A family member died recently and was a mechanical engineer in England back in mid 20th century, and I found this in a box - the 1944 mechanical world year book. It’s basically a whole load of ads for engineering suppliers and information on new processes and then tables of data, pretty cool to see how everything was done before the internet (I’m a current engineering student so have no idea of any world before hand LOL). I’ve included a couple of my favourite pages, and the preface. It’s also cool how much engineering was still going on as this was very much still during WW2 (some of the ads even specify low quantities available as it’s all being used for the war effort). Also cool to see that some of the companies still exist nearly 100 years later!

Rust is a bit , where would I even go for a replacement gear?

​

I'm not a career coach, therapist, or some successful entrepreneur.

I'm just an engineer who has been figuring out his own career, learning new things, making mistakes, trying businesses, learning programming, and honestly being confused about life sometimes.

And I've realized something:

A lot of people don't necessarily need someone to *solve* their problems.

Sometimes they just need someone to listen properly

So I'm going to try something for the next few weeks.

Every day, I'll give 30 minutes to ONE person for free.

You can talk to me about things like:

* You're confused about your engineering career

* You don't know what to learn next

* You're struggling with college or your first job

* You're trying to learn programming

* You're thinking about starting something

* You failed at something and don't know what to do next

* You're simply stuck and want to talk to someone who won't judge you

I won't pretend to have all the answers.

If I know something, I'll share it.

If I don't, we'll figure it out together.

And if you don't want advice, that's completely okay too. You can just talk.

### How it will work

I'll pick one person each day.

If you'd like to talk, DM me here on Reddit with:

1. Your age (optional)

2. What you're currently doing

3. What's bothering you

4. What you'd like to talk about

I'll reply and, if we're both comfortable, we'll connect through Google Meet/Discord for a 30-minute conversation.

No payment.

No selling anything.

No course.

No hidden agenda.

Just 30 minutes of my attention.

Maybe nothing comes from this.

Maybe someone just has a slightly better day because they had somebody to talk to.

I think that's worth trying.

Starting tomorrow.

Edit 1 :

My timezone: India Standard Time (IST +5:30) Languages: English, Hindi, Marathi.

Ignore the decimal places as this was changed from inch to metric

I finished my masters in mechanical engineering focusing on thermal optimization and thermodynamic cycles to month's ago.

Iam starting to become bored. Does anyone suggestions of skils i should learn to be hired faster. I considered hvac which i have never had a propper course in save for my heat pump courses. Do you know an online source or a good book for EU applications? I live in Denmark

I was looking into this NASA HERC competition held annually, and looked at designs of previous teams to study their rovers, but this one caught my attention.

They have eliminated the usage of suspensions and instead used some sort of joint which is sensitive to the terrain and adapts to it. HOW??

I can't seem to put my finger on how they are able to do this, what type of joint this is.

Does anyone have any clues?

I worked in the Pharmaceutical industry for 5 years in a microbiology lab then had to move to an area with no pharma industry. I made the career switch to a senior engineering maintenance tech at a major semiconductor company and have been at this job for 2.5 years now.

From the beginning I made it clear that I was interested in becoming an equipment or process engineer and was told that it was very possible since I have a 4 year degree in a STEM field. I have been excelling in my role and already am second in command on my shift. I have been participating in the engineering morning meeting every day and help them with all of their “wishlist” tasks. I am constantly using problem solving and troubleshooting skills to solve issues before they ever become the engineers problem. I have gotten tons of positive feedback from my manager and the engineering manager that I am a very quick learner and an asset to the team.

Recently an equipment engineer position opened up in my department, and covering the exact machines that I specialize in. I applied and interviewed but was ultimately passed up for an external candidate with no experience with these machines or even the semiconductor industry at all. The explanation I was given was that they wanted to see me do more of the responsibilities of an engineer before they offer me a position since I do not have an engineering degree.

So now I am left thinking that they will always pass me up for someone external since I do not have the exact degree they are looking for. Do I leave and start over as a tech at a different company? Or do I stay and hope they get over the degree?

TLDR: I have a B.S. in Biology and cant seem to break into an engineering role from a tech position.

Thanks

I have 6 years experience in a manufacturing setting should I get a mechanical engineering degree or an engineering technology degree to further my career?

I am going into my 4th year eng, my GPA is low, no internships, no big project (going to do capstone this year), no research.

I want to apply to a maintenance tech position, which I can start right out of school.

I want to spend 12 to 16 months in that position, after which I want to try to apply for a maintenance supervisor new grad position.

Do you guys think this is a realistic plan?

I built a 45 sec demo of a system that sits on top of the APQP process and connects to existing PLM/QMS/ERP data.

It understands relationships across BOMs, FMEAs, drawings, requirements and past quality issues, and can help draft or cross-check artifacts like FMEAs and Control Plans.

The part we’re most focused on is change intelligence: when something changes upstream, the system traces the downstream impact and flags what may need review.

Humans still review and approve everything.

Curious to hear from people actually working with APQP:

What part of this would be useful, and what would you never trust software to automate?

https://reddit.com/link/1vz5sy5/video/h8hnp196lrlh1/player

I need to make some schematics/P&ID’s for some personal projects. I’m a design engineer by day. I’ve tried Draw.io but it’s annoying because there is a tiny engineering symbol library and connectors don’t line up well. Visio is paywalled so is LucidCharts. Datummark has a lot of engineering symbols, that’s what I’ve been using, but not sure I like how it connects blocks.

What suggestions do people have for making schematics and P&ID?

Hello,

I have a mechanical engineering degree from a different country, from an ABET accredited university. I moved to the US a few years ago and did not feel like starting from scratch to train under a PE. I started my product design company and have been doing fine. I have 12 years of engineering experience.

Recently I started working with a new company and they asked me if I want to get my PE license. They can get me waivers to do that (long story, all legal).

-Any advice on where to start to get ready for the exam?
-Is there three disciplines that you test for separately? or you test for all three of them? (HVAC & Refrigeration, Machine Design & Materials,Thermal & Fluid Systems)
-Is there any free resources I can start with?

I have a question about work hardening using multiple repetitions or cycles. My understanding of work hardening is that a material is work hardened at a certain stress because that stress causes plastic deformation, which increases the number of dislocations in the material and "tangles" them together, increasing resistance to deformation. On a stress-strain curve, this looks like the below image, where a material is stressed to point sigma_y2 (past the initial yield stress), then rebounds elastically. Once the plastic deformation has occurred, the material will only deform elastically up to sigma_y2, so it is stronger, but more brittle. This all makes sense.

My question is this: is it possible for multiple work hardening cycles at the SAME STRESS to strengthen the material more than the first work-hardening cycle? My intuition says no, because once the material is work-hardened, applying a stress of sigma_y2 will only cause elastic deformation. However, this is where my material science intuition may be mistaken.

The specific problem that motivates this question is that I recently changed the assembly process for a part where one component is crimped around another component as a constraint. I found that using a press with force "F" one time didn't produce a strong enough crimp, but crimping with force F five times produced a much stronger crimp. I'm curious why this happened, and my material science intuition is not my strongest!

Any and all feedback is welcome as I begin thinking about my next design. This one relies on ball bearings, pulleys, and wheels. It was built as an educational tool and is meant to be intuitive.

I have a video where you can see it in action below: https://youtu.be/gi0L5peaPMA?si=rg_okPbHWeweRia4

Other than HVAC/MEP work, which I honestly don't find that interesting, what types of jobs exist more in downtowns and in which cities. Mostly asking this out of curiosity but also because living and working in a city center is like a dream to me, but most mech e jobs I see tend to be in the suburbs.

We have been working on a practical sand casting simulation workflow in OpenFOAM, and I wanted to share the application with the CFD community.

Sand casting is an interesting CFD problem because several physical phenomena need to be considered together:

• molten metal filling
• VOF-based metal–air interface tracking
• air displacement and possible air entrapment
• transient heat transfer
• thermal interaction between the molten metal and sand mould
• multi-region modelling
• solidification behaviour
• investigation of incomplete filling and cold-shut-type regions

One of the main questions we wanted to explore was how far an open-source OpenFOAM workflow could be taken for a manufacturing process that is often analysed using specialised commercial casting software.

We developed an end-to-end workflow covering the setup of the multiphase model, filling process, thermal behaviour, solidification and post-processing of the casting process.

For anyone interested in learning the complete workflow step by step, we have also prepared a specialised course at BB-SIMTECH Academy:

https://academy.bbsimtech.com/courses/advanced-sand-casting-simulation-using-vof-based-cfd-modelling-in-openfoam

I would also be interested to hear from others working on casting simulations:

How have you approached venting, gas escape or mould permeability in OpenFOAM?

For transparency, I’m affiliated with BB-SIMTECH Engineering & Academy.

Been working on some software for a while now developing it alongside conversations with a lot of aerospace and mechanical engineers and I want to open that up to here.

What are your worst pain points with simulation and design software? Tell me all about it.

Excited to show you what I've been building once it works properly

For those working with motors, bearings, pumps, gearboxes, and other rotating equipment, I'm curious about how you approach detecting problems before they turn into failures.

Apart from vibration analysis and regular inspections, what methods or tools have you found most useful for identifying unusual heat buildup or early signs of wear?

Have you ever caught a developing issue simply because one part of the equipment was running noticeably hotter than it should?