Tatsadasayago wrote:
Oh and REDONE; I'd cut the near end off, bore the hole and have a good welder put it back on.
But if I'm going to do that, I could just drill through an outer fin to get to the center fin, then weld in a plug on the outer fin. Or:
I could make it with one fin flat and the base + flat fin thicker than spec. Bend it up after drilling the center fin and machine the base and bent fin to spec to get rid of the radii. Or:
I can make it exactly like it is, and use an EDM to create the hole in 8 passes. Or: ...
Without guidance from the engineer, I'm either wasting time and material to keep features/tolerances that aren't critical, or I'm wasting time and materials to make parts that won't work. I've put in 40hrs of overtime to make things exactly as drawn and received the butt chewing, and I've made junk parts and got that butt chewing too. If the method I use changes the grain structure of the material (welding or bending), do I need to bump someone else off a furnace to heat treat it? Because that's another 20-40 hours before the parts are ready on Monday. At the very least, I need to know if this fits into something and what the forces on it will be. Is it a special hook for something heavy or is it a foot for a leveling leg on a piece of equipment? For reasons I haven't learned yet in school, most engineers I've worked with are unreasonably reluctant to answer these kinds of questions.
So, a fun story about an engineer that DID explain any question I asked on a project, the guy was awesome, and honestly, the only reason I sometimes feel a little bit guilty when I say bad things about Stanford (his Alma mater). While I can't be specific about the huge capital project, you know that Star Trek where they go back in time to snag some whales and Scotty is PO'ed because transparent aluminum hasn't been invented yet? Well, I work with this guy for months, selecting materials, working on the challenges with energy and space constraints, building models and spec'ing machines (most machines for the type were european, so finding which would be easiest to get parts for or could be adapted to US electricity easiest with regards to main and control power, especially involving the buildings integrated safeties and such). One day I get called into a meeting (I was a greasy coveralls employee: shaved head, Amish beard and tattoo sleeves , surrounded by people in suits who's names are on buildings downtown).
I find out that the project manager had planned to resign and that was all scheduled, but that the engineer I was working with quit the day after the PM resigned, and they needed me to bring the new PM and engineer up to speed. I start talking and after 5 minutes I get interrupted because what I'm saying isn't what's on paper in front of them. Turns out, the departing PM ignored everything the engineer and I worked on and ordered all the wrong machinery and materials in order to get one last "I saved $$$ on this project" bullet for their resume.
I don't blame that engineer for walking out. It was pretty obvious that the whole mess would've been wrapped around his neck once all the wrong things started showing up. From what I understand, the whole project got scrapped shortly after I left, too. I only had the deckplate details, none of the big picture perspective of what happens in laboratories and offices (like having the sand part of sandpaper, but without the paper). It was plagued with other problems too, the contract riggers dropped two new machines, pushing things back for months each time. It was interesting in a comedy of errors type of way, but also really sad to see how one person not held accountable was able to destroy something so cool for a resume bullet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_oxynitride