Free design engineering book

Oh, right. Yes, that's the one I meant.

I can't find it in the libraries around here, at Rutgers or the community colleges, anyway. Princeton's catalog is down and the other engineering schools are a drive. But I'll keep looking for it. I saw it back when I was with _Machine Shop Guide_, but I didn't have time to read it then.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress
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That is an excellent book. I couldn't put it down when I first read it years ago.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

If you like that one, you'll probably like a similar book that Kidder wrote, titled _House_.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Ed, see if this search has anything close to you:

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?loc=Piscataway%2C+NJ#tabs Keep in mind that is for any of the four editions, you can play around with the terms some to narrow things down I'm sure (if you weren't already using this search...)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Hey, thanks, Leon. I figured that Stevens Inst. of Technology had it but I didn't want to drive to Hoboken. But I'm surprised that the College of NJ has it. My library may be able to arrange an inter-library loan with them.

I keep forgetting about WorldCat. My wife uses it, and has full inter-library access to it (she's taking a Master's at Kean Univ.), but I never think of it.

I'll give it a try right now...Yes! My local public library can get it from CNJ.

We cheapskates have to learn patience.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

It seems like there is always something to forget with the all the internet possibilities now...

I have a sneaking suspicion that there are electronic versions floating around the ether too. I found one download/reference to a pdf, but it had already been pulled.

I checked through all of my used sources too, they were all close to $100, a lot more than either of us care to spend right now :)

Reply to
Leon Fisk

I'll say. Since it's basically a reference book, this may be a clumsy way to use it, but it is available on Google Books. You can switch to "full page" mode and hit the magnify button a couple of times, and it's quite easy to read.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Are there any positions available for such? I'm pretty good at design engineering and the electrical controls & programming, plus hydraulics, pneumatics, etc.. My current employer chooses to underemploy me and hires contractors at 4X my pay to do what I can do better than most of the contractors they hire. And the jobs they have me do are things that I'm not all that great at. For example they might have me changing light bulbs when they can have a younger more agile person change light bulbs faster than I can. But they hire people to program their machines that are high priced, not any better at it than I am, and are gone when the project is running. Do you know of any unreasonably good money jobs (or even reasonably good paying jobs) doing the design engineering electron pushing stuff?

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

Can I take a guess. You are working for a place that you haven't worked at for long after losing a job where the challenges were greater?

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Nope, been at this job for over 6 years, left my more interesting job for more money and better benefits, and paid overtime. I liked the work I was doing before better but it was less challenging than I wanted. My first engineering job was the most interesting, we provided engineering service for other companies and did machine vision integration, there I did electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, and pneumatic designs. Our customers did their own typical work and hired us for the more challenging work. That company closed down their office in the city where I worked, the boss wanted me to come to the StLouis office but I got a local job instead, that's been around 10 years ago or so.

I would love to find a more challenging job with competitive wages and benefits. To sum it up, I'm capable of automated equipment design, building, and programming but instead of my employer utilizing these skills, they have me changing light bulbs and repairing hoists, but they also want me to repair automated machinery when it's down.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

I work where we have engineers with the ink barely dry on their diplomas and a mindset that engineers do these things and techs do those and the twain shall not meet.

I keep telling my boss, "I live for interesting breakdowns". My way of telling him I'm bored. I miss the old job, gone in bankruptcy during the last economic downturn, they let me do things based on previous successes.

Hobbies help, you can use your creativity on your time.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven't been challenged by work to use 10% of what I learned just getting an AAS in Electronics. There have been some difficult breakdowns at work but the difficulty is generally not having documentation or parts needed to fix a machine. Friday we were working on a

2000HP drive, smaller drives just get replaced, but we have to troubleshoot an fix the 2000HP drives.

At home I have a CNC mill that I'm wanting to update the control on and a CNC lathe that I already did a control update on. Plus I mess with microcontrollers and do hobby projects with R/C, computers, electronics, and mechanics.

RogerN

Reply to
RogerN

so, why not get the degree?

Reply to
Bill Noble

I've done that a few times with other books and wish I could do it with a few more :)

It works a treat when you only need a paragraph or two to answer your question. That feature has sold me on a few books too. I've been burned a few too many times now buying books sight-unseen that I wouldn't have had I been able to peek inside.

There are some old (~1900's) engineering books available in electronic form. I'll pass along info (they are out of copyright, not hard to find) if you are interested. I've been downloading/collecting them as I come across them. If you use a decent "djvu" reader program they are pretty decent to peruse.

I haven't been too impressed with the scanning Google is doing. It may just be the pdf copy being released to the public, but the quality, especially images, kinda sucks...

Reply to
Leon Fisk

Someone here put together a bunch of books like that maybe six years ago or so and sent out some CDs of them. I have one around here; I looked at them at the time, but I haven't checked them since, so I don't remember what was on the disc.

That stuff is always interesting and it's tempting to do something with it, but I've never had the time. Back when I was with _American Machinist_ and it was in New York, we had the McGraw-Hill library, which contained the _AM_ library dating back to 1877. We had some great old machining books, many of which I've never seen on Lindsay or elsewhere. Of course we had the old Colvin and Stanley books (Fred Colvin was an editor of _AM_ at one time:

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-- all of his titles are listed there), and all of Dick Moore's books, plus at least a hundred others. Aside from the Library of Congress, they may be the only copies around -- at least, the only accessible ones.

_AM_ was sold to Penton in Cleveland and I've never checked to see what happened to the library. McGraw-Hill doesn't publish anything like _AM_ anymore, so they may have gotten rid of them. I'll have to check some day.

Yes, and I suspect it's intentional. They're playing a dicey game with copyrights and they have a new project going now, in which they had to spend $7 million of advertising around the world to let authors know that they're engaged in an opt-out program, to settle a court suit.

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-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

This rare and little known book is perhaps the most interesting mechanism/machine design book I've seen. Once I set a search, it took two or three years for a copy to show up on ebay. While you're doing the interlibrary loan thing, I'd recommend trying to get hold of a copy.

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?loc=04079#tabs

Reply to
Ned Simmons

Did you bring this one up before? I remember the title from somewhere, and also that there are two copies in New York City libraries that are easy for me to get to.

Maybe on my semi-annual trip to the NYPL in Manhattan.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

They let you check them out that long? ;)

Wes

Reply to
Wes

I don't check anything out on those trips, which usually are for going to the reference stacks that don't circulate.

The New York Public Library in midtown is a nice place to go on a warm spring day, especially when you've left enough time to visit the permanent design display at the Museum of Modern Art. And for a piece of cheesecake...

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Ah, that makes sense. I forgot you are a researcher. The cheesecake sounds great but I'd rather make it to the Museum of Science and Industry instead. Now if I can just figure out how to get my employeer to send me to Chicago for training some day.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

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