Project Ideas for Curious Students (2020)

I get it. Since COVID hit, many of us have been trapped at home, wondering how to make the best of the excess time not available for socializing, travelling or just generally going outside. Or, maybe you are reading this post-pandemic, still wondering if there is more to engineering than equations and datasheets. Well, my dear reader, I empathize with you and would like to propose some of my own suggestions!  

First, a bit of background. I am a student in the Mechanical Engineering department here at UBC. The program itself is excellent; subjects are often well-integrated, and the faculty is aware of the need to tie theory with practice. Nonetheless, the allure of personal projects remains if you want to venture beyond the fundamentals taught in class, or to have total freedom regarding what you choose to create. 

There is one big challenge with mechanical projects: you may find yourself grappling with the financial burden of doing so or worried about the safety implications of your project. I say this because outside of my design team, I am often constrained by these limitations. The goal of this blog series will be to highlight some of the resources available to students within the mechanical engineering department, and hopefully to give inspiration to those who are perhaps unsure of exactly what they want to create. 

See below for a list of all the blog posts in this series: 

Passion Projects 

Engineering Design Teams 

CAD and Simulation 

Software 

Project Ideas for Curious Students: Passion Projects

I have no shame in admitting that most of the ideas for my projects come into mind while I am bored of assignments. If I see value in a project and can afford to pursue it, I probably will. I do know people who take this to the extreme: a close friend of mine built a PID-controlled oven which can be pressurized or vacated of air, and thus used for manufacturing small, high-quality carbon fibre components.  

Depicted: my hydroponics system, for which I never hesitate to tell everybody about.

I actually think that there is value in pursuing projects in this manner. Ideas that get you excited are the ones that you should pay the most attention to; they are the most likely to keep you engaged, and will typically put you in a position where you learn much faster than if you were forced to do the work. When I started my hydroponics project, I did not expect to learn much more than I already knew about plants. Instead, I found myself learning about the mechanisms of nutrient uptake, and getting started with Arduino. As summarized by Marc Anthony, “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” I think that in some cases where there is a market for your idea or if it is applicable to what you want to do, you may end up opening new opportunities for yourself in the future. Perhaps you found a passion that you never realized you had, or maybe you will find that it was not as exciting as you originally thought.  

Still in need of inspiration? Here is a list of ideas that might help to get your brain moving:  

  • Remote-controlled vehicles  
  • Robotic arms  
  • Drones  
  • CNC machines  
  • Car modifications  
  • Anything that uses a 3D printer

Many of these suggestions are relatively expensive, however the resources necessary to complete them are generally quite accessible. While COVID-19 restrictions confine many of us to our rooms, projects related to robotics, as well as drones often have a plethora of components that “just work” once you assemble them, massively simplifying the design and assembly process.   

Whatever you decide to pursue, be sure to check local regulations, your tenancy agreement and to never skimp on safety research! I remember how one of my projects made use of LiPo batteries, which my friend and I found can carry an explosion risk if overcharged, excessively discharged or punctured. Safe to say that the additional safety equipment, including an explosion-proof case were worth the investment. We also learned that there are licensing regulations around flying drones above a threshold size (250 grams in our case). Similarly, making my own hydroponic nutrient solution meant that I had to be familiar with any of the safety risks related to the chemicals that I had in use. With any project, the importance safety and compliance with restrictions cannot be understated.  

Project Ideas for Curious Students: Engineering Design Teams

This year marks my fourth year on Formula UBC, one of many engineering design teams at UBC. I can unequivocally say that it has been the highlight of my university experience so far. When I joined, I was not sure what to expect. I knew that I wanted to learn more about aerodynamics and CFD, but I never expected that 2 years later, I would be leading the aerodynamics sub-team. Even more so, I never anticipated learning anything about machining, composites or even race cars (shocking, I know). I never imagined myself running track tests or figuring out how to manage people. And I certainly never saw myself driving the car.   

You will often hear that the value of engineering design teams is that they are an opportunity to apply concepts learned in class to a real project. In my experience, there is a stark difference between knowing something, and understanding it well enough to apply the concept to a real system. Moreover, you get to see the result of your design decisions on a working (or failing) system.   

Depicted: formula UBC front wing during test day. Test days are used to verify that the final product behaves as intended in its design.

It also gives you the opportunity to explore far beyond what is taught in class: for example, composites manufacture and fluid dynamics simulation, to the best of my knowledge, are only taught in a very limited capacity. Outside of the Mech 2 curriculum, design teams are also a great way to link concepts from seemingly disparate subjects. On Formula, large projects cannot be completed successfully without adequate communication with members from other sub–teams, since these systems will have to be able to work together on the car. In some cases, such as with the pneumatics, different subsystems will be competing for the same resources.  

Beyond technical skills, the one experience I feel is often overlooked is interpersonal skills. Learning to manage others, to deal with an occasionally political environment and how to work with sponsors can prove to be a very humbling experience. Interpersonal skills come with experience, and learning them in a fast-paced environment is excellent practice for the “real world.” Your sponsors are real stakeholders, who often want to see a return on their investment of potentially thousands of dollars into your project through representation and promotion of their brand. Over the past year, I have truly begun to appreciate the significance of the proverb “if you want to go fast, go alone…if you want to go far, go together.” What my team has been able to accomplish by creating a healthy, collaborative team environment has been nothing short of amazing.   

If you are considering whether not you should join a design team, my answer to you is an emphatic YES!  

Project Ideas for Curious Students: CAD and Simulation

Fortunately, engineering coursework typically requires a fair amount of CAE (computer-aided engineering) software, which can double as a creative tool whenever you have an idea that you would like to experiment with. I have found that a good combination of CAD, simulation software and some programming is sufficient for a significant portion of the design of low-risk projects.

To those who are not yet aware, UBC Engineering students have free access to several software licenses specific to the engineering department:

MATLAB 

Matlab is a programming language built specifically for technical work. Many scripting languages require the addition of libraries for tasks such as data visualization for example, which Matlab excels at. Well-integrated with this is Simulink, which allows you to model relatively complex systems in a more intuitive manner than explicitly writing code.

Your coursework will do a good job at teaching you the basics of Matlab, which you can choose to take further on your own. For all engineering-focussed math courses including linear algebra, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus and multivariable calculus, my coursework has included a heavy Matlab component.

If you are in an engineering design team or have a project that warrants large amounts of computation on a problem for which you cannot find ready-made software, this is always a good option. Matlab is also used commonly in industry. If you have graduated and are looking for a free alternative, Octave is a good potential solution; with that said, depending on the task you may also feel that languages such as R could be of use. My personal pick would be Python. With an explosion of open-sourced libraries, I have found that Python – along with SciPy libraries – is just as capable as Matlab for most tasks. It is also free, very well-documented and extremely popular. Being a general-purpose language makes it a useful transferrable skill to have, and gives you tools to expand your projects far beyond what dedicated tools might allow.

SOLIDWORKS 

If you are in or entering the Mech department, SolidWorks will need no introduction. CAD (Computer-Aided Design) in general can be an invaluable tool when you want to get a good idea of how components will look when assembled, and to spot problems (such as interference) in the design before it becomes a problem. With inorganic geometry, it can also speed up the process of making technical drawings, if you were to communicate your design to a third party.

ANSYS 

I will admit, I am somewhat less familiar with the practical uses for Ansys. If you do have access to a full Ansys license, you will be able to simulate anything ranging from computational fluid dynamics and thermal simulations to load simulations. Ansys has a great graphical workflow for coupled simulations, if you are interested in simulating multiple physical phenomena concurrently.

From personal experience, I would encourage anybody pursuing technical projects to be wary of the computational cost and learning curve associated with simulations. Having used the UBC Star-CCM+ license for fluid simulations (computational fluid dynamics or “CFD”), I can confirm that it is worthwhile to consider the cost vs. benefit of complicated simulations. For simple simulations where rough estimates are acceptable (e.g. “how likely is it that this non-critical component fails?”), SolidWorks often has a perfectly acceptable solution for you.

Finally, I would recommend looking into a free SimScale community license, providing access to 3000 core-hours of cloud compute time (calculated as the product of the number of cores used and the amount of time using them) with up to 16 cores at a time. Their documentation is nothing short of excellent, and they have a great user interface. To the best of my knowledge, SimScale is built using open-source technologies such as OpenFOAM, which provides open-sourced CFD and simulation code.

So…why do I recommend CAD and simulation if it doesn’t involve creating something real? Just as I mentioned previously, mechanical design projects often become prohibitively expensive once manufacture begins. Software allows you to pursue a design project with minimal upfront cost, and pursue its manufacture at a later date when it is more feasible. This is exactly what I have been planning to do for one of my more ambitious projects, which is a small-scale axial flow turbojet engine. Chances are that it will fail miserably when I am done, and I’m looking forward to it.

Project Ideas for Curious Students: Software

If you have ever been in a position where you were thinking “I wish my computer could do this task for me” or “why isn’t there a calculator for this,” well, it probably can, and there is probably a library for it. With a bit of programming knowledge and some coffee, you might just have a solution to your problem. Maybe.  

Make no mistake: I am by no means a programming guru, but I still have a few suggestions for you to be able to pursue applicable projects with software. For those of us in mechanical engineering, software is typically a tool rather than the product itself. One suggestion that I like making to people who are mechanically inclined with an interest in software is simulation development. Simulations require interdisciplinary knowledge to implement, since they are nothing more than a mathematical model of some real-world phenomenon. As a tool, I have seen this used on numerous occasions: my engineering design team, for example, uses a student-built Matlab vehicle dynamics simulator to estimate lap times for our car. If we change different aspects of our vehicle’s performance (for example, downforce), we can get an estimate for how our competition score will change. As I have mentioned, these can also be a product, meant to be used as a tool by engineers. These tools (products such as Star-CCM+) typically take a huge amount of resources and developers to create, although if making a contribution to open-sourced software is more your speed, there are always packages such as OpenFOAM.   

Don’t forget that there is always room for passion projects! Yet another one of my perpetually incomplete, overly ambitious projects has been to make a simple computational fluid dynamics (fluid dynamics simulation software, known as “CFD”) program from scratch using Python. I admit that it has no true practical application other than to help me to better understand the inner workings of CFD code.  

Although I acknowledge that I may not be the best person to speak about software development, a question that I often get is “how do I start”? My personal recommendation is to choose an application, then to just dive in. I promise you that there is no shortage of information on almost anything when it comes to programming. Just as with mechanical projects, you typically learn exactly what you need in the most efficient manner possible when you have something to apply your knowledge to. Failure will occur and iteration is a necessity, but this is all part of the learning process. Fairly recently I started to make a personal website and a web app, and I can safely say that I knew basically zero HTML when I started, let alone JavaScript or some of the common development libraries.    

Student Team Competitions: ISR 15 Part 2

Hello again,

In this post I will be continuing to talk about my trip to the International Submarine Races(ISR) this past June.  If you are interested to hear about the run up to competition and the journey over there, you are welcome to check out my previous post here.  To recap, I am part of SUBC, UBC’s submarine design team and we road tripped across the country to Maryland to race other collegiate teams at ISR.

The Base

Because submarines need to be underwater, and salt water is very corrosive, submarine races take place in ocean basins.  These are indoor large freshwater bodies that are maintained in military bases, often used for naval experiments or testing.  In essence, I would describe the ocean basin at ISR as an airstrip underwater.  However, because of the military nature of location there are some security measures that you have to be careful of such as staying in the area of the competition and not wandering elsewhere.  As well, you need to submit paperwork ahead of the time for security clearance to enter the base, especially if you are not a Canadian or American citizen.

Checks

In order to be qualified to race, we had to pass the dry and wet check.  The dry check consists of the entire submarine being assembled and demonstrated above water to ensure that all safety regulations are met.  The wet check demonstrates in the water that safety systems are working.  It’s not uncommon for issues to arise in assembly or between checks.  Some issues that came up for us included misalignment of the hatch locking mechanism as well as the gearbox.  These problems require quick fixes with limited tools and materials.  You learn a lot trying to fix systems that you did not originally make under pressure with the small group of people available.  It also tests and strengthens your communication and team working abilities, as they are needed constantly.

Racing

Racing consisted of the divers suiting up in full scuba gear and bringing the submarine to the lift which lowered into the basin.  The divers brought the submarine to the basin floor in order to make buoyancy adjustments.  These adjustments were done by attaching small weights and pieces of foam to the inside of the submarine.  Once we were confident our submarine was neutrally buoyant, we entered the race queue to wait for our turn.  The race coordinator warned us when we were next and the support divers moved our submarine to the start line, while the secondary diver brought the pilot underwater to meet the submarine and load the pilot inside.  Once the pilot was loaded, the divers signaled for the race to start. After a count down over the underwater speakers, the pilot took off down the course towards the finish line!

Conclusion

Submarine racing is a complicated business to an outsider but its a very rewarding one for an engineering student.  Through my time competing at submarine races the last couple of years I have gained serious team-working, communication as well as technical and interpersonal skills that have been honestly very useful in finding co-op jobs and my confidence in my abilities.  I would encourage anyone given the opportunity to go to a student team competition to make the most of it and dive in head first!

Later,

Allysia

 

Student Team Competitions: Takeways from SUBC’s Trip to the International Submarine Races

Introduction

Engineering Student Design Teams can be a big part of student life here within Mechanical Engineering, including my own.  Since joining in my second year, SUBC has become a big part of my life and my identity within Mech so I thought it would be an interesting read to see what its like to go to a student team competition.

The goal of most student team projects is to eventually compete in a intercollegiate competition.  For UBC Thunderbots, they compete at Robocup (the world cup of soccer for robots), or UBC Baja competes at the Baja SAE competition annually with their off-road vehicle.  My team, SUBC builds a human powered submarine to compete at two separate biannual competitions.  In effect, we compete annually but each competition runs biannually.  At the end of June, I had the awesome opportunity to road trip across the US to Bethesda, Maryland to compete in the International Submarine Races with our sub, Skookumchuck Mk. V.

Pre-Competition Madness

The run up to competition is always very turbulent.  There are administrative and technical deadlines that need to be met in order to compete.  Of course, we want our submarine to be fully functional and as optimized as possible but there is a fine balance between working until the deadline and stopping to pack away our tools to take with us as well as surfacing and painting the submarine.  In addition, we had a technical design report on our submarine due a month before we left and a technical presentation a week before we left.

It seems to be common that students leave their design teams for summer once classes and finals end for the term.  However, many design teams including SUBC have competitions are around the end of June and beginning of July, and I have found that the best way to learn and get the most out of the student team experience is to work during the pre-competition rush starting in May.  Those who are not on co-op have the opportunity to spend hours in the machine shop gaining practical skills with almost constant projects available for them to work on.  And those who are on co-op can come in after work or on the weekends to lend a hand.  The most happens during this time in terms of problem solving, machining and systems integration which provides an optimal opportunity for someone working on one area of the project to expand and get a good grip on other systems.  I would encourage anyone who craves more knowledge and technical skills to take advantage of amount of work available during the run up to competition.

The Journey – The Eye of the Storm

One of the best parts of getting to go on one of these trips is the travel there.  Those who could get the time off work road tripped with the sub across the US and those who could only get time for the competition itself flew in.  We drove around 12 hours a day between the three drivers and two pick-up trucks, staying at motels, AirBNBs and camping along the way.

I was worried the first time I went to a competition about whether I would get along with the people I traveled with especially because it seemed like everybody knew each other better than I did.  I can only speak about my own experience, but I found that everybody was very welcoming and interested to bring me into the fold.  Similarly, during the trip to Maryland I was excited to become better friends with the newer members who were joining us.  I would encourage anybody on the fence about going to competition about making friends and knowing other people on the trip to just go anyways.  The more the merrier!

Being on the road trip is a great way to bond anyways.  You learn everybody’s music preferences, what food they like and have lots of time to talk and get to know each other.  Plus there is the additional bonding experience of dealing with road trip troubles such as getting lost or having small car troubles.  During our trip a couple of notable ones included when the key fob for one of the cars stopped working spontaneously, or when we thought we were in a ghost town while finding an AirBnB in Indiana in the very early hours of the morning. We traveled with two pickup trucks with a walkie talkie in each to help keep our caravan together.   A personal highlight for my trip was playing 20 questions across cars in the middle of Wisconsin.

That’s how I ended up across the country in Rockville, Maryland.  I’ll be posting another post shortly related to my experiances during the actual competition itself.  Check back soon to read up on that! Or check out my co-blogger’s post about his student team competition experiences heading to California to race his team’s E-Bike.

Later,

Allysia

Design Team Competition: Lost Sierra E-bike Festival (pt2)

Welcome back reader,

I the last post I discussed the preparation leading up to our first competition and the journey we took to get there. In this one, I’d like to recount the details of the festival itself, including the weather, the camping, the food, the people and most importantly, the race.

Firstly, I wanted to talk a bit more about my team’s purpose and electric bike as a whole. ThunderBikes was founded by my friend and classmate, Bhargav, last year with the goal of promoting the use of e-bike as a mode of transportation. The team is doing this through high performance bike projects as well as encouraging and helping their own members to do their own electric conversion. Less than 5 percent of Vancouver residents commute to work by bike. This is often largely due to the extended range of most commutes, as housing in the city or on campus is very expensive. Electric bikes is a fantastic method of transportation and significantly increase the range of an average commute. This push towards e-bikes will also help lower the congestion of commuting by car or public transit to campus, improve student health through exercise, and create eco-friendly transportation methods around vancouver. 

Camping

Camping outdoors means exposing yourself to the elements, both hot and cold. And California in July is both hot and sunny in the day and quite chilly during the night. Fortunately for us, it did not rain. If you plan on camping this season, remember to check the weather forecast (highest and lowest temperature) and bring sufficient layers to dress up or down depending on the time of day. There was a lot of bugs at night, as they seek sources of light, so bring along bug spray. At night, the temperature dipped below 10°C, so invest in a warm sleeping bag and a comfy pad before heading out.

One Friday, we delegated one member to go grocery shopping while the other two stayed at camp to set-up. We had bought a butane stove, a saucepan and some camping dining ware at a nearby walmart. For dinner we boiled pasta and had it with canned chilli. We brought along soda and water in a cooler, which was great to keep everything cold. On Saturday breakfast, we boiled water to cook oatmeal, to which we added strawberries and peanut butter. For lunch, we grilled some corn on the cob right on top of our stove. Dinner was a western bbq provided by EcoBikes which included dishes including baked beans and beef brisket.

Race Day

We woke up early Saturday morning to prepare for our race. We signed up for only one race out of many (we qualified for the throttle assist class, but there were also pedal class, adaptive class, and super class). Bhargav, our rider for the race, went on a test run of the trail. Courtesy of EcoBike, I was able to borrow a pedal-assist bike and followed after him. The trail was a 10 km loop up into the mountains, consisting of big inclines and declines, countless turns, jumps and different rough surfaces (rocks, mounds, streams). It took me half an hour to complete the course, and I finished with sore hands and a very dirty bike. After our test ride, we did an overall inspection of the bike, and performed last minute adjustments to the suspensions, the pressure tires and secured all loose wires. We then left the bike to charge.

The race started at 2:30 P.M. One by one the racers stepped up to the start line and rode off; they were timed individually. As Bhargav rode off towards the mountain, we cheered him on and then waited anxiously for him to come back. 20 minutes later, we saw him slowly approaching the finish line. After he crossed, we slowly made our way towards the barn, and I noticed the flat tire. It turned out that our bike got a flat tire on the rear about 1 km into the trail, but the rider did not notice. He then crashed on a steep decline and was unable to keep going. Unfortunately, we could not finish the trail, and the bike suffered some damage to the rear wheel. We were disappointed with the result, but admitted it was down to track experience and unlucky failure, rather than a design flaw.

Other teams

Besides competing, this festival was a great chance to network with other teams. Some prominent e-bike designers attended, including Stealth and HPC. HPC sponsored some of the events and brought their own riders to compete using their bikes. Stealth had some of their models for us to test ride, and merch to give out. We also met some individuals who were just e-bike enthusiasts there to enjoy the atmosphere. Among them was Cutis, our camp neighbor who we shared some beers with; he’s a seasoned mountain biker who recently transitioned into e-mountain biking as he got older, and Daniel, a professor at Sonoma State University who built his own battery. Everyone there were very friendly and open to talk about their e-bike knowledge and experiences. We definitely took some inspiration from them that we could use for our future builds.

Conclusion

The Lost Sierra E-bike Festival was a great experience and a fun trip. Although the result was not what we wanted, we took a lot of positives from our design; we also learned a lot about other designs and have ideas for next year’s build. I would highly recommend going to competition with your design team if you have the chance, as you would definitely not regret it in hindsight.

Design Team Competition: Lost Sierra E-Bike Festival (pt1)

Hello reader,

In July I traveled with my team, ThunderBikes, to Northern California to participate in the Lost Sierra Electric Bike Festival, hosted by EcoBike Adventures. It was a 3 day event consisting of various races and e-bike competitions and showcases. Design competitions are big events that teams work towards every year. At UBC, there are many design teams that compete in competitions annually, many of which are organized by SAE. This is the first competition our team have ever attended, and it was a great chance to establish our reputation as one of the newest design team within the engineering department. In this post I will tell you all about our preparation the week prior to the trip as well as the journey to California.

The week before competition is always the busiest and most chaotic period during the year. Everything for the trip had to be arrange and final repairs and adjustments were made to our bike. Like most road trips, we had to plan our transportation, lodging, food options and what to pack. Transportation was complicated by the fact that we had to store our e-bike, which was over 100 lbs inside the car. With the help of Modo, we managed to rent a Toyota Sienna, which comfortably fit all three people coming to competition, all our bags and the bike.

Lodging was also difficult to find, since the festival was being held near a forest and an hour away from the nearest city. Fortunately, our host, Eco Bike, offered camping accommodation including running water and toilets. They were generous enough to offered us free tickets to the festival and free camping. All that was left was to collect camping gear, tools to work on the bike while on the road and we were ready. On a side note for all international students, be sure to get your US Visa early. Applications usually take a couple of days, and after that you need to arrange for an interview. The whole process takes about 5 weeks, so be mindful of that if your competition takes place in the US.

We planned our route to get to California; since all of us had either classes or work, we could only take a few days off. We planned to leave on Thursday afternoon and get back by Monday, which meant a lot of driving each day. Our destination in California was the Sierra County, about 1600 km from Vancouver; we planned on driving to Seattle (4 hours) and spending the night there, then driving 12 hours on Friday to Sierra.

We headed out on Thursday at 5 pm. it took us 1.5 hours to get to the border and about half an hour to get through. After having dinner in Bellingham, we drove to Sammamish, a suburban town outside of Seattle. Our night was a short one, and we left at 3 A.M to continue our journey; we arrived at Salem, just outside of Portland at 8 A.M and had a breakfast break. We then continued through Umpqua National Forest to Klamath Falls, where we stopped for lunch and bought some extra camping accessories at the local Walmart. Finally, we arrived at our campsite off the road in the Sierra County, California around 6 P.M. We spent the rest of that day setting up our campsite, cooking dinner and doing some small checks on our bike.

Stay tuned for part 2, where I discuss the events of the Festival!

Take Care,

Huy

How to Prepare for Interviews and Tips to Ace Them (Part 2)

The biggest fear that most interviewees have are about how to best answer interview question. I will talk about certain questions I’ve received during interviews. Some of these are also from sites listed in the reference.

1. Why did you pick engineering?

The interviewer is trying to determine your motivation for the job. You should be engaging in your answer. Try to sell engineering as the best career choice. In the past, I would have said that I liked Physics in high school, but that’s not a very great motivation. A better answer would be that engineering makes a large impact in the world we live in. Especially since engineering by definition is to design and improve on technology and systems to better society. You should also tailor this question towards the job, in terms of how you could make the biggest impact through the position in the company.

2. When did you start your job search? Have you been offered any positions?

This goes back to my other blog, Mechanical Engineering Job Search, where the job you are searching and applying for should fit your interests and career path. The interviewer can discern whether you’re simply applying to get employed or applying because you want to work in the position. A worker with keen interest is preferred over one who will simply drone on day-to-day. So to answer this question, explain honestly and clearly that you are trying to find the “right job” and what that means to you. Even if you have been offered positions, don’t brag about them, simply answer a yes or no.

3.Tell me about the most challenging engineering project that you have been involved with during the past year.

If you have a portfolio of projects you have worked on (which I strongly recommend), pull it out now. It’s always better to show than talk. Explain the problem solving process using Situation, Task, Action, Result, Transfer (START) technique. For me, one of the most challenging engineering project I had been involved with was developing payload dropper attached to a multi-rotor drone for a solar farm-simulating competition (Situation). There was no precedent system that I could optimize, so I had to design, from scratch, a device to drop off markers onto damaged solar panels (Task). I looked for inspiration on a project-sharing platform, then found a button dispenser to base my marker dropper on. After modelling the marker dropper to fit within the limited space on the drone, I printed and assembled it for testing. As we attempted to test, we encountered unforeseen problems such as wind generated by the drone veering the payload from dropping straight down. With only one day left before competition, we improvised with the available material to make the dropper more stable (Action). Because of this device, we are now able to achieve an important task in the competition (Result). These research, design, prototyping skills will help me transition into any fast-paced workplace and solve engineering problems encountered in the job (Transfer).

4.What new engineering specialty skills have you developed during the past year?

There is no doubt that continual learning is one of the most important aspects in life. Your interviewer wants to know that you’re proactive in acquiring and updating your skills in the ever-changing engineering industry. This question also serves as a great opportunity to show your eagerness to learn on the job. Talk about any skills that are relevant to the position, and how you mastered (or got better at) them. Important skills to Mechanical Engineering include ANSYS, CFD, CAD, and CAM. This semester, I learned how to use Siemens NX 12 software develop CAM programs by assigning appropriate tools, operations and parameters to properly manufacture parts.

There are many more potential interview questions. Take a look at the links provided below. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to comment them. I look forward to hearing from you! Happy job-hunting everyone.

References: