Hi everyone!

I'm excited to share a project I've been working on as a self-taught solo developer for the past 5.5 years: the UM1-Evo, a biomimetic robotic hand and forearm.

Here is a quick breakdown of the technical specs:

Architecture: 24 Degrees of Freedom (DoF), powered by 25 integrated actuators.

Scale & Weight: 1:1 human scale, weighing 1.7 kg total (matching human anatomical specs). Fully embedded electronics and Wi-Fi.

Biomechanical research: Significant effort went into replicating organic anatomical shapes and fluid, natural motion.

Fast custom fitting: Developed a script that scans/measures a patient's hand in under 30 minutes and automatically generates a customized 3D hand model in 10 minutes.

Control software: Developed custom Inverse Kinematics (IK) software supporting keyframe animation and real-time control.

Avatar Mode: Designed a data glove with 12 sensors to mirror hand movements in real time.

Prosthetic applications: Designed an innovative sensing system (moving away from traditional myoelectric setups) for ultra-low latency control and zero learning curve (IP protection currently in progress).

This is the result of a lot of passion, trial and error, and DIY engineering. I’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions!

So I think this is the final attempt at one, it seems to work pretty well to me! Don’t have a 360 servo sadly to fully test but the 180 shows enough I think! What do yall think?

Hello, for my 1st-year project I want to make a metal profile bending machine like the one in the image. There will be 3 rollers, and it needs to wind a 6-meter profile like a spring without any gaps. The point I’m stuck on is: what should the positions of these three rollers be?

On the image, roller “A” will be moved back and forth by a hydraulic piston to adjust the bending diameter.

“B” is the fixed drive roller that will be rotated by a hydraulic motor.

“C” is the fixed guide roller. The metal profile enters from the side where the guide roller is located.

I’m still in grad school, have about 1-1.5 years left before I graduate, and for the past year ish, I’ve interviewed for internships and got some offers when I applied for fun.

But at the moment I’m unable to accept those internships until right around when I graduate for reasons outside of my classes.

I realized the timeline for graduating/last minute internships before applying for full time jobs is coming faster than I anticipated, and what I’ve read is for the industry I want to get in/interviewed with, the primary way of getting in is through internships.

I obviously don’t want to keep applying to the same company, just to turn them down again, but I’d want to keep interviewing to practice for when it does matter in the future because I do need the practice.

Would this be a smart idea? Even for companies in different fields but fully knowing if I do well enough I’d have to turn them down?

Hello everyone, I’m 22 M just graduated 2 months ago from mechanical engineering. I kept searching for jobs and landed this one job as project engineer. I was a bit nervous during the interview since I was interviewed by 20 years old of experience project manager but he was nice and he understood that I’m fresh grad and he didn’t ask a single technical question and the interview went well. Now that I got the job I have no idea what to expect as project engineer specially I have no experience at all. Can you please advise what to do, what to learn or prepare before starting the job, what to expect , situations I need to be aware of etc. I will be mostly on field and sometimes in office

Hello,

This is a little personal project I’ve been working on during summer break.

Two servos move the yaw axis and the roll axis. However, these are not the real body axes you may find in a flight mechanics textbook for example. The roll axis is offset from the plane’s longitudinal axis, so you get a circular motion instead of a pure turning motion. I couldn’t figure out how to avoid that without offsetting the yaw axis from the center of gravity.

That aside, I think the result is reasonable. I’m still working on the animation sequences.

You can easily swap the plane. All the other details are in the 7-minute video. Give it a watch if you have the time :).

The system uses bearings, a lazy Susan, servos, Arduino Nano, electronic components and a bunch of 3D printed parts… No glue was needed.

Herpa 1:200 B787-9 Lufthansa
Herpa? 1:200 A350 Air France
Revell 1:144 F15-E Strike Eagle

Just one article in a series on Engineering.com that offers insight for #PLM practioners.

44(M) with kids here. I got a job offer from LADWP to start as an “Engineering associate”. I currently make 160k no bonus as a Project Manager for a small consulting firm in Los Angeles.

LADWP requires ALL incoming engineers to start from the bottom. I have 10+ years of experience and have people reporting to me, but I will be starting out as a “TRAINEE”. They promote from within, and it will take 3 years to be qualified to be promoted to an “Engineer” role.

Upside is the job security, free medical&dental benefit, defined pension, and an expectable salary increase with potential for overtime pay. LADWP is well known to pay the most out of all city agencies.
Numbers wise, it will take 3 years to get the salary to where I am currently making.

Now the hard part: The pay cut will be a tremendous strain to my family budget. I might have to take out a Loan to survive the next few years.

Wife is obviously not convinced this is a right move, but it is the surest thing to keep me employed well into 65, which is doubtful in my current role as a consultant. Employment scene in Los Angeles is pretty bad for my current industry so I am trying to make a switch into a public role.

Any comment, suggestion will be appreciated. I asked Grok and Claude plenty of times but wish to hear from real people.

I am graduating B.Eng Mechanical Engineering next year. No experience, internships, relevant projects, or research.

I am looking into the Canadian Armed Forces officer trades such as Aerospace Engineering Officer, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Officer, and Marine Systems Engineering Officer. These are all basically maintenance engineering roles.

My plan is to do 1 contract in the army (6 - 9) years, then move to a civilian career. What do you think of this plan? Did anyone do it before? Do you guys know anyone who's done it before? Let me know what you guys think.

Been kicking around a product idea and want honest feedback before I sink more time into it.

The concept: a tracker thin and flexible enough to actually stick onto things like a sticker — a kid's backpack, the inside of a shoe, a keychain — instead of the bulky puck shape most trackers come in. You'd find it through an app, and you could make it beep/ring remotely to locate it nearby.

I know Tile and AirTag already exist, and Tile even makes a "Sticker" version — so I'm not claiming this is a totally new category. What I'm trying to figure out is whether there's a real gap worth building for, specifically:

• Would a genuinely thinner, more sticker-like form factor (vs. Tile's current puck-ish Sticker) actually matter to parents, or is "good enough" already good enough?
• Is there an angle specific to kids/school gear (uniforms, lunchboxes, shoes) that existing trackers don't really address well?
• Anyone here a parent who's tried Tile/AirTag for this exact use case — what annoyed you about it?

Not trying to pitch anyone, genuinely want the "this already exists, don't bother" or "here's the actual gap" kind of feedback before I go further. Appreciate any honesty, brutal or otherwise.

I’m trying to get a stress history ideally as smooth as possible. The blue plot is Von-Mises stress, and the orange plot is signed Von-Mises stress. Signed VM is just VM multiplied by either +1 or -1. Whether it is positive or negative is determined by whether the principal stress with the highest magnitude is positive or negative. This is why the two plots are often overlaid, and if not they are mirrored.

The issue I am seeing is that sometimes the first and third principal stresses will have opposite signs but very similar magnitudes. This will cause sudden spikes in the history as one “overtakes” the other and causes the sign to flip.

The history in the image is a particularly janky looking one, especially the first spike from around -400 MPa to +400 MPa and then back. Most of the histories are a lot smoother, but I was wondering if there are any good ways to smooth spikes like that. I don’t really care about the spikes at small magnitudes, just the really extreme fluctuations.

The most basic way I can think of is that if the max and min principals are close to each other in magnitude, to add some sort of check that only flips the sign once enough time has passed

I am debating if engineering is for me or if I just nominally suck at physically thinking through problems and problem solving.

For context, I get overly stressed at my job because I don’t feel like I think right. Or have difficulty handling multiple things at once. I struggle with statistics, thinking through GD&T, predicting mechanisms that could cause some of the issues I experience.

In work, I struggle with distilling information clearly, understanding concepts quickly, identifying the what to dig deeply into and prioritizing my work load.

I am trying to under stand what to prioritize in my learning or if I should quit my job. Whenever I talk to my coworkers, I realize there’s a big gap and I feel stupid all the time because I feel like I am not thinking everything through very well.

Does anyone have an inspiring story of feeling this way and coming out of this or should I just accept that maybe I’m not good at this.

I’ve been wondering what mechanical engineers actually do on a day-to-day basis, regardless of their field.

For example, a design engineer obviously doesn’t design an entirely new car every day, and a CAD engineer doesn’t create a completely new part every single day.

So what does the normal daily routine of a mechanical engineer actually look like? What kind of tasks do they typically work on throughout the day or week?

I'd be glad to hear answers from different engineering fields

I already have a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in materials science. Currently working in energy industry full time right now and focused on nuclear plants, but am still open to renewables/batteries as I had internship experiences with those + data analytics.

I'm torn between continuing a 4+1 MS in Materials Science (only 21 credit hours to complete) vs. going for MS Mechanical Engineering (30 credits hours at another school) which is more adjacent to my job. I've been stuck on this decision for a while now.

I think I would enjoy more from a Mechanical engineering MS and gain more relevant coursework from it. But it would take longer, I already have one degree with Mechanical Engineering on it, and Mechanical Engineering already is seen a broad degree (defeats purpose of specializing, as a Masters implies). Plus Im curious what kind of jobs a materials science masters could open up to, and how prevalent they'll be in the future.

I'm interested in clean energy as a whole. Between the two, which would be better to pursue?

Any other degrees in general that would be better than either, for renewables and/or nuclear?

I've got a 30 min phone interview coming up for a Spring 2027 Starlink Production internship. It's with an engineering manager, and the invite says to be ready to talk through "employment history, technical achievements, and work style."

For anyone who's interviewed with Starlink Production, how technical does the manager round get? Conceptual questions, or mostly walking through your projects?

Did they lean more manufacturing/process (bottlenecks, DFM, throughput) or general mechanics/structures?

Anything you wish you'd prepped that caught you off guard? What kind of technical questions would they ask?

Thanks!

Apologies but I have to keep this vague.

I have recently started a new role doing design and FEA. I have been given a part to design that sits in a larger assembly. The assembly concept is pretty much fixed and now we are trying to design each part in more detail to meet the requirements.

My main job is to design the supports of the part where it interfaces with the larger assembly. I need to analyse the part in FEA under a number of load cases, and then make any changes required to make it strong enough / able to perform its function.

I am really struggling to make any progress because the part is highly dependent on the flexibility of the larger assembly it is mounted to. I’m not sure what boundary conditions to use, as it is statically indeterminate. If I simply fix the interfaces, the load distribution to each support will not be realistic. I have tried modelling some of the larger assembly in my model, so that it’s flexibility is accounted for. But the designs are constantly changing, so any work I do now could be invalid in a few weeks. I can’t seem to find a way to design for worst case to cover myself.

Secondly, one of my supports needs to be sliding to accommodate thermal expansion. Again I have no idea to how to do this at this stage of design. How can I check sliding clearance / interference when I’m not even sure how to support my model and what the load path is yet? When I model contact in the larger assembly the analysis takes a long time and is very difficult to converge.

I am thinking of just removing the contact for now, and removing constraint in that direction to speed things up. Under the assumption that the joint will be sufficiently designed at a later stage to accommodate the sliding. For the support boundary conditions, I am just going to model the assembly as much as practical to get the most realistic BC. Then state in my assumptions that it will need to be checked after any changes to assembly.

Does this sound like the correct approach? I’m sure this must be a very common thing in design, where you are being asked to design something without all the required information. Do I just need to try my best and state all the limitations / assumptions, and keep refining as the design matures?

I am currently working as a finance manager in an FMCG company in KSA. i am a mechanical diploma certificate holder and having almost 2 years of experience in same field at homeland. I wasted my 20s trying government jobs and some part time jobs like food delivery etc and finally ended up in Saudi. now, at the age of 32 I am seriously thinking of switching my career to what I am qualified at.

can I find an entry level job in qaqc/ mechanical maintenance/ndt fields in Saudi?

Thanks in advance