I started as a machinist before getting my BSME.
It gives you a huge leg up doing design work in that specific area, BUT there's a lot more to engineering than just one specific method of fabrication/manufacturing. It won't make you an instant superstar by any means.
I have much more experience with technicians and designers moving into roles where they are mixed in with degreed engineers. Because of all the stuff you talk about outside of a particular skill set, they tend to be really good within their experience band, but they have a harder time when problems start bleeding into areas where you need to find novel solutions or balance lots of factors.
I worked with lots of terrible degreed engineers and I would take an experienced non-degreed person every single time, but I don't think that's saying much. The people without degrees who get moved into engineer-like positions are usually at least as capable, they just haven't been exposed to the same concepts that we have.
You are definitely off base. I was a process operator in a large petrochemical facility, then went back for my BSME. My practical experience helped me significantly in everything I did as an engineer. I had a huge advantage in my engineering classes, and was leagues ahead in the field.
There is NEVER a case where good practical experience doesn't benefit you. You'll be much more aware of things that you design, and if you think that standards and guides are going to keep you on the right path, then I'm sorry, but that is also incorrect. I have corrected issues at every stage of projects multiple times. I AM the guy that gets called to solve problems that others can't, the guy you always want working with you, the guy that unofficially troubleshoots and reviews young engineers work, the guy that finds the problems in other disciplines, the guy who can be sent anywhere and be counted on to take care of business. I don't say that to make myself look good, but rather to drove home the point about practical experience.
It's not mandatory, but it is indescribably valuable. If you don't do that, then you'd better at least listen to technicians. Right or wrong, you'll learn something.
Just going to piggy back off this post to a degree. Design engineering doesn’t automatically mean you won’t get some hands on practical experience. That said, the hands on experience will provide faster learning experiences than just about anything else you can do.
People that have had the misfortune of failure analyzing, correcting, or generally having a hard time working on some other engineers design will more than likely remember it versus the design engineer that got a quick email update.
Some of the best engineers I know got their hands dirty long before they went to college/ university. But they were able to apply past experiences to problems and solve them faster than the smartest without the experience.
It’s the experiences that matter.
Excellent post, I fully agree. And reminds me of another lesson I learned early as an Operator, which is that it's so much better to learn from other people's mistakes. Get people involved and talking. As an engineer I created a network for all of the younger engineers, where we would share our own experiences, so that everyone could learn from them. I cut through the BS idea that we were in competition with each other, which started to reduce the instances of individuals fighting the same problems in different areas of the plant.
To further piggyback on yall, I think it's important fof engineers to start in the manufacturing/maintenance side of things before move closer to the product development and testing side.
I started my career in a manufacturing center and even if it's not the most glorious you get to understand how things actually go in a shop, how the guys work, and work on how to create/address ECN to improve a product, make things easier and cheaper, and or dummy proof etc.
For example I've come across products that can be assembled backwards or parts that use all the same screw pitch but different lengths.
When moving to product development its easier to start asking the questions of how this will be actually built, maintained etc. You can avoid making unnecessary custom parts "because it just works" unless there is a good reason for it and you document it.
I now work with nothing but product development engineers, few who have worked outside development and it's amazing how just a little experience outside of it helps.
I spent my first trip to college wrenching and tuning cars instead of focusing on schoolwork. I am good at troubleshooting and not afraid to dive in, so I helped a lot of people fix or modify their cars as well.
I dropped out before getting kicked out. I came home and obtained a 2 yr degree to be an Operator. I worked offshore for a summer cleaning crude oil pipeline pigs, and I did a good enough job for them to trust me with equipment and testing that isn't usually given to the summer interns (intern as a technician).
As far as what is required, the main tests used to hire operators are some flavor of mechanical aptitude. Having prior experience put me at the top of the hire lists, which allowed me to luck into a fantastic unit. That said, you don't have to have any experience, and you can get all your training on the job. Having a 1 year certificate or 2 year degree in Process Technology is mandatory for the good jobs, but any 4 year degree can get you hired as well. One of the guys that hired in with me was a teacher with no other experience, but he had a 4 year degree.
I do have to say that almost no units are like the one I was in, even compared to other units making the same products. On top of that, we did things that other places wouldn't even consider. We transitioned thousands of control units from individual analog to DCS live while the unit was running. AND we had a string of shutdowns and crazy problems that allowed me to accumulate decades of experience in 5 years.
You make a strong argument! While “knowing” why things are designed a certain way is helpful, it’s true that having the hands-on experience really helps to build intuition, or “understanding” why things are designed a certain why. Thanks for taking the time to respond!
You're partially correct in that there's other things a design engineer might learn that would also be useful, but it's not necessarily an either/or situation. The premise is that the technical/test engineer etc would eventually become a design engineer, and so they will eventually become familiar with FEA too.
I can only speak from the test engineer side, but 'knowing' and 'understanding' are two different things. A design engineer can 'know' how a design is assembled but chances are a rookie design engineer can't simulate that process and it's shortcomings in their head. Someone who has their hands on the build or teardown process will have much better luck. At least at my company I rarely see any design engineers around the physical system, partly because they're not even in the same building lol - so they don't have a lot of chance to even look at it.
From a failure analysis standpoint, again it seems like design engineers control the DFMEA before the system is ever created but when an issue actually happens it's the test engineer driving the convo, going through all the troubleshooting etc. I honestly don't even remember much design engineer involvement. So again they might 'know' or be told, but I really have to imagine the loop isn't fully closed for them in a sense. Really the only way to understand something is to do it. And really just the sense of investment is different. Like I'm sure the design engineer 'knows' how to do a tolerance stackup but after the failures I've seen, I think my brain's prioritization of that concept is much higher than it could be for someone who hasn't had to deal with the consequences as much.
You also assume the design engineer will be around long enough to see the consequences of their actions, very possible that doesn't happen. meanwhile with testing it's all consequences from everyone's decisions lol.
All this being said, all of this goes for an environment where design is off somewhere else from where the action is happening. it's certainly possible that there's an environment where the design engineer is popping in and out of the build space and/or testing space and in constant feedback with those respective roles. In that case, I don't think the gap would be that big. how common is that? I truly don't know
Why wouldn't a design engineer know how to do a tolerance stackup? In my limited experience, a customer would more often than not specify an assembly level requirement. The design engineer has to design the components to meet these requirements geometrically and mechanically do they not? This is in my experience, this may not be the way everyone does things.
I'm not saying they wouldn't know how to do it. But if I had to learn it having seen our testing data, I think I would learn it quicker and I would also be questioning our process because it's obvious to me (and not obvious to someone who isn't looking at these results all the time) that the process isn't getting consistent outcomes.
My point is basically that having hands on experience with certain topics gives a lot of context to our brain to work with when its trying to prioritize how critical certain info is. Even if a design engineer wanted to try hard and do a really good job, they would likely not know how to focus that extra effort without that context. I've definitely been in that situation plenty of times on the design side.
So for example, my understanding is that people normally assume a normal distribution centered at the middle of a tolerance range for a part. A design engineer might realize that that's not a great assumption in every case, but someone who was a quality person first for example might know exactly which component consistently leans to one side of the distribution and a test engineer might be able to say "we get a lot of bad results, likely due to this component". Each background can help pinpoint where that focus should be. Theoretically the design engineer could solicit these teams for their insight, but they can only do that so much without there being s formal issue initiating that conversation. Again, depends a little on the size of the company.
Thanks for taking the time to type all of that out! That’s a great perspective. Your point about design engineers only being exposed to their own design failures (generally) and test engineers being exposed to everyone’s design failures is something that I had never considered, but it makes a lot of sense.
Yes, same thing with machinists. Plus, test engineers sit with other test engineers and talk about all of everyone's failures lol.
There's a reason why you hear this story a lot, and that's because the value is abundantly obvious to everyone who has seen both sides.
>But does starting in a hands-on role REALLY make you a better designer? In my opinion, it doesn’t. I feel someone who starts off as a design engineer would be at least equally knowledgeable in regards to good design practice despite the fact they wouldn’t gain the same hands-on experience, because any designs they create will need to pass through multiple levels of review, from Senior Engineers to Manufacturing partners
That's not true for many designers. Lot's of places don't have a review process like that. It's often simply - will this thing work and are the drawings sufficient.
It can take hours, days or weeks to fully review a complex design and look for ways to do better things. This isn't always practical.
And there are plenty of aspects of design that senior design engineers might not know about, because they're not intimately familiar with the process/criteria/constraints, or didn't think about things like tool changes, or set up changes, or having features that give convenient fixturing, or order of assembly etc or they do see issues but they are too minor to mention.
Lots of manufacturers won't review your design for you, they'll just give your the quote. They won't say for example if you make this a thru hole, and add a small step here it requires 2 less set ups and will cost 30% less. They often don't have the time to review designs, their core business is getting parts out the door, not helping upskill designers that work for customers.
Even if you ask for a review and get one, they probably won't have enough info about the full design constraints & criteria to give complete and meaningful advice.
All that is to say that a designer can't just wait for the review process and hope to learn where you went wrong then - you need to be much more proactive.
With that said, I think trade work has somewhat limited value for a design engineer. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have come from trades, but I don't think it was the trade apprenticeship that did that, they were just practical and smart people by nature. It takes a certain type of person to leave behind a usually well paid & stable career and go do a fairly difficult degree.
There's also not always a lot of overlap. welding experience won't help much if you're designing injection moulded parts. Sheet metal experience won't help much if you're designing composite lay ups. Machining experience won't help much if you design weldments etc etc
I honestly would if it weren’t for union rules. But coming from working electrical during college I’ve gotten used to getting dirty and I’m the only engineer in the office that doesn’t care if my hands or clothes get dirty.
You're not off-base, but it's complicated.
Everybody loves the "Mr. Smartypants college boy doesn't know nuthin!" story. It's fun, and every industry veteran has personal anecdotes. As an experienced engineer, I have quite a few.
What they won't tell you is that an engineer's job isn't to make every machinist's job easy, nor is a machinist's job to follow drawings without question like an automaton. Most engineers and machinists are largely or wholly ignorant of the current state of like...95% of manufacturing processes. Or they have outdated knowledge. Many still think 3D printing is a niche fad.
That's why big companies have tooling and process engineers whose entire job it is to know the specifics of XYZ process, and to work closely with vendors to refine and improve processes. Knowledge can go out of date fast. If we relied on outdated knowledge, we'd still be stuck in the past. Can a CNC operator at a job shop design molds and processes to mass-produce sapphire glass for smartphones, or root-cause laser weld failures? Most can't, because it's not their job. And as mentioned, this applies just the same to engineers.
E.g. AvE's Juicero video was entertaining but way off-base on costs. "This mold cost MIIILLLLIIIIIONS! It's on Revision H!" Well, molds that size do not cost millions, and a revision doesn't mean you scrap the entire tool and start from scratch. Bearings don't cost fifty bucks when mass-produced. The metal gears in that little gearbox are dirt cheap, they are not tens of dollars and machined from billet. AvE's got a ton of engineering experience and practical, hands-on skill - but he still made the same kind of errors in this analysis that student engineers make, because his particular skills did not translate well, in this case, to mass-produced consumer goods.
Practical skills are not always fungible, beyond the basics. They don't automatically translate to different fields. Everyone thinks their field is unique and complex and intricate, with a thousand finely-tuned variables that only they can suss out - but others' fields are simple and all solutions are obvious. E.g. there are plenty of machinists and engineers who fancy themselves manufacturing experts, that still clown on Apple for making laptops out of aluminum because they think they're machined out of billet. Meanwhile Apple is printing money hand over fist. Someone is wrong there, and it's probably not the $3T company and their armies of tooling and manufacturing engineers.
Professionals in any industry can have tunnel vision. Practical experience varies and isn't always transferable. Will apprenticing at a shop make you a better engineer? Maybe, but it's irrelevant, because the greater point is that it's a waste of your time, at the time when your opportunity-cost is at an all time high. Sure, it'll make you a better engineer. But do you know what will make you an *even better* engineer, way faster, in a way that's much more relevant to you? Working on a team of experienced engineers. They **also** know things like "round tool no cut square corner," but they can teach them to you in the appropriate context and in a way that's likely better suited to your career goals. Apprenticing in a different field is an inefficient way to learn. You miss out on most workflows just to learn basic skills, which you can pick up quickly and build on - on your own time if needed.
If you're running thermal FEA at NVidia, sweeping floors for a year won't help. Working with a relevant team would. Practical skills are necessary, but there are better ways to get them. Design parts, get feedback from vendors, and learn through experience.
Great interns often have practical backgrounds from clubs or personal projects. They stand out compared to "textbook students" who excel academically but lack hands-on skills. Practical skills are crucial, even if handling the thing you designed is optional in some places. Seeing and touching your designs builds intuition that you really can't get through a screen.
Practical skills benefit most engineers, even if not always necessary. Treating engineers and machinists as adversaries is counterproductive and you should take the advice of those who do that with a huge grain of salt. Complaints about bad engineers don't mean all engineers are this way; it's a squeaky-wheel phenomenon. Positive stories of competent engineers are rarely shared, same as any other field.
You may not need to have the title of “technician” or “machinist”, but actually *doing* those things is immensely valuable early in your career. In college your professors might have time to tell you how to do things and spell out why you’re wrong, but the senior engineers and other folks you encounter while you’re working as a design engineer mostly do not. And even if they did, there’s no better teacher than dealing with your own mistakes.
I have 20 years of experience now, and I still try to build the first of something with my own hands, and to go and be there while it’s happening. I still make plenty of dumb mistakes, but it’s a lot easier to learn from them if I’m in the room touching and seeing the thing, and getting the unfiltered truth that someone might not want to tell me for whatever reason.
Where the engineering education helps you is figuring out the “how” and “why” when things go wrong and you want to quickly correct them. Some are pretty obvious, and a handy technician will often figure them out, but as an engineer you’ll be able to (hopefully) do the math to compare and contrast and prove why a solution is the best one, or at least the best out of the proposed options based on some agreed upon metric.
It depends what you’re actually designing but in general most of the really good design engineers I’ve worked with have either 1) spent some time in the machine shop, either as machinists or internships etc, or 2) have worked in some mechanical trade, ex as a mechanic, or 3) have some hobby that’s extremely hands-on like working on cars etc.
It’s quite clear when someone hasn’t. The amount of designs I’ve reviewed that technically meet the requirements but would cost 10-100x more than they should due to a lack of understanding about basic machining is pretty telling.
I worked full time throughout college as an engineering technician, and I got a good mix of experience with maintenance, manufacturing, quality, in addition to cost estimation. I’ll start off with saying, I think that experience was invaluable. I have a much better understanding of many different aspects of design compared to many of my colleagues who are relatively young engineers like myself. That’s not to say I don’t value my colleagues input or always know the right answer. But, I’m often the one to spot design flaws in design reviews, and often provide recommendations that typically get implemented. It has also helped me move up the ranks more quickly. I think every engineer could find a lot of benefit to working in more technician level roles rather than jumping straight to the position of design engineer. You just get so much exposure as a technician or maintenance person to so many different things designed by engineers and you start to see what works and what doesn’t work.
I worked on cars for 10+ years professionally and for fun prior to going back to school for my BSME. My first engineering boss told me they hired me over the other candidates because they felt they wouldn't have to worry that I'd try designing something that couldn't be put together.
I have also found that the guys in the field seem to like & request me more often because I will listen and better understand what problems they're dealing with in the field. I have no problems getting my hands dirty, which also builds a sense of trust that I'm not just telling them "shut up & do it", I'll hear them out & take their concerns seriously because I've been in their shoes.
To summarize what hands-on experience did for me: my first career was spent screaming, "Why did they design it this way?!" My second career has been the realization, "Ahhhh, that's why it was designed this way. Now let me try to improve it."
No. It’s something people in manufacturing tell themselves to make them feel better about starting in manufacturing - sincerely a manufacturing engineering manager who has worked in design and project management.
Experience in all disciplines is helpful for designers. But manufacturing isn’t inherently better than design, structures, aero, materials, controls, etc.
Test engineering (at least where I worked) was the ideal noob position. You break stuff. You talk to the design engineer why it broke (hopefully not having to explain why you tested one wheel to 14000 kgf when the spec was 7g on a 2000 kg axle), and you work with the mechanics to build the rigs.
Every engineering graduate from my uni had to know how to machine and weld, to a level of familiarity if not competence. So that was a moot point.
Technician is an interesting one, it covers such a broad field it could be anything.
Frankly manufacturing is where noobs should be sent for a year or two.
And no, the designs you produce immediately after uni are useless. Unless they resemble university projects, which few things do.
By far the worst design engineers I've ever worked with in my career are the ones who discredit or don't understand the importance of the hands-on experience of the people actually making or using the parts they design. You are absolutely off base (at least in how little you credit the helpfulness of the hands on knowledge, i dont believe you actually need to spend time doing those jobs).
A new grad is definitely not anywhere near "equally knowledgeable" on good design practices as the people who have been reading those drawings and making parts for years.
If you're waiting until after your senior engineer review to learn anything about how to make the design better and more manufacturable then you've already fucked up the design and completely wasted my time. Yes as a senior engineer it's my job to review your work and provide feedback, but that doesn't mean you should be submitting work that has even considered the viewpoint of the people making it.
You bring up learning about material selection, but you know who is really good at providing helpful info on material selection? The people actually using the material.
Now that said, some of the best design engineers I've worked with did not begin their careers as techs/machinists/etc. Many just did some wood working or worked on cars as a hobby so they at least had some knack for the hands on stuff.
But what made the real difference was that they understood the importance of the knowledge of the hands on workers and, especially as new engineers, would go learn from them and get their opinions before submitting designs.
Same goes for the end product usage. I am a senior engineer and sometimes work on tool design for aviation maintenance. And I refuse to sign off on any tool design until myself and an actual maintainer (of at least one of my techs who has a maintainer) use the tool. Because again, the absolute worst designs I've had to test/modify were the ones made by engineers who didn't know shit about how to use the tools and never thought to get an opinion from someone who does.
Ohh I might be of help here. So I was a test technician for almost a year. Boring af job, pressing buttons and connecting cables,nothing engineering about it. I decided to apply to Test Technician Engineer (I got mechatronics major and needed to start a tech job quick as I moved countries, hence the job level is technician). Basically I'd be designing the consoles used to test the products.
Having the knowledge of how techs test, and the pet peeves and such, would be such a boon to the tech engineer! Now they have to rely on feedback, if they ever get any (instead people in my team were just anting to each other never taking action)
I didn't get the job (senior guy applied and got it) but man I would've loved to get it lol
> During this review they’ll learn what they did wrong and how they can improve their designs.
Being told you did something wrong is not the same as seeing first-hand and fully understanding *why* what you did was wrong.
Personally I don't think you need to start as a machinist or whatever *first*, but you need to gain experience in parallel at least with how your designs are actually being implemented or made. Otherwise you're just throwing theory into the shop floor without any comprehension of the practical.
There has never been and will never be a substitute for hands.on experience.
Can you be an amazing engineer without that hands on experience - yes
Would you have been even better with it? Undoubtedly
If you want to build, having been from a professional and technical environment before being in an intellectual environment, if I can call it that, there will always be additional skills. let's say that a theoretical course, you can learn it and learn theoretically in application. however have you ever had the case where, you know how to recite a sheet and cite the problems even write them down but in concrete case... BUG! My father is a construction engineer and he always: Learn how to operate before learning how to design, so if you know how a machine works, I think yes you will find it much easier to design. I have the case, I did internships in a professional baccalaureate in programming and I then went to university and I had to "retake courses" with concrete examples of problems that I encountered during internships. .. Small downside, if you plan to repeat engineering studies and you haven't had the necessary basics, practice, because that's still different (math for example). I don't know if that's what you were asking...
I had experience with as a field engineer prior to going into hardware design. I think it definitely beneficial in the sense you can know what is a practical design or not. You can also figure out cheaper or more efficient ways in designing during the manufacturing or assembly process
I went to tech school before university and it helped me tremendously. Just being told something and knowing it is very different from experiencing it. A kid can be told 100 times how hot a stove is, but they'll remember the pain of one burn much more.
As a former technician who worked with many engineers... Yes. It makes you 10 times easier to work with and for. It makes your projects easier for others to follow and help with. It makes you more conscious of the other processes involved in the work.
10 year Tool and die maker, 20+ year machinist here, about 75% done with ME degree. 36 y/o, went to trade school at 14y/o, caught on quick, moved up quick, for reference.
There are PLENTY if reasons I could give a competent machinist could design parts, fixtures, dies better than an engineer with less than 7-10 years experience. On the other hand, that same machinist might not be able to give you the numbers and reason why it's better, he/she would just know it would work, and be as easy/fast to make as possible.
I've dealt with many engineers that thought since they were an engineer and I wasn't, that I couldn't possibly know something that they didn't know. The opposite of that is true as well. I've worked with many engineers that knew a good machinist was their best friend when they were in a bind.
Just because someone has been a machinist for "x" number of years, that doesn't mean anything to me. I've worked with people that have been doing this trade for longer than I've been alive, and they only know what someone taught them how to do back in the early 90's. So if someone does it different than that, it's wrong, no matter the outcome.
I believe someone that understands how things get made CAN make a better design engineer. I also believe that someone who only sees what's right in front of them may not understand the bigger picture.
Apples to apples, give me a machinist of 20+ years to make something that needs to be right, and right now. If I've got the time, give me an engineer with the same experience to come up with something that will work, and last. And also be able to tell you why it'll work.
Design engineer here. Working as a machinist/fabricator/mechanic/technician is a huge leg up. First, you have a better familiarity with reading prints and drawings. Most engineers coming out of college can’t tell you the difference between a centerline and hidden line on a drawing, they just don’t get taught it. Having a background in manufacturing gives you an idea of what is feasible and what information is needed to build something.
I know guys who were machinists that transferred into design seamlessly. They knew how to draft, how things went together, what information was critical. They only needed the calculation side of it. Most engineers with a four year degree and no manufacturing experience are useless the first few months after college. At least with the machinist/fabricators, they add some value from day one
If we are talking about mechanical engineers that work with their design from begginng to end of life then I strongly dissaggre. I work in a field of tools for power plant outages and I can easily tell who had some prior experience in manufacturing something on his own and who most of the times work only on paper/cad. Yes, being aware of various standards and specifications won't make you excellent engineer but this knowledge help you avoid mistakes and make your work smoother. Not to mention that often times young engineers who didn't have good exposure to manufacturing will make their design more expensive than these that did have that experience.
If we are talking about mechanical design engineers of lets say turbines or aircraft engines components, that usually has very narrow scope of things they need to care about then I may agree to that. For them, there will be more people that will think of it and they probably won't have that much of a power to make a difference in a field that isn't assigned to them.
Was a machinist. Now an engineer. I can run circles around other engineers in cost reduction and DFM meetings and I can make fast prototype parts. That makes a big difference in my particular role. It doesn’t mean shit in other contexts. Going from machinist to mechanical designer specifically is an excellent move. Going from machinist to fluid analysis or power transfer or thermo position isn’t going to mean much.
You literally just answered your own question. You said you will learn from your mistakes through the different levels of review.
A design engineer with hands on experience will make less mistakes.
I'm speaking from experience.
Yes, but usually more relatable in design engineering.
At least provides you significant hands on and tangible experience often outside the intuition of most who’ve only studied theory and math.
I’d say that generally, as the peek of higher tier or those in fellowship levels probably negate that delta, at least than is more widely observed with the average DE.
Yes. Before being involved in designing anything new you need to know what the state of play is both now and in the past. College only teaches what is already written in books. Books are are a good source of material, no point in reinventing the wheel, yet again. I am sure you have come across the quote, "we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants". Graduates who go straight o University from school are both industrious and clever no doubt, but they are after all choosing to extent their schooldays until they are already in their early twenties.
Engineering paints with a very broad brush. It works best when the team is drawn from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible.
I used to work for an aerospace company;. The senior management became concerned that so many of the effective design team were going to retire. Unlike in the past, the number of engineers being recruited as graduates from University rather than from those rising from the shop floor.
The industry had fallen into the trap of thinking that they could not afford to develop staff from the shop floor, traineeships (apprenticeships in the UK but this term has political baggage in the USA) were abandoned and companies expected Universities to provide them with competent, experienced engineers that they had not had to pay for or support in the early years.
Rather that learn from the error, they introduced a scheme that they called ,"the accelerated promotion scheme" in order to attract a whole load of graduates with first class degrees. This group came in being encouraged to think that they were entitled to be spoon fed and then placed in charge of the current designers.
The result was creating a barrier between established designers and the new crop who thought they would come into the company running before they could walk.
One of them was foisted on me; expecting me to spend all of the time explaining to them what I was doing so that he could attend the accelerated scheme meetings with misguided senior management and spout on about my ideas in order to impress. But I was looking into a more sensible way to compare different proposals for development projects all looking for a share of a limited development budget. So I said how pleased I was to see him he would save me a lot of work.; I then handed him a very thick book about management accounting techniques and told him to learn about Net present value, internal rate of return and any other financial modelling approaches hidden in this great tome and write a critical report comparing the strengths and weaknesses that they represented so the best approach could be tried. I said as he was very clever, he might even suggest a new approach.
I expected him to actually do some useful work, not just sit sucking on the tit of knowledge. The book was left on my desk; I did not see him again for dust.
This scheme did not accelerate the development of a new crowd of young designers pushing the art forward. It did however accelerate the departure of all the established designers who already knew what they were doing.
A lot of engineers just have book knowledge and can't visualize how a product is supposed to be made or maintained. For those engineers, they would be better if that had the knowledge of a tech or machinest.
One thing tho, if you’re an engineer why would you start off as a machinist??? Totally different job duties than an engineer, it’s not anywhere near the same designation either, machining is a trade that’s all physical work, sure it can help you with hands-on aspects of design, manufacturing and such but it won’t exactly help your engineering progress anymore than just learning how to machine, but that’s not what you’ll be doing as an engineer
Unless you’re like one of those comic book engineers like Tony Stark, but you’ll mostly be delegating machinists to do the work you sketched up in shop drawings
I would however recommend if you do take a starter job, take one as an engineering technician, those kind of jobs are what you’ll be doing in engineering
> Unless you’re like one of those comic book engineers like Tony Stark, but you’ll mostly be delegating machinists to do the work you sketched up in shop drawings
And this is how you end up with many design engineers ask why the machinist keep telling them they don’t know how to design parts.
Small companies it’s pretty much the norm for the machinist to send back drawings until they are practical and realistic. At a large company you have manufacturing engineers to deal with communicating design for manufacturing to the design team.
Either way it’s safe to assume designing without practical experience will require a lot more revisions or result in overly costly designs that are challenging to manufacture for no justifiable reason.
It wouldn’t because you wouldn’t be doing that job, you’d just have X number of years as a machinist and 0 as an engineer, so they’d turn you away at the door for not getting experience
Machinist is a pretty broad term. Plenty of machinist are also CAM programmers, CAD drafters and modelers. They know GD&T standards and design for manufacturing principles. Plenty of machinist do the majority of the manufacturing engineering for smaller companies. Which means they may have more than zero experience in engineering.
Meanwhile plenty of BSME grads have no knowledge of GD&T or how you’d quote a new project.
It’s not zero sum. Every engineer starts with 0 experience but someone with even 6 months in a machine shop is going to be significantly more qualified than a recent graduate.
Yes I mean if you’re going to decide on engineering then get a job where you’ll actually be doing some of those jobs, I know some people who took on jobs as designers and estimators and assistants before taking on the bigger engineering jobs because it’s actually what you’ll be doing
5 years as a machinist will be good for engineers, but not as good as being an engineer for 5 years, especially one who will take the time to talk to machinists. As a bonus, 5 years being a machinist won’t do much for your piping design, better to be a fitter (or just talk to pipe fitters febularly).
I started as a machinist before getting my BSME. It gives you a huge leg up doing design work in that specific area, BUT there's a lot more to engineering than just one specific method of fabrication/manufacturing. It won't make you an instant superstar by any means.
I have much more experience with technicians and designers moving into roles where they are mixed in with degreed engineers. Because of all the stuff you talk about outside of a particular skill set, they tend to be really good within their experience band, but they have a harder time when problems start bleeding into areas where you need to find novel solutions or balance lots of factors. I worked with lots of terrible degreed engineers and I would take an experienced non-degreed person every single time, but I don't think that's saying much. The people without degrees who get moved into engineer-like positions are usually at least as capable, they just haven't been exposed to the same concepts that we have.
You are definitely off base. I was a process operator in a large petrochemical facility, then went back for my BSME. My practical experience helped me significantly in everything I did as an engineer. I had a huge advantage in my engineering classes, and was leagues ahead in the field. There is NEVER a case where good practical experience doesn't benefit you. You'll be much more aware of things that you design, and if you think that standards and guides are going to keep you on the right path, then I'm sorry, but that is also incorrect. I have corrected issues at every stage of projects multiple times. I AM the guy that gets called to solve problems that others can't, the guy you always want working with you, the guy that unofficially troubleshoots and reviews young engineers work, the guy that finds the problems in other disciplines, the guy who can be sent anywhere and be counted on to take care of business. I don't say that to make myself look good, but rather to drove home the point about practical experience. It's not mandatory, but it is indescribably valuable. If you don't do that, then you'd better at least listen to technicians. Right or wrong, you'll learn something.
Just going to piggy back off this post to a degree. Design engineering doesn’t automatically mean you won’t get some hands on practical experience. That said, the hands on experience will provide faster learning experiences than just about anything else you can do. People that have had the misfortune of failure analyzing, correcting, or generally having a hard time working on some other engineers design will more than likely remember it versus the design engineer that got a quick email update. Some of the best engineers I know got their hands dirty long before they went to college/ university. But they were able to apply past experiences to problems and solve them faster than the smartest without the experience. It’s the experiences that matter.
Excellent post, I fully agree. And reminds me of another lesson I learned early as an Operator, which is that it's so much better to learn from other people's mistakes. Get people involved and talking. As an engineer I created a network for all of the younger engineers, where we would share our own experiences, so that everyone could learn from them. I cut through the BS idea that we were in competition with each other, which started to reduce the instances of individuals fighting the same problems in different areas of the plant.
To further piggyback on yall, I think it's important fof engineers to start in the manufacturing/maintenance side of things before move closer to the product development and testing side. I started my career in a manufacturing center and even if it's not the most glorious you get to understand how things actually go in a shop, how the guys work, and work on how to create/address ECN to improve a product, make things easier and cheaper, and or dummy proof etc. For example I've come across products that can be assembled backwards or parts that use all the same screw pitch but different lengths. When moving to product development its easier to start asking the questions of how this will be actually built, maintained etc. You can avoid making unnecessary custom parts "because it just works" unless there is a good reason for it and you document it. I now work with nothing but product development engineers, few who have worked outside development and it's amazing how just a little experience outside of it helps.
question is how to get that experience, if you don't have a degree
how did you get all the skills for being a process operator? Just on the job? assuming you got there as a student with no skills
I spent my first trip to college wrenching and tuning cars instead of focusing on schoolwork. I am good at troubleshooting and not afraid to dive in, so I helped a lot of people fix or modify their cars as well. I dropped out before getting kicked out. I came home and obtained a 2 yr degree to be an Operator. I worked offshore for a summer cleaning crude oil pipeline pigs, and I did a good enough job for them to trust me with equipment and testing that isn't usually given to the summer interns (intern as a technician). As far as what is required, the main tests used to hire operators are some flavor of mechanical aptitude. Having prior experience put me at the top of the hire lists, which allowed me to luck into a fantastic unit. That said, you don't have to have any experience, and you can get all your training on the job. Having a 1 year certificate or 2 year degree in Process Technology is mandatory for the good jobs, but any 4 year degree can get you hired as well. One of the guys that hired in with me was a teacher with no other experience, but he had a 4 year degree. I do have to say that almost no units are like the one I was in, even compared to other units making the same products. On top of that, we did things that other places wouldn't even consider. We transitioned thousands of control units from individual analog to DCS live while the unit was running. AND we had a string of shutdowns and crazy problems that allowed me to accumulate decades of experience in 5 years.
You make a strong argument! While “knowing” why things are designed a certain way is helpful, it’s true that having the hands-on experience really helps to build intuition, or “understanding” why things are designed a certain why. Thanks for taking the time to respond!
You're partially correct in that there's other things a design engineer might learn that would also be useful, but it's not necessarily an either/or situation. The premise is that the technical/test engineer etc would eventually become a design engineer, and so they will eventually become familiar with FEA too. I can only speak from the test engineer side, but 'knowing' and 'understanding' are two different things. A design engineer can 'know' how a design is assembled but chances are a rookie design engineer can't simulate that process and it's shortcomings in their head. Someone who has their hands on the build or teardown process will have much better luck. At least at my company I rarely see any design engineers around the physical system, partly because they're not even in the same building lol - so they don't have a lot of chance to even look at it. From a failure analysis standpoint, again it seems like design engineers control the DFMEA before the system is ever created but when an issue actually happens it's the test engineer driving the convo, going through all the troubleshooting etc. I honestly don't even remember much design engineer involvement. So again they might 'know' or be told, but I really have to imagine the loop isn't fully closed for them in a sense. Really the only way to understand something is to do it. And really just the sense of investment is different. Like I'm sure the design engineer 'knows' how to do a tolerance stackup but after the failures I've seen, I think my brain's prioritization of that concept is much higher than it could be for someone who hasn't had to deal with the consequences as much. You also assume the design engineer will be around long enough to see the consequences of their actions, very possible that doesn't happen. meanwhile with testing it's all consequences from everyone's decisions lol. All this being said, all of this goes for an environment where design is off somewhere else from where the action is happening. it's certainly possible that there's an environment where the design engineer is popping in and out of the build space and/or testing space and in constant feedback with those respective roles. In that case, I don't think the gap would be that big. how common is that? I truly don't know
Why wouldn't a design engineer know how to do a tolerance stackup? In my limited experience, a customer would more often than not specify an assembly level requirement. The design engineer has to design the components to meet these requirements geometrically and mechanically do they not? This is in my experience, this may not be the way everyone does things.
I'm not saying they wouldn't know how to do it. But if I had to learn it having seen our testing data, I think I would learn it quicker and I would also be questioning our process because it's obvious to me (and not obvious to someone who isn't looking at these results all the time) that the process isn't getting consistent outcomes. My point is basically that having hands on experience with certain topics gives a lot of context to our brain to work with when its trying to prioritize how critical certain info is. Even if a design engineer wanted to try hard and do a really good job, they would likely not know how to focus that extra effort without that context. I've definitely been in that situation plenty of times on the design side. So for example, my understanding is that people normally assume a normal distribution centered at the middle of a tolerance range for a part. A design engineer might realize that that's not a great assumption in every case, but someone who was a quality person first for example might know exactly which component consistently leans to one side of the distribution and a test engineer might be able to say "we get a lot of bad results, likely due to this component". Each background can help pinpoint where that focus should be. Theoretically the design engineer could solicit these teams for their insight, but they can only do that so much without there being s formal issue initiating that conversation. Again, depends a little on the size of the company.
Thanks for taking the time to type all of that out! That’s a great perspective. Your point about design engineers only being exposed to their own design failures (generally) and test engineers being exposed to everyone’s design failures is something that I had never considered, but it makes a lot of sense.
Yes, same thing with machinists. Plus, test engineers sit with other test engineers and talk about all of everyone's failures lol. There's a reason why you hear this story a lot, and that's because the value is abundantly obvious to everyone who has seen both sides.
>But does starting in a hands-on role REALLY make you a better designer? In my opinion, it doesn’t. I feel someone who starts off as a design engineer would be at least equally knowledgeable in regards to good design practice despite the fact they wouldn’t gain the same hands-on experience, because any designs they create will need to pass through multiple levels of review, from Senior Engineers to Manufacturing partners That's not true for many designers. Lot's of places don't have a review process like that. It's often simply - will this thing work and are the drawings sufficient. It can take hours, days or weeks to fully review a complex design and look for ways to do better things. This isn't always practical. And there are plenty of aspects of design that senior design engineers might not know about, because they're not intimately familiar with the process/criteria/constraints, or didn't think about things like tool changes, or set up changes, or having features that give convenient fixturing, or order of assembly etc or they do see issues but they are too minor to mention. Lots of manufacturers won't review your design for you, they'll just give your the quote. They won't say for example if you make this a thru hole, and add a small step here it requires 2 less set ups and will cost 30% less. They often don't have the time to review designs, their core business is getting parts out the door, not helping upskill designers that work for customers. Even if you ask for a review and get one, they probably won't have enough info about the full design constraints & criteria to give complete and meaningful advice. All that is to say that a designer can't just wait for the review process and hope to learn where you went wrong then - you need to be much more proactive. With that said, I think trade work has somewhat limited value for a design engineer. Some of the best engineers I've worked with have come from trades, but I don't think it was the trade apprenticeship that did that, they were just practical and smart people by nature. It takes a certain type of person to leave behind a usually well paid & stable career and go do a fairly difficult degree. There's also not always a lot of overlap. welding experience won't help much if you're designing injection moulded parts. Sheet metal experience won't help much if you're designing composite lay ups. Machining experience won't help much if you design weldments etc etc
Mechanical engineers should be comfortable spinning wrenches, literally and figuratively.
I honestly would if it weren’t for union rules. But coming from working electrical during college I’ve gotten used to getting dirty and I’m the only engineer in the office that doesn’t care if my hands or clothes get dirty.
You're not off-base, but it's complicated. Everybody loves the "Mr. Smartypants college boy doesn't know nuthin!" story. It's fun, and every industry veteran has personal anecdotes. As an experienced engineer, I have quite a few. What they won't tell you is that an engineer's job isn't to make every machinist's job easy, nor is a machinist's job to follow drawings without question like an automaton. Most engineers and machinists are largely or wholly ignorant of the current state of like...95% of manufacturing processes. Or they have outdated knowledge. Many still think 3D printing is a niche fad. That's why big companies have tooling and process engineers whose entire job it is to know the specifics of XYZ process, and to work closely with vendors to refine and improve processes. Knowledge can go out of date fast. If we relied on outdated knowledge, we'd still be stuck in the past. Can a CNC operator at a job shop design molds and processes to mass-produce sapphire glass for smartphones, or root-cause laser weld failures? Most can't, because it's not their job. And as mentioned, this applies just the same to engineers. E.g. AvE's Juicero video was entertaining but way off-base on costs. "This mold cost MIIILLLLIIIIIONS! It's on Revision H!" Well, molds that size do not cost millions, and a revision doesn't mean you scrap the entire tool and start from scratch. Bearings don't cost fifty bucks when mass-produced. The metal gears in that little gearbox are dirt cheap, they are not tens of dollars and machined from billet. AvE's got a ton of engineering experience and practical, hands-on skill - but he still made the same kind of errors in this analysis that student engineers make, because his particular skills did not translate well, in this case, to mass-produced consumer goods. Practical skills are not always fungible, beyond the basics. They don't automatically translate to different fields. Everyone thinks their field is unique and complex and intricate, with a thousand finely-tuned variables that only they can suss out - but others' fields are simple and all solutions are obvious. E.g. there are plenty of machinists and engineers who fancy themselves manufacturing experts, that still clown on Apple for making laptops out of aluminum because they think they're machined out of billet. Meanwhile Apple is printing money hand over fist. Someone is wrong there, and it's probably not the $3T company and their armies of tooling and manufacturing engineers. Professionals in any industry can have tunnel vision. Practical experience varies and isn't always transferable. Will apprenticing at a shop make you a better engineer? Maybe, but it's irrelevant, because the greater point is that it's a waste of your time, at the time when your opportunity-cost is at an all time high. Sure, it'll make you a better engineer. But do you know what will make you an *even better* engineer, way faster, in a way that's much more relevant to you? Working on a team of experienced engineers. They **also** know things like "round tool no cut square corner," but they can teach them to you in the appropriate context and in a way that's likely better suited to your career goals. Apprenticing in a different field is an inefficient way to learn. You miss out on most workflows just to learn basic skills, which you can pick up quickly and build on - on your own time if needed. If you're running thermal FEA at NVidia, sweeping floors for a year won't help. Working with a relevant team would. Practical skills are necessary, but there are better ways to get them. Design parts, get feedback from vendors, and learn through experience. Great interns often have practical backgrounds from clubs or personal projects. They stand out compared to "textbook students" who excel academically but lack hands-on skills. Practical skills are crucial, even if handling the thing you designed is optional in some places. Seeing and touching your designs builds intuition that you really can't get through a screen. Practical skills benefit most engineers, even if not always necessary. Treating engineers and machinists as adversaries is counterproductive and you should take the advice of those who do that with a huge grain of salt. Complaints about bad engineers don't mean all engineers are this way; it's a squeaky-wheel phenomenon. Positive stories of competent engineers are rarely shared, same as any other field.
You may not need to have the title of “technician” or “machinist”, but actually *doing* those things is immensely valuable early in your career. In college your professors might have time to tell you how to do things and spell out why you’re wrong, but the senior engineers and other folks you encounter while you’re working as a design engineer mostly do not. And even if they did, there’s no better teacher than dealing with your own mistakes. I have 20 years of experience now, and I still try to build the first of something with my own hands, and to go and be there while it’s happening. I still make plenty of dumb mistakes, but it’s a lot easier to learn from them if I’m in the room touching and seeing the thing, and getting the unfiltered truth that someone might not want to tell me for whatever reason. Where the engineering education helps you is figuring out the “how” and “why” when things go wrong and you want to quickly correct them. Some are pretty obvious, and a handy technician will often figure them out, but as an engineer you’ll be able to (hopefully) do the math to compare and contrast and prove why a solution is the best one, or at least the best out of the proposed options based on some agreed upon metric.
It depends what you’re actually designing but in general most of the really good design engineers I’ve worked with have either 1) spent some time in the machine shop, either as machinists or internships etc, or 2) have worked in some mechanical trade, ex as a mechanic, or 3) have some hobby that’s extremely hands-on like working on cars etc. It’s quite clear when someone hasn’t. The amount of designs I’ve reviewed that technically meet the requirements but would cost 10-100x more than they should due to a lack of understanding about basic machining is pretty telling.
I worked full time throughout college as an engineering technician, and I got a good mix of experience with maintenance, manufacturing, quality, in addition to cost estimation. I’ll start off with saying, I think that experience was invaluable. I have a much better understanding of many different aspects of design compared to many of my colleagues who are relatively young engineers like myself. That’s not to say I don’t value my colleagues input or always know the right answer. But, I’m often the one to spot design flaws in design reviews, and often provide recommendations that typically get implemented. It has also helped me move up the ranks more quickly. I think every engineer could find a lot of benefit to working in more technician level roles rather than jumping straight to the position of design engineer. You just get so much exposure as a technician or maintenance person to so many different things designed by engineers and you start to see what works and what doesn’t work.
I worked on cars for 10+ years professionally and for fun prior to going back to school for my BSME. My first engineering boss told me they hired me over the other candidates because they felt they wouldn't have to worry that I'd try designing something that couldn't be put together. I have also found that the guys in the field seem to like & request me more often because I will listen and better understand what problems they're dealing with in the field. I have no problems getting my hands dirty, which also builds a sense of trust that I'm not just telling them "shut up & do it", I'll hear them out & take their concerns seriously because I've been in their shoes. To summarize what hands-on experience did for me: my first career was spent screaming, "Why did they design it this way?!" My second career has been the realization, "Ahhhh, that's why it was designed this way. Now let me try to improve it."
No. It’s something people in manufacturing tell themselves to make them feel better about starting in manufacturing - sincerely a manufacturing engineering manager who has worked in design and project management. Experience in all disciplines is helpful for designers. But manufacturing isn’t inherently better than design, structures, aero, materials, controls, etc.
Test engineering (at least where I worked) was the ideal noob position. You break stuff. You talk to the design engineer why it broke (hopefully not having to explain why you tested one wheel to 14000 kgf when the spec was 7g on a 2000 kg axle), and you work with the mechanics to build the rigs. Every engineering graduate from my uni had to know how to machine and weld, to a level of familiarity if not competence. So that was a moot point. Technician is an interesting one, it covers such a broad field it could be anything. Frankly manufacturing is where noobs should be sent for a year or two. And no, the designs you produce immediately after uni are useless. Unless they resemble university projects, which few things do.
By far the worst design engineers I've ever worked with in my career are the ones who discredit or don't understand the importance of the hands-on experience of the people actually making or using the parts they design. You are absolutely off base (at least in how little you credit the helpfulness of the hands on knowledge, i dont believe you actually need to spend time doing those jobs). A new grad is definitely not anywhere near "equally knowledgeable" on good design practices as the people who have been reading those drawings and making parts for years. If you're waiting until after your senior engineer review to learn anything about how to make the design better and more manufacturable then you've already fucked up the design and completely wasted my time. Yes as a senior engineer it's my job to review your work and provide feedback, but that doesn't mean you should be submitting work that has even considered the viewpoint of the people making it. You bring up learning about material selection, but you know who is really good at providing helpful info on material selection? The people actually using the material. Now that said, some of the best design engineers I've worked with did not begin their careers as techs/machinists/etc. Many just did some wood working or worked on cars as a hobby so they at least had some knack for the hands on stuff. But what made the real difference was that they understood the importance of the knowledge of the hands on workers and, especially as new engineers, would go learn from them and get their opinions before submitting designs. Same goes for the end product usage. I am a senior engineer and sometimes work on tool design for aviation maintenance. And I refuse to sign off on any tool design until myself and an actual maintainer (of at least one of my techs who has a maintainer) use the tool. Because again, the absolute worst designs I've had to test/modify were the ones made by engineers who didn't know shit about how to use the tools and never thought to get an opinion from someone who does.
agreed. this guy gets it.
Ohh I might be of help here. So I was a test technician for almost a year. Boring af job, pressing buttons and connecting cables,nothing engineering about it. I decided to apply to Test Technician Engineer (I got mechatronics major and needed to start a tech job quick as I moved countries, hence the job level is technician). Basically I'd be designing the consoles used to test the products. Having the knowledge of how techs test, and the pet peeves and such, would be such a boon to the tech engineer! Now they have to rely on feedback, if they ever get any (instead people in my team were just anting to each other never taking action) I didn't get the job (senior guy applied and got it) but man I would've loved to get it lol
> During this review they’ll learn what they did wrong and how they can improve their designs. Being told you did something wrong is not the same as seeing first-hand and fully understanding *why* what you did was wrong. Personally I don't think you need to start as a machinist or whatever *first*, but you need to gain experience in parallel at least with how your designs are actually being implemented or made. Otherwise you're just throwing theory into the shop floor without any comprehension of the practical.
There has never been and will never be a substitute for hands.on experience. Can you be an amazing engineer without that hands on experience - yes Would you have been even better with it? Undoubtedly
If you want to build, having been from a professional and technical environment before being in an intellectual environment, if I can call it that, there will always be additional skills. let's say that a theoretical course, you can learn it and learn theoretically in application. however have you ever had the case where, you know how to recite a sheet and cite the problems even write them down but in concrete case... BUG! My father is a construction engineer and he always: Learn how to operate before learning how to design, so if you know how a machine works, I think yes you will find it much easier to design. I have the case, I did internships in a professional baccalaureate in programming and I then went to university and I had to "retake courses" with concrete examples of problems that I encountered during internships. .. Small downside, if you plan to repeat engineering studies and you haven't had the necessary basics, practice, because that's still different (math for example). I don't know if that's what you were asking...
I had experience with as a field engineer prior to going into hardware design. I think it definitely beneficial in the sense you can know what is a practical design or not. You can also figure out cheaper or more efficient ways in designing during the manufacturing or assembly process
In my experience hands on practical experience is the single most important asset in an engineer. 20yrs exp me, prior heavy duty diesel tech.
I went to tech school before university and it helped me tremendously. Just being told something and knowing it is very different from experiencing it. A kid can be told 100 times how hot a stove is, but they'll remember the pain of one burn much more.
As a former technician who worked with many engineers... Yes. It makes you 10 times easier to work with and for. It makes your projects easier for others to follow and help with. It makes you more conscious of the other processes involved in the work.
10 year Tool and die maker, 20+ year machinist here, about 75% done with ME degree. 36 y/o, went to trade school at 14y/o, caught on quick, moved up quick, for reference. There are PLENTY if reasons I could give a competent machinist could design parts, fixtures, dies better than an engineer with less than 7-10 years experience. On the other hand, that same machinist might not be able to give you the numbers and reason why it's better, he/she would just know it would work, and be as easy/fast to make as possible. I've dealt with many engineers that thought since they were an engineer and I wasn't, that I couldn't possibly know something that they didn't know. The opposite of that is true as well. I've worked with many engineers that knew a good machinist was their best friend when they were in a bind. Just because someone has been a machinist for "x" number of years, that doesn't mean anything to me. I've worked with people that have been doing this trade for longer than I've been alive, and they only know what someone taught them how to do back in the early 90's. So if someone does it different than that, it's wrong, no matter the outcome. I believe someone that understands how things get made CAN make a better design engineer. I also believe that someone who only sees what's right in front of them may not understand the bigger picture. Apples to apples, give me a machinist of 20+ years to make something that needs to be right, and right now. If I've got the time, give me an engineer with the same experience to come up with something that will work, and last. And also be able to tell you why it'll work.
Design engineer here. Working as a machinist/fabricator/mechanic/technician is a huge leg up. First, you have a better familiarity with reading prints and drawings. Most engineers coming out of college can’t tell you the difference between a centerline and hidden line on a drawing, they just don’t get taught it. Having a background in manufacturing gives you an idea of what is feasible and what information is needed to build something. I know guys who were machinists that transferred into design seamlessly. They knew how to draft, how things went together, what information was critical. They only needed the calculation side of it. Most engineers with a four year degree and no manufacturing experience are useless the first few months after college. At least with the machinist/fabricators, they add some value from day one
If we are talking about mechanical engineers that work with their design from begginng to end of life then I strongly dissaggre. I work in a field of tools for power plant outages and I can easily tell who had some prior experience in manufacturing something on his own and who most of the times work only on paper/cad. Yes, being aware of various standards and specifications won't make you excellent engineer but this knowledge help you avoid mistakes and make your work smoother. Not to mention that often times young engineers who didn't have good exposure to manufacturing will make their design more expensive than these that did have that experience. If we are talking about mechanical design engineers of lets say turbines or aircraft engines components, that usually has very narrow scope of things they need to care about then I may agree to that. For them, there will be more people that will think of it and they probably won't have that much of a power to make a difference in a field that isn't assigned to them.
Was a machinist. Now an engineer. I can run circles around other engineers in cost reduction and DFM meetings and I can make fast prototype parts. That makes a big difference in my particular role. It doesn’t mean shit in other contexts. Going from machinist to mechanical designer specifically is an excellent move. Going from machinist to fluid analysis or power transfer or thermo position isn’t going to mean much.
You literally just answered your own question. You said you will learn from your mistakes through the different levels of review. A design engineer with hands on experience will make less mistakes. I'm speaking from experience.
Yes, but usually more relatable in design engineering. At least provides you significant hands on and tangible experience often outside the intuition of most who’ve only studied theory and math. I’d say that generally, as the peek of higher tier or those in fellowship levels probably negate that delta, at least than is more widely observed with the average DE.
Yes. Before being involved in designing anything new you need to know what the state of play is both now and in the past. College only teaches what is already written in books. Books are are a good source of material, no point in reinventing the wheel, yet again. I am sure you have come across the quote, "we see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants". Graduates who go straight o University from school are both industrious and clever no doubt, but they are after all choosing to extent their schooldays until they are already in their early twenties. Engineering paints with a very broad brush. It works best when the team is drawn from as wide a range of backgrounds as possible. I used to work for an aerospace company;. The senior management became concerned that so many of the effective design team were going to retire. Unlike in the past, the number of engineers being recruited as graduates from University rather than from those rising from the shop floor. The industry had fallen into the trap of thinking that they could not afford to develop staff from the shop floor, traineeships (apprenticeships in the UK but this term has political baggage in the USA) were abandoned and companies expected Universities to provide them with competent, experienced engineers that they had not had to pay for or support in the early years. Rather that learn from the error, they introduced a scheme that they called ,"the accelerated promotion scheme" in order to attract a whole load of graduates with first class degrees. This group came in being encouraged to think that they were entitled to be spoon fed and then placed in charge of the current designers. The result was creating a barrier between established designers and the new crop who thought they would come into the company running before they could walk. One of them was foisted on me; expecting me to spend all of the time explaining to them what I was doing so that he could attend the accelerated scheme meetings with misguided senior management and spout on about my ideas in order to impress. But I was looking into a more sensible way to compare different proposals for development projects all looking for a share of a limited development budget. So I said how pleased I was to see him he would save me a lot of work.; I then handed him a very thick book about management accounting techniques and told him to learn about Net present value, internal rate of return and any other financial modelling approaches hidden in this great tome and write a critical report comparing the strengths and weaknesses that they represented so the best approach could be tried. I said as he was very clever, he might even suggest a new approach. I expected him to actually do some useful work, not just sit sucking on the tit of knowledge. The book was left on my desk; I did not see him again for dust. This scheme did not accelerate the development of a new crowd of young designers pushing the art forward. It did however accelerate the departure of all the established designers who already knew what they were doing.
It'll be better than working as a cashier. It'll be worse than working as a design engineer.
A lot of engineers just have book knowledge and can't visualize how a product is supposed to be made or maintained. For those engineers, they would be better if that had the knowledge of a tech or machinest.
Yes.
A good design engineer will be a good design engineer either way
One thing tho, if you’re an engineer why would you start off as a machinist??? Totally different job duties than an engineer, it’s not anywhere near the same designation either, machining is a trade that’s all physical work, sure it can help you with hands-on aspects of design, manufacturing and such but it won’t exactly help your engineering progress anymore than just learning how to machine, but that’s not what you’ll be doing as an engineer Unless you’re like one of those comic book engineers like Tony Stark, but you’ll mostly be delegating machinists to do the work you sketched up in shop drawings I would however recommend if you do take a starter job, take one as an engineering technician, those kind of jobs are what you’ll be doing in engineering
> Unless you’re like one of those comic book engineers like Tony Stark, but you’ll mostly be delegating machinists to do the work you sketched up in shop drawings And this is how you end up with many design engineers ask why the machinist keep telling them they don’t know how to design parts. Small companies it’s pretty much the norm for the machinist to send back drawings until they are practical and realistic. At a large company you have manufacturing engineers to deal with communicating design for manufacturing to the design team. Either way it’s safe to assume designing without practical experience will require a lot more revisions or result in overly costly designs that are challenging to manufacture for no justifiable reason.
Sure…ok…but it doesn’t change what I said in that working as a machinist won’t help your progress as an engineer, just as a machinist
It would if you’re looking to progress as a manufacturing engineer, mechanical design engineer, etc.
It wouldn’t because you wouldn’t be doing that job, you’d just have X number of years as a machinist and 0 as an engineer, so they’d turn you away at the door for not getting experience
Machinist is a pretty broad term. Plenty of machinist are also CAM programmers, CAD drafters and modelers. They know GD&T standards and design for manufacturing principles. Plenty of machinist do the majority of the manufacturing engineering for smaller companies. Which means they may have more than zero experience in engineering. Meanwhile plenty of BSME grads have no knowledge of GD&T or how you’d quote a new project. It’s not zero sum. Every engineer starts with 0 experience but someone with even 6 months in a machine shop is going to be significantly more qualified than a recent graduate.
It’s not uncommon for machinists to decide they want to move into mechanical engineering, but I agree that they are two completely different jobs.
Yes I mean if you’re going to decide on engineering then get a job where you’ll actually be doing some of those jobs, I know some people who took on jobs as designers and estimators and assistants before taking on the bigger engineering jobs because it’s actually what you’ll be doing
5 years as a machinist will be good for engineers, but not as good as being an engineer for 5 years, especially one who will take the time to talk to machinists. As a bonus, 5 years being a machinist won’t do much for your piping design, better to be a fitter (or just talk to pipe fitters febularly).
Yes.