^^^^

See? Told ya!

quote:

Originally posted by YellowJacket:
And people that fix or build things ought to try designing for awhile. Work within compressed budgets, compressed time constraints, bosses/clients who change their minds constantly, and overbearing and ever-changing government regulations. Get a design finished the right way and then have finance tell you to cut the cost by 1/3...

You are not wrong but there are two sides to every story.

I have no doubt whatever. I think it's best summed up by the old poem:

It’s not my job to drive the train,
The whistle I can’t blow.
It’s not my job to say how far
The train’s allowed to go.

It’s not my job to blow the horn,
Nor even clang the bell.
But let the damn thing jump the track
And see who catches hell.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
I posted this rant on a motorcycle board I hang out on.

One of the responders said "Remember, Bean Counters are the condoms on the penis of progress."

I may have that engraved on a brass plate...

I was told a joke, during a remodel of a store I managed,

I was told this after they figured out the width of the store was off by 5 feet, (building was not enlarged, but the engineers did not do the right math)

the joke (sorta) was

'during every project there comes a time to shoot the engineer and move forward'


the engineer that was on the project did not get it,

and when I explained it to him, was not happy,


they made up the extra 5 feet that was missing by eliminating a urinal in the mens room

As an engineering technician i have an intense loathing for most of the engineers at our plant.

I just spent a week going round and round with one of them over an upgrade to my manufacturing line. A new design for an end of arm tool for a pneumatic cylinder. The upgrade was jamming trays and causing product jams. She refused to accept that it was her design causing the issues despite all evidence we presented to support it.

She refused to do the paperwork to revert the configuration to the previous validated state. It took going to her boss and even then, he did not think we were right, he told her to go back to the original conf to prove us wong when the issues continued. We are back ti the original configuration now and running like a champ. I have not seen her out on the floor since.

We do have a few really good engineers and i have a lot of respect for them. They spend time out on the manufacturing floor around the equipment and look for input from the techs that run and maintain the lines. You can tell who they are because techs will volunteer to come in off shift to work on engineering projects for them.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I think sometimes this is purposeful. From what I understand replacing the headlight on a Cadillac CTX involves taking the bumper off and other assorted pieces such that the cost is several hundred dollars. In other situations you must buy the ASSEMBLY, the parts are not sold separately.

In a Lexus belonging to a friend the estimate was 2500 dollars to replace one 14 dollar light bulb. He cussed the dealer out and drove that Lexus to a Jeep dealer and traded it in on a Grand Cherokee.

There are some good engineers that can take what they learned in school and apply it to solve problems in the real world, the rest seem to create the problems or some how become the program managers.

Don’t get me started on college professors who went from undergrad straight through to PhD and have no real-world experience in the subject they teach. They’re the profs who have grad students spend two years working on the stupidest projects imaginable, with no real value to the field of study.

quote:

Originally posted by RespectTheAmish:
There are some good engineers that can take what they learned in school and apply it to solve problems in the real world, the rest seem to create the problems or some how become the program managers.

This!

Some of the best engineers i know have no engineering degree, just years of experience.

That being said, you wouldnt necesarrily want them performing load calculations on a structure

The absolute best mechanical engineer that I know of has a degree and grew up working on cars, his dad is a mechanic.

He is always thinking a few steps ahead of the rest of the engineers on his team.

I'm still looking for the asshole who put the starter on my Nissan Titan between the V of the cylinders and under the fuel injection and intake manifold.

Among other things, you have to drain the cooling system to change it.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I'd like to take whoever designed the headlights for the 2006-2015 Honda Civic and string them up by their testicles.

To change out a simple headlight bulb, you have to literally remove major components in the engine compartment to even think about getting your hand near the headlight.

And I was thinking about buying a set of headlights for my sons 2010 Civic. I guess I will polish them again in the summer. Maybe he will buy a new car by next summer. My younger son and daughter both have Hyundai's. On the 2013, there are small opening to change the oil and filter. On the 2015 Hyundai I have to take out 16 screws to drop an engine cover to change the oil.

I have been twisting wrenches all of my life, on cars and now industrial machinery and can tell you most all of it was created by an engineer that has never had to work on it. The equipment I work on now, mostly all Italian made has just some incredibly stupid designs.

Know how to tell a good engineer? When introduced to him/her, shake hands with him/her. If they have grease, splinters or at least leather-like skin, he's done something and more often than not will pay attention when you make a suggestion.
I had it told to me that at one time (probably in the '30s-40's) engineering students had to build something including pouring and machining their own castings to complete their course of study and obtain that degree.
How we got to where we are today...I don't know.

As long as we are bashing on engineers, I'll add that I work with several engineers (BS, MS and PhD) that are trained in India and are very book smart.

However, once on site - holy hellfire! You're going to get us killed or kicked off the lease. Don't climb up on a operating oil well (pump jack) to take a photo of motor nameplate. You see those 2500# counter weights come swinging around? They'll know you out or knock your head off.

Guess I’ll go ahead and drop my 2 cents in even though they echo both sides so to speak.

I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and now work as a design engineer for big box retail and for the most part the things I would normally chalk up to “stupid engineer” and things done under the direction of the client or owner and all you can do is what that ask and watch along side them as it fails and then have another meeting to talk about how we can improve moving forward. There are still dumb engineer stuff that come up but not being product design they are not as prevelant.

Previously working as an engineering consultant we didn’t get a job until it had been messed up by 3-4 other engineers, our first order of business was to check out the location/plans and then get a conversation in with the maintainence guys or contractors. Almost always came away with great information that really help us on the engineering side. Only down side is our rates where considerably more since we spent so much time on site and didn’t just throw it on some plans and move on. That niche market ended up costing me employment when things got slow.

In my case though even with the engineering degree I spent the first 28 years of my life around everything from residential construction up the family industrial refrigeration company doing both construction and maintenance/service work. I am an oddity in the engineering field in general, but more so with people my age (33) and younger. That said there are tons of engineers out there with way more technical knowledge and book smarts, I all but hated college and skirted though with a 2.26 gpa which kept me from getting an engineering job for almost 5 years after graduating.

This is why Leo Fender, founder of Fender guitars was a genius. He spent years dealing with other peoples problems before he started his own company.

His manufacturing creed was:

If its easy to service, its easy to build.

quote:

Originally posted by Russ59:
As long as we are bashing on engineers, I'll add that I work with several engineers (BS, MS and PhD) that are trained in India and are very book smart.

However, once on site - holy hellfire! You're going to get us killed or kicked off the lease. Don't climb up on a operating oil well (pump jack) to take a photo of motor nameplate. You see those 2500# counter weights come swinging around? They'll know you out or knock your head off.

I'm a mechanical engineer, and I'll echo those sentiments. Most of the foreign engineers I work with have their specific difficulties, but for some reason the Indian ones seem to be the most obstinate in insisting on doing the obviously wrong or dangerous move.

I think part of it has to do with the attitude toward safety that seems prevalent in their country. I was working on a project several years back when I was with a company that made robotic work cells for metal finishing (cutting, grinding, buffing, etc). The customer, an Indian company buying a system for their dirt-floor not-fully-enclosed warehouse, insisted at every opportunity to put workers in harms way for no conceivable reason. The price for the unit never changed, so it's not like removing safety stops and guarding made it cheaper for them, but the original design was already a few steps below what we'd supply to a N.American/Euro customer and they'd ask for things like door sensors not be used so the robot areas could be accessed during operation, guarding be removed from the polishing and buffing heads, robot motion speeds be increased to unsafe levels, base mounts to be done with inadequate lagging, etc. Basically they wanted robots running within inches of their workers who would manually be monitoring the buff wheels and adding compound as needed (despite the head having an auto feed on the compound), monitoring and adjusting belt tension on the grinders (which has auto-tensioners), and all kinds of crazy stuff. We eventually had to just build it to our minimum safety levels and tell them to remove the guards themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by UpTheIrons:
If its easy to service, its easy to build.

Back to the idea of spending time with the maintenance guys:

The first control panel I put together, I was pretty proud of. I took a bunch of materials home over the weekend, and built it on my kitchen table. It worked! I was happy with it, and the system it would be built into was going to save my (former) employer a bunch of money. I took it in with me on Monday morning, and went directly to my friend in maintenance. "Check it out!"

He tinkered with it for a minute, determined that it worked as expected, and opened the door on the control box. Very dryly he said, "You expect me to be able to work on this?" From where I sat over the weekend, it was all there. It worked, it was in the box, and all was well. But from his standpoint, my wiring was messy, the box contents were unorganized, and it was going to be hard to work on if it failed.

So we took it apart and rewired it that day. It worked exactly as it had on my kitchen table, but it was far neater inside and would have been much easier to work on or modify if we had needed to. That lesson has stuck with me for over 20 years now. He and I still work together (different employer now, thankfully), and I still take him my panels when I get them [nearly] ready for production.

Furthering that, and back to Mr. Fender's statement: some years later I asked one of the other maintenance techs to help me install a transfer switch for my generator. (I don't play in the residential voltage!) He finished it up and gave it a quick once over, then blurted out: "If it looks good, it works good." Makes sense to me!

Well, if it's harder to service, you can charge more for service.

It's about dollars and sense, not ease of DITY.

Right on Paul.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
I'd like to take whoever designed the headlights for the 2006-2015 Honda Civic and string them up by their testicles.

To change out a simple headlight bulb, you have to literally remove major components in the engine compartment to even think about getting your hand near the headlight.

About the same on Subaru Outback I think 2010-2014 version. Crazy.

A while back, Microsoft released a bulletin stating one of the objectives of their soon to be released (at the time) operating system was to remove the end user from the diagnostic process.

One result of this is that it removed this end user from the Microsoft process.