F engineers

[folkenheath]

We've all been there, cussing at the people who designed stuff, because the fact is there is some stupidly designed stuff.

I've also seen some people in engineering classes that answered test questions wrong because they couldn't determine which way a lever was going to move in a mechanical linkage when you pulled on the first lever(it was a very simply force calculation). And then there is always the story of the engineers who design stuff on the computer that can't even be made, "the old..."it looked good on paper"..before computers took over.

They give us all such a bad rap I don't usually even volunteer that I am an engineer, and if they do ask I say, "I was mechanical before I became an engineer". But like anything, there are a lot of good engineers and a lot of bad ones, unfortunately too often people remember mainly the bad stuff. There are a lot of very good engineers out there too, I've worked with both.

When aspiring engineers ask for advice, I tell them to get out and use their hands and build stuff, get hands on experience. It really makes a difference.

I designed a weldment different than the "usual" because I thought it would weld easier and be just as strong. I got a lot of resistance and pushback because the standard way was done by an engineer with a lot more experience than me at the time and that's not the way they've always done it. So finally someone said, lets go ask one of the welders who will be making it. Guess which design they liked better....

 

[KirsL]

I've said for years that to pass engineering school. That they need to intern out in the field every summer. A few summers in the field will give them an entirely new perspective on what actually happens beyond the office.

 

[Wes Harden]

personally I blame MBA's not the engineer.MBA's are ruining our country, I call them CYA's mostly, the one making the decisions in my company, only want to save money so they can promote, then the infrastructure, improvements/maintenance,(Orville Dam spillway) is put on hold. Only after a catastrophic failure do things change for @ a month, never any accountability thou.

 

[JoshHefnerX]

There's always a balancing act w/ engineering. But I've run across some pretty dumb stuff at times. I whole-heartedly agree w/ having engineers at a minimum have to build their invention with their own hands and work w/ the people who'll actually be doing so.

 

[Stephen]

Lots of good points here, especially remembering that the priorities of people selling trucks aren't the same as those using and maintaining trucks, especially by the time most of us get our hands on them. It sure is easy to hate on the bolt you need to remove being installed in a way that can only happen when the body is off till you remember that was a guy standing on a line installing that bolt from the top when there was no body and no one planned on the bolt ever being removed anyway. Sometimes I feel lucky that any of our crap works out as well as it does.

 

[folkenheath]

I agree, and yes sometimes spark plugs are hard to get at, but that's also one of the reasons they spent so much time and research developing those 100,000 mile spark plugs. Many times they get changed maybe 1 time in the life of the vehicle, or 0 for most people. Of course there are always exceptions, like when you need to run a colder plug with nitrous.