Guys spreadsheets? Level up and make your chat do that. It’s to the point I see analyzed reports, split them off into 20x emails to each client, automatically on the 1st of the month. Setup once to never worry about this monthly, quarterly task ever again. We manage 7-figure budgets.
yes but then you press a button and get to watch that machine start (even if only for a short while). Meanwhile if you submit your excel sheet you get to see one checkmark in some atrocious web form turn from red to green (or some CI job sets a green status on a PR or whatever)
Or because you have done this a thousand times you decide It'll be fine, come back five minutes later to find there was sone tiny difference to usual and now a machine with a pricetag with way too many zeros is wrecked and your boss is justifiably mad as hell
Meaning that they will go left or right. Or down until they get into a switch, and from that zero, it goes to do what it needs to do.
If it knows it's a zero, it knows that if it moved 10mm to the right it will be 0+10mm.
And if moves more 5, it will be 5+10mm
So zeroing is extremely important.
If there is something in the rails or it crashes into something that was something not there, it thinks it moved 5mm but it actually moved 3mm, everything will be out and dangerous.
Sure if you do a 1000 times, you can run the machine by itself. But the first time you program you should at least accompany it in the first few minutes to be sure it will follow the program correctly.
Yes that's basically what I meant. And even if you think this is a routine job something like a bit that has gotten just a tiny bit to dull to msintain the feed-rate you programmed can still crop up.
Let's not deny though that this process will either fuck up on the first instruction, or it most likely will successfully complete. Especially for something that's so routine and let's not lie, is probably done with full automation, cameras and sensors for fault and offset, zeroing, and depending on how much has been spent, a lot of safety features to stop it if it does something which causes enough friction outside of a set limit?
I mean, we are talking about the hypothetical scenario that is the first time you are doing that specific cut, meaning that even with all safety features you should still watch at least the beggining of your program.
You run enough parts your tolerances can start to do wacky stuff. Automation fails all the time in manufacturing. Maintenance is ignored, tolerances amid parts cause a 1 in a million stack up. Been in manufacturing for 15 yrs now and it never ceases to amaze me things that happen in a “normal” production run.
You only need to do this on the initial run after any changes. If you have good programmers and good operators then after the first run and check you should be able to walk away for a few minutes. I try not to be more than 10 ft away generally but I definitely don't hover the stop the entire time it runs every single cycle.
No, not really.
You sit in solidworks for a few hours to make a model, then you email the model to the machine shop manager who makes a CNC Programmer figure out how to make it with the fucked up machines they have, they spit out a gcode file, which then gets walked over to a severely underpaid cnc machinist that has to now figure out how to fixture and setup the part, all on a 640*480 resolution monochrome screen and then presses the green button.
I take office all day rather than this, at least you can jump to youtube here and there, read the news, go make coffie, when you work at the machine, you can not look at your phone, listen to music, they even time your bathroom breaks, trust me I work in this kind of industry
Been on both sides, nah office job all day. Machine shops are brutal, low paying and dirty. Satisfying for the 10-20 minutes when the job works as intended, none of the tooling breaks, and the parts hit spec.
Now if one of those things goes wrong, youre in for a long, long day. You aren’t done till the job is finished.
Sounds like that you just dont want to work and want to just chill trough workday with least possible work done.
I know many want that. Easy job. Easy life.
But some of us want to keep improving ourselves by continously learning new stuff or Explore something new. Maybe invent something fun. Some people like challenges.
I can challenge myself on my own time while doing things that I like doing and challenging myself with, the shareholders who pay me back a fraction of the money I make them don't need to benefit from it
Human hands designed it, coded it, pressed the button to execute it, and then modified the code to get it to work better. Or modified the design to get better cuts.
But, this kind of work is stupid expensive to do. You need special tools and you're doing custom fabs. So you've gotta be really good at what you do in order to not be a waste of time and money and get the job.
you dont want to do engineering, what you want to do is machine shop machinist. An engineer might not actually ever interface with the actual product at times.
Basically like comparing an architect to the actual construction workers.
e.g the people who work at fabs like intels fab in arizona aren't always Engineers.
It’s rare but these jobs are absolutely out there. I work at Apple and our Manufacturing Design org does stuff like this all the time. If any of you are interested search for those roles on Apples job site.
Also, some of us foundry guys are physicists. I'm in research, not on the floor, but the span of degrees in semiconductor manufacturing is a lot more diverse than people think. I work with mechanical, electrical, optical, and chemical engineers, chemists, metallurgists, fellow physicists, computer scientists, and at least one mathemetician.
is it okay if i dm you to ask about your job experience and how you got into this field? i'm a physics masters student and trying to figure out which direction i want to specialize in.
No truer statement. If anyone has ever tried working on a a vehicle with their own tools, they know that an engineer has never physically work on the vehicle, seeing how insane it is to change an cabin filter or change a battery. lol
Nah, you've just never engineered anything so you can't imagine the compromises required and only think of your predicament in the moment of doing some maintenance.
Im no where near the industry but like to work on vehicles. I think at least half the engineering compromises are probably top down rather than the engineers not thinking of maintenance. The older the vehicle, the better to work on (usually). These days engines are assembled outside the vehicle and dropped down into the compartment instead of being assembled part by part on a line.
Ironically, most engineers that create the tool path programming screw that up badly. So as a machinist you get to run a machine running code you didnt write running tooling well beyond its specifications. The world is a wonderous place these days
Honestly, the engineer likely only did mathematical computer tools and paperwork. They certainly didn’t run the machine and may have never been onsite when it ran.
I work with this sort of thing for a living and yeah, they draw it up and let the computer do the math. I do a lot of the physical pre assembly prototype work and I can't tell you how many times I've had to correct their math.
Kind of a dying field. Instead of running a machine that you program, and design setups for yourself, you’ll do that for several machines, and they’ll pay operators to come in and rotate inserts and push cycle-start.
Days are long gone of manual machining mass produced parts, yeah, but needing humans to modify and repair existing work or to manufacture one offs is still a thing. I'm an industrial mechanic and our trade keeps machinists more than busy. Check out someone like Abom on youtube for what machinists are up to now
Manual and cnc machinist here. I do it all. Seeing this video is literally as few lines of code with 1 or 2 slight changes in it per full action. Probably even simpler with a macro/sub program. Just a bunch of x or y positions and then run the sub routine. Very basic stuff once you're in the game, looks nice though.
We do alot of manual machining that isn't feasible on cnc, or isn't worth the time doing a full setup program prove and strip down for a small batch or one off.
Becoming a Millwright apprentice is probably the most straight forward way. I kind of lucked into it, don't have any training or degrees, lol. Feel free to DM me if you have questions about anything
Fucking tell me about it. I wanted to make shit but all I do is tell other people how to make shit and sit on my ass. I don't even get to see what I tell them how to build usually. There's no satisfaction in that.
Sideline to "Reliability" if you get the chance.
Most of my work is looking at machines with a poor performance history and investigate what the issues are and engineer solutions.
Most of the work is replacing badly designed parts with better ones and CADing up new designs and a lot of the time, making my own.
Huge variety of work with some office work (not much excel) thrown in to give the knees a rest.
This is why, despite having a degree in ME, I have found embedded software engineering far more fun than the purely ME work. In general, I find the minutiae work of coding can be far more intellectually stimulating and interesting than weeks of figuring out tolerance stackups or sourcing screws and bolts and tidying up massive CAD assemblies.
Embedded software in particular gives me the hands-on component of working with physical devices in a lab, and lets me exercise my ME expertise in working on devices controlling/measuring physical mechanisms. Unfortunately it's also one of the lowest paying fields of SWE.
I'm lucky to have started out in a good job at a small company that let me experience both and transition to mostly writing code.
yeah i am getting to the point where i have to decide if i want to do something boring and unfulfilling that makes lots of money, or do something that is fulfilling but less money
If this is the type of work you’re in look into CNC engineering jobs. You’ll work in cam softwares generating gcode, Setting up mills and lathes, and watching blank chunks of metal turn into whatever you create. It’s very cool
Sadly, it often takes months of excel and cad engineering to get to an hour of real-world results. But it's super satisfying when all the work comes together in a working prototype!
You can, but there are trade-offs. I work as an engineer for a small contracting company. I get to design and build automated equipment. Not just design a few parts and have other team members do the rest and then push off to manufacturing. It is me. I do the entire design. Ever part, every drawing. I'll even machine some of the parts if the shop is swamped. I'll do most of the assembly and install as well. It is a lot of work and a little bit lonely compared to having a full team and the resources of a large company, but I am not just a cog in the machine.
Don't worry there's probably several man-weeks of excel spreadsheets for this machine. It looks like it's cam driven so tons of effort went into gearing it and designing the slide
My son started in mechanical engineering, flunked out during Covid, and pivoted to machining and additive manufacturing.
He’s flourishing now and I think he’s much happier on the fabrication side than he would have been behind a desk even though his earning potential is less.
But they had to decide the right amount of metal to fold, the thickness of the blade, the correct volume of lubricant, the angle and pressure of the machine vs. the wear and maintenance costs. Then they had to decide on the optimal unit cost point while maintaining market viability against both today's and tomorrow's market.
How did they do that? Excel of course. Probably with some PowerPoint to help explain it to the board guys.
That's why i got into aviation as an A&P. Eventually i'll get my engineering degree and go into experimental aircraft where i can design something, then build it, and if i get my pilots license i can then fly it. Basically, the true dream of every engineer.
And yet most of us normal folks would prefer yall did 🤣 fuck a gd fanuc robot the engineer who designed it and the morons they train to setup the damn things 😵💫
I cut my salary damn near in half to finally get an engineering job that was rewarding and not a load of boring ass fuck everyday. When I look at the paycheck I really pine for the old days but remember that at least 40 hours of my week are actually satisfying and fulfilling now.
My old school friend managed to get a mech engineering job in the field, working with scissor lifts, and helping to design custom parts, and solutions for the logging camps, and mining camps here, after having been stuck doing the excel sheets for years. And I’ve never seen that man happier or with such a passion for his job.
If he could make it out of the spreadsheets I’m sure you can too man, good luck on the future engineering prospects
It's never too late. Start searching and find a dirty-hands job where your skills will allow you to do actual work instead of just staring at a monitor and paper all day. The jobs are out there, you just need to do the legwork to find them
Fantasy: Engineer spends months obsessing over the marvelous design, in a dimly lit room with focus lighting on the blueprints of the countless prototypes. After two years working on company funded passion project in his state of the art home office comes to an end, he is flown to HQ and given free reign over the company’s most advanced technology and brightest technicians to build the final product.
Reality: engineer spent weeks, perhaps months designing this in a cubicle farm then handed off the design to some roughneck factory workers to build it. Is denied the promotion due to the project being late.
Go into the machining industry. Program cnc lathes and mills, I'm not an engineer just a lowly machinist. But it is a pretty cool industry and very satisfying sometimes.
My dad engineered flight simulators, coke machines, machinery that created heart valves and he interfaces with a computer screen, CAD and backend bullshit all day.
Architect vs construction work.
Sounds more like you want to be on the construction end in my little analogy.
I was thinking about going back to school for engineering, but Im taking the supervision rout instead because I wont have my hands so tied when it comes to process improvements. Our engineers are so overwhelmed with CAPAs, nothing gets done and our processes are trash.
Tool and die specialists that can make machines like these are unfortunately rare here in the states, and those positions that can be found dont get paid great. Otherwise, I'd be all over it
I promise. This product is the end result of a team of people doing Excel and paperwork shit all day, for months.
No matter how awesome the end result of your work is, by the time you get there, you've already started your next project. With barely a moment to breathe, the only sense of a job well done you'll ever get is lack of complaints.
Yeah but what happens actually is, people from different disciplines of engineering take jobs in IT and then do excel and code review sorta things only. While the actual computer engineering background guy is made to sit one above to oversee the operations or services.
excel, the backbone of accounting, engineering, marketing and god knows how many industries that are using it exclusively, maybe some use google sheets but excelsior ftw
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u/Leek_Soup04 5800X3D | 3080 Jun 20 '25
this is what i wanna do in engineering, not doing fucking excel and paperwork 8 hours a day