are we getting blinded by the sophistication of the software and forgetting that garbage in = garbage out applies with software, or indeed any system.
I only know for certain that the last example was from an unqualified, but perhaps over-enthusiastic kid, but I hope that the other two are drafters with a healthy curiosity. If so, I hope that they are given sufficient experienced engineering supervision so that they do not waste too much time, design something impractical, dangerous or all of the above.
On the other hand, if the other posters are qualified, it suggests the following.
- Quality of education. In the examples given, buoyancy is a fundamental of physics that should have been understood in high school. Machine element design has fundamentals regarding constructability that should have been learnt in college.
- Insufficient supervision or inappropriate tasking. Are senior engineers too occupied with management to give the younger guys the necessary mentoring, and related to this, are the young guys being asked to undertake roles above their experience. Similarly, are companies cutting costs by employing graduates only, thus avoiding higher pay rates. This is a common complaint on this website, and although it is heartening to see the younger guys shouldering the challenge, it is also a concern that they may not realise the exposure of their situation and could easily be thrown to the wolves.
- Inadequate recruiting practices. Not everybody was good in all subjects in college and you would expect that career paths would reflect particular strengths. I may be wrong, but I suspect that ptoficiency in CAD seems to be driving a lot of selections. Are the correct skills being overlooked by recruiters who simply see a candidate as a two-for-the-price-of-one find, someone who can draft and do a bit of engineering?
Regards,
Bill
P.S If anybody recognises themselves in the examples, no offence was intended. The purpose of this post was not to ridicule, but to highlight what appears to be unreasonable expectactions on our junior colleagues or associates.
One guy writes that he is designing an ROV and wants buoyancy explained.
Another is designing a pump and wants to know how to calculate the moment of inertia and then discloses that he plans to use three bearings - (indeterminat loading and difficult to align).
Yet another was designing a rotating welding manipulator handling loads weighing tens of tonnes, which was eventually red flagged due to the heat that the thread was generating.
In all cases the posters referred to their solidworks designs. Are we getting blinded by the sophistication of the software and forgetting that garbage in = garbage out applies with software, or indeed any system.
I only know for certain that the last example was from an unqualified, but perhaps over-enthusiastic kid, but I hope that the other two are drafters with a healthy curiosity. If so, I hope that they are given sufficient experienced engineering supervision so that they do not waste too much time, design something impractical, dangerous or all of the above.
On the other hand, if the other posters are qualified, it suggests the following.
- Quality of education. In the examples given, buoyancy is a fundamental of physics that should have been understood in high school. Machine element design has fundamentals regarding constructability that should have been learnt in college.
- Insufficient supervision or inappropriate tasking. Are senior engineers too occupied with management to give the younger guys the necessary mentoring, and related to this, are the young guys being asked to undertake roles above their experience. Similarly, are companies cutting costs by employing graduates only, thus avoiding higher pay rates. This is a common complaint on this website, and although it is heartening to see the younger guys shouldering the challenge, it is also a concern that they may not realise the exposure of their situation and could easily be thrown to the wolves.
- Inadequate recruiting practices. Not everybody was good in all subjects in college and you would expect that career paths would reflect particular strengths. I may be wrong, but I suspect that ptoficiency in CAD seems to be driving a lot of selections. Are the correct skills being overlooked by recruiters who simply see a candidate as a two-for-the-price-of-one find, someone who can draft and do a bit of engineering?
Regards,
Bill
P.S If anybody recognises themselves in the examples, no offence was intended. The purpose of this post was not to ridicule, but to highlight what appears to be unreasonable expectactions on our junior colleagues or associates.
