Learn how to learn!

Imagine you are searching for a job in your engineering career. Boeing sounds amazing, but you have no idea how to use Catia, the CAD system they have used for the last 28 years. You would love to design cars for GM, Chrysler, or Mazda but you never learned how to use NX. There are many more CAD systems like Solidworks, Inventor, ProEngineer: why didn't we ever learn how to use these CAD systems?

There are so many options when selecting a CAD system, which CAD system should you learn?

If you all ready know which company you would like to work for, simply search online to find out which CAD system they use. However, for the 99% of us who don't know which company we are going to work for after we graduate, we need a different approach.

I am currently a college student working part time at an engineering company, and I know that CAD system skills are valuable. I have taken CAD classes in college, and was taught a variety of systems. At work, I use ProEngineer totaling 1000+ hours in design work. But is learning the wrong system going to hurt me? What if I don't end up at a company that uses the CAD system that I learned?

It doesn't matter! The secret is that I have learned how to learn CAD systems. Regardless of where I go, I will quickly get up to speed on the system. How did I do this?

First I learned the fundamentals of 3D CAD modeling. My CAD class had us build the same computer fan in 3 different CAD systems. This taught me to not focus on the CAD system, but the basics of 3D modeling. Many people may not be currently enrolled in an engineering degree. This definitely does not mean you are stuck. I found that YouTube is a great resource for helpful tutorial videos. I learned about extrudes, revolves, sweeps, chamfers, rounds, and many more 3D modeling basics. For example:

Get the fundamentals down, and then learning a new system is quite easy. All of the CAD systems have the same types of features. They can all extrude, or do revolves, or change the color of the surfaces etc. To learn a new CAD system, all you have to do is just learn where the buttons are to make those features. A lot of CAD systems these days even have a search bar in the corner of the screen. This makes it very simple to just type in the feature and have the program tell you the path to that button.I started in ProEngineer, but have become skilled in Catia, NX6, and Inventor. The key is that I learned how to learn CAD systems. Now when I look for jobs, I am confident that no matter what CAD system they have, I can quickly learn it. I will be able to design anything from airplanes, to cars, to whatever this is.

(No idea what this is, perhaps a spiked squid?)

Everything you need to know is on Youtube

            So I drive a vintage 1995 Honda Accord and recently it has been having some problems. I have yet to do any posts about the automotive field, so I decided I would document some of things that I am learning.

I do not profess to be an automotive expert or even a car hobbyist. I am a straight up car noob! At college, I am away from home and don't have the benefit of asking the car guys that I know for any help. But what I have come to learn is that everything you need to know is on Youtube!

A few weeks ago my car started shaking really badly. The engine sounded like it was running differently and I noticed that the shaking was exceptionally bad when I slowed down and was idling. My first thought was that there was something wrong with the spark plug. So I opened up the hood with my brother-in-law and inspected the Spark plugs.

This is what the inside of my car looks like....

Intimidating right?

What we found is that the first spark plug was not firing and that the cylinder it sits in had oil in it.

This is what a piston/spark plug/cylinder assembly that is firing is supposed to look like. (As found on Youtube)

If you notice in the video, there is a cylinder that has a piston that goes up and down. The animation even has spark plugs that ignite the blue fuel in the cylinder. The problem with my car, is that there was oil on my spark plug. There was so much oil that the spark plug was doused, sitting in a pool of oil, and was unable to make a spark. No spark = No firing piston = One man down. This animation video is of a 8 cylinder engine. My car only has 4 spark plugs. Because one of the pistons wasn't firing, the other 3 have to work extra hard and the crank shaft ( in the video it is the center rod in the middle of the assembly that is being turned or "cranked") may not be in sync. This is what was causing my car to shake.

The SOLUTION:

Replace the spark plugs, and stop the oil from leaking into the cylinder again. How do you do that....?

So again, I went to Youtube to learn how to replace spark plugs. This is the exact video that I watched. Just ignore the 20 second weird introduction.

 I found the video extremely helpful and went to the local auto parts store and bought 4 brand new spark plugs. Total cost on spark plugs,$2 a piece = $8.

As you can see, the plug on the right is the new spark plug and is what it is supposed to look like. The spark plug on the left is bad. You can tell that it has been burned and scorched from sitting in and trying to ignite a pile of oil.

So for $8, we replaced the spark plugs, but we hadn't fixed the entire problem. Sure, we got all of the oil out of the spark plugs, but if we don't fix the source, more oil will just leak back in onto the spark plugs. So doing some more research on Youtube, I found a video to show me how to replace the valve cover gasket. I went to the local auto parts store and purchased a valve cover gasket set for about $20. My brother-in-law and I watched the video below a few times, and then went at it.

After only spending $30, and a little bit of time watching videos, my car runs like a champ! Everything you need to know is on Youtube.

Student Engineer in the Bearings Department

Sounds official right? That's because it is! About a month ago I got hired on at US Synthetic. This is the place that I worked at over the summer. US Synthetic is a company that mainly makes diamond bit cutters. Or in other words, they make synthetic diamonds to   put on oil drills to dig down into the Earth. Why diamonds? Because they are one of the hardest materials available.

During the summer I was a member of the press maintenance team. 

I worked on big presses like this:

To give you some perspective, this machine is probably 10 ft tall and weighs up to 80 tons. I would build, repair, and diagnose the presses. It was hard, laborious work, but I learned a lot and had fun.


I wanted to continue working there when school started, but they didn't have a part time position open in that area. So I stopped working and was just going to be a full time student. But a few weeks later, I heard about a job opening in the bearings department for a student engineer part time. I was super excited and applied for the job. After a few interviews, I was finally selected to be a part of the Bearings team!



I spend most of my time designing thrust/radial bearings for our customers. I found a site online that explains what we do.


"The company's bearing lineup includes radial bearings and thrust bearings, primarily for the oil and gas drilling industry. The bearings are designed for use in down hole motors, turbines, rotary steerable systems, drilling tools, heavy industrial equipment, and a variety of pump applications. Pump applications include extreme conditions transfer pumps, electric submersible pumps, stationary pumps, and injection pumps.


The bearing bodies themselves are machined from stainless steel. The antifriction surfaces placed into the bodies are polycrystalline diamond pads that have been built up on tungsten carbide substrates, then formed, precision machined, and placed with high precision.



The first picture is of thrust bearings. 

Other advantages of PCD bearings include their relatively small size for the load-carrying capacity, allowing tight packaging and exposure to extreme conditions. Also, because the bearings do not rely on rolling elements and have no moving parts, they have fewer failure modes and operational limitations."

In the picture just above, you see large and small diameter radial bearings.



It's been a lot of fun trying to solve problems as they come at work and I'm enjoying having a job with the word "engineer" in the position title.



Something interesting about US Synthetic is that they also have a factory on site called Suncrest Diamonds. They deal with REAL diamonds. Jewelry stores send them real diamonds, and have them change their color. So the factory makes pink, purple, yellow, and just about any color of diamond. They alter the color by adding nitrogen in between the carbon atoms of the diamond and heating it up in a press like the one shown above. Cool huh!?





Check out more at: http://www.suncrestdiamonds.com/







Information taken from : http://www.ebearing.com/news2009/060901.htm

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For those of you who don't read binary code, I made my first website!
This semester at BYU I am taking a class called Introduction to Scientific Computing and Computer-Aided Engineering (Me En 373). A mouthful.... I know.

 Today was our first lab day and we had to program a website in html code. I have never done anything like this, but I think it turned out well for an hour of work.


Check it out!  www.et.byu.edu/~dbeck8


I am very new to this, and still trying to figure things out. I haven't figured out how to change the background, and I really want to know how to make an icon appear with the title on the top tab of the page. Anyone know? I should probably just ask my computer genius brother Nate Beck.


For other cool geeky ideas, Check out Bettijo's amazing party ideas.

Robots!

This semester I had a great opportunity to work with Robots. ASME is an engineering club here at BYU and they sponsored an event with local elementary schools. For the last 8 weeks, I have gone to a local elementary school and mentored 6th graders. Our task was to build a robot that could pick up a colored ball, navigate through 3 walls(which changed order), and drop the ball in a small basket. We were using Lego's NXT Mindstorm (see http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx). The Robot was actually pretty cool. We built it in about 3 weeks and spent the other weeks trying to perfect the programming. Besides trying to keep 6th graders on task, the hardest part was calibrating the robot using an old Mac. The computers at the elementary school were pretty outdated, which made programming slow and frustrating. However, on the big day, we were quite successful.

There were 10 schools, and each school had 10 minutes to do as many runs through the course as they wanted. Points were awarded for every task accomplished. We got points for picking up the ball, staying in bounds, getting through walls, and reaching the drop destination.

Here is our first run: 

Another issue we had is that we built and practiced our robot on smooth tile, so the plywood was difficult for our robot. We had a few different programs, and were able to pick up the ball, navigate through the maze, and get to the final basket. Unfortunately, we neglected to take into consideration the height of the basket, and our claws weren't high enough to get over the lip of the basket. So our robot would just run into the side of it.

At the end of the day, the kids from Edgemont Elementary were tied for first! In order to decide who got the first prize picking of candy, a tough game of rock,paper, scissors ensued. We came out victorious! "WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!"

It was a great experience!

I also Youtube NXT robots to see what people have applications people have thought of. Robots are now solving rubics cubes, playing connect 4, and even painting the Mona Lisa.

What ideas do you have for a robot?

Carbon Fibers

I am currently taking ME 250- Materials Science at BYU. We have been discussing the different types of polymers and their uses. Yesterday, our professor brought in some carbon fiber pipes and plates, and I was surprised at how strong these materials were. I was very impressed with their strength and wondered what engineers were applying this material to:

I checked out http://www.syntek-carbon.com/  

I thought it was interesting that they were using carbon fiber as a hockey stick. I played street hockey when I was a kid and know how to hit a puck. I also know that occasionally a hockey stick breaks. In this event, with a carbon fiber stick, that could be extremely dangerous. Swinging a sharp stick and having tiny fibers fly around upon rupture gives me the chills. However, the company wraps their hockey sticks with Kevlar. I think this is an ingenious idea. Kevlar doesn't tear or cut easily and is a great way to contain all of the shattered fibers.

Other applications I found were bicycles, mountain climbing gear, water rafting gear, or golf clubs. The basic idea is to have something really tough but light weight.

Another site had carbon fiber technology in a piano. Check it out! http://www.kawaius.com/main_links/acoustic_brochures/carbon_fiber.pdf

Ship shape: a new concept for greener, cleaner oil tankers | In-depth | The Engineer

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