Life of a Mechanical Engineer

Every single mechanical engineer has to study a subject called mechanics. Some call it MOM, some call it SOM, some call it EM. But whatever you may call it, it's always there and it's always the same. This subject tells us how to decide whether our design will fail or not. And it is a very complex subject. And the bad news is, we only study this until we get familiar with the concept of Simulation. Once you start doing simulations, there is no going back. I had a glimpse of simulation very early in my college life, way before it would have according to my syllabus. And then I got myself involved in another project that made me understand simulation to a very great extend. This was the design and manufacturing of HAWT. Basically, we were trying to make a hybrid wind turbine that can produce electricity safely inside a crowded city. And the very first step included the Fluent based simulations. Actually, the first step was a literature review, but yeah you got the point. So, my s...

One of the most time-consuming types of simulations is Explicit simulations. Simulations can either be implicit or explicit. Explicit simply means that the simulation is run for a very small time period where energy change is very high and instantaneous. Many different studies are done using Explicit methods. One of these is the simulation of an explosion. This is what I did in my six-month internship. Since this internship was under a government organization, I can't describe the specifications of the process, but basically, it was the simulation of an explosion. Here's an image of how the failure occurred just after 0.1 s of the explosion. Image: Failed sheet due to explosion on Ansys Explicit. While using Explicit methods, it is very important to define the material properties properly. Unlike Implicit models where a few properties like density and elastic modulus can fully define the material, Explicit models require much more data. Thus, one of the most important steps is ...

This was quite a famous project last year. Basically, this is meant to be a prank. There is a box with a switch on it. You flick the switch, an arm comes out and flicks the switch back to the original procedure. We thought of making this with some upgrades so that we can use much of our knowledge about Arduino in a single project. So we started designing the same box, but with the added functionality of movement and proximity detection. Not only it could flick the switch, but also detect if someone is approaching to flick the switch and even move back to avoid that. And this all was done inside a small box with an easily manufacturable structure. Here's a render! Image: Rendered Product on Fusion 360. The project started with a model on Fusion 360. A cuboid was cut into parts to ensure different motors and microprocessors can be fitted in. Further, the structure was made in such a way that it could be made by laser-cut wood sheets. Laser cutting was chosen due to it's relativel...

CNC machines are the most vital part of Mechanical Engineering. One way or another, we all end up using CNC machines in our projects. Let it be robotics, automobile, prototyping, additive manufacturing, CNC is used everywhere. My first experience with something similar to CNC was the 3D printer. We had an FDM based 3D printer in our college, which was majorly used for research purposes. We had worked on it for some time when we came up with the idea of making our own 3D printer.  We thought of making something less complex before making a 3D printer, something like a 2D printer. So, we decided of making the least complex 2D CNC machine: A Plotter. What it does is simply using a pen to plot whatever the file is provided with on a piece of paper. But making any CNC machine is very complicated. There are many things to take care of, the most important being vibrations. The body of a CNC machine needs to be stiff enough to ensure minimal vibrations. We achieved this by using layers of ...

First of all, Formula Student can't be called a personal project. It was rather a team project where I was in charge of designing the car. As a team of twenty, we worked for over eight months to come up with this vehicle. And believe me, it took more effort than any of us had expected. To start with, it was the first time our college was making a Formula Student, so we had no guidance. Although we had a team for BAJA India, the last few years were not going good for our teams. So we had a bit of experience, but that too with an All-Terrain Vehicle. I was the head of designing for the Formula Student. And I had to read the rule book at least three to four times and design a chassis at least ten times to come up with a design that looked fairly good. It took us (me and my team) five months and nearly 97 iterations to come up with the final design. Yeah, you read it right. I had to make the roll cage up from scratch tens of times. Then each of these was modified to ensure no rule is b...

This was the first real project we ever made. Our university had allocated some funds for green initiatives inside the campus, and one of our seniors had an idea. He thought of making an 8 seater cycle bus. And I along with my friends started working under him. We started by deciding the orientation of the passenger. Then we worked on the mechanism to transmit power from eight different pedals to one driving shaft. And slowly, we kept on solving every problem and finally came up with a chassis. Somehow, this project made me understand Solidworks in a way I couldn't even learn by studying or from Youtube. I did my first simulation on Solidworks as well.  The project also helped us all to understand why we were studying all our subjects. We had to do calculations for the turning radius, gear ratios, transmission mechanism, clutch mechanism, and whatnot. We designed the chassis, simulated it, removed unnecessary components, and then repeated everything until we reached the most optimu...

This was the time when I had understood the design procedure of a product. I had started working with CAD Software. I knew that before manufacturing the product, we need to design the product. And let me tell you one thing: there is no one more interested in making CAD design than a second-year mechanical engineering student who has just understood the software. So, here I was making the design in Fusion 360, having discussions with my teammate, finalizing the dimensions of the project. All this without even understanding what a Press Mechanism is. Yeah, we didn't study what was meant by a press mechanism and started making a design that will somehow "press" or crush anything placed inside it. We made a beautiful CAD model, showed it to our Professor, who said that we can proceed. Now, this project was to be made in 6 months alongside our studies. So we used to work on it twice every week. Given the absence of CNC machines in our college, this project took us a lot more t...

While I am working on the Review of the Past series , why not write about some of my initial projects simultaneously? The first project I made as a mechanical engineer was a Speed Reduction Pulley System. If you are familiar with something, you would know that it is not even a proper project. However, as a first-year student who didn't even know what he was doing in engineering, this was the best idea I could get. Actually, this wasn't even my idea, this was my friend's.  If you are unfamiliar, this was basically a few cylinders connected to each other using a rope, the motive of which was to reduce the RPM of a motor to nearly one-third. It was such a basic, and I'll say pointless project that I don't even include it in my resume. Or maybe it was a great project, but we were unable to understand it at all. Anyways, We made it together and it somehow contributed to my future projects. Image: Final Assembly. So this was it. The so-called project. I would have include...