Mechanical Engineers of TSR

Matlab is software used for complex mathematics equations when dealing with engineering problems

This isn't free but CorelCAD and CorelDRAW Technical Suite has free trials but only for 30 days.

Once my trial ended for CorelDRAW, I just downloaded it again so...

hey guys

i have a question what do you think about practicals in mechanical eng? Do you prefer a course thats entirely academic and has lack of practicals or a course with a good mixture of both practicals/lab sessions and academics.

It seems some universities entirely rely on academics which i would get sick off i want to be able to test stuff out in labs or make something..

id prefer academic, practicals get boring fast, plus you cant do past exam papers for practicals

I've used Corel 2D Design and Paintshop before. I wasn't too impressed with their stuff to be honest.

Can you make 3D plans and edit drawings with constraints, edge effects, threading, etc?

we are learning to be proper engineers tho not calculating machines. Perhaps you may not really see the significance of practicals now since you've just started? It may get more obvious as you progress in latter years but personally i think the practical side of things makes things even more interesting.

Just something interesting i found here guys, i'm definitely taking part in this!!!

Mech Eng is aswome

[video="youtube;AVL6w2YoKpQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVL6w2YoKpQ&list=FLvNQ2CDru8XdxmaR-k_3r5A&index=3[/video]

yeah but some universities do less than others for example at imperial the course is far too academic and lacks practicality or at least thats what a guy who studies there said on here.. he just said they didn't do many practicals everything was just linked with research academics and that they also didn't get enough help throughout the degree.

trust me, practicals get boring after awhile, although i still look foward to them

This is definitely true.

The good ones are where you actually have to build something. But there is the tendency with these to spend a lot of time doing nothing when your group is too big for the amount of practical work that needs to be done.

trust me, practicals get boring after awhile, although i still look foward to them

Of course, some of them are more useful/interesting than others (failure of materials in extreme cold was great fun - particularly putting a banana in the liquid nitrogen - not strictly supposed to have done that but the health and safety guy was cool with it )

why isn't that safe tho? Something to do with potassium n liquid nitrogen not mixing well?

i just have a picture of being able to build stuff most of the time but i guess its not entirely true xD



On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your practicals? In terms of enjoyability 10 being i really enjoy them and 1 being I absolutely hate this pointless ****

The good ones are where you actually have to build something. But there is the tendency with these to spend a lot of time doing nothing when your group is too big for the amount of practical work that needs to be done.

Liquid nitrogen in general is pretty dangerous if you misuse it think freezing fingers off and stuff

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Here's a list of the topics I have covered in my first year I'm not at Brunel though... So your mileage will vary!

Complex numbers (imaginary numbers, argand diagrams, etc)
De Moivre's Theorem and roots of complex numbers
Matrices and matrix manipulation
Vectors, Cartesian components
Derivatives (implicit, parametric and logarithmic) and chain rules
Stationary points
Integration
Integration by parts
Introduction to MATLAB (software used for coursework and the such)
Partial and improper fractions
Root Mean Squared
Statistics - Averages (I know, right?)
Probabilities, tree and venn diagrams
Mean, variance and binomial distribution.


I only did AS maths with mechanics, and I'm finding most of this stuff is well within my grasp. The first year is typically a levelling period though, so most of the maths will probably just be A-level and a slight extension of that.

You could try Engineering Mathematics by K.Stroud if you want a book to read over the summer, or just go out and sunbathe.

I do love some of the group projects we've done, but I am even more excited about the individual projects in the next few years for this very reason.

The labs can kinda suck because of the need to go back and finish calculations and do presentations. The excitement wore down a while ago... Especially when you have to get up at 8am on your free day just to go in to present for 20 minutes. The projects are much more fun.


Small groups, especially when you pick who you're with, are quite successful. Groups, even small ones, with slackers are super annoying though.

For those interested, one of the generic projects you may do (it's something you hear about on open days at quite a few unis) is bridge building. It depends on the uni as to what the actual specification is, but you can look forward to doing it at most. At one university they had to build a bridge to support a human. At another university they build an un-supported one to transport a mass over a distance.

We had to build a bridge, and transport system, to move a 1kg mass over around a foot or so between two ledges and it couldn't be fixed to the surface (so suports to dig into the ledges had to made too). The winner was the group with the lightest bridge - For perspective, I think the winner had theirs under 40g. In a group of 3, it was a really fun task... Especially when you get to see what other people made. For a set brief, it's impressive to see the variety of solutions. It's also interesting to see the difference between micro and macro engineering - A design I made would've been perfect for an actual bridge, but the materials were useless when shrunk down. Things like that just don't always scale as you would expect. Supporting a 1kg mass, when your bridge is ~50g, is still staggering to me. In a destructive test it could hold something like 6-7kg before a non-structual part cracked and brought the rest down. Over engineered to hell, but still a lot of fun.


In comparison, a large group project to build an RC car chassis just didn't go as well because of those who didn't put any effort in. For a group of 12, half never actually laid a finger on the work. A few of us worked pretty much every free hour to complete it. We get to race it next week when we go back for the final revision sessions. The winner is the fastest, most nimble and good looking car. Ours is quite small so it turns on a dime. That said, it's quite light and the motor has a lot of torque, so the wheels start to spin depending on the terrain.


On a final note, and the reason why I do love the practical side of engineering, is because you can actually apply the theory. Before we built the bridge we did a lab session assessing forces on a pin-jointed bridge frame. Before building the RC car (although, it's electric) we rebuilt two engines (one diesel, one petrol). Before all of that we learnt the basics of CAD, technical drawings, types of fixtures, etc.

It's really useful to be able to tie the stuff you make to the theory. It's complementing design with science and maths.

Lol that seems a little bit of an odd experiment for mechanical eng student sounds more like chemical. Do you do chemical eng?

That sounds really cool mate. Are you at cambridge btw? I ask because you mentioned building bridges and a car chassis which is a mix of civil and mechanical!

what physics topics did you do