Outline of my future
Outline of my future
(OP)
Hello, I’m Lorenzo, I joined the forum just a few days ago. I’m an Engineering student, now I’m attending at the Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. I’m about to choose the elective courses, and in order to do that I’m deeply thinking about which one of my personal interests could lead me to a satisfactory professional career. Reading some random discussions I realized that this forum is frequented by a lot of engineers who are active in many different job areas. So, given the importance of the choice I’m making, I joined the forum in order to ask you some questions, because I’d like to have opinions of someone who is more integrated in the field than me.
The areas of Mechanical Engineering that I like the most are Mechanical Design, Vibrations and Mechatronics.
In particular, in the area of Mechanical Design I could attend courses like design with advanced materials, advanced design of mechanical structures and CAE.
Vibrations are interesting, but I’m not an expert in the field, so at the moment the choice is quite hard.
Mechatronics was my passion when I was younger, but I’m concerned because it is deeply related to Electrical Engineering and Automation, so the risk is that as a ME I won’t be able to reach a sufficiently strong level of competences. (maybe it’s better to focus on the mechanical part only?)
I know, my message is very long, and probably I made some mistake, but I hope you’ll apreciate my effort since I’m not a native speaker and speaking English isn’t my cup of tea :). So, which area do you suggest me, in term of job request, wadge, and probability of interesting developements in the future?
Thank you, Lorenzo
The areas of Mechanical Engineering that I like the most are Mechanical Design, Vibrations and Mechatronics.
In particular, in the area of Mechanical Design I could attend courses like design with advanced materials, advanced design of mechanical structures and CAE.
Vibrations are interesting, but I’m not an expert in the field, so at the moment the choice is quite hard.
Mechatronics was my passion when I was younger, but I’m concerned because it is deeply related to Electrical Engineering and Automation, so the risk is that as a ME I won’t be able to reach a sufficiently strong level of competences. (maybe it’s better to focus on the mechanical part only?)
I know, my message is very long, and probably I made some mistake, but I hope you’ll apreciate my effort since I’m not a native speaker and speaking English isn’t my cup of tea :). So, which area do you suggest me, in term of job request, wadge, and probability of interesting developements in the future?
Thank you, Lorenzo





RE: Outline of my future
Where do 90% of electrical failures occur? Mechanically. Personally I blame EEs for encouraging the use of star washers and barely torqued hardware. Also frankly EE for robotics is plug and play. As such I wouldn't doubt that your contribution to a mechatronics team would be fine. So if that is what you /want/ to do, do it. Even if it is a bit harder than some other option, if it is what you want to do you'll be better at it.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Outline of my future
I'll assert that at least >99< percent of all 'electrical' failures are caused by electrical engineers' hubris and ignorance of mechanical issues that predictably, and repeatedly, bite them in the arse.
... present company excepted, of course. The sparkys who hang out at E-T are in a different league from the ones whom I've been, er, privileged, to work with. Okay, all but two. You don't know them.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: Outline of my future
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Outline of my future
I think that we agree about the mechatronics subject: projects in that area are developed by interdisciplinary teams, so instaed of studying both the electrical/control and mechanical aspects, I'd better to focus on the mechanical design problems. In fact I'm relieved knowing that the projects aren't developed by only one engineer, because this gives me the freedom to develop my mechanical design skills, without preventing me the partecipation to teams designing mechatronical systems.
What do you think about the fields of advanced materials (polymers, composites) and reliability of structures, both applied to mechanical design? In your opinion are they going to be requested in the future? Do you think that industry will invest on them, or that other branch of mechanical design will be perferred?
RE: Outline of my future
RE: Outline of my future
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Outline of my future
I thought they had those on automobile assembly lines
B.E.
RE: Outline of my future
RE: Outline of my future
RE: Outline of my future
RE: Outline of my future
Go get a part time job at a machine shop. The experienced gained will be equal to your masters.
RE: Outline of my future
RE: Outline of my future
Around here it seems it ends up being the mechanical/mechatronics folk that get stuck picking the motors and sensors etc. and the electrical guys mostly do boards and firmware. Plus having some mechatronics might support a systems role in future which can be a way to stay technical but be in leadership.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Outline of my future
As a freshman in college, we learned to program in FORTRAN, the Elbonian way, completely on paper, because the college had only one computer accessible to students, and you had to sign up months in advance to use it because the grad students were computing PI to many decimal places. No part of it looked interesting to me.
Several decades after graduation, I took a detour into writing firmware, because I needed it done for machine control projects, and our IT department started layoffs when their backlog got down to ten years. So I wrote programs, at first on a teletype, later on terminals. Most of it was done in assembler and/or FORTH, because that's all that would fit in the available program memory. I did a lot of work with the 8741, which had 1024 bytes of program memory, and 32 bytes of usable ram. I also became pretty decent with the 8080 and 8086.
I found programming a natural fit, because a program is a machine that you write, and I like to write, and I like machines. But those tiny microcontrollers didn't exist when I was planning my career.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA