Thread: Uni Student needing help!!

Gooooooo JillB!!!!!!

Let me also tell you all is not completely lost. There are still some simply amazingly talented young people becoming engineers. Some of our Science Engineering double degree are super students and super people. Not only do they get top marks in some of the hardest courses around but they also do community volunteering, act as mentors to younger students. and do amazing research. Thankfully we still have them.

Originally Posted by barot1

Hi all, I am a 4th year engineering student at Monash Clayton. For my final year project I need to build a simple wooden rotating drum (small - 13cm diameter). I think it requires a lathe and hence have run into some diffuculties. Is there anywhere in suburban melbourne I can go to get this part made for me? Cheers

Hi barot, the key is to get some drawings for people to see, there are plenty of people here willing to help you. Let us know if you need help with loading some drawings up and we'll start from there.

Aaaah! The double degree. That's what you need these days to get even close to the old single degree. and then prolly a masters and Phd and all that.

Kinda the same thing as what happens in the pottery courses, although slightly less disasterous for society. They don't teach "throwing" on the potters wheel anymore. Or glaze formulation. You got to do other courses to learn that now. And since there is no ceramics "industry" in Australia anymore all those courses will prolly soon disappear too.

Originally Posted by BobL

I think you might have this a little bit skewed. The idea is that when playing with lives or the environment, or the all important corporate moaney!! so we don't let people learn from scratch on the job. OK first year engineers let's build a nuclear power plant!

Their idea is, that is not much lost if the students study the theory first. They can then at least make decisions on an informed basis.

What this often does, especially today, is off and filter out the people that are good at practical and keeps too many theorists in the system whereas we need to foster people with both skills and some of each of the other. Nobel prize winners Einstein and Feynmann were ordinary experimentalist but brilliant theoreticians. Michael Faraday would have found it difficult to pass a uni course but was an amazing experimentalist.

What the "theory first" people are confused about is between "theory" and "fundamentals". It is important that graduate engineers have good fundamental knowledge skills not a tanker full of theory. Fundamental includes practical bigtime and not just project management.

Bob,

I'm not disagreeing with you.

After completing my engineering degree I took up post-grad studies in a medical department of another university. This was a specialist medical department that was, and still is, world famous for its research. The department did relatively little teaching but a hell of a lot of research. This was a department that trained surgeons.

I do recall that one of the common discussions was on the merit of using academic merit to decide who gets to become a surgeon instead of practical aptitude. Some argued it would be better to choose someone with a high degree of manual dexterity than someone with an excellent academic credentials.

Certainly, we don't let first year medical student practice surgery, but we allow post-grads to do so (under supervision).

Just to reiterate, I'm not stating I agree with the philosophy, I'm just pointing out that some professions use academic merit to decide who gets the practical training.

Chris

Originally Posted by chrisp

Bob,

I'm not disagreeing with you.

After completing my engineering degree I took up post-grad studies in a medical department of another university. This was a specialist medical department that was, and still is, world famous for its research. The department did relatively little teaching but a hell of a lot of research. This was a department that trained surgeons.

I do recall that one of the common discussions was on the merit of using academic merit to decide who gets to become a surgeon instead of practical aptitude. Some argued it would be better to choose a someone with a high degree of manual dexterity than someone with an excellent academic credentials.

Certainly, we don't let first year medical student practice surgery, but we allow post-grads to do so (under supervision).

Just to reiterate, I'm not stating I agree with the philosophy, I'm just pointing out that some professions use academic merit to decide who gets the practical training.

Chris

Funny you should say this because I am not sure if it was this forum or another but a few years ago there was an orthopedic surgeon who stated that he wished his students and indeed he himself had the manual dexterity demonstrated by some of the better woodworkers that he had seen and went on to say that you cant teach that to somebody no matter how good their theory was if they didnt have the physical aptitude.


Ross

Is anyone surprised that Barot hasn't returned with a set of drawings to continue that dialogue? If I was in his position, I would have read about half the posts, gotten very red-faced, and gone to find somewhere willing to help without all the baggage.

I can understand a lot of the sentiments being discussed here (and I also have an engineering degree), but was it really necessary to rip into him just asking for help? At least he had the balls to ask. His description makes reasonable sense to me (it isn't that complex), and he did say he has photos but can't see how to post them. I doubt he's even read most of what has been written here (including the occasional offer to help if he posts an image (that he still doesn't know how to do as he said in post #3)).

Think next time someone asks me for help that I can't provide directly, I'll suggest somewhere else that might actually help, without first giving pages of "the problems with student engineers these days".

Originally Posted by Stuart

Is anyone surprised that Barot hasn't returned with a set of drawings to continue that dialogue? If I was in his position, I would have read about half the posts, gotten very red-faced, and gone to find somewhere willing to help without all the baggage.

I can understand a lot of the sentiments being discussed here (and I also have an engineering degree), but was it really necessary to rip into him just asking for help? At least he had the balls to ask. His description makes reasonable sense to me (it isn't that complex), and he did say he has photos but can't see how to post them. I doubt he's even read most of what has been written here (including the occasional offer to help if he posts an image (that he still doesn't know how to do as he said in post #3)).

Think next time someone asks me for help that I can't provide directly, I'll suggest somewhere else that might actually help, without first giving pages of "the problems with student engineers these days".

Sorry I dont agree I think most people made it clear that he was NOT the target just the system he is cought up in. Apart from the very constructive suggestions he lay out his requirements in English.
If he is that thin skinned how will he survive the transition from student to the business world.
He is a fourth year engineering student, must have been using computers his entire life and cant post a photo on a message board! Please ! If some of the living fossils we have here can do it on a daily bassis then why not a highly educated young man of the computer age?

Actually I think we know why he hasnt returned with a photo, drawings and description and it is for the same reason he didnt have them in the first place.

I dont think anything Bobl, myself or underfoot said was remotely rude or attacking on the poster.

Ross

Some people might well call it unhelpful, but I thought I was quite specific as to what he should do to progress his request.

To summarise; ".... gobbledygook.... provide us with a decent design specification, some sort of a diagram and a brief description of its purpose. . . . Come back when you are ready. "

I reckon he probably got a gentler response from me that I would usually give one of my first years.

With all respect of your good intentions, Ross and Bob, I am 100% with Stuart on this one. To the point that I had already written a post on the same lines but much less tactful. Fortunately I caught myself in time and deleted it so as not to make a pain of myself. Maybe I am mellowing in my old age...

F&E - you are definitely way too soft. Just remember who this guy is - he not a high school kid, he is not a general member of the public, he is not a first year uni student - he is 4th year engineer.

Imagine Barot is at work, as he could well be in just 4 months time and he turned up at the site workshop asking his "gobbledygoop" enquiry. Can you image what the site tradie would say?

I reckon we did him a big favour and he will from now one be rocking up in any situation in a much better prepared way and his boss might even commend him for it.

Originally Posted by BobL

F&E - you are definitely way too soft. Just remember who this guy is - he not a high school kid, he is not a general member of the public, he is not a first year uni student - he is 4th year engineer.

Imagine Barot is at work, as he could well be in just 4 months time and he turned up at the site workshop asking his "gobbledygoop" enquiry. Can you image what the site tradie would say?

I reckon we did him a big favour and he will from now one be rocking up in any situation in a much better prepared way and his boss might even commend him for it.

I agree with everything you say, but this is not my point (or Stuart's if I understood correctly). The first few posts should have been ample to make those points. All the discussion about academic standards should have been removed and sent to the "nothing to do with woodwoork", where I would have happily jumped in boots and all.
Now, if we just had some decent moderators around here....

Originally Posted by Frank&Earnest

Now, if we just had some decent moderators around here....

Yeah - where are they when you need them

So far as engineering goes have a read of Machinery's Handbook. Just the list of materials deals with wood plastic steel alloys castings and goes for a few hundred pages of fine print.

Steel say you want mild steel but there are lots of flavours 1010 1011 1012 for starters. Try and machines any of those they are rubbish on a machine. Can we use 1020 grade Mild Steel? Many these days just use 1040 for everything. I can tell you it is such a joy to put 1040 on a machine compared to 1012. 1012 just tears and is all over the shop but 1040 comes out looking like it was touched by god in the machining process.

You know that even though it is called The Bible in the trade there is a lot not in the book. I spent ages once trying to work out what 18-10 PH was. The PH series is not in the book! I believe it is a tool grade stainless but I have no idea honestly. In my trade if we do stainless it is typically 303, 304, or 316 however there are many others.

Nobody knows all of engineering. The other big thing is think of this, who is charge of Universities? Academics! So they set things up to come up with more Academics, what else would you expect? Of course a good engineer needs to be able to handle more nuts and bolts type problems but when does an academic need to do that?

Studley

Originally Posted by Studley 2436

So far as engineering goes have a read of Machinery's Handbook. = I spent ages once trying to work out what 18-10 PH was. The PH series is not in the book! I believe it is a tool grade stainless but I have no idea honestly. In my trade if we do stainless it is typically 303, 304, or 316 however there are many others.

Precipitation Hardening, Studley. Strengthens/stiffens it up immensely, Car Springs are Precipitation Hardened to stiffen them up. While exactly the same mechanism, it's more commonly called dispersion hardening in steel or age hardening in aluminium.

http://www.google.com.au/search?num=...G=Search&meta=

Cheers,

eddie

(B.Eng (Hons); cert Furniture (Cabinetmaking) - all for giving the original student a break.)