Get to the point version of the question:

If you were an EE or software engineer designing a consumer wearable; a handheld product with PCB, display, and battery; or other similar device; what would you expect or want the mechanical engineer designing the housing and other elements to know about EE and software so that the project is successful and on time? Your top two or three items would be great. A link or a reference is also welcome.


Longer version with a little more background.:

As the thread title says, I am a mechanical engineer. I have 25 years of experience in product development, mostly in small medical devices and some consumer products. Many projects have included electronics, such as cell phones, blood glucose monitors, and insulin pumps, so I have some knowledge of the field. However, I feel like this ad hoc education has left many holes in my knowledge. This fact was mentioned to my boss and it is now an objective to improve my EE knowledge and help our group of 8 – 10 MEs do the same.

Unfortunately, I have not found a good resource for what I think I need. Yes, I am not sure of what I need. What I have found is either too basic and too broad that finding helpful information is hard (example – the textbook on this forum) or too narrow and too deep that I am over my head on page 1. It is likely many of you have worked with engineers like me on projects similar to what I mentioned. During those projects, there were probably times you said to yourself, “If only that engineer knew X or told me Y we wouldn’t have this problem.” Conversely, hopefully there were occasions were the ME had appropriate knowledge and was able to help head off a problem. Those are the kind of things that would help me figure out what I need to know.

Here is a good example from a blog post I found: “Location of I/O ports to meet the demands of the outside world can compromise internal cable routing – keep cable routings as short as possible “. This is a very practical, DFM type recommendation. More theoretical nuts and bolts kind of suggestions are also welcome. A final way to look at it is what should be in the EE section of a training syllabus for mechanical engineers designing products with electronics?

While it would be great, I do not expect reading the replies on this forum will fulfill my objective, but hopefully they will point me in the right direction.

Thank you.

 

You want to be an EE, get the formal education of an EE.

 

Sounds like you're in a "throw it over the wall" environment - your EEs design something, then "throw it over the wall" to the MEs. This type of design environment went out of style in the '80s. This really isn't your fault, but is your management's fault. Your teams should be co-located in one area, so that the designs are done concurrently, not one group does their design, then another group trys to shoe-horn the previous design into their design.

There aren't any suggestions here, because what one EE design needs is completely different from what another EE design needs. That's why the designs are done concurrently, so that the surprises at the end of the designs are kept to a minimum.

 

Your best bet for a thorough education would be to go to college, but you could also try a online course.
A.H.W.

 

During the last 25 years of my career I had the pleasure of working with some of the best ME types out there. Every new project was a collaborative effort on both sides. The ME guys while far from strong electrical did understand the basics, especially the newer kids right out of school. My mechanical skills were fair at best. I could read and interpret most drawings and make a good enough drawing of for example a chassis punch affair that the ME guys knew what I needed. My boss was a ME type and would tell me "Ron, get out your crayons and make a cartoon my guys can understand". He liked calling my electrical schematics cartoons.

Realistically I did not really expect too much electrical working knowledge from the ME guys I had the pleasure of working with. Their job was not to have an in depth understanding of my world. The object in my case was to work closely together within an assembly and test department to improve and develop test methods and systems, this frequently involved our facilities guy being involved.

Your case really depends on you knowing what your electrical engineering counterparts expect of you and you of them. That will likely be dictated by the environment and specific task and projects you get assigned. I just don't see it as the same in all workplaces or scenarios.

Ron

 

You can be jack of all trades and master of none.
Do you want to be on a team of mediocre engineers or on a team of experts in all areas?
Hire experts and have strong teamwork.

 

It seems to me that you have a management problem.

Your projects should have a project manager who facilitates the interaction between different disciplines. Your EE's know what constraints are require for their part to work. ME's should know what constraints they may have. Those constraints should be brought up in the project meetings.

 

... it is now an objective to improve my EE knowledge and help our group of 8 – 10 MEs do the same.

Are there resources within your company? The simple answer is to meet with them and establish ongoing dialogs. One way to do that is to define a new-product development process that requires communication between your groups. Sign off on responsibilities, timelines and so on.

You can and should do this with external resources also, but it becomes more challenging.

It's very inefficient to allow specifications to remain 'hidden' until later in the process. For instance the EEs and marketing people may expect some level of water resistance or shock tolerance in the finished product. If you, as an ME, don't learn of these things early-on, it can lead to expensive redesigns.

The responsibility for running this process should fall to marketing. That's their job, to develop new products using all the resources available to the firm and outside the firm as needed, to drive the process to successful launch and beyond. But many companies essentially have no marketing and do things on an ad hoc basis. These companies don't last long.

 

I initially objected to the "throw it over the wall" characterization because, in a design role, I have worked closely with manufacturing folks most of my career. Upon further reflection, I realized that in projects with electronics, the “throw it over the wall” environment is more reality than I realized. Much of that has been driven by the fact that for the last 16 years, I have worked at mechanical contract engineering firms. When a project with electronics came up, we worked with an electrical contractor that either we or our customer selected. While concurrent engineering has been the goal since the 80s, today’s frequent practice out outsourcing projects and virtual teams make it more common than we would like. In light of that, and even if more collaboration can be achieved, some level of EE development understanding will make me a better ME and the final product better. Any suggestions to achieve that are my hope.

 

Are there resources within your company? The simple answer is to meet with them and establish ongoing dialogs. One way to do that is to define a new-product development process that requires communication between your groups. Sign off on responsibilities, timelines and so on..

WayneH,

That is exactly what I/we are doing. At this particular time, our on site EE department of one is very busy and I am not. Reaching out to an online community seemed a good way to make some progress given those circumstances.

 

I'm going to throw something out to think about.

I think the ME's goal should primarily be ergonomics, ease of assembly and environmental.

So, let's say you have a Sketch of what the product should look like. The EE should TRY to design around the mechanical constraints and the environmental constraints, particularly temperature. The EE might say, I can't put this connector where you'd like it because it would coast more.

One aspect that could be tricky is if your trying to use a standard or modified case.

 

I think the ME's goal should primarily be ergonomics, ease of assembly and environmental.

Under "environmental" I would include being familiar with the concepts of thermal management, electromagnetic compatibility and dealing with electrostatic discharge. (The Wikipedia links are just a start.)

Provided the ME isn't going to be attempting any electronic circuit design, I think the above would probably suffice.

 

Hi,

Interesting question.

I suppose you know about electrical simulators so you can simulate the circuit if you wanted to know about the workings of the circuit itself, but this sounds more like where it's more toward the applied side of electronics rather than electrical theory itself. There's a crossover threshold though where some of the electrical theory overlaps the mechanical side, and the EE's should know where this region is and how to convey it to anyone else on the team that should know about it. If they dont then they arent very good EE's

An example is in order, probably several examples. The first is a simple one, the second a little more involved.

The first is where we have a transistor in a circuit that has to dissipate an appreciable amount of power. The EE would know this right off, and would specify a heat sink. The heat sink is partly electrical in nature since it connects to the case of the transistor (in many cases) and partly mechanical since it has to be mounted in such a way as to be close enough to the circuit (many cases) and also have enough free air flow, yet the EE may or may not specify the way it has to be mounted unless it has to be insulated from the case, and may not specify for example how many holes should be drilled into the case to allow free air flow into and out of the case. Thus the next guy in the chain may have to figure this out.
There's really only two ways to get this done. One is to learn about transistors and heat sinks and what is required for free air flow to and from a heat sink, the other is to ask the EE. So one is about learning and one is about good communication. I would think the communication line has to stay open and if the receiving party wishes to learn more about this then they have to study applied electrical engineering.
In order to know how to best work with a heat sink we have to know the power dissipation of the transistor and the rating of the heat sink, and how many holes to drill and if a fan is needed. We might even have to leave room for a fan just in case the air holes dont add up to enough when the unit is life tested. later.

There's a lot of cases like this that can come up and that's because there are a lot of different parts in electronic circuits that need special attention and even special orientation. A recent event that brings this point out even more is the Samsung phone explosions. The preliminary cause i have read was because the Li-ion battery did not have enough room inside the case for proper expansion when it heats up due to charging (although it might also expand during dischcarge). That's because someone did not design the case right.

So the question here to ask yourself or another party involved is, do you know enough about an Li-ion battery to design a case that holds an Li-ion battery in normal use? But the more general question that has to be answered is do you know enough about ALL the electronic parts so you can design a case to hold any of them. If not, then you have to read up on all the parts and hope that after all is said and done that you found all the right information you needed.

Another point that comes up often involves distance. The distance some more remote parts are from other parts or PC boards. The distance from one part to another can not be too long in many cases because of the way signals work and noise works.

Unfortunately i dont think we could make a list of things to check because it may involve new parts that are invented tomorrow and the only way to know about that is to read up on that part, and the EE would have had to have done this already so they would or at least should know how to apply that part effectively. They also have the background education to know what is most important about what they are reading and might even be able to guess about something that is left out of the source material that is important, and that kind of insight comes with experience, experience in that field.

So really this is a whole field in itself and would take some time to learn, so probably best is to ask the original EE what is best for these kinds of situations and that means keeping the communication lines open. The whole ball game is about electrical and electrical mechanical parts and their real world application.
Back when i was in the industry there would be a project manager that would overlook the whole project, and they would have to have knowledge in both areas.

You should already have all the prerequisites so if you want to read up on this yourself then the best bet is to start reading up on all the electrical parts you can find in various circuits and products around the globe and how they work. Expect this to take some time as when learning a new language

 

Everything.

 

WayneH,

That is exactly what I/we are doing. At this particular time, our on site EE department of one is very busy and I am not. Reaching out to an online community seemed a good way to make some progress given those circumstances.

Hire another EE.

 

Bert.......if you are a mechanical engineer.........EE will be easy for you. EE is mechanics......just in a different form.

Think of a screw.......in which you may vary the radius and pitch.......in real time.

That's EE.

 

Under "environmental" I would include being familiar with the concepts of thermal management, electromagnetic compatibility and dealing with electrostatic discharge. (The Wikipedia links are just a start.)

Provided the ME isn't going to be attempting any electronic circuit design, I think the above would probably suffice.

Thanks OB. Those are some good tips. Just the sort of thing I was looking for.

 

Mr Al,

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. Your idea of simply starting to read up on electrical parts makes sense. How many are there? One or two dozen? That shouldn't take too long to finish.

Bert

 

I really think it's the EE engineers that need to learn some ME.

I worked as a manufacturing engineer, DFM was my thing and I'm sad to say that the EE designers were a complete nightmare for designing lovely looking PCBs with unnecessarily fine pitch components, with ZERO consideration for things such as cable entries (large components all the way around the outside of the PCB), physical component sizes (large capacitors where you needed enclosure covers to be) or simply designing products that were impossible to actually build.

 

DFM was my thing and I'm sad to say that the EE designers were a complete nightmare for designing lovely looking PCBs with unnecessarily fine pitch components, with ZERO consideration for things such as cable entries (large components all the way around the outside of the PCB), physical component sizes (large capacitors where you needed enclosure covers to be) or simply designing products that were impossible to actually build.

How dare them to actually want the circuit to properly work!