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Posted by Clint Dixon [74.206.63.42] on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 09:23:48 :
Some very interesting comments on fastener threads, material quality, and engineering capabilities in the threads below.
Some of you may know that I work as a Senior Mechanical Designer in an engineering firm. With all due respect to Matt Wilson, Mike Fanoni, Mike Hernke, and all the rest of the Engineers that visit this site, what I see every day is that not all engineering is good and not all Engineers have equal abilities. Some of both are down right incompetent.
I am not an Engineer. I am a Designer. I half seriously explain to people the differences between us as; in my company, I have more responsibilities than an Engineer, AND, I get paid less. I have no idea what Engineers study in school, how much they study, or what it takes to graduate with a degree, but I see a steady stream of "Engineers" flow through our company that are grossly unqualified.
We provide engineering services for ANYONE who need our service and has the money to pay our bill. The majority of our work is in designing bulldozers, farm equipment, automotive equipment, food processing and packaging equipment, firearms, earthquake proof construction techniques, and the tooling that is required to produce all of these varied products.
I spend an inordinate amount of my time training newly hired Engineers how to do their jobs. Most of these guys are commanding 1-1/2 to 2 times my pay even before I have them trained. Most have no previous manufacturing experience whatsoever. That is, they have not been employed in a machine shop, are not a "gear head", or have not grown up on a farm. In other words, they have not practical experience to draw from, only that which they have been taught from a text book and a degree to show for their efforts.
I got into a discussion just the other day as I was trying to teach a new Engineer how to design tooling. Neither the young Engineer, nor my boss (who is also younger than me and who I also taught to do his job when he was a new-hire, and then later - my job) had any clue to the difference between climb cutting and under cutting. I would forgive 99.9% of the people on this site if they do not know the difference between the two. This is the type of thing one learns from having worked in a machine shop. But, I feel that every Engineer that hopes to be hired by our company SHOULD already know the difference and hopefully learned it from practical experience. Even better if they still have the steel slivers embedded in their flesh from learning the WRONG way.
I also find that many of the new hires (including my boss and his boss) seem to think that all milling must be done with an end mill. They don't seem to know the difference between an end mill, an indexible end mill, or a cutter head, and the mention of a horizontal boring mill results in blank stares. There is no sense in even mentioning the term turret lathe.
I can not comment or make comparisons between the engineering and Engineers between yesterday and today. I imagine that there has always been good and bad. But, I do know that the mindset is totally different today from what it was 50, 60, or 70 years ago. Every project I work on is driven 100% by money. All are faced with pathetic budgets and unrealistic deadlines.
I can't say I am really proud of any of our deliverables. But, the customers keep coming back, so someone, or some someones, are apparently raking in the dough and very happy because of it. They are getting what they are asking for. Who cares if the current tractor is the best that can be built, I just made someones life a little more plush.
Junior
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