Tag: engineering

SOLIDWORKS 2018 Debuts

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SOLIDWORKS is back again in the year 2018. The package has some added tools, enhancements and features to give you a completely new experience. Right from the welcome screen, the application has new and improved data management capabilities, integrating CAM feature along with some other innovative functionalities making it again your best design partner.

Pen and Touch-Enabled Devices: The application supports new touch-enabled capabilities. This is one of the most significant changes that came with SOLIDWORKS 2018. Now, you can make sketches using a touch-enabled pen. The application even supports customized mouse gestures making it more user-friendly and interesting to use.

Adding Granular Details: SOLIDWORKS 2018 has come up with new capabilities to work with assemblies such as Adding Mates Between Hidden Surfaces, Misaligned Mates, and Smart Explode Line Tool. The application has also introduced a new Tab and Slot feature for the sheet metal design. Now you can create the inspection documentation directly from 3D models.

CAM Integration: The most promising feature that SOLIDWORKS 2018 brought about is the CAM integration. The feature is called SOLIDWORKS CAM and works as a new application. The capability leverages CAM technology which is pretty interesting software in itself. Such integration will automate the entire manufacturing programming.

Enhancing the Complete Cycle: SOLIDWORKS 2018 comes with an integrated approach that works with your product right from design to manufacturing. This is done by putting the part or the assembly model in the Centre of the action. The concurrent collaboration capabilities of SOLIDWORKS 2018 keeps the data well managed so that you can create a design using manufacturing strategy across the product development workflow.

Ease in CNC Programming: The application has come up with new part and assembly machining, a 2.5 axis milling, and two-axis turning features. Such a feature is capable to make CNC (computer numerical control) programming less time consuming and simple.

Automating the Manual Inspection Process: The revised version of SOLIDWORKS has automated inspection capabilities. This feature helps you to save time skipping the manual inspection process. Dassault now claims that the 2018 version can carry out the article inspection process and generate reports in minutes.

Dealing with the corrupted files: If your repair attempts fail to resolve a corrupted file, SOLIDWORKS 2018 now prompts you to extract your geometrical details if data about the body is still intact. You can use this extracted data to create a new model.

Four Key Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Used in Aerospace

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Advanced Manufacturing technologies have become one of the most important parts of the Aerospace industry. This is because of the unique challenges that the aircraft designers deal with. The aircraft designs need to consider the environmental conditions using strong materials that are both lightweight and temperature resistant. Such designs require micro and Nano- machining techniques. Here are four advanced machining technologies that are used in the Aerospace industry.

Additive Manufacturing  

The Aerospace industry was quick to identify the benefits and potential of Additive Manufacturing to design its planes. The technology uses Power-Bed laser printing systems to build its most components. Additive manufacturing technology is used to build structures that work within the fuselage with features such as reduced weight and reduce heat. An additive manufacturing technique, commonly known as the Fused Deposition Modeling, is used to create semi-hollow parts of the aircraft wings by both adding strength and reducing weight.

Composite Materials

Composite materials are widely used to design aircraft. Aerospace engineers prefer using these materials because of their favorable characteristics of flexibility, strength, temperature and chemical resistance. Composite materials and advanced polymers in the design help to improve performance and reduce lifecycle costs. These materials also reduce the overall weight of the aircraft cutting short their fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

Robotics

Robots are used in the aerospace industry to manage the labor-intensive process, particularly when lifting and handling tasks are to be done. The industry is using powerful robots in its manufacturing plants to move and join aircraft parts. Robotics is also taking care of manufacturing process that is hazardous to people such as painting and welding.

Laser Beam Welding

This technology offers rapid and high precision work as compared to the traditional welding techniques. Laser welding is, therefore, a preferred solution for handling materials when repeatability and high accuracy is required. The most advantageous property of this technique is that it transfers very little heat to the material that is welded. This way it does not create a heat affected zone around the weld, ultimately not compromising the strength and performance of the material.

With the widespread use of these technologies, the aerospace industry has also inspired several other industries to use these technologies in the manufacturing process. These techniques have undoubtedly simplified the manufacturing processes and reduced costs to a greater extent. Their accuracy and precision have reduced the number of failure points in the manufacturing process.

Intangible Soft Skills: An Engineers Key to Stand Out and Succeed

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Today’s era is the era of engineers. The field of engineering is very vast and provides a lot of opportunities. So far there has been a simple career formula for peaceful life.

 

Peaceful life = Bachelor’s degree + Experience + Pension + Retirement

 

However, the formula is not applicable in the current competitive world. Apart from technical skills, the companies look forward to additional skills in every candidate. Soft skills are one among those important additional skills.

 

Is Soft Skill Really Important?

There is no doubt that soft skills really matter to an engineer. There have been several cases where extremely talented engineers have failed in teamwork, client communication or maintaining professionalism. Studies found that people with soft skills outperform those who only rely on technical skill. Therefore, employers value engineers who master both technical and dynamic skills.

 

Mastering Soft Skill

7The basic thing to understand is the way work is done in any engineering environment. The way work is done today has also become a critical factor. The engineering field includes highly mobile teams and handling multigenerational workforce and projects. On a daily basis, engineers encounter fresh graduates as well as highly experienced professionals. Employees need to bridge the gap between such differences and efficiently communicate with all the individuals encountered during their work. On a global basis, projects require a high level of collaboration. An engineer might have to work with other members working miles away. Several differences might stand as an obstacle in any global project such as

  • Language
  • Culture
  • Time zone
  • Working hours and many others.

An employee without the right soft skill will find it hard to adapt to such project which might affect both the individual and the employers.

In the world of project-centric work, only the employees with intangible skills can dodge various pitfalls throughout the lifetime of the project. The employers look for candidates who can

  • Successfully complete a job which will highly depend on the tangible skills of an individual
  • Skilfully manage any project is a skill that every employer looks in a candidate
  • Handle complex projects rather than just be a part of it are more preferred

Whether you are looking for an engineering role or trying to move up your career, marketing your soft skills as an asset will pitch your capability and help you to achieve your goals. It is a differentiator that will put you in the spotlight.

 

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Support Women Engineers – The World Needs Them!

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Women with the desire, skills, and ability can enter and succeed in any stream or profession that she wishes. However, it is depressing to find that most of the women after attaining their qualification in technology and science make a U-turn, not to return. Recently, many organizations all around the world have launched campaigns and taken initiatives to increase the women in the engineering field. The world needs women with higher capabilities and problem-solving skills. Here, are the ways to encourage and attract women towards the engineering field:

Promoting Girls towards the Sector in Early Age

Several organizations are into the practice of promoting girls in the sector by encouraging them to choose right subjects. They are also dedicated to inform and explain the rewarding opportunities available to women in the sector. There are organizations who invite a huge number of female graduates and provide them with essential training and remarkable career options.

Creation of Flexible Work Culture

Women are usually surrounded by family responsibilities to look after. So, it is significant to ascertain flexible working environment which will act as a key to attract women in the engineering sector. Since we have technology that works beyond the geographical boundaries and people work to meet the need of employers sitting in any part of the world. Thus, it is possible to offer women with flexible work culture to give a boost in their career options and involve women in the very important sector.

Arrival of More Engineering Campaigns

It is also possible to encourage women towards the sector through targeted campaigns such as The Institute of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) award namely, Young Woman of the Year in the UK where women are rewarded as the supporting partners. Involvement of such popular campaigns will increase women interest and action towards Engineering. In addition, business and schools can collaborate and work towards raising women awareness in engineering.

Eradication of Discrimination and Biased Behaviour

Recruiting of women would easily take place if they were present on selection panels. Elaborately, women usually do not appear for job selection or are not present to get shortlisted. All form of prejudiced thinking should abandon to make sure no discrimination takes place and women are able to make their way to better opportunities.
There is much of work involved in guiding girls and explaining them career-enhancing jobs in the field of engineering. Therefore, the complete engineering field must be widened and should direct the jobs to them so that, female population is present in the suitable number at all the levels.

The Evolution of the Engineering Services Outsourcing Industry

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The integration of IT into daily life has already impacted the world to a very great extent. And this implementation is expanding day by day. Every year, the products are introduced with tight IT integration in them. ‘Smart’ is a new concept today and every product is getting smarter every year. Smart objects such as lights that automatically turn on and off are the next big thing. With such expansion of IT, the growth of engineering service outsourcing (ESO) industry is also booming. The ESO providers have taken the lead when it comes to integrating IT and engineering. There are three waves of evolution in this industry, and we are currently in the second wave.

 

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Wave 1 (2000 – 2010)

The first wave of engineering services is the services of yesterday. The enterprises till date consider engineering services as an extension of the engineering organizations.  The market of ESO has remained smaller when compared to IT outsourcing (ITO) or business process outsourcing (BPO).  The ESO has always survived with a core group of service providers and the engagements have contacts that are tactical and delivered through time-and-materials (T&M) arrangements.

From the data collected in 2014, it was found that a quarter of the overall engineering services market was accounted by India-based providers. The worth of this quarter of the market is approximately US $80 million per year. The Engineering Service Providers (ESPs) and the Global Engineering Centers (GECs) make up the Indian ESO industry and almost half of the top 500 R&D spenders operate through these GECs in India.

Wave 2 (2010- 2017)

Technology has advanced in many fields like sensors, distributed company, wireless communications, and big-data. These technologies are provisioning the rapid transformation of the Internet of Things (IoT). The consumer expectations are increasing at a very fast pace and thus embedded electronics and IT are permeating the service and product engineering services.

In all the industries, the firms are dealing with a wide range of devices and data. These challenges create a unique opportunity for ESO providers. The ESO providers can create intelligent engineering applications that can monitor and customize the entire experience of any product.  There are several ideas such as real-time health care, smart homes and remote monitoring them, connected cars and much more. The created intelligent products store their own data and use it to establish a feedback loop. The OEMs can constantly deliver intelligent products as-a-service whose customer experience and product evolution are defined using software applications.

Wave 3 (2015 onwards)

In the third wave, the ESO industry integrates manufacturing as the third field of expertise. The security in the industrial internet is increasing day by day which is creating a new dynamic in robotics, 3D printing, and industrial automation. The third change is beginning and has two phases.

  1. With the evolution of “Digital Shop Floor”, the previously collected information will integrate with systems like product Lifecycle management (PLM), Enterprise resource Planning (ERP), and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Such integration will increase the productivity, optimize the operational costs, improve the safety, and enhance asset uptime utility.
  1. The product maintenance and the repair requirements will have a lot of impact with the introduction of design-to-print concepts of additive and 3D manufacturing. For example, a washing machine that has the ability to provide 24/7 monitoring and can trigger the local provider with the need of printing a spare part.

Engineering Services and its changing nature

The need for change in the ESO delivery model has risen to realize the full potential of the growth capacities of technology. The current GECs must broaden their scope and invest further to meet all the upcoming challenges of IT-enabled engineering. Moreover, the GECs must also leverage the exposure, experience, and ESO providers’ investments.

In the future, the managed service contracts for ESO will require shifting from traditional engagement models to demand tight integration of service which includes key performance indicators, metrics of client business, and service level agreements that are stringent. In such way, the business model will move towards sharing risk and reward between the service providers and the client.