Textual Analysis

“The Feasibility of Friction Stir Welding” is the testing and application of a newer solid state welding type.  For most of us, we do not care about new advances in welding technology and manufacturing processes.  From this we know that this article was meant for manufacturers, engineers and others who might take advantage of this technology in the fields of creating objects.  From the language we also know that the author uses career jargon to explain what sorts of testing were going on.  These two things together tell us that the purpose is to inform and educate engineers and manufacturers about new methods of welding metals together.  It lists the advantages and disadvantages of this newer process to demonstrate that further testing still needs to be done but there is hope on the horizon for this new welding method.

The authors of this article are listed as taking part in the group called TWI, which is the research group that is testing this new method as described in the article.  They have their credits as well as had the article peer reviewed before publication.  This indicates that it is a scholarly source to start with and that it also is meant for other scholars in their fields.  This is in line with the fact that it was peer reviewed for starters.  It also is indicative of this based on the language used.  There are very high level manufacturing jargon in this article to further prove that they are talking to other academics.  Welding is a very specific skill and the techniques used in it are special to the industry itself.  The authors mention all sorts of different attributes to steel by using the full name of the metals that they are talking about.  Metals in the manufacturing industry are classified by the size (length, width and height), hardness, tensile strength, metal alloy percentages, etc.  To the average person, 6010 aluminum does not mean anything, whereas to a manufacturer this is a very specific metal with specific properties.  In engineering, you need this specificity because sometimes you need very hard materials that cannot bend under any circumstance but sometimes you need to keep the weight down so you chose a lighter material instead.

As stated previously, this is a peer reviewed scholarly article. With that title comes a reason for writing it.  It was peer reviewed, which means that even others in that same field thought it was important and ground breaking enough to publish.  Peer review is a tough process to get through because you have to make a case that is new to everyone as well as important enough to tell the world about.  At TWI, they had conducted enough research so far to provide preliminary results.  Testing is by no means over so this publication is more of a memo to let others in their field know about the strides they are making.  It is extremely important to stay current with research due to everyone trying to make it to the top first, so to speak.  This helps to inform the community about further research that could be done.  It also will tell everyone who is working on similar research that TWI is this far ahead, so if you are doing this and not getting results then maybe try it this way.  It becomes a way of sharing test results so that everyone can benefit and do the most productive work possible.

Similarly to the authors, this work is intended for a specialized group of people.  It makes references to high level words that only manufacturers or engineers would know.  The purpose of this is simply to share the information gained in doing this research.  TWI has spent time and money to find the best way to weld metals using this process.  They have an interest in this technology and feel that it can help create better manufacturing processes or to improve the ones that already exist.  Therefore, they need to target those types of people for them to know about the technology.  It makes their future better if other believe in it.  Practicing engineers need to stay current with this type of stuff so they are going to use language that those engineers would know best.  They do not care about the person who works as a janitor in a hospital because he probably does not care since it does not affect him/her.  Therefore, they are not going to use everyday language to try and make it a best seller.  They only what people who care about this new advancement to read about it. 

Although it was touched on in earlier paragraphs, the purpose is already apparent since we know that it is academic writing.  It is to share information and research results with other academics in the fields of manufacturing and engineering.  This is shown through the use of dense manufacturing words that this article is littered with.  This is due to the fact that they do not care if the average “joe” can read it or not.  As long as they get their point across to their intended audience then mission accomplished.

To conclude, the article of “The Feasibility of Friction Stir Welding” done by  W.P Thomas, P.L Threadgill and E.D Nicholas was intended for the academic world of manufacturing and engineering on the principle that it uses high level language to communicate ideas, targets an academic audience and is a subject of research.  These all come together to show that the authors’ intent was driven by research findings and sharing results that were found in their research with others.  

Visual Rhetorical Analysis

My visual analysis piece is of an old aircraft tolerances and lubrication.  This is a standard technical drawing that is used in the engineering industry.  It involves a cross section drawing of the assembled engine with all its various components.  Every part is labeled with a number that specifies a certain part and tolerance of that part.  Within an engine, you have a lot of moving parts so they have to fit nicely with as little friction as possible.  The engine also heats up so you have you take into account that all the parts will heat up and expand.  They only heat up a few hundredths of an inch but that is enough for things to go wrong.  This drawing was clearly made for engineers and people who are trained in such a field.  This is because there is such specific jargon and symbols to convey what the author is trying to say or show.  The purpose with this drawing is to let the engineers or mechanics know how tightly things are supposed to fit together and to show the flow of oil.  This is important because it can prove why an engine failed or diagnosis an engine that is not performing correctly. 

Almost everything we do has a purpose.  Within engineering, there is nothing that is unnecessary on technical drawings.  Everything you will ever need to find comes from something on the drawing itself.  With this information in mind, I was able to figure out what this drawing was intended for and what it is saying.  Labeling everything is extremely important because you do not want someone assuming something that you did not or vice versa.  Therefore, most of the obvious information will tell you exactly what the intent of this drawing is.  This way when someone else goes to read it, they know precisely what they are looking at to find if it’s relevant to their information need.  The title is clearly stated on the lower right side of the page.  Most of the methods employed to analyze this visual was stated directly on the visual itself.  Engineering is very direct as well as cut and dry, when it comes to presenting information.  They want it given directly to them without any extra unneeded details. 

The large main drawing is displayed in the center because it is most important.  It contains the most information.  The right side of the page is dedicated to smaller views of the engine from different angles.  These are not as important because they do not have as much information available on them.  In engineering practice, we have standards for the way that drawings are supposed to look and ways of dimensioning them.  The common practice is to have a front, side and top view of the object with the front being the side with the most detail.  If you have an oblique surface or plane then you have to do a different angle view to get the correct dimensions.  With some drawings you have to do detailed views which display a larger view of something that you are already showing in the drawing.  This is required a lot on wheels that have a large total area but also have a smaller more detailed area in the spokes.  The front view is used as convention in this drawing.  The reason for the other smaller drawings on the right is for the same reason as before if we have an oblique plane.  The only way to show those features are to make a separate view than what is normally used. 

This drawing was definitely meant for engineers and mechanics who have training on reading drawings like this.  It is very technical in nature with field related jargon and codes.  Just from looking at this, someone can see that it is extremely complex and heavy in engineering conventions.  If one wanted to use this in a presentation to marketers or other people who are not so familiar with these customs then a lot of modifications would have to be made.  What someone could do is create an isometric view of this engine with certain parts cut away.  An isometric drawing is one at an angle to all three axis.  It shows off all of the main features of the object.  It also makes the object look very nice and professional as well as what it would look like in real life when it is built.  Within engineering, if we need to show the full function of something but most of the function in intern, then we will create an isometric drawing with parts cut away.  What this does it lets us see the internal mechanics and view its full operation.  As in with an engine, you have four cycles that allow it to function.  We would then create four different drawings of this to display the four cycles that it goes through.  We draw the regular isometric drawing and then draw a wavy line where we “cut” to display that we cut through right here and that is what it looks like on the inside at this exact spot.  Repeat this for the other stages of internal workings and you have something that you can present to a client.   

Overall, this technical drawing of a Royal Air Force plane engine is very cut and dry.  It displays a diagram of the engine with all its various internal components to show other engineers and technicians what the tolerances of the parts should be and the lubrication of the engine.  These are all very important as they are vital to the performance of the engine and thus to the aircraft.  This was written in plain black ink with an off white paper color.  This is to ensure that your focus stays on the diagram and the information it presents.  The whole point of this is to find out information of this particular engine so there is no need to spend money or fancy paper to print this on.  It looks professional, which is part of the reason too.  As stated previously, the intended audience is other engineers who might be working on the design of the engine, fixing the engine, manufacturing the engine or mechanics/technicians who would be working on this as well.  The logic behind this is you need training to read this.  Other people might be able to see that it looks like an engine but they will have no knowledge about the specific numbers or references that are displayed in this drawing.  To open the audience more, we would have to do a major change to this drawing.  It would require a conversion of this working drawing to an isometric drawing that shows more of the function of the object rather than the high level technical details.  Isometric drawings provide a more three dimensional look to the object.  Now couple that with cut away section that show the internal workings and you now have something you can show a business client.  To conclude, this visual representation of the specific measurements and lubrication system of an aircraft engine from the post-world war two era is intended for engineers and technicians trained in this field of study.  It requires functionality rather than esthetically pleasing colors.  It is to easily access information about the function of objects.

Work Cited List

"Clearance Index Chart." CAC Wirraway Technical Details. DB Design Bureau , 29 Dec. 2010. Web. 7 Feb. 2014. <http://dbdesignbureau.buckmasterfamily.id.au/images/CAC_R-1340_Wasp_S1H1-G_Clearance_index_chart_1_of_2.jpg>.

Visual rhetorical analysis (part 1)

This is a technical drawings of a old Wirraway air craft used from 1939 to 1959.  It was used by the RAF (Royal Air Force).  This drawing was made to communicate the clearances and lubrication on this engine.  Clearances are extremely important in engines because they heat up and cool down, so that means they expand and contract.  You have to make sure that when you first start the aircraft up it works properly but you also have to allow for the expansion of the metals in the engine as well.  Sometimes you have an aluminum engine black that houses everything and some other part might be an aluminum alloy or even iron so that part will expand differently than the rest of the engine block.  The audience is engineers working on designing or manufacturing this engine as well as the repair crew that would be fixing the engine or doing maintenance on it.  I know all of this because these drawings can be extremely difficult to read and not everyone knows how to read them.  In this way I know it is geared towards that audiences because of the language used.

Rhetorical analysis_creative writing

Every student throughout time has analyzed their teacher, professor or teacher’s assistant, or a combination of all of them.  Its human instinct to try and figure out who is good and who they should avoid.  It also is how students decide which teachers they like and which ones they don’t.  I remember doing this to my high school teachers all the time.  During my junior year, my two best friends and I would always evaluate my English teacher for what was going on in her life by the way she would act and teach the class that day.  She was a first year teacher at my school when I had her for English, so she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of what to do.  She was every straightforward at the start of the year but ended up mellowing as time went on.  On the average, she was a happy teacher would loves her job and will sometimes go out of her way for her students.  Now my friends and I hate English, we are sciences and math kids all the way.  Because of this we would often make fun of our teacher.  Partly because she didn’t know how my high school wanted the material taught and partly because she did something awkward that we could make fun of.  By the middle of the year, my friends and I had come up with a theory to explain her mood swings from day to day.  We came up with a theory that her mood was proportional to whether or not she had sex the night before.  We came to this hypothesis because she would often have what is referred to as “the glow”.  My friends knew what “the glow” is better than I did at the time.  If you do not know what this, it is a way that a person acts and talks after having really good sex or sex for the first time.  Teenagers all over the US are victims of having “the glow” quite often.  We had slightly more evidence than the fact that she displayed all the symptoms of “the glow”.  One of our supporting pieces of evidence was that she would always talk about her husband and how they just got married and how happy she was that she was with him.  This made us believe that she was in love/huge crush kind of a thing.  This is a leading cause of “the glow” as well.  Whenever she was in a great mood, she would talk about him nonstop, whereas on the other hand, when she was more upset she would stick straight to the lesson and would be less willing to joke around with us.  My last piece of evidence was that when she had her husband come into class when he wanted to drop something off for her. She got extremely excited and pulled him into class and introduced him with such a smile on her face.  But when he was brought up in conversation when she wasn’t feeling too well, she would hardly speak about him.  My friends and I spent the final half of the year proving our theory and making slight adjustments to it to perfect it.

Summary Reflection_2.1.14

Summarizing is something I feel like I do often so it was not that big of a deal for me.  The only real difference was that the article was longer and denser than I am used to and that the summary that I had to write was a lot longer.  It was challenging getting used to the academic writing and how to find information in a academic paper.  I think, overall, you just have to practice it.  In my opinion, I am good at extrapolating from information given to figure out where the author came from or is going when it comes to engineering and science writing.   I most likely will have no clue what it is talking about but given context clues, I can deduce a good amount of information to summarize it.  Writing three pages worth of information was tricky.  I am used to dealing with summaries that are two pages at most so to write three full pages was hard.  The only thing I would want to change about this was my article.  I just kind of grabbed the first article I saw that sounded cool.  It is difficult to find really good articles online. I would just prefer that we had more resources to us.  Maybe that was just me being lazy and only looking online but it just seemed that we had to find an article very quickly.  Overall, it was a good assignment.  I like being able to research my own field to see what new advances are coming.  I feel like it is also good for us, who are just about to enter our fields, to be familiar with the newest technology in that discipline.  Staying current in your discipline seems to be extremely vital for you in that field because it shows what your colleagues are doing, what new advances are being made, what areas of research are gaining popularity or decreasing in popularity.  It gets us more acquainted with what we are interested in.