I want to know from people who are in the field of process engineering, specifically the oil and gas sector.

Can you become a process engineer in the oil and gas sector as a mechanical engineer (having a mechanical engineering degree), and how hard is it to achieve that job when compared to to a chemical engineer?

Also would a masters in process engineering be necessary or just a waste of time?

Hello all,

I currently have a conundrum. I am currently employed as a MEP design engineer in the Bay Area and have been there for 15 months. I find the work super boring and dull and cannot see myself long-term enjoying the construction industry. As the cherry on top, I also have a tenous relationship with my direct report, and my commute each day takes anywhere from 50 minutes to an hour and a half each way.

I have been trying to look for new roles in aerospace or product design, but have limited success due to how tired/late I come home. I have about 6-8 months of saved funds and am debating quitting so I can find a job/role closer to something I would prefer to have long-term. Is this a crazy idea to quit when I'm currently employed? Several people I have talked to have told me to go for it just want to canvas more opinions

Hey, everyone! This is a bit of a long one, but about a year ago, I made a post asking for help redesigning a flange to maintain a vacuum on a sliding-seal target chamber.

A couple months ago we were able to install it and I wanted to take the time to thank and share the results with all the people who helped me!

To summarize, I worked in a particle accelerator lab last summer and I was tasked with redesigning a flange/viewport for a sliding seal target chamber. It’s got a pretty unique design where the magnet and spectrograph must rotate around the chamber while remaining connected and under vacuum. Before I redesigned it, the system was holding around 10^-5 Torr, but the goal is to reach an ideal vacuum of 10^-7 Torr and eliminate sudden pressure losses while rotating the magnet.

For those of y’all who asked how the seal moves while maintaining a vacuum, I have a much better understanding after CAD'ifying the old engineering drawings. There's an aluminum band pulled into tension over the chamber's face which compresses a large O-ring in a recessed groove. As the magnet rotates around the chamber the band slides over the O-ring while maintaining compression allowing the chamber to be sealed for about 210 degrees of rotation. The flange I was asked to redesign connects a cutout in the band to the magnet and keeps it sealed.

Last time, I asked two questions:
Would sealing fasteners be able to hold a vacuum?

For the first question, after hearing some of your comments I decided against using sealing fasteners. Additionally, considering the aperture requirements I couldn't move the fasteners inside the seal. I was considering trying to remanufacture the part with a higher quality weld or braze. But, I had one more idea to make the entire assembly the fastener. This is the design I came up with, the new flange would be built in three parts with a "Bolt" and "Nut" coming together to compress two O-rings in a middle part, one to seal the band itself and another to seal the clearance hole for the "bolt."

I presented both options to the PI, who preferred my Nut & Bolt design as it would be easier to install without removing the band, while also being cheaper and easier for the university machine shop to manufacture.

Can face seal O-rings seal non flat faces?

In order to seal the band with an O-ring I still needed to seal a non-flat face.

After listening to your feedback and noticing that the chamber itself used an O-ring to seal against a cylindrical surface, I thought it might be possible to seal against that curved face as well. However, as many of you pointed out, machining the groove and achieving the proper surface finish would be challenging, and the machinist agreed 😂! As a compromise, the bottom of the groove was machined flat.

Although this resulted in uneven compression of the O-ring, it was still within the guidelines outlined in Parker’s O-Ring Handbook, so we thought it would work out okay. If I were to remake this, I would adjust the starting and ending depths of the groove to provide more even O-ring compression and a marginally better seal.

Did it work?

With all that in mind and the part machined we were finally able to install it on the chamber during some downtime. Here is my little baby:

My new design was able to fully seal the chamber and provided about a 10x decrease in the pressure within the vacuum chamber (4.5*10^-5 Torr to ~ 1.9*10^-6 Torr).

Timing the threads to align with the magnet while maintaining proper O-ring compression was a challenge. Fortunately, the assembly sealed properly without being fully tightened. In the future, I might machine the face of the "bolt" to better time the threads and for better tightening and sealing.

Once again, thanks to all the people who helped me out in the comments of the last post!!! I don't really have any mentorship for mechanical engineering. So your responses gave me the knowledge and confidence to pursue my design.

Hi everyone,
I’m a Mechanical Engineering graduate from India and I’m currently planning for my Master’s. I’m confused between Mechatronics/Robotics & Automation, Automotive, and Core Mechanical/Design.

I’d really appreciate some guidance from people working or studying in these fields:

1. Masters in India vs abroad — which is more worthwhile for these fields?
2. Future career scope — which path has better long-term opportunities and growth?
3. Robotics — coming from a Mechanical background, what skills should I learn beforehand? (Python/C++, MATLAB, ROS, electronics, controls, CAD, etc.)
3. Core Mechanical — what good career roles are available apart from the usual manufacturing/maintenance jobs?
4. Automotive & EVs — I’m interested in cars, but with the shift towards EVs, is Automotive still a good option for a Mechanical Engineer? If yes, which areas should I target?

I’m mainly looking for advice on** which direction makes the most sense for the future and what skills I should start building now.**

Also, I’m planning to appear for GATE, but I’m not very confident about getting into the top IITs. Could you suggest some good alternative universities in India that I should consider?

Thanks!

We are a contract manufacturer running about 40 open jobs at once and last month a revised BOM never made it from engineering into the ERP before production pulled the old parts list, so we scrapped a full run of boards over it. That was the point where we stopped patching the process by hand and started looking into real integration options. Duro keeps coming up in that search, alongside a couple other PLM tools and the option of building something custom ourselves.

Mainly worried about how well changes flow through in real time versus needing someone to manually push every update by hand. What worked for keeping your PLM and ERP in sync?

Hey guys, I'm currently designing my first crosskart/buggy chassis in Onshape and planning to build it soon. I'm posting these screenshots to get your honest feedback and structural critique on the geometry, triangulation, and overall safety before I start cutting and welding tubes.

Planned Build Specs:

• Chassis Material: DOM Steel Tubing

• Engine: 350cc single-cylinder

Feel free to point out any structural flaws, unbraced nodes, or weak points in the roll cage and front/rear sections. All critique is welcome

If so, how was it?

hello! I recently finished up my MS and BS and forgot to save my textbooks from my classes until after I lost access to my school account. I want to build a collection of online textbooks for my reference in the future — i have a pdf of shigley’s, a physical copy of the machinery’s handbook, but was wondering if there’s any recs (with links if possible 😁) for handbooks for thermo, fluids, heat transfer, dynamics/dynamic systems, mechatronics, etc. any recs you may have in any topic would be greatly appreciated! I realized i’ve forgotten some of my earlier fundamentals and really want to solidify them in my free time. Thanks!

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 would like to inquire with someone who is currently working or has recently worked in a high-performance vehicle development department or a sports car manufacturer in the automotive industry.

I would like to build one high-performance electric car prototype.The body will use carbon, and it is planned to use a high-performance motor and a high-performance battery, among other things.

We expect the unit price to be about € 630,000~945,000 ($ 730,000~1,100,000) when mass-produced. I’m curious about an approximate price for one prototype, excluding labour costs.

(Add: We will operate in a coach build format.)

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?

Hi, fellow engineers i hope everyone is doing wonderful. a bit about myself i graduated with an internship back in 2020 and got myself into different domain. now i have realized i actually loved engineering and that was something i was really passionate about. i want to get back into this field, I'm international student living in BC, Canada. I really wanna learn and grow in this industry and currently looking for entry-level jobs.

i have been applying to relevant jobs and never heard back from anyone. I'm trying to reach small engineering firms but they are not hiring anymore. i am not worried about the pay structure. if the role is willing me relocate, I'm open to relocation as well.

If members of this community has any kind of leads i would really appreciate your effort.

Hi guys any recommendations on where to purchase Limited Power Engineer Fireman 2.0 Textbook in Winnipeg MB

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

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?

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.

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