What is your work day like?

[cocoloco]

I see a lot of people were taking the Machine Design Afternoon module. I have a question, do you guys actually design machinery? I am just curious as to how much work there is out there on that field and how you bill your hours. Do you bill hours to a particular job or some kind of overhead? I couldnt have done machine design...

 

[Sschell]

I design portable reverse osmosis systems, mostly diesel driven. Typically I bill my hours to a job, either development or as engineering support for a production run, whatever the case may be. I feel like Mechanical Engineering is the most broad of all engineering diciplines (with a possible exception of civil, but no matter how you cut that cake there is a lot of overlap). Similarly Machine design is the most broad of the Mechanical diciplines because you need to know alot about Fluids, heat transfre and HVAC (depending on what you are building). There is an incredible amount of manufacturing world wide and wether the end product, the tooling, the tools that made the tools, or the tools that made the tools that made the tools... there was most likely a machine designer invloved in many setps of the process.

 

[chavez]

....the tooling, the tools that made the tools, or the tools that made the tools that made the tools... there was most likely a machine designer invloved in many setps of the process.

Well stated... :brickwall: in my opinion, that is what makes the test so tough. i would honestly say that i don't do 'machine design' day in and out, but that is the module that I took; doable, but very broad IMO

 

[Capt Worley PE]

I don't do machine design, per se, but I have 0 experience with HVAC and Thermo, and I have an interest in machine design, so that's what I took.

 

[cocoloco]

Wow, I mostly do HVAC design work. I went through the Machine Design problems in the review manuals and got scared the heck OFF!!! YIKES!

 

[NCST8ENGR]

same here, i took in a previous exam the MD module, and wasn't successful. but my later employment HVAC was the main focus so it made sense to do the HVAC pm. I was successful the 3rd attempt.

 

[Sschell]

my work day is mostly comprised posting on the 5000 thread.

I usually manage to squeeze lunch in between posts.

 

[Katiebug]

I'm a global component engineer for an elevator company. Typically, I spend about 75% of my time in the office and 25% of my time at our test tower.

On paper, I do global component development and field support. The office part of my job technically encompasses a good amount of machine design, but we have a design services group that does our CAD work and basic calculations, so usually my involvement is limited to marking up drawings and checking work. I do a lot of manufacturing and materials engineering work. Fatigue, tribology, even a little electrical. Empirical modeling, some FEA. Some control systems stuff for our test fixtures. Design of experiments, hands-on testing, data analysis, etc. Codes-related work. I do most of my own test work. Field support encompasses most of those areas, and I probably like my field support tasks the best because they let me do a little of everything.

Of course, I have to sit through way, way too many meetings.

The tower makes me happy - 28 stories of fun, and I get to play with test fixtures and test elevators. I really love having the opportunity to go into the field, which is much less common than I'd like (usually about 2 times a year). Field engineering isn't for me (they travel constantly) but I like getting out there and getting my hands on the gear.

Very little of what I do is actually "machine design" in the sense of the type of questions on the PE exam, but it's a heck of a lot closer to my job than HVAC or T&F.