Commentary • expert insight

I attended the recent Robotics Summit & Expo in Boston, and one of the highlights was hearing Jon Hirschtick’s keynote. Hirschtick is General Manager, Onshape and Atlas, PTC — and is famous in engineering circles as being the fellow who created Solidworks. He was also a member of the famed MIT Blackjack Team, which was the…

At the recent NFPA Annual Conference, I was eager to hear Peter Ziehan, the famed geopolitical analyst, and his take on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ziehan has been predicting this type of aggression from Putin for years, based on his country’s terrible societal demographics, which indicate a country slowly imploding. But what I came away…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]Twitter上的@ DW_LeeTeschler问大多数人the role of engineers in the economy and you’ll get back answers that mention technology research and new ideas embodied in patents. That’s certainly the image you could come away with if you examined some of the undergrad…

By Charles Tschaggeny, Tschaggeny Design In 1984, Lockheed ceased production of the L1011 TriStar airplane and exited the world of commercial aircraft for good. For Lockheed, its latest passenger jet had been heralded as a technological marvel but was, in fact, a business disaster. The TriStar is a fascinating story that clearly illustrates fundamental concepts…

In January, I talked about how engineers and scientists really are kindred spirits, as they play on the same team of knowledge seekers. And hopefully you read the fascinating “Leadership in Engineering” feature article on Dan Arvizu, the Chancellor of New Mexico State University, who has been a leader and a trailblazer his whole career.…

COMSOL Day: Oil & Gas is the next installment in a series of events hosted by COMSOL, makers of the COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software. This event will cater to both experienced users and those new to simulation with a comprehensive program that will include keynote presentations from industry leaders as well as COMSOL-led technical sessions.…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Engineers looking for information about how heat treating affects the tensile strength of hardened steels may stumble onto a journal called Multidscipline Modeling in Materials and Structures. It published a paper in 2010 by researcher Ali Nazari that analyzes failures of high-strength…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Back in the dark ages of my undergrad career, I heard about a classmate enrolled in second-semester freshman chemistry. One of his lab sessions left oily carbon muck in the bottom of a test tube that wouldn’t come out. In his attempts to clean the test tube,…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler You’ll frequently find pundits today equating engineering with innovation. Typical observations: “The foundation of a nation’s common innovation infrastructure is its pool of scientists and engineers available to contribute to innovation throughout the economy,” from Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter and…

Although I am a degreed engineer, I’ve always felt a kinship with scientists; I suppose it’s that we’re playing for the same team of knowledge seekers. As a kid, I was attracted to subjects like meteorology and astronomy, and on many nights, you could find me in the backyard or at a star party with…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, recently convened in Scotland. Perhaps unsurprising to cynics, soon after COP26 came an analysis from the Washington Post that found a significant gap between the amount of greenhouse gases countries say…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Back in the dark days around the end of the year 2002, the NASDAQ-100 had dropped 78% from its peak, and the country was in the middle of a recession. Many early dot-com companies had run out of capital and gone bankrupt.…

Engineering Career Twisted Away from Legal Path After Earning Law Degree, igus’ Nicole Lang Found Enjoyment in Solving Mechanical Dilemmas By Thomas Renner If Nicole Lang had followed her original career path, you might find her today at the negotiating table for Tom Brady, Mookie Betts, or some other high-profile professional athlete. Instead of pursuing…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler The 20th anniversary of the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks has fostered a lot of media reflection on lessons learned. Less appreciated is the introspection the tragedy has brought about in construction engineering. An example can be found in the Arizona State University classroom…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler I recently passed an unfortunate soul on the highway whose vehicle was engulfed in smoke. This incident brought back memories of my own car fire back in the 1970s. I was driving along when suddenly the guy behind me began laying on…

At the National Fluid Power’s annual International Economic Outlook Conference, Alan Beaulieu of ITR Economics spoke on “U.S. & Global Macro Trends and Impacts,” and the overall outlook is positive for the manufacturing world. In examining the U.S. economic leading trends, it seems clear that there will be a slowing ascent in the next calendar…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Clean energy is in the news thanks to a Federal budget proposal that would boost spending on clean-energy infrastructure by 27% as well as create both a federal standard and tax credits for clean electricity. To many people, clean energy is a…

After a full 15 months of being homebound, it was exciting — and a little daunting — to take my first business trip since the COVID-19 pandemic began. But it was great to see other fully vaccinated people meeting and networking at the NAHAD Annual Convention in Scottsdale, and wonderful to feel even a little…

As we move through our careers, it’s often interesting to watch the trajectory of our peers and compare their paths to our own. In many companies, there’s a natural corporate ladder we all climb, sometimes in stops and starts, depending on the overall structure. But we’ve all seen coworkers who rise faster, deftly navigate past…

By Jan Gilg,president SAP S/4HANA and Tony Hemmelgarn, president and CEO of Siemens Digital Industries Software. Siloes between engineering and business have existed in enterprises for decades. As manufacturers design and deliver smarter products and assets, access to real-time business information across networks is critical to bring new and improved innovations to market faster. In…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]Engineers of all stripes have developed a sudden interest in building construction practices thanks to the collapse of Miami’s Champlain South Tower. There’s been a lot of speculation about the tragedy’s cause, but one of the most interesting attempts at analyzing the sequence of events is…

在我们的最新技术星期二播客,设计World’s Michelle Froese speaks with Jonathan Cottrell, lead program manager with PTI Engineered Plastics, about design for manufacturing and the injection-molding process. We discuss the key factors to take into account when designing plastic parts, including the material, gate, wall, and draft considerations, as well as tips for…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]It’s no secret that the media eagerly report potential technical breakthroughs with hyperventilating headlines. The most recent example is the buzz surrounding battery technology for electric vehicles. We might wonder why EVs don’t all have a 1,000-mile range given the number of news reports about spectacular…

Teschler on Topic Leland Teschler • Executive Editor[email protected]On Twitter @ DW_LeeTeschler Back in the early 1990s, before the Internet had spread much beyond hard-core forum dwellers on Compuserve, I penned a piece about electronic data interchange. The first EDI messages were sent in 1965 when the Holland-American steamship line transmitted trans-Atlantic shipping manifests…

Smalley recently launched the 2021 Ring and Spring Catalog and Design Guide, a resource engineers have relied on for decades for retaining ring and compression spring selection. Smalley’s Catalog and Design Guide contains specifications on over 10,000 stock parts, custom design configurations, engineering equations, application guides, and more; all wrapped up into one comprehensive guide. Our newest release is unique because…