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That might be a start, but higher education only scratches the surface of on-the-job skills in engineering. You learn the basic tools, the way of thinking and t

by ascar 6y ago

That might be a start, but higher education only scratches the surface of on-the-job skills in engineering. You learn the basic tools, the way of thinking and the skill of acquiring additional knowledge. You get near to zero experience on real engineering problems as encountered in business. So in the good case this degree might broaden your horizon and teaches you that you don't know enough and in the bad case it might make you overconfident in even more areas while having even less knowledge than from a more focused degree.

dhosek 6y ago
The capstone of the engineering major is the engineering clinic project which has students working on “real engineering problems as encountered in business”. Companies pay the college to have teams of senior engineering majors solve a problem they face. Two of the sexier projects were Disneyland hired HMC to come up with an anti-collision system for autopia and West Dorm had a clinic team refurbish a beloved vintage pinball machine.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  My university had a student club doing that and it's probably my fondest memory of engineering. It was so inspiring and almost addicting to work on projects that actual people would use or have their lives improved by. And you got to have a hand in writing firmware, machining parts/enclosures, meeting the customer (mostly doctors, which was super cool), and researching the market fit for if it were a real project. It was so much fun. I really wish my post-college engineering experience could be anything like that. I miss making useful things.
  - dhosek 6y ago
    My wife, after she finished her MS in Software Engineering, ended up in a job where one of her first tasks was writing DOS .BAT files. On the other hand, her first asp.net page was demonstrated by Steve Ballmer at CES, so she did advance in the world.
lmilcin 6y ago
That's right. So I see a lot of mechatronics students that actually, instead of trying to develop all their skills, settle in either electronics or software development. Students should understand that what they learn at uni is as far from real world product development as possible. Uni does not have incompetent coworkers, unreasonable, conflicting or entirely missing requirements, scaling issues, vendors trying to screw you, procurement processes trying their best to prevent you from doing anything, faulty materials, etc. Knowing a bunch of mechanic formulas or software development patterns does not an engineer make.
- Animats 6y ago
  Uni does not have incompetent coworkers, unreasonable, conflicting or entirely missing requirements, scaling issues, vendors trying to screw you, procurement processes trying their best to prevent you from doing anything, faulty materials, etc. MIT students have complained, after graduation, of finding companies that worked like soap operas.
  - CarbyAu 6y ago
    I suspect it is the same everywhere. At Uni you are taught many things including "things NOT to do"; some seeming quite obvious. I thought: "Well, I shouldn't encounter those "things NOT to do" in the Real World TM, because professionals in the workplace have had 10 years to learn these lessons." Ah, the naivety of youth... Professionals are just people who convince someone to pay them for what they do. What they do doesn't have to include competence.
- Animats 6y ago
  Now, here's a good project for someone into mechatronics. There are many videos of machines for making N95 masks on Youtube. Watch them, and try to design a better one. Things to note: - They're all running at a rather leisurely pace, about 1 mask per second. That's very slow for a simple low-cost product. Compare textile machinery, progressive stamping presses, bottle making machines, and printing equipment. That's probably because demand for these things wasn't high until recently, and nobody designed a high-speed machine. - The bottleneck seems to be attaching the elastic loops. The rest of the process is all roll to roll and could easily be 3x as fast. Is there some better way to do that? - Can you get wider rolls of the source materials and build machines that make more masks at a time? - At the output end, most machines just dump the finished masks into a bin. That loses order and count. They then need a separate packaging operation. They come out of the machine in a consistent position and orientation, which can be exploited. A better machine would put 10 or 20 masks put into a printed poly bag and heat-seal the bag. Then it would drop the bag into a waiting cardboard carton. When the carton is full, switch to a new carton. The filled carton gets a shipping label and rolls down a roller conveyor headed for shipping. Compare [1], an N95 mask making machine, and [2], a paper cup making machine. The paper cup machine is doing a tougher job at 5x the speed. It has a flying paster, like a big printing press, so you can change rolls without a shutdown. The cups are shot out through a pneumatic tube to the cup stacking and packaging machine. That's why paper cups are so cheap. [1] https://youtu.be/SdCBKB4DhdA https://youtu.be/SdCBKB4DhdA [2] https://youtu.be/x3Vx5y0Yg3Q https://youtu.be/x3Vx5y0Yg3Q

by ascar 6y ago

dhosek 6y ago

The capstone of the engineering major is the engineering clinic project which has students working on “real engineering problems as encountered in business”. Companies pay the college to have teams of senior engineering majors solve a problem they face. Two of the sexier projects were Disneyland hired HMC to come up with an anti-collision system for autopia and West Dorm had a clinic team refurbish a beloved vintage pinball machine.

PascLeRasc 6y ago
My university had a student club doing that and it's probably my fondest memory of engineering. It was so inspiring and almost addicting to work on projects that actual people would use or have their lives improved by. And you got to have a hand in writing firmware, machining parts/enclosures, meeting the customer (mostly doctors, which was super cool), and researching the market fit for if it were a real project. It was so much fun. I really wish my post-college engineering experience could be anything like that. I miss making useful things.
- dhosek 6y ago
  My wife, after she finished her MS in Software Engineering, ended up in a job where one of her first tasks was writing DOS .BAT files. On the other hand, her first asp.net page was demonstrated by Steve Ballmer at CES, so she did advance in the world.

lmilcin 6y ago

That's right. So I see a lot of mechatronics students that actually, instead of trying to develop all their skills, settle in either electronics or software development. Students should understand that what they learn at uni is as far from real world product development as possible. Uni does not have incompetent coworkers, unreasonable, conflicting or entirely missing requirements, scaling issues, vendors trying to screw you, procurement processes trying their best to prevent you from doing anything, faulty materials, etc. Knowing a bunch of mechanic formulas or software development patterns does not an engineer make.

Animats 6y ago
Uni does not have incompetent coworkers, unreasonable, conflicting or entirely missing requirements, scaling issues, vendors trying to screw you, procurement processes trying their best to prevent you from doing anything, faulty materials, etc. MIT students have complained, after graduation, of finding companies that worked like soap operas.
- CarbyAu 6y ago
  I suspect it is the same everywhere. At Uni you are taught many things including "things NOT to do"; some seeming quite obvious. I thought: "Well, I shouldn't encounter those "things NOT to do" in the Real World TM, because professionals in the workplace have had 10 years to learn these lessons." Ah, the naivety of youth... Professionals are just people who convince someone to pay them for what they do. What they do doesn't have to include competence.
Animats 6y ago
Now, here's a good project for someone into mechatronics. There are many videos of machines for making N95 masks on Youtube. Watch them, and try to design a better one. Things to note: - They're all running at a rather leisurely pace, about 1 mask per second. That's very slow for a simple low-cost product. Compare textile machinery, progressive stamping presses, bottle making machines, and printing equipment. That's probably because demand for these things wasn't high until recently, and nobody designed a high-speed machine. - The bottleneck seems to be attaching the elastic loops. The rest of the process is all roll to roll and could easily be 3x as fast. Is there some better way to do that? - Can you get wider rolls of the source materials and build machines that make more masks at a time? - At the output end, most machines just dump the finished masks into a bin. That loses order and count. They then need a separate packaging operation. They come out of the machine in a consistent position and orientation, which can be exploited. A better machine would put 10 or 20 masks put into a printed poly bag and heat-seal the bag. Then it would drop the bag into a waiting cardboard carton. When the carton is full, switch to a new carton. The filled carton gets a shipping label and rolls down a roller conveyor headed for shipping. Compare [1], an N95 mask making machine, and [2], a paper cup making machine. The paper cup machine is doing a tougher job at 5x the speed. It has a flying paster, like a big printing press, so you can change rolls without a shutdown. The cups are shot out through a pneumatic tube to the cup stacking and packaging machine. That's why paper cups are so cheap. [1] https://youtu.be/SdCBKB4DhdA https://youtu.be/SdCBKB4DhdA [2] https://youtu.be/x3Vx5y0Yg3Q https://youtu.be/x3Vx5y0Yg3Q