Phil, I'm old enough (now a retired ME) to have made design (hand)drawings that pretty much did everything you asked for in this video, but unfortunately worked with _way_ too many younger Engineers that were taught how to use CAD software but not _how_ to make a decent drawing. They were whizzes at CAD, but made _all_ of the errors you mentioned over & over. Unfortunately most of them were "too good" (in their own minds) to accept any helpful criticism of their designs and/or drawings. Some even avoided visiting with the Toolmakers that were building whatever they had designed! I think that I spent more time in Tool & Die talking with the Toolmakers than most of the other Design Engineers in my office, and jumped at the chance to spend a whole week working in Tool & Die while many tried to avoid their week. Of course, one week wasn't enough, but I at least learned what a "tenth" really was. The Toolmakers definitely appreciated Engineers that listened to good suggestions and wanted to learn!
I can relate. I'm a manual machinist in a one man aerospace test lab. Every feature on their drawings are like it's for the space shuttle. All of the counterbores and passages are all oddball sizes. I've been pushing for a conversational mill but they're full of excuses. So, they get to wait days instead of hours for parts. But my biggest struggle is that they provide me with inspection drawings, not manufacturing drawings. So, the datums just move around and the stack up dimensions are always from the opposite side of where I'm doing the work from. For instance, a simple block with thru holes and counterbores, I want the datum to be the back jaw of the mill vise but every view it's moved. The counterbore depth, is measured from the bottom, not the top, etc. I make a bunch of special hex bolts but they don't call out the size of the raw stock, because they just care about the measurement across the flats. I've done fixtures with dozens of components and they have no clue how to generate a cut list. I redraw and spend hours marking up their drawings. They have no interest in improving their communication. Glad that I took a semester of mechanical drafting.
Amazing, just came over here from a shout out from a RobRenz call out to you. And the first video I watch is this one. This could have been me talking to my boss years ago. I started a bit different, but the same end result. I used to say, it's common sense. My guys got frustrated at me, the old guy. This could have been my words. Guess I'll watch more.
A good, conscientious and considerate designer will communicate succinctly thru their drawing on how a part should be made. In other words they should ask themselves, if I had to make this part how would I go about it? This appears to be lost these days due to laziness or lack of concern.
I enjoy the old-school advice. I'm a drafter with toolmaking and maintenance experience in my field. I also create illustrations for maintenance manuals (dream job :) ). There longer I work, the more variables I realize I have to balance to maximize efficiency. There's the company standards, industry standards (if the drawing is sent to another shop), human factors in manufacturability, etc. Design engineers abhor colors, line weights, etc, but you do have a point. Something that requires extra effort with cookie cutter CAD solutions is being able to draw the eye to critical portions and tell a story, like you described.
The mistake many modern designers make is they don't print for the builder. What I mean is that they leave things out or dimension things as if they were making it. They don't put all the information required for the guy on the floor to make it and know all that is required.
The point I would like to make is that it seems contrary to the modern age. Generally, got something to solve?, there's an App for that; many solutions looking for a problem to solve. So if there are inefficiencies rooted in miscommunication between departments or disciplines, the 'youngsters' are tasked with addressing and solving it. And it appears that the problems weren't there in the old school world as details were included which have been omitted in the transformation into the digital world. What is more concerning is that big decisions in organisations are made top down, so in theory the now aged old school guys at the very top have allowed those things which were important disappear along the way and it has now manifested itself in inefficiencies and mistakes which end up costing the firm money.
You took all the words right out of my mouth Phil! I have experienced all of the above. Hard as I tried, I could not get the other designers to change units when using taps and counterbores. "it takes more time" they would say, not realizing the extra cost created by unnecessary tolerancing (we were using SolidWorks). Yes, illustrate your drawing so your Grandmother can understand it. I agree, ordinate dimensioning is the best. Incremental leaves tolerance stack-up. Great video. Thanks Phil.
This is a TERRIFIC subject! As a lead toolmaker (2015-2022) i ran into these same items all the time! Great design engineers but no practical experience so hole diameters,counter-bore diameters depths all in at least 3 place decimals! What ever happened to 1/4" ccb, 1/32" over sized usually? PRESS fit or slip fit OR they change inch to metric and give 4 decimal places for bolt holes counter-bore and depths!!! My guys would bust their BUTTS trying to HIT the depths and diameters!! OMG!! Drove me nuts!! Many trips every day just to figure out the process needed! IF these holes are JUST clearance and counter-bores for a Socket head cap-screw! Even metric ones for maybe on a ZEISS cmm!! Work with us guys!!! I 100% agree! Let the toolmakers do whats needed to get it done! I explained this xact scenario repeatedly to our design engineers!! Give us toolmakers some credit just say ream for a press fit we will do the rest! Must engineers do not even know they make under-size, on-size and over-sized reamers! .5312 then you really mean CLEARANCE drill 17/32" for a 1/2" SHCS! I always tried to go SEE what we were making and what the fixture actually did! This would HELP tremendously when the CNC guys were trying to make the actual parts! I hated to find a boring head being used for a counter-bore for a capscrew! OR even the THRU hole that was listed as .2812" and there is a boring head being set up code being written to BORE the THRU hole and then all the gage's needed to inspect the holes! I would tell them just spot the holes and ill do them! Many many trips to engineering and they finally began to change! SLOWLY! The other very COMMON problem i had was guys wanted to use their phones or RELY on CADCAM systems to figure it out!!! What if you are OFF SHIFT?! Learn some trig! Learn some geometry. Calculate the angles yourself if needed. The DAY Boss once gave me a punch to finish. I did! The next day they called me at home desperate to have the punch! "Where is it?" I said it is finished and done in inspection! By the time they caught up to it it was in USE and making parts for Milwaukee Tool! They just could not understand how I finish ground it! They had design engineering make prints and programs to cnc mill electrodes, inspect electrodes and then run electrodes and on and on! While CNC's are great ,I have ran many, we are losing so much OLD SCHOOL common sense it is amazing!!!
Thank you for the real education that you are teaching us. What people don't realize is all the wasted time and trips back and forth, between machinist and the detailer. But very few are teaching these principles that I know off. So thanks again. Maybe you could do a lesson on tollerancing starting with your vise drawings that you offer for sale.
We have one customer who chooses random sizes for standard things.... not even limited to fractional sizes of drills, often something in-between. So what I am looking at as some special hole with a specific relief and .xxx dimension is actually just a drill and counterbore for a 3/8 shcs. Waste a lot of time figuring if I need to get a boring head out. Then the horrid dimensioning, we got another job for a bent structural peice and they don't have a single datum, some holes are from a corner, some from other holes, and some are measured from the bend. So get done with the tooling and run some sample peices and try to measure to make sure they are to print was a pain. Thankfully the tool shipped so we don't produce that part, it wasn't a progressive die. I am just an apprentice, but it sure feels like so many other things in life it used to be a lot better but somehow we have lost lots of knowledge the last few generations.
Question. Do you do projects outside your company you work with. I am working on a patent and I am looking for a person that is in this field in making a model of my patent. Thank you.
so funny that people have nothing better to do than bitch about someone passing on drawings for technical knowledge for the younger guys. haha. keep it up!
Wasted tolerancing gone wild. In the very early 80's at what was then Delco Electronics the decision was made to use metrics regardless from way up the ladder. A sketch by a somewhat aging manufacturing engineer and an unknown soul with a tape measure was made showing a mounting plate for a new hand operated god-knows-what that was to be bolted ,off hand in a much larger area by millwrights in an area that was designated by yellow crayon . The print, made by a newly graduated engineer was drawn up showing the overall size and mounting hole dimensions of the quarter inch plate. The dimension were called out to FOUR places in silly-milly-meters! Important SAE dimensions were called out to four places as needed but hardly ever in metric. I was ignorant Of the details initially so I wasted over a shift carefully squaring up the plate and then jigboring the mounting holes on a machine with an added on DRO, A trouble shooter in the radio lines area showed me the bolted in place assembly some time later and let me know that taking a day or so to do a two hour job was disgraceful. I agreed and showed him my print copy which is how I found out "The rest of the story".
Phil, I'm old enough (now a retired ME) to have made design (hand)drawings that pretty much did everything you asked for in this video, but unfortunately worked with _way_ too many younger Engineers that were taught how to use CAD software but not _how_ to make a decent drawing. They were whizzes at CAD, but made _all_ of the errors you mentioned over & over. Unfortunately most of them were "too good" (in their own minds) to accept any helpful criticism of their designs and/or drawings. Some even avoided visiting with the Toolmakers that were building whatever they had designed! I think that I spent more time in Tool & Die talking with the Toolmakers than most of the other Design Engineers in my office, and jumped at the chance to spend a whole week working in Tool & Die while many tried to avoid their week. Of course, one week wasn't enough, but I at least learned what a "tenth" really was. The Toolmakers definitely appreciated Engineers that listened to good suggestions and wanted to learn!
I can relate. I'm a manual machinist in a one man aerospace test lab. Every feature on their drawings are like it's for the space shuttle. All of the counterbores and passages are all oddball sizes. I've been pushing for a conversational mill but they're full of excuses. So, they get to wait days instead of hours for parts. But my biggest struggle is that they provide me with inspection drawings, not manufacturing drawings. So, the datums just move around and the stack up dimensions are always from the opposite side of where I'm doing the work from. For instance, a simple block with thru holes and counterbores, I want the datum to be the back jaw of the mill vise but every view it's moved. The counterbore depth, is measured from the bottom, not the top, etc. I make a bunch of special hex bolts but they don't call out the size of the raw stock, because they just care about the measurement across the flats. I've done fixtures with dozens of components and they have no clue how to generate a cut list. I redraw and spend hours marking up their drawings. They have no interest in improving their communication. Glad that I took a semester of mechanical drafting.
Amazing, just came over here from a shout out from a RobRenz call out to you. And the first video I watch is this one. This could have been me talking to my boss years ago. I started a bit different, but the same end result. I used to say, it's common sense. My guys got frustrated at me, the old guy. This could have been my words. Guess I'll watch more.
3:36 they are a half century old now.
A good, conscientious and considerate designer will communicate succinctly thru their drawing on
how a part should be made. In other words they should ask themselves, if I had to make this part
how would I go about it? This appears to be lost these days due to laziness or lack of concern.
I enjoy the old-school advice. I'm a drafter with toolmaking and maintenance experience in my field. I also create illustrations for maintenance manuals (dream job :) ). There longer I work, the more variables I realize I have to balance to maximize efficiency. There's the company standards, industry standards (if the drawing is sent to another shop), human factors in manufacturability, etc. Design engineers abhor colors, line weights, etc, but you do have a point. Something that requires extra effort with cookie cutter CAD solutions is being able to draw the eye to critical portions and tell a story, like you described.
The mistake many modern designers make is they don't print for the builder. What I mean is that they leave things out or dimension things as if they were making it. They don't put all the information required for the guy on the floor to make it and know all that is required.
Thanks for explaining it, ☺️☺️☺️
I hope people do read 8t.
The point I would like to make is that it seems contrary to the modern age. Generally, got something to solve?, there's an App for that; many solutions looking for a problem to solve. So if there are inefficiencies rooted in miscommunication between departments or disciplines, the 'youngsters' are tasked with addressing and solving it. And it appears that the problems weren't there in the old school world as details were included which have been omitted in the transformation into the digital world. What is more concerning is that big decisions in organisations are made top down, so in theory the now aged old school guys at the very top have allowed those things which were important disappear along the way and it has now manifested itself in inefficiencies and mistakes which end up costing the firm money.
Wise words Phil! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
You took all the words right out of my mouth Phil! I have experienced all of the above. Hard as I tried, I could not get the other designers to change units when using taps and counterbores. "it takes more time" they would say, not realizing the extra cost created by unnecessary tolerancing (we were using SolidWorks). Yes, illustrate your drawing so your Grandmother can understand it. I agree, ordinate dimensioning is the best. Incremental leaves tolerance stack-up. Great video. Thanks Phil.
This is a TERRIFIC subject! As a lead toolmaker (2015-2022) i ran into these same items all the time! Great design engineers but no practical experience so hole diameters,counter-bore diameters depths all in at least 3 place decimals! What ever happened to 1/4" ccb, 1/32" over sized usually? PRESS fit or slip fit OR they change inch to metric and give 4 decimal places for bolt holes counter-bore and depths!!! My guys would bust their BUTTS trying to HIT the depths and diameters!! OMG!! Drove me nuts!! Many trips every day just to figure out the process needed! IF these holes are JUST clearance and counter-bores for a Socket head cap-screw! Even metric ones for maybe on a ZEISS cmm!! Work with us guys!!!
I 100% agree! Let the toolmakers do whats needed to get it done! I explained this xact scenario repeatedly to our design engineers!! Give us toolmakers some credit just say ream for a press fit we will do the rest! Must engineers do not even know they make under-size, on-size and over-sized reamers! .5312 then you really mean CLEARANCE drill 17/32" for a 1/2" SHCS!
I always tried to go SEE what we were making and what the fixture actually did! This would HELP tremendously when the CNC guys were trying to make the actual parts! I hated to find a boring head being used for a counter-bore for a capscrew! OR even the THRU hole that was listed as .2812" and there is a boring head being set up code being written to BORE the THRU hole and then all the gage's needed to inspect the holes! I would tell them just spot the holes and ill do them! Many many trips to engineering and they finally began to change! SLOWLY!
The other very COMMON problem i had was guys wanted to use their phones or RELY on CADCAM systems to figure it out!!! What if you are OFF SHIFT?! Learn some trig! Learn some geometry. Calculate the angles yourself if needed.
The DAY Boss once gave me a punch to finish. I did! The next day they called me at home desperate to have the punch! "Where is it?" I said it is finished and done in inspection! By the time they caught up to it it was in USE and making parts for Milwaukee Tool! They just could not understand how I finish ground it! They had design engineering make prints and programs to cnc mill electrodes, inspect electrodes and then run electrodes and on and on! While CNC's are great ,I have ran many, we are losing so much OLD SCHOOL common sense it is amazing!!!
Definitely a kindred spirit!
Thank you for the real education that you are teaching us. What people don't realize is all the wasted time and trips back and forth, between machinist and the detailer.
But very few are teaching these principles that I know off.
So thanks again.
Maybe you could do a lesson on tollerancing starting with your vise drawings that you offer for sale.
We have one customer who chooses random sizes for standard things.... not even limited to fractional sizes of drills, often something in-between.
So what I am looking at as some special hole with a specific relief and .xxx dimension is actually just a drill and counterbore for a 3/8 shcs.
Waste a lot of time figuring if I need to get a boring head out.
Then the horrid dimensioning, we got another job for a bent structural peice and they don't have a single datum, some holes are from a corner, some from other holes, and some are measured from the bend. So get done with the tooling and run some sample peices and try to measure to make sure they are to print was a pain. Thankfully the tool shipped so we don't produce that part, it wasn't a progressive die.
I am just an apprentice, but it sure feels like so many other things in life it used to be a lot better but somehow we have lost lots of knowledge the last few generations.
There’s an engineer from Pfizer that sends some handmade drawings to our shop sometimes. They do look pretty
Question. Do you do projects outside your company you work with. I am working on a patent and I am looking for a person that is in this field in making a model of my patent. Thank you.
so funny that people have nothing better to do than bitch about someone passing on drawings for technical knowledge for the younger guys. haha. keep it up!
Wasted tolerancing gone wild.
In the very early 80's at what was then Delco Electronics the decision was made to use metrics regardless from way up the ladder. A sketch by a somewhat aging manufacturing engineer and an unknown soul with a tape measure was made showing a mounting plate for a new hand operated god-knows-what that was to be bolted ,off hand in a much larger area by millwrights in an area that was designated by yellow crayon . The print, made by a newly graduated engineer was drawn up showing the overall size and mounting hole dimensions of the quarter inch plate. The dimension were called out to FOUR places in silly-milly-meters! Important SAE dimensions were called out to four places as needed but hardly ever in metric. I was ignorant Of the details initially so I wasted over a shift carefully squaring up the plate and then jigboring the mounting holes on a machine with an added on DRO, A trouble shooter in the radio lines area showed me the bolted in place assembly some time later and let me know that taking a day or so to do a two hour job was disgraceful. I agreed and showed him my print copy which is how I found out "The rest of the story".
Move to metric like the rest of civilization!!
Thanks for your input, you should tell your subscribers the same thing. Oh wait, you don't have any.