18 (ish) Mechanical Design Tips and Tricks for Engineers Inventors and Serious Makers: # 093 

This should be carried over into suppressing parts, as in simplifying! Once you have a detailed design, take a pass or two through it and see how many parts can be physically deleted such that the design still works. Save two ten cent fasteners, on one hundred thousand widgets and pretty soon it adds up to real money, not to mention the time savings in assembly and repair processes.

I read this in your voice

Maybe they changed school programs since I was in school. I got maybe two CAD courses and they rest was physics and math in school. I learned 95% of my modeling skills on the job and yes a large portion of many engineering jobs are tinkering around in CAD.(AKA the same work description as a pro gamer, but more relaxed and less stress)

@@Chris-bg8mk "Save two ten cent fasteners, on one hundred thousand widgets and pretty soon it adds up to real money," If you are making a widget that people will buy only one of then this is not a good idea. We see this all the time in tools built down to a price "For the sake of a ten-cent part, you ruined a fifty dollar tool", Milwaukee, I'm looking at you, you may have saved $100,000 but you have pissed off 1,000,000 customers. Sure, if you are designing a new type of fixing, which will be used by the thousand, it makes sense.

@@BoB-Dobbs_leaning-left Excellent points Steve. There is definitely a logic to eliminating any extraneous parts or features (often far more difficult than most people realize), but you also don't want to eliminate too much and reduce reliability or usability. I've designed several things that begin pretty complex, then by continually tinkering, and looking at exactly what is being done, or the specific stresses, and other criteria to simplify things. What is funny is that once it is reduced to it's essence, people look at it like it is so simple that anybody could have designed that. Little do they know ...

I'm just commenting here cause I love Grady and Practical Engineering

And the divide due to CAD systems and ERP / PDM systems evolving wildly and fabricators / contrators still "trapped" in the physical world is a whole new challenge. Doing 2D drawings that can be understood in a dirty workshop, under pressure, with no mistakes and eliminating any error source takes a while to learn. In one end , you got workshops are full of experienced 40+ year old machinists (some as old as 60+) that want PAPER (unless it's CNC, but that's a whole another beast). In the other, someone who's just getting into engineering , young and inexperienced (we've all been there) that is in a stressfull office space with management and delivery dates. I'm grateful that in my field of work I can periodically visit the workshop (not only when there's a huge mistake) and get feedback. I love being there and seeing how things are done, things that they want to complain, and what the scale of what started with a click is. Also, lots of welding and metal shenanigans ensue. For instance, turns out steel is heavy (: .And thus, making assembly alignment features, and lifting points is very appreciated.

As much as I want to agree with this, there's also the flip side where the factory people are telling me as an engineer what the design constraints for the end user are. But they often don't see the full picture of integration between product A, B and C. Then you can get endless discussions about things that don't even matter to them for assembly or manufacturing. But of course that fully depends on the person you're on talking with. There's also loads of people that just want to help you to increase the manufacturability and that's great indeed.

in software its all backwards but similar and the same issues arise, only this time theres no engineer and the designer studied how to design for print in college the fabricator is the front end engineer

Read that in Grady’s voice

all electronics run on smoke. if you let it out, they stop working

@@ohsnapfit2096 I can't tell you how many times I've heard about the magic smoke.....

lol one that I came up with that kt robotics team jokes about is very similar. “Anything is a press fit if you press hard enough”

@@gumby5068 This only works for oversizing not undersizing. Pressing so hard the material expands could work I suppose but that presents lots of other issues.

@@simona625 gotta keep that stuff in there ya know, it's important

I've been doing it a while as well as a technician apprentice, draughtsman, senior mechanical designer, contract spm designer, consultant and manufacturer ( maker) and supplier ( 200 parts typical) optical apparatus - Jeremy Fielding has passed with distinction!

I am a retired machine designer and I have to tell you that I am impressed with what Jeremy has passed along. I have mentored a couple of young engineers and have given them nearly identical advise on most of these things like "when you begin work for a company with a machinist, you make him your best friend because he will teach you more about designing then anyone else there". Well done Jeremy

Cool. I was born in 1964, am 58 now, and have been a Mech Eng. for 35 years, and I agree, Jeremy in on the money. Very talented guy.

This isn't just good for assembly, this is cost efficient, and looks great on a bill of materials.

Or ideally - no tools.

@@BeholderThe1st no tools when possible, but arguable most applications can't be really designed with a 0 tool teardown, so as few tools as possible.

If you want an example, look at any small equipment by Husqvarna. It's all brilliantly designed for good performance, efficient use of materials, and ease of assembly and repair. They are rarely the cheapest products, but they are frequently the cheapest products of comparable quality. Their competitive advantage is their design philosophy.

Fastener Reduction is a whole paradigm, and an important one, since it slows assembly time. I would argue it should become Joint Reduction (to include welds), Part Reduction, etc. Complexity is undesirable for boat-loads of reasons.

Absolutely this. I started my engineering education because I worked in manufacturing and I saw too much of this :) You gotta communicate/be friends with the people making your stuff.

My father gave me many lessons he learned being a CNC Programmer/Manufacturing Engineer in the Defense and Aerospace industry. One of the big ones was to learn as much from your fabricators as you can, and use that to make their jobs easier. He'd spend an hour programming a chamfer on a part, just so it wouldn't become a hand operation the machinist would have to do. It really reduced the total time per part, even if it lengthened the time in the mill. He'd also pour over vendor catalogs for stock cutter shapes for the machines. This let him use one specialty cutter to do a profile in 45 seconds, instead of doing it in 8 minutes with a standard ball end mill. His biggest lesson: don't hoard knowledge. Sharing it makes everyone more valuable, and helps foster a more open working culture that's fun to be in.

Always listen to the guys on the floor. They might not have the right ideas everytime, but they are the ones that get their hands dirty an know how things work in the real world. Arrogance (not calling you arrogant) by thinking you are superior because you wear a shirt and have a degree gets you absolutely no where.

Similar experience when I was in high school helping my Dad repair a lathe. We spent hours removing parts and pulling off one gear after another to get to the one broken piece at the head end., just inside of the access opening on that side. He pointed that if only the engineer had made this access cover a fraction of an inch larger, we could have removed this part from this end instead. Basically, the engineer made the cover slightly smaller than the part and so it was useless for anything other than to observe how much additional work the repair would take.

Project a virtual " reasonable access" cylinder/cone from all your fasteners to the outer bounding box of the finished assembly and look for collisions. I sometimes do one model with the regular fasteners and one where I replace them with a fastener that has the cone on top. This will really help visualise and snag access issues while you're still working digital. You can also use the shapes to cut geometry or make assembly drawings. The assembler is the first user of your product.

i'd rather have a slotted head screw than a phillips to be honest. torx would be the best for head screws imo.

@@johndeaton4607 Hex socket screws, not torx, or even Robertson head (square) screws (that in Europe are non existent =( ) would be better

@@Mr_Yod yeah but a lot of applications are such that socket head bolts can't be used. if the head of the bolt/screw needs to sit flush with a flange or something the hex head wont work. and if you mean hex like "allen keys" as some call them, those strip out easier than torx all day

@@johndeaton4607 Yes: I meant Allen keys. As for stripping: aren't torx worse thanks to their tiny flanges in all the vertices of the hexagon? 🤔 In the end only Robertson's heads are superior. And slotted head screws are The Evil. 😬

@@Mr_Yod i work on small engines as my job, many things in that application use T27 torx for every bolt, and i have never stripped one out

Judicial use of tolerance is a huge issue. I am an ME and have owned 2 machine shops, and have seen so many problems that were driven by thoughtless use of "Unless Otherwise Specified" tolerances. One fabricator I worked with had a sheet metal customer that spec'd +/- .002" for all their hole locations. For his manual shop, that made them $20 holes, vs $2 holes if at +/- .010".

@@fburtt CNC has really exacerbated this. I used to spend a lot of time on GD&T, but later realized that everything was going to be executed at the maximum room-temperature performance of whatever machine it was on. Unless you were calling for something truly demanding that took you into special temperature controlled machines or something, the CNC would just about always satisfy the tolerances by a large margin. BUT, when engineers get this ingrained and then send something to a different process, you can end up with wildly inappropriate callouts.

You tolerances are right they they are 1. As big as possible and 2. and tight as absolutely needed.

Or conversely some 250-pound gorilla reaming a 1" bolt through a 7/8" hole while cursing the fabricator for "getting it wrong" :)

@@danielscott4514 oh my god ive fucked up a good bolt for nothing

this reminds me of a story of a previous mechanic at the shop I work at. He was changing the timing chain on a motor, and one of the bolts had a couple mm longer shoulder, which was noted in the manual, but he wasn't going by the manual, so when it came time to reassemble the cover, he put a bolt with a shorter shoulder in the hole, and it got too tight and cracked the timing cover in half. ended up costing an extra $300 for a simple mistake.

Not to mention that odd sizes, like 7/8, versus 3/4 or 1” are MUCH more expensive than standard sizes

Or using metric and imperial interchangeably. I get on some parts it’s a given obstacle, but don’t do it if you don’t have to. As an assembler, I have spent too much time testing a quarter inch hole only to find it’s actually 6mm.

Excellent question.

I'll play devil's advocate... because 9/10 times the not-fully-right way will last "long enough" and not need to be done over until there are other reasons to want to replace it. Time to deliver/market is a business constraint that engineers like us don't value as much as we do a beautifully elegant and highly optimized solution. In my experience when a project manager is absent or not skilled enough, and the engineers are unconstrained on a project, the projects never get finished because there's always more that can be made better. Instrumenting some software for metrics can take 1 week and be good enough to get it into production with some reasonable visibility, or it can be "done right" and take six months, deep statistical modeling, and performance tuning, etc. but jeopardize the entire product having any market demand at all by the time it's ready.

I have often found that frustrating as well, but the main argument to this is if you do it twice you learn twice as much about it (requirements, design issues, failure points, etc.). Trying to get it right in one iteration will inevitably lead to an inferior product. This is why I love 3D printing...it usually takes me 3 tries to get exactly what I'm looking for and I can get there pretty quickly using rapid prototyping.

While I agree with some of the points being made here, I will add a further caveat... when one is rushing there are ample opportunity to take shortcuts and to miss things... that is a major source of where that phrase came from... the corollary is that it takes three times as long and six times as much money to correct those screw ups or errors, and it only gets worse the farther it gets along the process... a simple thing that could have been caught with only a single hour of extra time at the office can cost hundreds of dollars and days of labor during the build process and can cost several thousands of dollars and people being flown out to customer sites (with all the expenses) as well as lost time to take out the error, and install the proper thing during installation and start-up.

That is fantastic advice!

Having worked in aviation 44 yrs galvanic corrosion is a real problem. A lot of sealants are tried to reduce the damage. They are difficult to apply perfectly and require extensive cleanup and a lot of waste plus they are not cheap. In many cases to break the electrical circuit between the 2 (electrolysis) is as simple as using mylar, x-ray or photo film etc.

Dude, how old are you?

Ford uses aluminum bolts to hold the transfer case to the transmission just for this reason.

I was pretty impressed also. This stuff seems to be strong.

Indeed, that 'ultra two handed mega full body flex power jump giga smash' was worth any amount locktite paied

I agree. But I wonder (doubt) it would hold up if he rotated the sample 90 degrees and tried again. Loctite probably wouldn't sponsor that 😀

I think you missed the point LOL. Loctite has published the engineering strength data for this adhesive. You can find details in the description. The video was just to give you a feel for it’s strength. Engineers would use that data for decisions not a random hammer test :)

@@JeremyFieldingSr isn't the hammer test the verification that the data is accurate?

THIS, THIS RIGHT HERE! Even in software engineering and web scale engineering, this is HIGH on my list of engineering mantra's. Cloud computing is ALL about this. Yes custom configured computers could run the database and the caching layer better, but the operation, maintenance, and deployment hit is just not worth it until you have prooven performance really requires a custom part. Mechanical engineering, design everything to use a 10mm M4 bolt or a 10mm hex head bolt. Only vary your fastener IF and only IF you _really_ need the extra length, or width. Hey, instead of one big bolt, how about 2 M4 bolts? Sometimes an increase in part count of commodity parts is CHEAPER that varied parts. this also makes assembly MUCH easier/faster/cheaper and makes repairability MUCH easier. Excellent example of this: the PRUSA Mk3 3d printer.

I'm a service technician that works on agricultural tractors and equipment. We have some models that require removing several screws to access the fuse and relay panel. (first mistake, it should take zero tools to access these) three are #2 Phillips head and one is a T27 Torx. The same tractors have a cover on the steering column that has 4 T27 Torx screws. Two of them require a long reach bit, two require a very short bit and a ratcheting handle to remove. The less stuff I have to tote up to the cab to get something done the better for me and the customer whis paying dearly for my services.. I could go on and on about about all of the stuff that could have been easy with just a minor change here and there.

Should’ve told that to the engineers of the F-35

As a customer I AGREE 100%!!!!!!!!! Nothing like trying to put together some fancy furniture and trying to figure out the difference between screw A and C.

@@jimnaden5594 God that sounds awful. I remember changing our car's water pump. Removing the serpentine belt was a pain on it's own. But to get at the pump itself required the removal of a few brackets and even an engine mount. All in a space barley wide enough to fit a tool, let alone your hand. (Not fun)

Indeed. I hope people keep commenting even after this is an old video.

Seriously though. Keep stuff simple. Carrots, potatoes, cabbage, herbs, spices, water, beef roast. Good stew.

@@Adam-118 The ole KISS principle. Works every time.

There is an adhesive and process for 99 percent of all materials that work really well. There just has to be sufficient surface area to withstand the static and/or dynamic loads the joint will encounter. A good example is joining (2) 3/4 wooden boards together with regular urea resin glue (yellow). If the surfaces have been jointed and are truly flat and the boards properly clamped together till cured. The wood fibers next to the glue joint will deform or shear long before the glue joint will give up.

Be open and interested in things outside your field.

I LOVE this one (and have found it super-valuable lesson many times). Experience has taught me to look in the farming/agricultural industry for many solves

So true!

This is one of the reasons I keep a level of awareness in the back of my mind, hanging on to interesting little tools or processes that I stumble across, just in case I need that bit some day. I've used so many of these for simplifying repairs and build processes over the years.

Honestly, this is a reason that we need to have more comfortable interconnection between fields, and less ego about where good information comes from.

YES! When I worked is auto body repair, often times the absolute worst things to repair were anything behind a door panel or in the rear quarter panels… why? Because you break so many fasteners trying to open it up. Each manufacturer had different ones a lot of the time, and you’d be scrolling through catalogs trying to find these damn plastic clips, or weird metal crimps or whatever… we could be long done with the repair, bondo, paint, ordered and replaced new window motors and still just waiting on a few damn chunks of plastic. It was the absolute worst. Then you get yelled at for taking too long and you try to explain why everything is done and we can’t just buy the stupid screws at ace hardware! ! You should never have to break something to take it apart…. I wish more companies took this seriously.

I think it's called "design for disassembly". A big thing in architecture now.

Exactly! One of the things that has always bugged me immensely is when a roll pin is used in a "blind hole" instead of a "through hole" so it can't be drifted out in the future if the need arises. 😵

A true but somewhat ironic response to a video sponsored by an adhesive company

For sure! As I've moved deeper and deeper into modifying and designing cars, I've reaised how important this is. Sure, putting a certain hose or filtering this spot will make it fit and keep it simple, but will it mean you have to amor remove the engine when it came time to service? Do you need to custom make a part, when there's a standard but slightly less facy part available? Because being able to just go to a shop, buy a replacement and fit it easily makes a huge difference to the whole experience. Doing things right, building for disassembly and serviceability is complicated and takes longer but extra time in the design and prototype phase is quicky fogotten 2 years Dow the line when you're removing a turbo for the 3rd time 'cause that's the only way to change the damn oil filter 😅

I've worked on machinery designed by engineers which is why engineers get that treatment. Theoretically, the repair job when it's needed should be 'simple' but that is rarely the case when things have been 'designed' to be impossible to work on.

This is super useful!

You had better quit that talking about standardization! Those 18 amp MOSFET cost the company an extra $.12! Some supervisor is going to veto that because he can run to his manager and say, "Look, boss! I am saving the company money." And when the shop runs out of the 12 amp, he will blame you for not standardizing them all..

oh cool i literally did that (with those voltages too) on a project last month

though when working with polarity sensitive stuff just use XT30 or other reverse polarity "protected" connectors

The standardization suggestion depends largely on the scale of the company and product line. If you're moving millions of units, the 5 cents of additional costs per unit adds up.

That said, some of us are pretty damn smart ;)

Nick h :: as a mechanic once told me, “I’m not paid to fix stuff. I’m paid to have the patience to accomplish the goal, whatever that takes. ‘Doing my best’ is not the point!”

By doing so they become smarter everyday.

By doing so they become smarter everyday.

as a software engineer i can confirm this, its like i tell people, I aint intelligent, I'm just a dumb man working hard to be smart

The red green show is where I best remember that quote. Along with, "If women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

sounds like something red green would say right before he peels off a strip of duct tape

Slots are your friend

I use this quote all the time. I also can't remember where I heard it from but it's been a good anecdote in most situations.

I had a head engineer once who said he hated adjustability. After many years of letting that one simmer, I think that it's related to the "make it simple, stupid" idea. I think the idea is to eliminate unnecessary adjustability, for various reasons, but maybe the main one is because someone will likely find a way to adjust it the wrong way, particularly if more than one instance of adjustability is stacked in "series". It's like tolerance stack-ups. The question about eliminating extra tolerances (that is to say, sources of variation) and extra adjustability is always worth considering. When is it better to make a single, more complex part than 2 or more parts that need to be assembled? When is it better to tighten tolerances, and when is it better to let something "float", and either match on assembly/installation or build in adjustability to take that variation back out? The answer, of course, is "it depends".

Excellent Jeff, I use Pi for cost estimating and field retrofit installation too. It is the magic number!

3.14.............~¿

I probably need to use this, things always take me way longer

Really 3.141 times longer. That's very generous. I guess it's all relative to your original estimate of finish time. Or if you put time in for mistakes and changes, lead times on components, delays because of other firms having problems. Materials from the EU or China.

Pretty good multiplier for commercial work. But if you are dealing with a government project at least use 2pi. The only time my partner and I got the initial budget right, was when we took his estimate added my estimate and multiplied it by four.😀

Tech transfer is super useful for this kind of "fuzzing" in any kind of field where there is a process. Even just having someone from your department who isn't savvy on your particular stack.

I think of this as akin to the productive conflict of "writer" vs "editor" You need that dispassionate second perspective to point out the confusing and vague bits before you turn it loose on the world!

All engineers should have a good relationship with their fabricators. We can help you shine like a diamond in a goat's butt! Or not.

Recently I got some spare time and took up a CAD program - I started answering many other 'user' questions and problems on the forum - I now reckon I know and use the program like nobody else! This probably comes under the banner of 'Many heads are better than one'

I'm not an engineer but I'm currently taking a precision machining course and product design has always been interesting to me. When I read your comment I realised that I had actually learned that same design flow from a game called Space Engineers where the main goal is to make creative solutions to problems. I recently built a mining vehicle that would be primarily used inside of a canyon with steep walls so it had to be able to dig horizontally without tipping over (wide wheel base and low center of gravity), the wheels had to be able to carry the weight of the ore and climb hills (more wheels under the heaviest part), and the drill arm had to be articulate enough to reach the ore while still being able to collect the ore that was dug (rotors and hinges, only some of which come with conveyors equipped meaning I had to use special pieces). The drilling arm was the most complicated and had the most constraints so I built that first and worked down the list of "non-negotiables" as you put it. I design all my stuff this way and I hadn't really thought about that much until now. Another important thing I've learned from Space Engineers is "ease of use". I could make a mining arm that can reach anything you want, but it's going to be so complicated to control it that you'll never want to use it. On the drill I compromised by having a switch for each joint on the arm that reversed the direction it moves, and a switch that stops it. The parts move slowly to reduce the chance of crashing the arm and it only requires 9 buttons to use. Two for each joint, that's six buttons there. Two to extend/retract the drills that's eight there. One button to turn the drills on and off again makes 9. That fits on the number line on your keyboard neatly. There's a million features I could add but they'd bog down control and make it a chore to use and they're just not required to do the job.

@@lol2Dlol a "game" teaching good engineering practices, FANTASTIC ! Reminds me of Leggos being used at MIT for Robotics classes ! I wish people enjoyed solving scientific challenges, more than just 'Blowing Stuff Up'

@@solosailorsv8065 Blowing stuff up is cool, but the fun for me is figuring out how I can make it more complicated!

Very good advice. This somewhat translates to software development too.

Sounds like identifying constraints. Like the lawn mowing problem. Of course in a manufacturing setting these constraints are softer than you might think. I mean yeah in general you are going to want to work around that column but if you you can justify why moving that column is the right choice long term, it might just get moved.

Over refining during designing seems to crop up a lot- a horrible waste of time. Nice call out about byte-gobbling eye-candy.

Roger this is so bang on. All of the things I've designed/built that I'm happy with are things I designed COMPLETELY at least twice and they all got simpler with each iteration.

It's called the sunken cost falicy. So often we are not willing to lose a dime to save a dollar.

And question requirements and constraints. Quite often they are unnecessarily strict, outdated or plain unnecessary.

@@Mike-oz4cv This. New husband to bride: 'Why do you cut the end off the roast before you cook it, dear?' Bride: 'I don't know; Mom always did it that way. I'll ask her. Mom, why?' Mom: 'Uhhh...Grammy always did it that why...I'll ask her. Why, Grammy?' Grammy: Because we were poor and had only one roasting pan, and the roast wouldn't fit!' Conditions may change over time; outdated or misunderstood customs and traditions can lead to paralysis.

Explaining something to non-technical groups is an extremely important skill to develop. So much can be lost in translation when they don't understand the problem you are describing. If you can humbly explain and not bore you will be an asset to the team.

@@JeremyFieldingSr I once made the mistake of explaining an oxygen sensor in excruciating detail to my sister in law. In my defense, she did ask what one did.

@@lousypirate Ha ha ha! 😄 If someone asks me about something I geek out on I know I better watch for when their eyes glaze over or they start to grimace. It's not often I see someone lean in to a conversation about composites or propellant chemistry.....

@@jimurrata6785 it’s not rocket science

@@lousypirate Except when it _IS!_ 🤣

Yes a good engineer is lazy, but not when it matters

I use ASAP paraphrase for that: As Simple As Possible

aka: Never engineer what you can negotiate.

Thank you!

By Donald Norman right?

@@silvervortex2441 Yup. Just checked my copy.

Great recommendation, I second that! Absolutely love that book.

been reccomended this about 8 times now, may have to finally get it.

"Even stupid people can have bright ideas." - my quote when i had a good idea in work and told that to coworker... we had a good laught too

There's an old line I heard 20 years ago, something like "the engineer can tell you all the wonderful things the part does and what problems it's going to solve, but the maintenance guy can tell you whether he'd actually use it."

Agreed! Has a lot of crossover with the concepts in the SDLC (waterfall or agile).

I was thinking the same thing while watching this, a lot of these concepts can be applied to software design too.

I'm a data scientist. I just sent this video to a young analyst I am mentoring. This wisdom dump is so relevant it is scary.

Watched this and read the comments! Excellent material

There's a reason why software engineering is a real field :D

A programmer doesn't come to a job knowing how to do it all. He comes to it with a big mental toolkit that often includes knowing MOST of how to do it. But it ALWAYS includes ways to find out or figure out those other parts he didn't already know. A programmer is a special kind of lazy. He'd rather spend two days figuring out how to do something, once, than spend half an hour doing it twice.

This. A thousand times this. If I'm interviewing an applicant and they try to BS me instead of saying "I'm not familiar with that, but this is how I'd find out" there is 0% chance they're getting hired. As you said, they are both a liability and toxic to others.

@@UnlikelyToRemember this also seems to be something that a lot of junior engineers suffer from; I personally felt like admitting ignorance early in my career meant I missed something in my education and I was a fraud (see imposter syndrome). But if senior engineers model the healthy attitude, juniors grow out of it really quickly and everybody is happier for it. Another reason that mentorship is really important and it is sad that it is often overlooked; juniors who don't grow out of it and become know-it-all seniors are dangerously toxic.

A corollary to that is to know when you should say, "I can't really add to that." I.e. adding me to the team or the discussion won't add value to the outcome. Particularly, junior engineers, as well as those who for any other reason don't feel secure in their jobs, will have trouble admitting either that they can't add value right now, because they don't know the answer, or that the outcome would not be improved with their input. People naturally have the instinct to protect their livelihood, and it's up to those who ARE secure and/or higher up in the organization to find ways to alleviate the insecurities that lead to so many counterproductive behaviors. For us knowledge workers, I agree--practice saying "I don't know but I'll find out." Or alternatively, "Let me look into that. I'll get back to you." As long as you actually do follow up in a timely manner, and aren't just BS-ing, it's a good practice.

I wish governments could do the same lol, world peace!

amen to that!!!

Well said - so right you are!! Thanks !

Yes! Empathy in design isn't just about making your product accessible to the user, it's also in making sure other people can work on it easily, it can be maintained, repaired or improved and that the way it works is well documented and clear. As a fellow dev, spending an extra few minutes making sure you've got clear comments for each function (what does it receive, what does it do and what does the output look like), clear and descriptive commit messaging and refactoring to hit that balance between ultra condensed, elegant code and code that a human could actually read makes a huge difference to everybody involved, including future you when you come back on a Monday and try to pick up where you left off 😂 ask me how I know...

@@helplmchoking you're absolutely on point. Empathy for future you or other devs is not just a good idea but the best of them. I recently had an issue on a school bus that I converted into a motorhome. We had to take the radiator off of the bus. There is a giant access door in the side to the air-to-air intercooler but guess what? Neither that or the radiator can comene out through that access door by a matter of half-inch (that is a 20 something x 20 something inch opening). No empathy for thr person who will service the equipment. The bus has to be lifted so they can slide from underneath. Or an Audi A8 that has to drop the whole engine cradle in order for an alternator to be replaced. Someone obviously only thought about packaging and nothing else. Thank you for your comment, it adds several layers of empathy!

Could add Longevity too!

I often say, "if it was easy they wouldn't be hiring us to do it."

Also, "SHUT UP AND TAKE IT LIKE AN ENGINEER"

If it was easy, someone else would be doing it.

A corollary to this is: Most of what we know about anything is wrong. What we know that is right is only because of a narrow set of conditions or use cases. Many tragedies occur because people "know" something will work based on training, history or test results, until it doesn't. On the other hand, I've stubbled across a lot of solutions that can't work, but do because "known" things were actually based on assumptions that didn't apply.

@@videcomp I love that comment, perfectly balanced, as all things should be, yet it went somewhere and I found myself learning something. Truly a great comment 👌

A further benefit of getting a really good grasp on being able to sketch are the many times you will go to or be on a job site and need to take measurements or make a diagram of how something operates, or even what shape a part may need to be and a simple picture may not be enough. I have had hundreds of times over the years that a few simple sketches has saved my bacon once I got back to the office... Sketches are also invaluable to be able to further describe an idea to onsite personnel, whether that be builders, installers, or even maintenance... I am not that great at organic shapes but I can lay out nice and clear diagrams of an electrical or mechanical nature. You **WILL** face times where you have nothing more than paper and pencil to get your ideas down. tablets and phones will run out of power at the most inopportune times. Learn how to sketch!!

Absolutely. People get attached to CAD models and are less willing to throw them out. A paper sketch is much easier to throw out making it less likely that you'll drag bad ideas through the design process

Ah I had that same experience at Kansas state. My handwriting also drastically improved after learning engineering scrypt

We must assume it will never be greased in the field. That shaft will wear clean through the bushing and deep into the base metal. It will then be run until the shaft cuts itself in two or binds up tight. Then the shop will get to fix it on a holiday weekend because we can’t have down time.

Not having lift point is a huge pet peeve of mine. Used to install skid sized industrial A/C units. At a couple hundred pounds and the top and sides being made from basically tinfoil, they were a nightmare to move. I had the opportunity to tour the plant they were made at once, after they asked for questions. I said "how do you expect us to move these things?" The entire engineering team was bewildered, at the plant they bolted them to, and assembled them directly on the custom pallets they shipped out on.

How do you grease it? Well, if you ask the companies that own the equipment that I work on, you don’t

Also, when maintenance is inevitably neglected, and a pin is seized in place, it sure is nice to be able to swing a hammer at it. I’m looking at you caterpillar

@@KonkeyDong96 that would cost an extra $0.27 no hammer swing room for you

That is so true. I designed fume hoods and lab equipment and my first day on that job I hit the line and found there were bolt headed screws that wouldn't reach the holes 😅 Fighting this helped me learn to never wing things in my kwn design

Molex, for connectors is great as they have very detailed models that you can download (without registration, if I recall correctly). Unfortunately, they are *very* detailed models. Drop a few connectors into an assembly and suddenly your "part" count is a few hundred items--especially a pain when exporting STEP files to other tools.

Drives me nuts. I work in yacht-building, a lot of equipment suppliers provide 3D models of their products - unfortunately most are unusable because of excessive detail, so I end up having to model simple proxies myself. Perhaps their 3D guy had a blast modeling the embossed logos and individual balls in the bearings inside their winch, but his winch is only a very small part of what I'm doing.

@@grantm6514 I'll take all the extra detail any day as it allows me to better understand the assembly from the point of view of installation, function, access for servicing etc. but it's getting simplified before it goes in an assembly. Back in the day on ProEngineer for example, there's was a function called 'shrinkwrap' that turned assemblies into simple blocks with only outer surfaces showing. It allowed you to dig into the detailed assembly if required, but didn't load it into the assembly. A manual version of this process is to make a block bigger than the assembly and assemble it over the original assembly, then cut the assembly parts (Or just the ones on the boundary) out of it, clean up small surfaces and cosmetic features and make a new part that occupies the cavity created in the block. It's also possible to export the outer surfaces of the assembly as, say IGES files, import and convert them to solid to create a block that avoids internal details but captures dimensions. With macros, it can be done pretty quickly even if the software doesn't have anything built in to help.

@@peglor That extra detail sometimes is utterly useless, i have no need to have an embossed part number on a nut on a bow shackle that will be purchased and used as a single unit. On the drawings there will be a proxy (dimensions and weight will be exact) and a reference to the part number as an object property that will have it's own tag. If i'm going to show 5mm embossed text on a scaled drawing for all small parts, it will be just one black blob of lines and bog down my printer and no-one will read it anyway.

Yep... Always tell people that threads are never to be modelled unless for practice/understanding.

The end user is really overlooked in tech, ironically. I'm a systems engineer, and most of my peers over the years have the attitude of, "This is the solution I designed, and the end users are going to use it". My most successful projects have started with identifying the pain points the end user is experiencing, how it's affecting their workflow, and how it's affecting their team or business unit. I'll sit down with the primary user and have them show me their workflow and explain why the current solution isn't cutting it, or what _they_ think would make it better. They're the expert at their job - not me. _Then_ I get to work coming up with a solution to their problem. I'll be back in-touch with say, a manager or lead, and ask them for go/nogo on workflows that off-the-shelf solutions may provide and work through it. Like Jeremy said with purchasing precision 'jellybean' parts, the same goes for off-the-shelf software implementations if it ticks all the boxes. It takes time to care and do the groundwork for these projects. Sure, it may be a bit more expensive with regard to your time, but if your forced implementation/bad solution wastes the time of an entire department or business, that's a lot more expensive than your time was alone.

You're definitely spot on, no need to apologize for rambling. I did ID studies too and definitely our primary directive was to question the basic assumption of just making a better toaster when people ask for a better toaster. That all said, they also in cases would remind us that often when you're working for a company that makes toasters you need to continue making toasters while you invent the thing that replaces the toaster; and that sometimes it's important to deliver a good version of what the market expects from you. Additionally, brand new solutions have a lot of primary ground to cover while an incremental update is often riding on a well worn path of progress and that in the real production environment it requires time to transition to novel products in the market. To go back to the lawn mower example from the video, just because lets say John Deere invents some new electro drone grass maintenance machine that uses advanced trimming methods to maintain even and regular grass heights, doesn't mean they stop producing classic ride-on tractors, or even push mowers, for those who still have that as their preferred solution to the problem. There is still good design and engineering to be done in the space of incremental improvement, even in the face of major new technological breakthroughs.

The end user is overlooked by all disciplines. As a 71 year old end user, mechanic, IT guy, software user, tinkerer, repairman, improvisor, troubleshooter, problem solver, you get the idea, I have always wanted to know if the designer ever went outside in an unfamiliar setting and actually used their product. Or if they gave their product to their grandmother to use with no help other than what was in the box. Or they gave their product to the average guy on the street. Again, you get the idea. And the worst part in the process is once the product hits the shelf there is no possible way to realistically send feedback upstream. Even there ask your grandmother to let the company know what needs to be done for her to use the product and sit back and watch. I see where the lawyers have destroyed things (gas cans) and accountants (fasteners) and I get it. I have installed aircrew egress systems that the end user couldn't give feedback if there was poor workmanship. I designed the very first Very High Pressure gas lift well in the Gulf of Mexico where potentially $millions could be lost if a failure occurred. That is just to say I recognize and appreciate things that work and irritated when they consistently don't. Now I'm rambling, sorry.

Can I ask why you're not doing ID work anymore? I hope it's not too personal but being a student I have some concerns that perhaps you agree with.

@@s4n714g000 Not too personal. I have been part of software development for over 30 years. I took the ID classes as a returning adult several years ago with the idea of changing careers. However, I couldn't figure out how to get into a new field without literally cutting my salary in half or more. That didn't appeal to me. So even though I never was officially an industrial designer, a LOT of the fundamental design skills I picked up were readily transferable to software development. Overall, I think it made me better at designing software and building a quality product.

Good one!, I do this any time I don't have to be anywhere else. When asked what I'm looking for, I just reply, "I'm taking inventory for future projects". It doesn't take long for people at the various stores to get used to my wandering. haha

Anytime I walk around in HD or Lowes and someones asks me if they can help me I always very kindly say "no, because I'm not going to use any of this stuff for what you think it is for."

I was looking for spring steel for one project, but it was expensive to buy because I needed to buy large spools of it. I would also have to special order the size I wanted, making it even more expensive. Then I happened to remember that some plumbing snakes are made from spring steel, so, bingo, I found a small one that was cheap and used that. Another time I needed some really tiny tools to move tiny electronics around and even do some scraping of hardened flux. I ended up getting a handful of used dental tools that worked perfectly. And as useless as 4 wire phone cords are anymore, I've found they are plenty strong to hang up paintings and even large speakers. Oh, yes, definitely look at things for all the different uses they can perform, not just what they are designed to do or what industry they are meant for. You might be surprised at how your brain looks at A + C + G + I + M and comes up with Magic.

I call it "shopping for inspiration".

The corollary to this is browsing the (paper?) versions of supply catalogs (like McMaster-Carr, MSC, Grainger, NSK, Boston Gear, etc...) and finding things "on the next page" that are related to what you thought you were looking for. Searching online catalogs and web searches too often just show you "this one thing you asked about" and NOTHING ELSE, when in fact, that next item in the catalog is what really would do the trick. They don't send out the paper catalogs unsolicited, and en mass like they they used to, but you can request one.

YES! 👍👍

That's a beautiful story sir. You did what you thought was right and you got rewarded with a good career for it. I'm happy and inspired by your words. Thank you.

From a janitor to a engineer without paying any academia getting paid! Great story but that would never fly today

@@Parnell50 he did it all at one company that is rare too, now.

Great inspiring story!

@@Parnell50 sorry to disagree with you. See, this is where you, as many of the young engineer, are wrong. Is not the paper that says that you are an engineer, is how you use your knowledge that says what you are. I don't want to offend anyone but the biggest error that most of the "new engineers" do, is to think that after some years of studies they are an ME. Between the theoretical knowledge and reality is a big gap which can be filled only after "getting dirty". Or, how i like to say: only on computer a line is horizontal, in reality never is. Mastering both sides of the problem, anyone can be an engineer without the need of a piece of paper. Speaking from experience.

As a guy who used to work on boats which operate in an electrolyte solution this is frequently a problem. There are many parts which are supposedly designed for work boats, in which it's obvious that the person who designed it thought aluminum that's non-corrosive brass too! I'll just stick those together. And they make a little pretty battery that will turn into flaky crud over the course of a year or two.

I was going to post exactly this. "We" flooded a whole building once because of an aluminum heat exchanger connected to copper piping. Don't put two different metals together and put it in contact with water

@@lorenkaake2515 If you loctite instead of weld, I wonder if electrolysis is prevented...

@@TheRainHarvester Not for closed water systems.

@@TheRainHarvester it's not so much the metal being in contact, it's when you get an electrolytic solution (i.e. water that's anything less than perfectly pure) that's in contact with both of them.

I generally avoid fine threads unless it is critical to the design. They are often messed up by machinists, maintenance often doesn’t have replacements on hand and they are cross threaded far too often. In most circumstances course threads are fine.

I learned this from soda bottles. It has been incredibly helpful in that I have never crossed any threads. Although I have had to explain a few too many times that I do actually understand "righty-tighty lefty-loosey".

I've always done since a youngin'. Learned from disassembling plastic toys held together by self tapping screws

It pisses me off when people see me doing this and think I'm just turning it the wrong way because this is the superior way to start any threaded object.

As a designer, if you're going to be using fine threads and you have the space to do so, put a bit of unthreaded straight hole above the thread to guide the fastener into place. Saves so much pain in getting fine threads started.

"While a 6" pipe might fit through a 6.5" hole, a 6" pipe with flange connections will not. " I bet that was fun to learn!

I was 40 years in the car business as a mechanic then manager. I was and am shocked that engineers don't spend more time with people in the trades. There were electronic ways to report issues but trying to speak with the engineer was like pulling teeth. However, when we did get a call from a concerned engineer the result was always mutually beneficial. Not to mention the lift it gives the tech that someone actually cares about our valuable input. Engineers, please listen to your techs out there. We are on your side and want to help.

@@mixer6166 Were you at a franchised dealer? I worked in powersports for a while, and our manufacturer was pretty good about dealer relations. We found an issue at our shop where a fuse would vibrate out and start arcing in one of the lighting accessories. Told them about it and shortly afterwards there was a service bulletin and a replacement kit for it. We never spoke to an engineer, probably because they speak Japanese anyway lol, but the service reps at corporate knew the machines pretty well. Apparently word got up to the right place. I think as long as you have good chains of communication that's the most important thing, especially when there's one engineer and a million dealers.

One of the most satisfying parts of my work in yacht-building is getting to speak directly with the guys who make the stuff I design. I really appreciate input which results in a smoother process and a better end product, and I hate finding out that they have struggled with something I could easily have designed differently if I'd known about the issue.

Hmmm... 6" sch40 pipe is 6.625" OD, so flanges or not, you need to design your piping system so you can get a good running start when trying to stuff it thru a 6.5" hole. I'm just being a smart a**. Your point is completely valid.

Cable management is always an afterthought and it kills me to see it. Great comments on basic functions and reduce cosmetic features.

Another thing, as he kind of pointed to in the video, but it bears repeating: break down the "base function" into smaller, simpler pieces of base functions. The "base function" of a lawn mower could be described as "cut the grass" but that isn't really helpful. The more breaking down you do, the more freedom you can give yourself in designing creative solutions.

Some explicit examples of this “breaking down” would be helpful. Someone gave an example of “cutting grass” as a an example of how not to do it. Can you now take that same example and give the correct way to break down “cutting grass”? Thanks.

Along with having to design cable management I found similar areas touching on electrical engineering such as panel layout and connector selection that I found my colleagues in that discipline seemed to not do well.

Keeping the "pretty" out of CAD until the last minute also helps when you almost inevitably have to scrap it and design something new. The time you didn't spend on those extra features can now go towards the redesign.

"Every time that they make something foolproof, someone else invents a better fool" - unknown

The actual quote from the real test pilot murphy. "If something can be done wrong, it will be."

There is a related statement, make something foolproof, and only a fool will use it. I don't agree, there is the KIS principle. There is a software engineering principle based on someone using it who understands the application but not necessarily the details of the internals, it is those people I tend to design for.

I have an escape room... let me tell you stories...

As a former turboprop mechanic, and later automotive, I want to second and stress the above comment. Not only the disassembly, but servicing also. If there is a fluid to be serviced is there a clear and simple way to catch the liquid during evacuation.

Totally agree!!! I have worked with engineers whose idea of "engineering" was playing video golf on their computer at work and chasing women around the shop!! And when it came time to "engineer something" they couldn't do simple math (addition or subtraction) couldn't understand or read wire schematics and blueprints, and didn't know the difference between a Phillips Head Screw and a 12 Millimeter Socket!! Trying to assemble something that calls out a 100 Ohm resistor and yet all I have left in the box are two inch long slotted pan head screws gets old after the first two kits I have to assemble when my engineer can't understand "the wrong parts are not the same and don't belong"! And some of these engineers today have no humility, and are pretty arrogant, when you have to do their job for them, because they don't care or understand that a 2.5 MM fine thread nut isn't the same as a 1/4 watt diode OR that a three inch wire harness really doesn't need 82 zip ties to hold it together!!!

My Kia Rio has a washer motor that needs the inner wheel arch to be removed to access. diabolical.

In my country, drafters need to do a 6 month internship as a machinist during their apprenticeship.

I've done a great deal of work over the years (now mostly retired) in a number of fields. It was a pleasure, for example, to see electronic organs develop as time went on and the "serviceability" of these get easier and easier as time went on. The exact opposite is true when it comes to automotive engineering. I ran a retail battery store for a few years. There was one vehicle where you had to drop a headlight (!) in order to be able to access the bolts that held in a strut that went across the top of the battery, bolts that were readily accessible in many other vehicles that had such a strut. My current vehicle is even worse. You open the hood and you can't even SEE the battery. I recently had to have one replaced, and asked at the dealership what the mechanic had to do to get at it. He had to take the front wheel off, and then remove a panel behind that! This is absurd, designing things that way...

... and every software engineer should do a stint in tech support.

I disagree, I prefer a "safety factor" of at least 2x of designed strength etc... My coworker retired from an old steel mill and he said they were still using rollers that were designed for 1/4th the load they were using them for today.... He said they were made in the 1920's and everything was oversized and heavy duty and built to last. In comparison, the newer parts are engineered to be barely strong enough to do the job and frequently fail and need replacing because the are disposable designs. The saying they don't make them like they used to is so true.

@@scrappydogfinance8434 depends on what you're making. Elevators typically have a safety factor of 10, buildings and walkways have a safety factor of 4-5, but airplanes have a safety factor of below 2, however that is changing with the advent of composite materials such as carbon fiber. Some designs are disposable and intended obsolescence is definitely a thing, but it would be a waste of money and resources to make a bridge with a factor of safety of 10-20x

Agreed on the tolerances. Getting designers to do tolerance stackup calculations and tradeoffs was always a struggle, no matter which discipline we're talking about.

Spend as much time on the shop floor as you do at your desk. Get the shop floor to look at how and why you design things the way you do. Saves so much hate and frustration on both sides.

So true. Tolerances can be the top driver of cost and delays. An arbitrarily chosen clearance or tolerance could result in many failures to assemble or 10x part cost. This is where an understanding of manufacturing capabilities and limitations (or consulting the experts) can make a difference.

or even better, use metric. because you need a 13mm drill to make a 13mm hole 😂

​@@flosch5444 I like metric too, but there's still value to calling out the drill sizes.Try using a 5mm drill for an M5 tapped hole and you'll see what I mean.

@@CoWolArc just use metric

​@@STORMY-lv9lr I use metric most of the time, but it still helps to call out extra details. For example, many drawings just say to tap M5 without telling you what drill to use. An M5 bolt is nominally 5mm, but the tap drill needs to be 4.2mm.

@@CoWolArc don't forget the other direction - clearance holes can vary in size too.

If you find a problem, instead of pointing it out, ask "how will this deal with this situation". Sometimes, they found a solution you hadn't thought of (you can add that to your quiver). If not, it is a gentler way to get your point across.

@@stevesedio1656 Yes, exactly! And when you do the extra little bit of work to ask the question instead of just saying "that's wrong," you keep your own skills sharper. Because you can't just rely on "what you've always done" or "what someone told you"--it forces you to understand and apply the reasons for doing things.

If we all did this with everything in life the world would be a much better place.

And be prepared for the extremely touchy recipients that take any questions about their work as a personal attack.

@@towdispatch1897 How touchy would they be if their design blew up in the field?

fit and function first, then form :)

Electrical components are often rectangular so I often require square holes in cabinets. Luckily it’s sheet metal so you can file the corners fairly easily if necessary. I usually put a note on the drawing with an allowable relief dia.

@@chrisreid8298 Wow. That was kind of dumb. Want a chance to start over?

@@DomManInT1 I haven’t had any machinists complain about undercutting the corners but if you have a better suggestion I’m happy to hear it. These are usually one off hoffman enclosures.

@@chrisreid8298 a lot of machinists are happy to take your money and make your complicated design. Most get paid by the hour. The relationship between engineers and machinists can get pretty tense. I’ve seen plenty of machinists make parts that were clearly wrong on the print, just so they could say "Well, that’s how you drew it."

@@rexmundi8154 Yup, when I was an intern at a metal working shop, I had to make about a 100 small sheet metal parts and noticed that the drawing had accounted for a bending radius in the wrong way, so the part would become to large. The experienced colleague agreed and told me to make them all to large. "They'll figure out it's wrong and probably ask you to make them again next week. It's not your fault, just make sure you did your job correctly."

This, thousand times over! I've lost track of the number of times a different perspective or fresh set of eyes has led to a far simpler or vastly improved design.

I agree, but a caveat: If you're designing something that you want to use, don't be too strict on the final assembly. Failing and going back to the drawing board repeatedly can be a real morale-killer. It's often better to proceed with a less-than-perfect version than to stop and get it perfect. Finishing that initial build can also help you find and solve a lot of problems along the way that would otherwise cause you to restart again and again as you found each one. This doesn't apply when designing for other people, though. If you plan to hand you design to someone else, it needs to be correct. OTOH, you can get there by building it yourself until you get it right, then handing off the final design.

@@Raytenecks I may not have been clear with the explanation. At each level of design/implementation, I don’t go backwards. After the drawing phase is done, I don’t go back to the drawing board when I am building unless it’s really bad. I try to catch the major mistakes early where it is easier to fix. My creations are typicality aimed at the final user and the one paying for it. Most of the time, the payer is the harder critic, unfortunately.

Yep- I agree 100% about only using the minimal effort to decide if an idea has legs...and by failure i hope you mean ' mentally diminish it's potential if possible' and move on with the next minimal effort aspect to fix the next problem.

Both great points.

"Steal from the best, invent the rest"

@@UnlikelyToRemember calm down, china

I'll counter Tip 1 in that reinventing the wheel gives you a massive appreciation of how the wheel works and how to fix it when it breaks. I fully agree that just buying a thing instead of designing it yourself is usually cheaper, but especially for hobbyists, going the DIY route can be very much worth it from the knowledge gained. But yeah, in a professional situation, just buy the pre-made thing.

I’m trying to decide on mechanical or electrical engineering major right now… do you work along side mechanical engineers being an EE? I enjoy electronics especially radio and sound, amplifiers, etc… but the designing products seems fun as well..

YES! Replacement assemblies for "you" are hard to obtain.

Learnt that the hard way.

give it a fricken rest with the PPE...

@@AtimatikArmy No, dont, you want your eyes, ears and fingers to work for more that 5 years

@@milandjuric8043 NO.... I want to lose them all.... OBVIOUSLY!

Maybe not. Maybe astronaut.

Probably because they realized how much it sucks after all the disappointments they experienced in their first week. Just because it's a fact doesn't mean it can't be changed. You should perhaps learn the difference between dissatisfaction and a lack of acceptance. Or perhaps you should recognize that your version of acceptance isn't universal. So long as you look down your nose at these people, they will look down their's at you. If there's one things that nearly universally true of engineers is that they love to be doormats for powerful people.

"i'll do my laundry when i have time."