4 ms·

What does pathfinder mean in the context of manufacturing?

madaxe_again 7y ago
A fuzzball of patches and “good ideas at the time”. It’s like the first iteration of an app that never sees the light of day, as you finish, sit back, go “ah, an abomination”, and rewrite the thing properly with what you learned from the prototype. I do this pretty much any time I’m doing something new - I have three revisions of a solar panel stand sat out on the lawn right now, each better than the last, as I needed to build the thing to see how it actually held up to forces as it’s easier and more accurate (ah, how do I fit a screwdriver in this gap to fasten this?) than doing an engineering simulation.
celticninja 7y ago
Essentially doing something for the first time, no one has built a steel structure of this size before, that will have to withstand the forces that this will be out through in normal operation.
specialist 7y ago
Tabu search thru a semi-dynamic design space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabu_search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabu_search
double0jimb0 7y ago
At the highest level, the conversation looks like: The design engineer: "We know on paper how the product needs to function in terms of strength, weight, durability, etc" The manufacturing engineer: "We've never made something like this before. I've got a couple ideas how we can bend/shape/form/machine/weld these materials into the shape, but I don't know how those bend/shape/form/machine/welding operations are going to affect the underlying physical properties of the material. I know on paper these operations should be OK, and we can inspect them as we go, but again we've never done them before, we most likely will overlook something or discovery something new, so let's try one of them and break it early before we get too far down a potentially bad path." The test engineer: "Well it worked up until X point then failed, here's the data for you design engineer and you manufacturing engineer, better try something else". Design engineer: "Shoot, what we thought we were manufacturing isn't actually what got manufactured. Hmmm, is it even possible to make the part we need? Or do we now need to redesign the part because it can't actually be made. Let's try another approach. And maybe it's smart to pursue a few of these in parallel to increase our overall chance of success" Those 3 roles can be the same person or separate organizations of hundreds/thousands of people. Requirements documents, manufacturing/quality reports, test reports, inspection reports are the language of this technical interchange.

A fuzzball of patches and “good ideas at the time”. It’s like the first iteration of an app that never sees the light of day, as you finish, sit back, go “ah, an abomination”, and rewrite the thing properly with what you learned from the prototype. I do this pretty much any time I’m doing something new - I have three revisions of a solar panel stand sat out on the lawn right now, each better than the last, as I needed to build the thing to see how it actually held up to forces as it’s easier and more accurate (ah, how do I fit a screwdriver in this gap to fasten this?) than doing an engineering simulation.

celticninja 7y ago

Essentially doing something for the first time, no one has built a steel structure of this size before, that will have to withstand the forces that this will be out through in normal operation.

specialist 7y ago

Tabu search thru a semi-dynamic design space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabu_search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabu_search

double0jimb0 7y ago

At the highest level, the conversation looks like: The design engineer: "We know on paper how the product needs to function in terms of strength, weight, durability, etc" The manufacturing engineer: "We've never made something like this before. I've got a couple ideas how we can bend/shape/form/machine/weld these materials into the shape, but I don't know how those bend/shape/form/machine/welding operations are going to affect the underlying physical properties of the material. I know on paper these operations should be OK, and we can inspect them as we go, but again we've never done them before, we most likely will overlook something or discovery something new, so let's try one of them and break it early before we get too far down a potentially bad path." The test engineer: "Well it worked up until X point then failed, here's the data for you design engineer and you manufacturing engineer, better try something else". Design engineer: "Shoot, what we thought we were manufacturing isn't actually what got manufactured. Hmmm, is it even possible to make the part we need? Or do we now need to redesign the part because it can't actually be made. Let's try another approach. And maybe it's smart to pursue a few of these in parallel to increase our overall chance of success" Those 3 roles can be the same person or separate organizations of hundreds/thousands of people. Requirements documents, manufacturing/quality reports, test reports, inspection reports are the language of this technical interchange.