Portfolio

Table of Contents

Introductory Reflection 2

Revision of Textual Analysis

Revised Edition

Reflection of Revised Edition

-OVE piece

    Revised Edition

    Reflection of Revised Edition

Introductory Reflection

Throughout this semester, I feel I have grown as a communicator using the WOVE (written, oral, visual and electronic) method.  As an engineering student, we are taught that communication is key in the advancement of ideas.  If we cannot effectively communicate then the idea we are trying to get across will be in vain.  Within the written section of WOVE, I have learned to elaborate on ideas and explain them in more detail than I normally do.  I have typically wrote in short concise ways that might not tell the whole story.  Within oral communication, I learned to prepare better for my presentations.  I learned to be more open during my oral communication, such as in more nonverbal communication when giving a presentation and speaking in a clear, polite voice during an interview.  Within visual communication, I figured how placement and presentation are crucial in effectively communicating through visuals.  Finally, within electronic communication, there has been a stress on blogs throughout this semester which has taught me about how to professionally communicate through some sort of electronic medium. 

Before taking this class, I thought I had a good handle on the communication needed for the field of mechanical engineering.  After this class, I am convinced that there is much more in the communication aspect of engineering than people often let on.  We too often forget that communication is how ideas are passed on to finally have them come to fruition.  We all need communication in order to spread ideas and thoughts around. 

In order to spread said ideas around, we must first figure out who we are communicating with.  We do not talk to our friends the same way we would talk to our grandparents and both of those are even different from the way we might address our grandparents.  Knowing your audience is key in effective communication.  You must be able to step into that person’s shoes in order to figure out how they think.  In order to talk to an engineering major you would probably need to know lots of technical manufacturing, science and math languages.  Conversely, if you were talking to liberal arts major you could not use such high technical talk but rather choose the simplified version of what you are trying to get across.  Knowing your audience is key.

Throughout the semester, I have learned to draft and revise my own work before a final draft is ready for others to read.  I have come to realize that it is best to get all those thoughts about an assignment out of your head and get them on paper.  It does not have to be pretty as long as you understand the point you are trying to get across.  Once this is done, I would organize my thoughts and reorder them to have coherence when read.  This would be considered my first draft.  I would reread the draft and consider what I need, don’t need, what is important and what can I leave out.  This is also when I realize that I need to expand on some topics and condense on others.  After that I would have somebody proof read it and give me feedback.  This would then lead me to my third draft and after another proofread it would be old enough to graduate as my final draft. 

Most, if not all, communications can be categorized into the WOVE categories.  This makes it a great strategy in teaching undergraduates about effective communications because it covers all types and exposes them to it.  Within one major, there is all types of communication, some more than others but still they are all present.  First, electronic communication is big and becoming bigger.  I have grown up in the information age, so electronic communication is something I am very used to and comfortable with.  Written communication is a bit tougher for me because I cannot always ascertain the correct words in order to convey my thoughts accurately.  I use multiple drafts and revisions to accurately get the point I am trying to make across.  When put on the spot my written communication is choppy and scatter brain.  When it comes to oral communication, I have work to do.  I can do a presentation about engineering or a topic I know very well with extreme precision. Although my spur of the moment conversations need work.  I often say the first thing that comes to mind and then end up correcting myself.  I am often nervous in front of crowds during presentations so I fidget which is bad to do during a presentation. Out of all of them, I would say visual is my strongest.  I can draw well enough to get a point across but not so good that I should be an art major.  I learn by diagrams so I often refer to them when explaining something.  I can draw a picture of a situation or what a process is because I know I won’t leave any details out.  Everything that the person needs to know is right there.

Within this portfolio, I will examine the different types of WOVE and revise and edit my previous work in this class. This will allow me to think back about all the communications that I have partaken in throughout this course.  It is good to look back on your own work to revise and correct it in order to improve upon your communication ability.  After all, practice makes perfect.

Textual Analysis Revised Edition

“The Feasibility of Friction Stir Welding” is the testing and application of a newer solid state welding type.  Most people do not understand the methods that are involved in the manufacturing process.  The language of the article also tells us that the author has an intended audience of technical people in mind.  From this we can conclude that this article was meant for manufacturers, engineers and others who might take advantage of this technology in the fields of creating objects.  These two things together tell us that the purpose is to inform and educate engineers and manufacturers about new methods of welding metals.  The article examines 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 being members of a group called TWI, which they state is the research group that is testing this new method.  Their credentials are listed at the very top of the article, which would indicate that this is a scholarly source and has been peer reviewed.  Credentials are very important in verifying if it is a good source or not.  They will tell the reader the author’s level of education and sometimes where they got their education from.  In this article, it tells us that “Dr. Thomas is in the Innovation Unit and Dr. Threadgill and Mr. Nicholas are in the Friction and Forge Processes Group, TWI, Abington Hall, Abington, Cambridge, UK”.  They are a group of three doctors collaborating on this research together from Cambridge in the United Kingdom.  Within the same part as their certification, it also states what date the manuscript for this article was received on. 

Scholarly articles go through a peer review process in which a manuscript is submitted and verified for originality and accuracy.  The peer review process is also another good way to confirm that this is both scholarly and meant for highly educated people in a similar field as the authors.  The review process is done by people who are also experts in their respected fields, which means that they know the topics discussed very well.  On top of that, if you are writing something that you know is going to get peer reviewed, your audience becomes those peers.  This allows you to know your audience and gear the article towards them.   They list the previous research on friction stir welding and where the idea came from.  This is to give background for the peers reading this article.  Although they are considered experts in technical fields, they do not all specialize in welding processes and the history of them.  This is to inform those who do not know about where the grounds for their research came from.  

Another way to tell that it is a scholarly source is by the language that is used in the context of the article.  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. For example, they mention “work piece materials selected were 12 and 15 mm thick low carbon steel of grade BS 970, Part 1, 1983 07M20(BS EN 10083–1) and 12 mm thick 12% chromium alloy steel of grade DIN 1.4003 (X2CrNi12) (EN 10083–3) with the nominal compositions given in Tables 1 and 2”.  Table 1 and 2 are lists of elements and their percentages that make up each metal.    Metals in the manufacturing industry are classified by the size (length, width and height), hardness, tensile strength, metal alloy percentages, etc.  Only someone who has dealt with such specificity of materials would know why this matters.  To the average person, 6010 aluminum does not mean anything, whereas to a manufacturer this is a very specific metal with specific properties.  Depending on how metals are mixed together can also change their properties.  Different metals have different boiling points and freezing points.  This is important because as you weld you heat up the material you are trying to fuse together.  Since there are two different metals mixed together then one might end up melting first while the other metal stays a solid underneath.  Conversely, if you successfully weld two pieces together, they might cool at different rates and cause cracking or some other defect.  All of this information would make sense more to an engineer or manufacturer who deals with this stuff in their own fields. 

The purpose of this article is to share information and research results with other academics in the fields of manufacturing and engineering.  More times than not, the whole point of academic writing and scholarly articles is to share the information you have discovered or found through experimental ways.  This article has many features of scholarly articles which is one of the reasons to infer that the purpose is to share results.  Despite the evidence that is associated with scholarly things and research, there can be some bias thrown into it by the author.  This article seems to have very little, if any at all.  The reason for this is due to the purely statistical insight that this article brings.  From the very beginning, the authors state that this technique is more good than bad but also has these bad things.  Throughout the paper they seem to be presenting their findings rather than discussing why it is a good thing.  Although just because they present statistical data, there could still be some bias because they could have chosen to leave out statistical data that would make their results less impressive.  We will never be sure until the extent of their research has been published, so for now we consider them to present only good information.

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 based upon the use of high level language to communicate ideas, its target audience being an academic one and the fact that it is currently a research topic.  These all come together to show that the authors’ true intent was driven by research findings and sharing results that were found during their study with other people in technical fields.

Reflection of Revised Edition Textual Analysis

The revised form of this paper was necessary for a few reasons.  The first being that it was just poorly written, repetitive and incoherent.  The second being that it was my lowest grade out of all my other papers during this course.  And finally because I saw this as having the largest room for improvement.  In the end, I rewrote most of it. 

I have always found revising my own work to be difficult because I knew what I wanted to say but the words that I would write were the always the best way that I could phrase it.  This does not mean that it is the best overall way but rather it was the best I could come up with.  I am not particularly great at word choice and properly phrasing things that would make the most sense to everyone.  I know in my head what I am trying to say but it does not always come out with the same meaning when I put those thoughts into words. 

I started by taking the constructive criticism that others have given my about this piece.  I looked for it in my paper for myself to figure out where they were coming from.  Most of the comments I got about this paper were that it was repetitive and hard to understand.  After reading it myself, I completely agree because I would begin a paragraph and state everything one way then move to the next paragraph and restate it in a different way.  This leads to the author no seeming to have a point in the paper they wrote.  I knew this was the first thing I had to fix.  The second thing was that when I read it, it did not make a whole lot of sense to me.  I did not have constructed paragraphs that flowed together and covered a topic as whole.  I talked about the who, what and why all in the same paragraph.  I Knew I needed to reconstruct the organization of my paragraphs as well.

I took my paper paragraph my paragraph and just rewrote what was in each of them.  This did not turn out too well because my paragraphs did not work together to begin with.  I reorganized my thoughts into a few subcategories that would accurately analyze the article that I was talking about.  I placed them into who the authors were, why they were writing this article and what they were doing. 

I ended up taking each part that had to do with my subcategories from my original paper and put them together in a new order.  After a little reworking to get the remaining kinks out, I ended up with a very similar paper to the final edited form.  One of the things that was also brought to my attention was that in my original paper I did not say where I was getting this information from within the article.  It was suggested that I put references to how I came to the conclusions that I did in my analysis.  After skimming my paper for places that I would need evidence, I put in the appropriate parts and ended with the paper that is a few pages ahead of this one. 

Research Presentation Revised Edition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7v2KP6eyM0 

Reflection of Revised Research Presentation

This revision was needed to help improve myself for future oral presentations.  I have nervous habits when giving presentations, which is the main reason for this revision.  I wanted to be able to look at a presentation that I gave and figure out what I can do better on.  In high school, I had to give a few oral presentations and every time I always knew that I would act nervous or not look at the audience or something like that.  I knew I did less of these nervous habits while giving this presentation but when you know that you still have bad habits in something it is good to take a break and analyze them further and figure out where you are improving or not improving. 

While thinking of how to improve my research presentation.  I determined that it would be best to watch my first presentation before doing anything.  While watching my video, I took notes on certain things that I was doing.  I noticed that I would not make eye contact with the camera and I seemed overall anxious.  This does not make my presentation seem very good.  Since I had nobody peer review my presentation, I had to do it all myself.  It proved to be no easy task because when you know your own quirks then it is harder to fix them or notice them in the first place.  I gave the presentation knowing what I had to accomplish, and looking back my major issues with it was not my information but rather my delivery that needs work.

With knowledge of my habits, I knew there was lots of room for improvement.  Within my revision of the presentation, I figured that I should not focus on the information that was delivered because I felt as though I covered it quite well.  Instead, I would focus on how to improve the delivery of the material.  To do this, I wrote notes on my power point slides.  Thanks to Microsoft’s newest version of Office, you can see your current slide along with notes that you write about that slide and the next slide.  I figured that I would be able to control my thought more if I wrote out generally what I want to say first.  This is often used as a way to help when you are giving a presentation. Turns out the room I redid my presentation in did not allow me to see my computer screen while I was giving my presentation.  To compensate for this, I reread my notes before giving it again.  Some of the smaller details that I changed were like dressing nicer and standing up more straight and just more proper etiquette overall.  These contribute to more of a professional look when talking and people will take what you are saying more seriously.

Lastly, I’d like to say that I am giving this speech to my friends because they nicely agreed to film me do this.  They are all engineers so with that in mind, I feel as though my attitude might be different when giving it.  I tried to keep that same tone and attitude when giving it a second time but it was much more difficult.

Friday reflection on revisions

Throughout my revision process, I am looking at my paper and imagining someone else wrote it and I have to peer review it for them.  I see what makes sense to me and what could use touching up.  I already wrote the revision for my first piece of my portfolio.  I took the advise people gave me about my piece and look for evidence of it myself.  Then I restructured my paper because it was very confusing and I wasn't even sure what I was trying to say.  After figuring out my main points, I was able to reword and make my paper more coherent.

I think would translate into most other classes where writing is involved because you need to be able to make your papers coherent and have a clear meaning.  Rereading your own paper is good but I definitely see limitations with it.  You know the material and you also know your own line of thinking, but when someone else reads it then they might get confused.  Someone might not always be available to look over your papers for you so that is why I tried reading my paper as though someone else wrote it.  This is can be difficult just because its still your work but if you can think about it as not yours then it works nicely.  I was able to see the lack of organization in my paper and how repetitive I was sounding.

Overall, you should always do what works for you best but when in doubt ask someone their opinion.

Research paper

Product creation is no easy task that can prove to be pretty daunting as well.  Engineers pull it off in a seemingly flawless way.  This is because they have a process to follow.  Although the engineering design process varies between firms, it is essentially the same idea throughout all.  You begin be defining your problem, think of ways to solve it, research and refine your ideas, then build and market it.  When it comes down to it, the whole process can get very complex and hard to keep track of everything that is going on.  Engineers will use visual, oral and written communications to convey ideas, thoughts, actions and intent to other engineers, manufacturers or clients during the engineering design process in creating a new piece of technology.

First order of business for the engineering firm is to define a problem.  Most of the time, this is a problem that society is facing and needs innovation.  Other times it is for a client with the intention to make profit.  In an ABC production, the engineers at a company called IDEO we tasked with designing a new shopping cart[1].  This is a very crucial step because it will define all sequential steps.  In this step engineers will be communicating with clients as to what is required, expected and deemed suitable for this task. 

During this stage of things, there is often lots of written communication that is used for reference later on in the project.  They cannot remember everything that was said so they will write it down.  This makes the needed information easily accessible and they will not have to bother the client when they need to remember a detail about the product that they were tasked with building.  The engineers may begin to use a house of quality in this stage while they have the client present.  A house of quality is essentially a spreadsheet that translates the client defined constraints into engineering jargon that will be used in evaluating the ideas that are thought of during the next few phases.[2] 

Next in engineering process is research and brainstorming.  They can go in either order, which is why they are talked about together.  Research is exactly what it sounds like.  Engineers will go and research similar problems to the one they are tasked with solving.  This could be something very simple and only requires a web search, whereas others require extensive searching.  On the more research heavy side of things is what is called reverse engineering.  It is taking apart an existing product or object and attempting to learn how it works and why it works well or does not work well.  Companies do this all the time and there is nothing illegal about it.  Specific companies will put warnings or labels on certain parts that says open at your own risk.  For example, there is a cell phone that Boeing designed and manufactured that will erase all the data on the phone if the back cover is taken off.  This could be useful for sensitive government officials or spies. Boeing’s intention though was to release a phone that could be bought by the average person.  They did this so that if your phone gets stolen or someone tries to hacking the phone it will get rid of all the data. 

Sometimes during this stage the engineers find that there is little to no documentation of something like this before.  In that case they are left more in the dark but it allows for more creative freedom when actually making the final product because you have nobody competing.  It could be that the technology does not exist to make a certain product fit the desired constraints.  If they are faced with an extremely challenging problem, then they will break the problem up into something that they can solve more easily.  A screw is nothing more than a ramp that is wrapped around an axis.  This is an over simplification of it but it serves to show that problems can be broken into smaller parts.

Mostly written communications are used in this part.  The reason is that basic researching techniques only require basic note taking.  This again is used more for the fact that they cannot remember everything so they need to write it down to remember.  While exploring different answers to the problem, they might end up drawing basic sketches for the brainstorming process to come.  The sketches could also serve a reference because it is much easier to draw what something looks like instead of trying to describe it in words.  These would be classified under visual communications. 

After all the research is gathered, brainstorming is allowed to happen.  Brainstorming is meant to be a free thought, no criticism is allowed and just to get ideas flowing.  In the Project Lead the Way classes, you are taught that it does not have to be a viable option.  If you thought of a pair of shoes that could shoot lasers as defense, give you super speed and make your feet feel like they are on air all while making your breakfast then by all means you are allowed to bring it up.  The logic behind this is that even crazy ideas can lead to something worth noting.  In the IDEO video, the manager talks about how he encourages such craziness and free thought.[3]  From some random idea that nobody thought would work came something remarkable and innovative. 

Sketches, doodles and words would be the communications used in this step.  This is because each person is allowed to make up their own ideas on how they think they should solve it.  To communicate this to the other engineers on the team, they will draw what the product would look like with lots of arrows explaining what each thing does.  These sketches can range from something drawn on a post it note to something that is on a large piece of white paper that has shading and looks like a piece of art.  Members of the team present ideas to the rest of the group using their drawings.  This would be oral communications.  The team leader would then write down notes about each design and everyone gets a say in which are the preliminary designs. 

Visual communications are vital in this area because if a picture is worth a thousand words then it would take a lot longer time to get these accomplished.  These sketches demonstrate ergonomic design, visual appeal, functionality, and how complex it is or is not.  There is something about visual design that makes it easier to understand and communicate complex ideas.  To explain something in words is simply too vague for this step.  If someone said that their design was cubic, medium size and could made using only 6 parts then everyone’s idea of it might be different than what the original person had in mind. 

Once all possible ideas have been thought of they move into the phase called identifying constraints.  Now constraints are something that would restrict the engineers in some way or another.  The resources are not limitless so they have to work within a confined space that would make the product profitable and marketable while still solving the problem at hand.  For example, a client wants a revolutionary redesigned backyard grill.  They would want to be able to sell it in the future and make it available to many people.  A constraint would be that it has to be sold for under two hundred dollars, has a maximum volume of 64 feet squared and has to have a smoker box attached somewhere.  These are important because the world does not have limitless resources and people selling this product need to be able to make money from it.  Engineers have to make products that are going to be useful and practical.  Nobody will buy a hundred dollar toaster oven.  They have to keep consumer in mind while doing this.

During this time a house of quality and morphological matrix are constructed to better visualize the constraints and goals of the project.[4]  For the most part, the fun has ended and it is now time to think more logically and seriously about what designs to consider.  A morphological matrix is a spreadsheet that shows what the client is looking for and what the engineers came up with during the brainstorming sessions.  It takes all of the better ideas that are proposed and ranks them based on the criteria that the client has spelled out for them.  It examines the strengths and weaknesses of each design.  Most of the time, they start out with five decent designs and figure out where the strengths in each lie. If one design has very low weight but very high fuel economy, whereas another design has very high fuel economy but is heavier, then they would most likely combine the two ideas to make one better idea.  They do this for all the other designs remaining and see what remains.  Often, it is only two or three designs that make it this far.  This is the more where problem solving is used a lot.  During this they are more focused on legitimate ideas that would make it to the production stage. 

“The house of quality takes the client related constraints and turns them into engineering related constraints”[5].  If the constraints that the client is concerned with are low weight, high fuel efficiency and low costs, then the engineers would relate those terms into more math and science terms[6].  Low weight is a function of density, type of material and size of the material.  If they choose a very dense material then it will weigh more for a smaller volume.  If they choose carbon fiber over stainless steel then the cost goes up.  They would look for a cheap, light weight material.   The size of the material could be related to the volume of a container or it could have to do with the cross sectional area of a more vehicle type product.  High fuel efficiency can be thought of in terms of weight and aerodynamics.  Aerodynamics can be effected by the cross sectional area of the product.  A flat piece of steel does not move through the air very easily when it has more area facing the direction of travel.  Turn the steel on its side with less area facing the wind and it moves easier.  They all end up relating together in some way.  At the top of the house of quality, which is called the roof, is a large triangle with smaller triangles in it.  The engineers use that to figure out how the math and science terms they just came up with relate to each other, as in the example just given. 

Much as the name implies, this is the select an approach and design proposal stage of the design process.  After the best designs have been considered and looked over, the team of engineers decides on a final approach to take.  They review over the design ideas that have made it this far and try to narrow down and figure out which would be the best one to go into production.  Once again, they will often combine ideas that have complimenting advantages to make the product better in some way.  They will fine tune the details of the agreed upon design as to minimize flaws. 

This leads to another form of written communications that they use in documenting the birth of a product.  The two main ones that are used are risk registers and failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA).  Risk registers examine the likelihood of something going horribly wrong.  For example it will say a steel bar can withstand this amount of force.  Within the design you have the bar so that it might take a greater force than it can handle, and what is the probability of that happening.  It checks for things so that once this product is being manufactured it is safe to use.  It also says how severe something is if it breaks.  If a belt that is attached to a high speed motor snapped then the belt will fly off and hit someone in the face causing severe injury.  They do not let a product move on if it has something like that.  The engineers also test to see if, once in production, the product will last in the consumer’s hands. 

Failure modes and effects analysis is essentially the same thing but on a bit larger scale.  It assesses where and when the product will break.  This is the test to see how long a product lasts and what internally will cause it to fail.  It checks for the stress that each part will take and determines whether or not that part will last the life of the product[7].  If the product out on the market already and then the engineers find a flaw, the FMEA will determine how catastrophic it will be to the safety of the consumers[8]. 

During this step there are also design proposals that are written.  They are basically a report on what the team thinks the solution is, provide how much it will cost, the materials it uses, how quickly it can be made, etc.  The team of engineers will meet back up with the client during this time and submit their design proposal to them.  If the client likes the idea and thinks it is viable then they continue on with the design process. 

Once the design is approved, the team begins plans to model and prototype the design.  This is the next step in the design process.  Modeling software is something every engineer will encounter at some point and it is the basis for prototyping.  It is called computer aided design, or computer assisted design.  Mostly it is referred to as CAD.  They essentially build the product from scratch on the computer and give it physical characteristics that would match the material being used.  By doing this they can save a lot of time and money.   By modeling it they can do stress tests on it, figure out where something does not fit or how to assemble the object once it is fabricated.  It gives them a chance to work out the remaining bugs.  Nothing is going to be perfect the first time so they do this in order to better the final product.

From the CAD model, they create technical drawings of each part that they modeled in the computer.  From here, they dimension the drawings and add comments for the manufacturer who will end up making it.  The visual communication here is the upmost importance.  The engineer who is making the technical drawing is tasked with calling out where certain parts go and their respective dimensions.  They have to be careful as to not over dimension the drawings.  The manufacturer does not want to have too much information because then it just makes the drawing complicated and he or she might miss an important dimension within the drawing.  The person who creates the drawing has to be careful so that just the right amount of information is on there. 

Within the technical drawings, there are many standards that engineers have to follow.  There are Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerances (GD&T) and these give rise to standardized ways of communicating.  One of the protocols include, a diameter is symbolized by a forty five degree angled line coming from the circle and then is followed by a little circle with a line that slashes through it.  This is a universal symbol that the dimension given near that is a diameter.  This way it is not confused with a radius or arc length.  GD&T also outlines how tolerances have to be.  Tolerances are how tight of a fit something else will fit into that hole.  It dictates if a hundredths clearance is enough or is a three thousandths clearance enough.  In different applications this will be different.   If a loose fit was required with not a lot of force then there is one type of hole that is made, whereas if a snug fit, high load and high revolutions per minute is going to need a different tolerance.  These are the things that the engineers have to think about when designing a product. 

Once a prototype is made the engineering analysis part of the process can begin.  This is essentially making sure that the product does what it is intended to do and that it does not do what they do not what it to do.  This is where a change order could come into play.  A change order basically is something that needs changing on the product so they have to document what the change was and why it is required. 

All of this is to limit the risk to the user and ensure that they have created something that is safe to use and will last a while.  During this it also allows them to make sure that they are within standards and limits set by the government.  A new car has to only allow certain amounts of carbon dioxide into the air per minute. 

Once the birth of a product is complete, there is only one last step to do and that is to make sure you have records of everything and document whatever you left out.  Documentation is extremely important to them because if they need to go back to this project for some reason then they have all the information that they need.  They can repeat the process without having to go through the steps again.  Now because of all the documentation, this part is the most communication heavy, in the sense that they are trying to communicate with a future human being.  This is often used in math and science heavy disciplines.  It becomes important, not just to engineers but everyone, because science and math are based on reciprocation.  If someone does and experiment is Boston then someone else in Tokyo should get the same results. 

Overall, visual, oral and written communications play a major role in the birth of a product during the engineering design process.  The communications are so vital because it creates a trail for other engineers or even themselves to follow.  This allows for knowing what happened every step of the way, so that future people will be able to find their path of logic and recreate what they did.  Nikola Tesla was considered a mad scientist during his life and yet we continue to look back at his technical drawings trying to figure out what he was trying to do.  From those documents alone, we have been able to figure out what and why did those things. 

Works Cited

Apostolakis, G. E. (2004), "How Useful Is Quantitative Risk Assessment?". Risk Analysis, 24: 515–520.

Clearance Chart and Lubrication Diagram. Digital image. N.p., 29 Dec. 2010. Web. 8 Mar. 2014.

Gearyinteractive. "The Deep Dive" Youtube. Youtube, 26 January 2011. Web. 8 March 2014

Temponi, C and Yen, J and Tiao, W.A. (1999), "House of quality: A fuzzy logic-based requirements        analysis". European Journal of Operational Research, 117(2):340-354

Starns, Gloria (2014, March 6). Personal Interview

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[1] Gearyinteractive. "The Deep Dive" Youtube. Youtube, 26 January 2011. Web. 8 March 2014

[2] Temponi, C and Yen, J and Tiao, W.A. (1999), "House of quality: A fuzzy logic-based requirements analysis". European Journal of Operational Research, 117(2):340-354

[3] Gearyinteractive. "The Deep Dive" Youtube. Youtube, 26 January 2011. Web. 8 March 2014

[4] Starns, Gloria (2014, March 6). Personal Interview

[5] ibid

[6] ibid

[7] Apostolakis, G. E. (2004), "How Useful Is Quantitative Risk Assessment?". Risk Analysis, 24: 515–520.

[8] Starns, Gloria (2014, March 6). Personal Interview

research poster homework

On Friday, I went and checked out the 3D shape measurement with digital binary defocusing techniques.  The research was done by people in the mechanical engineering and the mathematics departments.  Their research was about 3D shaping, which is a technology that uses waves to map a 3 dimensional area.  At its basic form, it essentially sends out waves, they can radio to gamma rays, and then there is a receiver that will get all the waves back and figure out how long it took the waves to reach a spot and return.  The computer system  knows that since it took this wave longer then it must be farther away and thus maps accordingly.  The focus of the research was how binary defocusing helps this process.  Binary defocusing is when you have a wave that uses a 1 bit system to track the formations in the mapping process.  This way the information that is being sent back is much simpler so the computer processes it faster.  Although because they are using waves that carry less energy to keep it simple, they also have the problem of having less information or more information loss.  There are still many problems with this technology and they said that they have to still adapter other technologies to get results.  It still is a step forward because it allows for faster mapping, and ground surveying.  They hope that by simplifying the imaging technology they can speed it up and still get the same if not better results.  While the technology is above my pay grade, I still can appreciate the application that it might have in potential military uses and general surveillance.  Being able to make the invisible,visible is a huge task in general.  It allows us to look at things we would normally be flying blind into.  This could protect more militants as well as uses of national security because we could now survey the ground of hostile enemies.  Overall, this technology is still under research but it will soon prove useful in application.

Homework for 3/26

My research paper is important because it outlines how communication plays an enormous role in the engineering design process.  It shows that engineers use much more writing and visual communication than most people realize.  Most engineers take all of it for granted because they don't think of it as writing.  When in reality it is exactly that.  From the start of the start of the design process, engineers need to define their problem that they have to solve and research about previous designs or break it down into simpler pieces.  In order to keep track of all that information they write a lot of it down.  Engineers will also use a house of quality to translate consumer requirements and constraints into engineering constraints.  They think of it as a function of something that they can control.  For example, low weight is a function of density and amount of material.  Engineers can control both of those functions in the design process.  Later on, mostly during the analysis part, engineers will do risk management and effects analysis on the object that they made.  They record where it could fail, how it could fail and how spectacular it will fail.  They do this to keep the product safe and to minimize future problems that might occur with the thing that they are making. So overall, this paper will help me as well as future students to understand what it is they will be learning and using in practice.

One of the main problems I am having with my research paper is that I can not seem to find much in the way of explaining why they do the certain documentation that they do.  There is quite a bit on how it is used but not much on where it originated or why it is this way.

Research Proposal

The Various Communications Used in the Engineering Design Process

Mechanical engineers, much like any other engineer, are tasked with designing and creating various objects with a specific functionality and cost.  “Two heads are better than one” is a philosophy that is often used in the engineering discipline.  For this reason, they will work in teams to create something new or to improve upon an existing object.  This is where the communication plays a major role in the ability to get a job done.  They must be able to relay information between other engineers, engineers and business people as well as engineers and clients or consumers.  Cross discipline communication is one of the hardest ways to get ideas across because what they engineers see is something different than what the business majors see or vice versa.  On top of that, engineers must also be able to record their results and ideas in order to reproduce them later on.  How they accomplish this is in many different ways based on what they are trying to say, who they are talking to and whether or not they are recording information or brainstorming information.

The various ways that mechanical engineers transfer information is based upon who they are trying to communicate with, what they are trying to communicate and when they are trying to communicate it.  There are many different forms, charts and tables that mechanical engineers will use to convey these messages.  They often involve some sort of a visual representation that can be translated into words and ideas.  Visual and oral communications are the main forms that they will use but they also need ways to record those visual and oral conversations.  This leads to copying the visual communications into printed copies and the oral communication turns into more visual communication in the form of charts and drawings.    

Mechanical engineers want simple, straight to the point things that they can pull an answer from easily. Visual communication aids in this process by making it easier, more efficient and quicker to decipher.  Throughout the design process, which starts as soon as a team is tasked with solving a problem, there will be many things said or discussed by the team.  They need a nice way of organizing this, so to solve this problem they came up with ways of recording the ideas for future reference.  As you begin a problem, the team must first ask themselves what their problem means or start by defining it in some way.  They then do research on that topic to discover what ideas have been thought of already or how to break the complex problem even farther down into simpler pieces.  This requires taking notes on what they research.  I will refer to the Deep Dive video throughout the paper as a reference to this design process.  In the beginning of the video, the team called Ideo was tasking with making a new shopping cart.  They researched previous designs, such as what worked or what did not work.  They saw that they had to break down the problem even farther because everyone shops differently.  Some people like to leave their cart at the end of an aisle, grab what they need from that aisle and then return to their cart.  Whereas, other people take their carts everywhere they go.  After research, there is what is called the brainstorming part.  This is exactly what it sounds like, in the sense that they all get together and brainstorm ideas.  The one rule about brainstorming is that you cannot put down an idea and no matter how extreme, silly or obscure an idea is.  Within Ideo, the camera takes a look at how all the engineers will sit in a conference type room and think of crazy ways to improve the shopping cart.  By the end of that brainstorming session, they have too many ideas to use and must consolidate them into a two or three good ideas.  They accomplish this through what is known as a house of quality, morphological matrix and decision matrix.  These tools allow the engineers to qualitatively assess the ideas that were thought of.  Everyone has limitations that they have to work with and engineers are no different.  As with Ideo, they have to make it at low cost so that it will sell, functional for the everyday person to use and keep it with the same dimensions as a normal shopping cart.  These are called constraints.  In the house of quality you take the constraints or requirements that the client desires and put them in the left side.  Then, engineers relate them to a certain function of the object that they are trying to create.  For example, at Ideo, materials is a function of cost because some materials are more expensive than others.  You have control over the material you choose to make it with so you can define materials in the top part of the house of quality.  After all your constraints are dealt with, you look at the relationship between the functions that you defined.  It is a way for engineers to translate consumer words and adjectives into math and science terms.  This is useful so that engineers can easily sort through what they have to accomplish with this project.  Next in the design process is to see which of your secondary designs are good.  You then look to see how your competitors are doing in the categories of things such as price and compare them to you.  Sometimes ideas get combined because if one idea has very low cost but large size and another idea has high cost and small size the you can combine the ideas to make an even better one.  This is where the major engineering analysis comes into play and where most of the communication happens.  This is because ideas are thrown out, changed, combined or redesigned, so to keep it all straight they have to record how they got to it.  After that comes prototyping.  This is where the object is made in a computer software and tested as though it were in real life.  From here they can modify the design so that it performs better and figure out if they need to redesign something.  Communication at this stage is mostly technical drawings which are drawings of the actual object that is to be created.  They have specific standards to communicate lots of information between engineers and manufactures or whoever is making the part(s).  The other form is a chart called failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA).  These are used to calculate the risks of failure in something and how serious it would be if it were to fail.  They are to prevent harm to anyone using the object and to ensure that it will not breakdown.  Nobody wants to buy something is just going to break, nor is someone going to buy something that poses a threat to them.  This is there to prevent all that.  After it is verified that its safe they begin production and the product hits shelves. 

Overall, the communication that mechanical engineers use to convey design intent from the beginning stages of the design process are wide spread but often involve some form of visual communication that can be translated into a meaning that is useful to the engineers

Starns, Gloria (2014, March 6). Personal Interview

This interview was with a Mechanical Engineering professor here at Iowa State University.  She has been teaching for a long time. She teaches a freshman class as well as a senior design class.  This makes her an expert in the field.  During the senior design project, you actually deal with real companies, so she would know about how companies function and what they are looking for.  She taught me what the tools to communicate were so there was not any bias.

Apostolakis, G. E. (2004), "How Useful Is Quantitative Risk Assessment?". Risk Analysis, 24: 515–520.

It takes a look at the use of risk analysis in the designing and production of something.  It focuses mainly on how it is conducted during engineering analysis, how engineers typically account for this risk factor and the advantages and disadvantages of this method.  It seems fairly unbiased because it essentially verifies what Professor Starns told me as well.

Sant'Anna, A.P. (2012) "Probabilistic priority numbers for failure modes and effects analysis".             International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 29(3):349 - 362

This article shows how to perform a Failure modes and effects analysis.  These are useful to help prevent the failure of an object.  This explains the procedure, how and why it became a choice for engineers to use.

Temponi, C and Yen, J and Tiao, W.A. (1999), "House of quality: A fuzzy logic-based requirements analysis". European Journal of Operational Research, 117(2):340-354

This paper is very factual.  It agrees with the other sources about house of qualities so this leads me to believe that it does not have any bias, or has very little.  It is a good length article that explains the reason, calculations behind the House of Quality.  It identifies relationships between the different parts and explains why each part is there.  It explains how that it is not an exact science when making this but rather a tool to aid and guide engineers.

Hauser, J.R. and Clausing, D. (1988), "The House of Quality". Harvard Business Review

Although this article is older, it outlines a general design process that is widely used.  It explains why design is so hard and how the house of quality helps engineers to make decisions about which idea they should fund.

Nagamachi, M. (1995), "Kansei Engineering: A new ergonomic consumer-oriented technology for product development". International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 5(3)

This article shows how to implement newer design processes.  It shows that although there are different types of design approach.  It explains the product-out and market-in approaches to consumer products.  It shows a different type of communication in the design process.  This paper seems to be more factual and stating results than opinion based, which means less bias.

Tapke, J and Muller, A and Johnson, G and Sieck, J. "House of Quality: Steps in understanding the House of Quality"

This is a simple article that explains the house of quality.  I would use this to corroborate information that I find in other articles to stay with consistent information.

Clearance Chart and Lubrication Diagram. Digital image. N.p., 29 Dec. 2010. Web. 8 Mar. 2014.

This is an example of a technical drawing for an aircraft engine.  I planned on using this as an example when talking about technical drawings in my paper.

Gearyinteractive. "The Deep Dive" Youtube. Youtube, 26 January 2011. Web. 8 March 2014

This is an educational video about an engineering firm that goes through the design process to build a new shopping cart.  It will show the design process and I would refer to it often as a single example for the reader to follow.  It is a ABC Dateline production.  It seems more to function to show the design process rather than persuade the audience in some way.

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.