Today, I went out to lunch with my friend/mentor, R - he's a professional electrical engineer who helped us out a lot on Rice Solar Car. We started talking about a device he was working on, and we got around to brainstorming different ways to make it cheaply (fit for mass production), yet effective. The device itself is very simple, but we spent more than an hour discussing ways to manufacture and assemble it. That's one of the things about engineering I really like - that an object that has a simple and straightforward function can be quite challenging to make. That's why I love the Discovery Channel show, "How It's Made". It basically shows how everyday objects get produced in factories or by craftspeople. In fact, I made several suggestions for manufacturing R's part that were inspired by things I saw on that show.
This whole lunch conversation reminded me of a time around 1.5 years ago when I was working in my lab making a small jig to bend a strip of thin sheet metal. (I wish I still had a drawing of this particular part). I drew up a design on CAD, printed it out, brought it downstairs to the Space Science machine shop, and presented it to one of the machinists. He pointed to one of the drawings and said, "We won't be able to machine this here. This fillet, the radius is too small. We won't be able to make if that deep with a bit that thin." I felt so stupid after the machinist told me that. These are the things I never thought of...I had been used to drawing up models and having them 3D printed, which basically means I had total freedom over the geometry of the part I'm designing. Having only occasionally worked with traditional machine shop machines, I wasn't prepared to design a part that would be fabricated using them.
Describing what a part is supposed to do is always easy. Sometimes, even making a sketch of what the part should look like is pretty easy, too. But 3D printing is still a relatively young technology, and many parts are constrained by the methods of manufacture available to the designer. That fabrication step is almost always going to be a challenge. I remember a lot of times during solar car design sessions, it'd be like:
Someone: Well for this part we can just use/do ___.
Someone else: Okay...how are you going to make that?
Someone: ....
or
Someone: Well for this part we can just use/do ___.And just today, I was trying to (re)design another part with fabrication constraints:
Someone else: ...Yeeeeaah you're not going to be able to machine it like that...
Me: UGH I'll have to 3D print another thing to hold this part up...that's going to take so long...Chad: ...Do you have to 3D print it?
So anyways, after I got back to my room, I decided to watch some more "How It's Made". In the first couple seasons, the intro shows a bunch of fabrication words like "trim" or "compress" or "apply heat" along with a little animation performing that action, which I think is really cool. There are just so many different, creative techniques engineers, craftspeople, artisans, and tradespeople have developed over the course of human history to build stuff that at one point never existed. Sometimes the idea is so far ahead of current technology, you need to build the tool to build the thing you actually want to make...or even build the tool to build the tool to build the thing you want to make (you get the idea).
Anyways, after watching a couple of episodes, I decided to list all the fabrication-related words I could possibly think of (in a reasonable amount of time). There are just so many awesome techniques people developed to make all the stuff we have today, I just wanted to try capturing all that in spoken/written language. Now I tried to ROUGHLY categorize these by a general topic, but obviously such groupings are artificial, and some techniques can easily be put under another category I've listed.
Oh, one more thing. I noticed a lot of these verbs are also nouns, which probably means those things (probably a tool of some sort) have become so popular or so functional that their use is some generally accepted technique. But then think all the verbs (techniques) you'd have to perform to make that noun. Take, for example, bolt. You BOLT something together. But to make that bolt you had to use some sort of dye to CUT threads into that bolt, which you had to EXTRUDE or STRETCH or LATHE from some other piece of metal, say stainless steel, which you had to MINE, REFINE/SMELT, and MIX with PULVERIZED carbon black and chrome and nickel. Anyways, it's amazing how much stuff you have to do to make a simple bolt.
Okay. Without further ado, here is a list of all the things you can do to make stuff (that I could think of in maybe 1.5-2 hours or so).
Kerry's list of things that engineers, tradespeople, craftspeople, and artisans do
| Topic | Technique |
| Computers | Upload, download, program, compile, execute, debug, sync, type, query, signal, transmit, receive, sort, search, comment, time, loop, count |
| Raw materials | harvest, extract, condense, reform, mine, drill, grow, farm, refine |
| Measurement | Measure, align, calibrate, mass, weigh, graph |
| Attachment | Glue, JB-weld :), cement, tape, screw, nail, bolt, bind, rivet, velcro, hook, weld, braze, solder, clamp, pin, mount, fuse, sinter |
| Soft materials | Sew, string, stitch, weave, knot, zip, tie, zip-tie, wrap, wind, reel, pultrude, fold |
| Subtractive manufacturing | Cut, laser-cut, waterjet cut, saw, carve, lathe, mill, route, drill, tap, thread, trim, punch, dye-cut, perforate, enrave, wipe, chisel, scrape, whittle |
| Fluids | Spray, pour, vent, dry, mix, whip, brew, agitate, inflate, ventilate, blow, suck, vacuum, rinse, filter, purify, pump, pressurize, drain, treat, fill, percolate |
| Design | Trace, draw, draft, model, CAD, scan, photograph, film, print, mark, optimize, simulate |
| Shaping | Bend, press, compress, sand, grind, chamfer, fillet, sculpt, extrude, sharpen, dull, file, taper, deburr, roughen, texturize, stretch, twist, shave, flange, hammer, roll, sand/shot-blast |
| Heat | Heat, fire, bake, forge, burn, autoclave, cool, chill, freeze, steam, refrigerate, boil, vaporize, melt, temper, smelt, quench |
| Solid handling | Pulverize, atomize, sieve, trawl, scoop, funnel, shoot, push, pull, rotate, lift, screen, gear |
| Additive manufacturing | Cast, mold, print, 3D-print, inject, layer |
| Finishing | Finish, coat, paint, stain, seal, insulate, wrap, shrinkwrap, vacuum seal, laminate, dye, polish, wax |
| Electrical | Wire, connect, plug, crimp, strip, pulse, de-noise, dampen, power, charge |
| Chemical/Physical | Cure, react, sputter, ionize, oxidize, reduce, expose (light), excite, spin-coat, activate, dissolve, acidify, alkalize |
| Civil/construction | Demolish, pave, reinforce, lay, scaffold, cantilever, support |
Can you think of any others? If so, please comment!
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