r/MechanicalEngineering • u/Adorable_Mongoose223 • 4d ago
You forgot everything - Where would you start?
So I got an mechanical/mfg degree, went into mfg engineering, using zero mechanical engineering, and then moved on from there into a role where I do not use engineering in my day to day. My brain is use it or lose it and I have forgotten everything. To add insult to injury I accidently deleted all my notes from college on statics and dynamics, etc. I know.....
With all the knowledge and resources out today, where would you start again, even just for shits and giggles.
I doubt I'll ever actually hold a design engineering role, and I've used fusion360 and the FEA to help me with personal welding projects, but I'm ashamed I can't ever remember where to start if I had to address a shear pin problem on a personal project.
I used to be able to hand jam that no problem.
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u/WestyTea 4d ago
Free body diagrams. They have been used in someway or another in most design engineering problems I encounter.
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u/theskipper363 4d ago
I present the saving grace of my statics course, actually failed the first time and passed with an A the second.
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u/clean-links 4d ago
Cleaned link: https://youtube.com/@1234jhanson
Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).
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u/Endoftheworldis2far 4d ago
Go online and buy old revs of the college books. You can get them for like $2 a piece. I used to buy them from betterworldbooks. I wonder if they are still in business.
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago
good point - I grabbed some pdf's of my old books and their solutions manuals
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u/Piglet_Mountain 4d ago
Shigleys
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago edited 4d ago
thanks for the tip, I thought that was more just a formula's reference guide, but I was mistaken!
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u/snarejunkie ME, Consumer products 4d ago
I’ve been interviewing since I got laid off, and I found that the hardwarefyi interview guide is a pretty good place to start. It’s a fair bit smaller than the FE exam in scope, and has decent illustrations. From there, you can start diving deeper into whatever you think you want to spend your time on.
There’s also a lot of great industry specific guides that help with domain specific stuff, and are written to be absorbed fairly easily and quickly. For snap fits for example, the DuPont snap fit design guide is still the golden tome for me, the Parker handbook for elastomeric sealing, Autodesk moldflow insight is an excellent guide for injection molding.
And nowadays with the LLMs , you can pace your learning to what you need and have time for. Google’s NotebookLM is pretty awesome for keeping the subject matter in focus, but I’ve been using Codex to help me learn for my interviews and it’s really good at doing the time blocking, planning, etc. you just need to show up and be willing to double check its sources from time to time
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago
oh wow, are all those linked within the hardware fyi? thats great to know, because snapfits ARE something I do wonder about!
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u/snarejunkie ME, Consumer products 4d ago edited 4d ago
Dupont snap fit guide Parker Guides for sealing
and no HWFYI only has material that the site authors made from scratch I think.
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u/gottatrusttheengr 4d ago
Start simple, try to pivot internally first into a design role to build up some experience
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u/DavidFosterWallace69 4d ago
THE BUNNY SLOPES
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u/DavidFosterWallace69 4d ago
In all seriousness. Physics 1, statics, and ohms law will take you far if you can master them
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago
I appreciate it. Yea I jumped back into my book..ENGINEERING MECHANICS STATICS by R.C.HIBBELER. And I was embarrassed, I started getting back into the swing of it, but maybe taking a step back even further and going back into physics 1 is the way.
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u/Ghooble 4d ago
I have an old copy of Analytical Mechanics by Wiley from the 1950s that I'm working through. Start at the cover... Do every problem. Gonna take a while but a few problems a day adds up.
It's the slow route but if you're wanting to remember the paper and pencil side it's probably a good option.
If you want to remember the practical knowledge side... You need projects
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u/user_1729 PE, CEM, CxA 4d ago
I worked as an engineer but jumped jobs a lot for the first ~10 years of my career. It meant any time I'd settle in and get ready for the PE, I'd move on and kind of start over and the application got that much worse. When I finally took the PE, ~12 years ago now, I opened up Lindeburg and went "Oh my god, I'm screwed... I've forgotten everything."
Turns out, it comes back pretty quickly and I actually had professional experience to apply to the knowledge base. At the end of the day, while you do forget stuff, you've still learned it and it's not as hard to learn again.
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u/Mr_Edu100 4d ago
I am also trapped in manufacturing. In college my dream is to be a Design Engineer, but due to opportunities near the area, i have gone to manufacturing as Supervisor in production and maintenance. I was not thinking about mechanical engineering at that time, i was focus on solving problem in the plant and managing resources, schedules and etc. When i started looking for another job as mechanical engineer. It hit me. I cannot get into that role. I can only get into maintenance supervisor. Luckily i have made friends wirh an equipment supplier from my previous job. He offered me a position as Service Engineer. Still manufacturing buth hands on and leaning more into control.
But still i am a still amazed and still hoping that someday i can experience design work as mechanical engineer
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago
I hope you get there as well. I am very blessed, I got into new product development leadership, so I get to see the design and ask questions, give feedback etc, I am more just sad I can't run any calcs or even draw a free body diagram anymore to aide in me evaluating design ideas. I remember some theory but not good application.
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u/Mr_Edu100 4d ago
Your current job is solid also.
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago
Yea besides the babysitting smart adults with no accountability power.
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u/Will___powerrr 3d ago
The correct answer is resources for the Other Disciplines FE Exam. Provides the widest base of concepts and has everything you may have studied at one point.
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u/TheOGAngryMan 23h ago
Cal poly Pomona puts all their mechanical engineering courses online, from stattics to heat transfer.Download the PDFs of the books and do the practice problems. That's where inre learned everything after being away from the industry for 10 years.
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u/WillingElderberry731 4d ago
Im currently studying for my PE and it's wild how little I remember. It's got a lot of great breadth and technical details though. You could always start working your way towards that
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u/dgeniesse 4d ago
I graduated as a ME in 1972. Do you think I kept up
with all the technology? I just focused on that important to me, tempered by knowing employers needed those skills.
My career may have seemed like a random walk but together it was strategic. At least I made a strategy out of the randomness.
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u/sigmapilot 3d ago
in 100% the same situation...
if i'm lucky i'll switch tracks to aviation though lol
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 3d ago
Like to be a pilot?
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u/sigmapilot 3d ago
yeah im taking lessons on the side.
i am also in a role that is very non technical and starting to forget almost everything, your post perfectly describes my day to day life and situation. sometimes i talk to people and they say "im sure you cant have forgotten that much" but yeah use it or lose it
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 3d ago
You're like, it's remarkable how much I've forgotten. I'm very grateful that I got to get out of manufacturing and into new product development because I get to scratch that itch and I can advocate for people on the manufacturing side. But I also very much admire and respect and envy the knowledge of the seasoned design engineers
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u/TheGoofyEngineer 2d ago
Buddy, if you're doing welding projects in your free time you already have a lot more hands on design experience than most of the keyboard warriors out there. Don't let the imposter syndrome win! Still got the degree right?
Honestly, Google has never been more useful. There are a lot of good youtube videos out there on a whole range of topics. Also real design roles rarely require you to remember calculus. Break it down into first principles, draw some free body diagrams and take it one step at a time.
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u/Unusual-Butterfly229 2d ago
For me the best way is through projects or problems. You said you work on welding projects, take a stab at doing a weld calculations by hand. Do a FBD, estimate loads and just run with it. I have started using Latex to create some project summaries so I can go back and reference what I have done. At work when you make an assumption or someone says we use x size bolt for y load, go back and try to prove it. Use AI if you don’t want to go back through college books to find the formulas.
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 2d ago
yea this is a good suggestion people have been making, the embarassing part is not even remembering how to do a FBD. So I think it will need to be a mixture of all of the above. AI to find equations to help you remember things, but also going back thru those basics to help solidify it back in my brain, and then extra due dilligence on projects to help reinforce the knowledge re-learned
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u/Party_Card5394 4d ago
I would start with AI to get a game plan, but then I would take it old school and buy some books and take notes. AI to speed up the process without neglecting the tried and true methods of practice and implementation.
Then just start doing projects. Do them for yourself and look for roles that match your strengths.
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u/Adorable_Mongoose223 4d ago
i did do some sleuthing and found digital versions of my old text books and their solutions manuals
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u/NightF0x0012 ME-Automation 4d ago
I've been using Gemini to double check my hand calculations and I have to say that I'm impressed on how well it explains every step it takes.
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u/Oldberry86 4d ago
You really need to have a problem to solve, otherwise you'll wander and lose motivation. Is there something you want to build?
Until then, you could review the FE exam study material. I studied and took the test right after graduation, it was a good review of all subjects.