301 Top Tips for Design Engineers: To Help You 'Measure Up' in the World of Engineering

By Chris Morris

This book is aimed at new mechanical design engineers – to improve your employability and to help you ‘hit the ground running’.
It also contains useful information and checklists for more experienced designers.
It’s a quick read, listing real-world, non-academic, practical experiences which you won’t find in an engineer’s technical reference book.
It includes design and drafting guides, good advice for everyday design and general office life, advice on job interviews, how to handle meetings, insights into other departments, looking after yourself in a work environment and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528994484

Chris Morris

Chris Morris holds a BA from the College of New Jersey and an MA from Rutgers University, and works full time on Wall Street. He brewed his first beer at age twenty and was hooked. He made a website, started a blog and registered his brewery, Black Dog Brewing Company. He took his blogging to the next level when he started writing for the Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper. He hopes to start his own brewery soon, but until then, he's enjoying exploring the craft beer world.

Book preview

Problem

About the Author

Chris studied mechanical and production engineering at Nottingham Trent Polytechnic.

He worked within the engineering industry for 49 years, starting as an apprentice at age 16 with Royal Ordnance (UK MoD), BAE Systems, JCB Ltd and other organisations. He was responsible for the design and production of highly complex precision products.

During his long career, his roles have included technician apprentice, skilled fitter, assistant foreman, drawing office draughtsman, production engineer, tooling engineer, leading CAD draughtsman, CAD supervisor, engineering design services team leader and senior design engineer.

He has witnessed and summarised numerous wise-working practices, which have been shared in his book.

He lives in Nottingham and is married with two sons.

Dedication

To Helen Morris

Copyright Information ©

Chris Morris (2021)

The right of Chris Morris to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528994477 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528994484 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Book One

Introduction

The following tips are in addition to your technical training and are for basic guidance only from my perspective as a mechanical design and production engineer and include many personal opinions.

You should always consult your company standards and procedures for approved working methods.

My Career

I have been employed by some excellent engineering organisations in my 49-year career, these have included:

The Ministry of Defence Royal Ordnance Factory in Nottingham. I served my apprenticeship there and learned from some highly skilled people. I studied mechanical and production engineering during and after my apprenticeship. Not long after finishing my apprenticeship, I was given a go at being an assistant foreman in the fitting department. After that, I started work in the production drawing office designing jigs, fixtures, tools, gauges and general equipment also product design work and became CAD Supervisor training approximately sixty CAD operators.

The jobs I’ve held at Royal Ordnance were:

Engineering design services team leader

CAD system supervisor

Tooling engineer

Production engineer

Leading CAD draughtsman

Production drawing office draughtsman

Assistant foreman fitting department

Skilled fitter

Ministry of Defence technician apprentice

The factory produced many types of precision engineering products, from small arms to heavy artillery and armoured vehicles, so the design work was extremely varied and complex.

After the ordnance factory closed in 2001, I worked for a design contract company and carried out CAD design work for BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, J C Bamford Ltd and other companies. It was interesting to experience the very different ways of working between the companies even though they were generally using the same design, production and business software!

I became a permanent employee at JCB Ltd and was a senior design engineer, helping to design some of the many tools that can be attached to construction machines. I also worked on vehicle upgrade kits and manuals for worldwide distribution, working with people in countries such as India, China and the USA. All varied and complex work which I enjoyed learning about right up until my last day.

My Design Experience

I’ve helped with the design of many military weapons and armoured vehicles, probably best if I don’t go into details as I’ve signed the official secrets act! It was all precision engineering, with highly complex strong forces and very interesting to design.

I’ve designed hundreds of machining fixtures, welding fixtures, drill jigs, machining tools, inspection gauges and various types of production equipment and also created thousands of production stage drawings for manufacture.

I’ve also been involved in the design of military weapons, armoured vehicles, construction vehicles and construction equipment.

I started to design using a drawing board in 1972. A CAD workstation appeared in the drawing office in 1985, so from then onwards I used computer design, starting with wire frame models and around 1995 using solid modelling. I was trained mainly in Unigraphics NX and also in ProEngineer, Autocad and Ferretti CAMX.

Just to demonstrate how computers have improved, in the early days, I managed to slow down all the computers on the factory site where I worked. All our computers were run from a mainframe which filled a room. Our first CAD was 2D lines only, which would slowly and gracefully appear on the screen, this then developed to 3D wireframe. I naively thought I would try out some 3D solid modelling, this stopped my computer and slowed the whole mainframe, resulting in a slapped wrist from the IT manager. I had to wait a few more years before having another go when computers had vastly improved.

Here are some tips that you won’t see in a reference book. They will help prevent new design engineers being a LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER and to plan ahead!

Chris Morris

In the Office

Setting Up Your Office Systems

If you are setting up office systems from scratch, purchase all your CAD, CAM, CAE, FEA, PLM etc. from the same software company if possible. The software systems will then easily communicate with each other. Your accountants may want you to have cheaper software from various suppliers, but this will mean big problems with data transfer. Example: A few years ago, Daimler Benz, who manufacture Mercedes cars amongst others, changed their whole CAD system to Siemens so that it could easily interface with its Siemens PLM system. A massive undertaking.

Set up a Disaster Recovery Plan: Daily archive your database away from the design office in case of fire or computer problems. Don’t imagine this will never happen to you. It’s best to plan for the worst-case scenario.

Set up a Suggestion Scheme so that company employees can help with designs (or anything else) for a financial award. It’ll make your company more inclusive and will generally help.

Have a large Notice Board in meeting room displaying employee suggestions so that other people can comment on them. Also have ongoing project plans on the wall but have a cover over them so that all and sundry cannot see them.

Check whether your new designs have already been patented by someone else. If not, start the Patent Process before someone pinches your idea.

Always look around at Designs of Everyday Things. It can give you some good ideas. It works for me anyway.

Create a Library of Standard Solid Modelled Parts that CAD users can easily add to. Some standard parts, such as fasteners, are available as solid models on the internet.

Have a Secrecy Policy in the office concerning your innovative new designs. Don’t leave any paperwork lying around. Lock up all your sensitive information overnight. Have a special pass to access experimental areas.

Have a Clear Desk Policy in your office. It shows that you are organised and helps with security. It always used to amaze me when working in a so-called secure office that the early morning office cleaners and the window cleaner had a free reign to look at any paperwork strewn over the office desks.

Set up good, Clear Numbering Systems for files, drawings and documents. I found that military style numbering systems were best for documents. This is where numbers only are used throughout the documents:

Section 1.0

Paragraph 1.1

Paragraph 1.2

Sentence 1.2.3

I’ve seen people create their own intelligent numbering system. They thought it was very good, but it was actually complicated and most people didn’t know what it all meant. As usual KISS