Product and Mechanical Engineering Blog | Adept Engineering

Making Wise Prototype Decisions, Don’t Drink from a Fire Hose

July 10, 2014 by Adept Engineering

In my previous post, I mentioned the responsibility of deciding when to transform a virtual prototype into a physical prototype. I may have been a bit premature having this discussion with my readers. As you may be aware, there is a great deal of hype – surrounding “desktop printing” and I may have jumped on that bandwagon a bit hastily. This technology has been around for decades. True, some very industrious individuals brought this technology main stream by offering desktop printers within a price point of a personal computer. However, before you get to play with this new toy, you must have a “solid model”. While there are many tools to create solid models, engineering or designing a solid model is a very different undertaking.

Tools That Transform Concepts into a Physical Prototype

June 12, 2014 by Adept Engineering

“With great power comes great responsibility.” I’ve always expected a bit more from this quote. If Peter Parker is who claims it, so be it. Don’t get me wrong, I love Spiderman movies. What’s not to like about a good guy winning and getting the girl. Unfortunately, in the world of engineering, we are not always fortunate to have the same fate. We are given great power and responsibility, but without the girl (or guy, let’s stay on theme…Spiderman and all). The power to engineer and develop in the virtual world is fantastic and has granted us unimaginable vision and responsibility.

Robots are among us…

May 5, 2014 by Adept Engineering

With June fast approaching and another school year coming to a close, students everywhere are looking forward to the summer break. This also brings another year of the USFIRST Robotics championships to a close. For those of you who are not familiar with USFIRST.org, let me introduce you to one of the smartest after-school programs ever conceived. FIRST (“For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”), is an organization that encourages Engineering to elementary, middle school and high school students through an exciting yearly robotics challenge. The shortest and best description of the program was given by one of its founders, Dean Kamen, who brought us the Segway, and coined the phrase, “The sport for the mind”.

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Want to engineer your idea? It might not be easy.

April 8, 2014 by Adept Engineering

Let’s just say you want to build a new machine or develop a new product. Can’t you just dive in and do it?

The simple answer is “no.” You need an Engineer.

Adept is proud to present If Engineering Was Easy… a blog with an editorial focus on innovation in mechanical engineering, industrial design, and electrical engineering consulting. Written for, by, and about engaged and innovative engineers, If Engineering Was Easy… aims to inspire readers to strike up engineering related conversations discuss and share methodologies as they pertain to a machine and product conception and development.

The Engineering Design Process

February 17, 2014 by Adept Engineering

Concurrent Engineering has been a buzz word for decades. I expect that there are dozens of similar terms for all types of development work. They all basically mean the same, relative to foresight and working as a team with the hopes of streamlining the Engineering design process. Within the design Engineering sector the onset of extremely powerful computers and software has made this process enormously easier. Perhaps it is best to look at it as a macro and micro perspective and it all has to happen in a concurrent fashion. From a micro sense, I’m speaking of all the engineering and design factions working as one; conceptualizing, designing and analyzing as one, targeted at producing a virtual prototype (computer simulation/model) that is indicative of the subject product or machine. From a macro sense, during this Engineering design process it is imperative that the Engineers keep in focus; risk, usability, fabrication, cost, marketing, etc.. Whether in a micro or macro sense, it is also important that the governing engineer establishes a level of effort required to satisfy the end objective and organizes and focuses appropriate resources. Knowing what capabilities are within each contributor’s wheelhouse is imperative to operating an effective and efficient team.

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