Being an Engineer
Being an Engineer
S1E54 Serendipity in Mechanical Design, Gaining a 6th sense, SolidWorks Top-Down Modeling, How get the Most out of McMaster, Prototyping, SolidSmack Blog | Dan Slaski
Dan Slaski is a mechanical design engineer. He specializes in hands-on prototyping, manufacturing, knowledgeable in industrial components, packaging, and labeling. He’s a writer for SolidSmack Blog.
This episode is perfect for a beginning to intermediate mechanical design engineer specializing in CAD, SolidWorks.
Read Dan’s SolidSmack Blog Posts Here: https://www.solidsmack.com/author/dan-slaski/
Interviewed by Rafael Testai: https://www.linkedin.com/in/testai/
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About Being An Engineer
The Being An Engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people resources, and opportunities. We feature successful mechanical engineers and interview engineers who are passionate about their work and who made a great impact on the engineering community.
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The being an engineer podcast is a repository for industry knowledge and a tool through which engineers learn about and connect with relevant companies, technologies, people, resources and opportunities. Enjoy the show.
Rafael Testai:Welcome to the being an engineer show today we have Dan Slaski. He's a person I really look up to Dennis, a mechanical design engineer, which is my passion. And he does hands on prototyping, manufacturing. And he has very vast knowledge in industrial components, packaging and labeling. So in essence, if I understand your LinkedIn bio correctly, you could be an inventor and prototype a wide range of products. Is that right?
Dan Slaski:Ah, yeah, I like to think so. I have a few. I have a few patents under my name. And I guess going back to like elementary school, one of the things I'd written in my yearbook when I, when I grew up was I wanted to be an inventor. So I feel like if I've done that, and I've, I've done done okay with myself. So yeah, I think we've satisfaire
Rafael Testai:it's funny you say that, because I've done the same very similar when I was to my earliest memory, when a teacher asked me what I wanted to be I said, inventor, and everyone looked at me all weird when I said that in the classroom, remember? But anyways,
Dan Slaski:yeah, no, exactly. And then, you know, there was no inventor major in college. Right. So that's why I went towards mechanical engineering, because I thought that might be that the closest thing to get me there.
Rafael Testai:And I went into genetics to pursue that. But ultimately ended up coming back to mechanical engineering. Cool. So Dan is a writer for a blog or website called solid smack, which are many mechanical designers may be aware of, if not, I'm gonna hyperlink dance solace mag blog in the description of the podcast. So you guys can reference all the different questions, I'm going to ask him because I'm going to be pulling from a lot of the articles that Dan has written in solid smack. And these are going to be questions that he can expand on some things I share with us. And my little introduction, usually, this style of writing that I like to read is very direct and succinct, but then has a style that he sprinkles on humor, and it actually makes it better. And I can't think of any other articles that I've read that the author has done this correctly. Sometimes, you know, authors, they sprinkle a humor, and it's not funny, but Dan's jokes actually funny, and the articles. But anyways, I came across then, because he popped up in my social media feed for a size Mac. And here are some of the questions that I have. Let's see. Okay, so this is of the article that Dan wrote called How to not be a noob. So basically, a very rookie as someone that's starting out, and he says, I want to ask him, what are the most important mechanical principles and fundamentals that a designer should know?
Dan Slaski:Yeah, so I guess first, thank you for the compliment. On the articles, I call them infotainment. So I try and make them entertaining, but also have kind of to keep people engaged, but also kind of have real quality information sprinkled in there as well. So I appreciate that people see that. And sometimes you just feel like you're throwing stuff into the world and don't know if it's sticking. So it means a lot to hear that. People are getting value out of it. Yeah. So to get to your question, well, I guess I guess first, you know, I've listened to the podcast, and I'm a fan. And so I'm, you're, you're coming at me hard. I'm used to these softball questions like How did you get into engineering and stuff? So? So I'll do my best to answer all these questions. Some of these are tricky to condense. But so as far as the most the most important mechanical principles. So I guess one thing about being mechanical designers, we are such a jack of all trades, and there's just so many different, different paths that you could go on. So there's people designing wildly different things that will will pull on different different backgrounds and different different specialties. But to boil it down, I would certainly say that, that statics and dynamics is very foundational, I guess, in my mind to most things that, that people would be would be designing. So that's kind of the the ability to understand a freebody diagram and understand if you put different forces you know how that will react throughout a system so I think that would definitely be pretty, pretty critical to to most to most designers. I guess the takeaway step further. there's a there's a class in a book called just machine design, which takes that kind of to the next level to industrial applications of a lot of those principles. So, you know, when you're thinking of like, bolt preload or buckling, failure, all that kind of stuff. So kind of specific industrial applications of a lot of those kind of kind of basic principles.
Rafael Testai:Perfect. Yeah, right on with the with the hardball questions. I've got a good list here. All right, let's see, in an article you mentioned, the way we create awesome designs is by researching the how this is by researching vendors, components and processes. Could you elaborate and provide an example of how to successfully do this? And if you could be as specific as possible, the better?
Dan Slaski:Yeah, sure. So, um, you know, engineering needs to live in the world of practicality and reality. So, you know, an idea is only is only an idea if you can't make it real, if you can't make it tangible and practical. And I guess, in particular, my world, which is product design, we're not just looking to make even one of these things, but we're really thinking about scale. So how can we make something that every single one of these parts, or every single one of these assemblies will, will function and work as intended, and it gets more complicated as you do that you can, you can do one, and you don't necessarily need to think so much about the process or need to think so much about tolerance stack up. So a lot of this goes back to process and understanding different different manufacturing processes. At least enough, there's so many of them out there that I just tried to be what I call kind of like conversationally competent, and a lot of these different processes. So that I know at the start of a design, you know, I'm thinking, Well, you know, will this be a sheetmetal part or Will this be will be, it will just be an injection molded part. And that can dictate, dictate the design from the beginning, rather than getting to the very end and then trying to figure out how to make it. So I guess a couple examples, like coming straight out of my, my past week is, is we're designing, designing a medical product, and it's lower volume than then we traditionally do. So we're just normally we would use injection molding, it's not really feasible, because we're only looking at about 50 parts. So there's other ways to do it. And and one that I've used in the past is called urethane casting, which is kind of a soft tooling, low volume part. So having the knowledge of that allows us to still meet a lot of our goals of still having a part that looks looks great. So we don't have to just put some block on the wall. And it still has a lot of ease as assembly, it still has a lot of clipping features a lot of a lot of that kind of stuff. But without the large risk and the large cost of going with injection molding. So it's knowing that how they're right. And then you could take that a step further, maybe we're only making five, we might do. You can maybe just do direct digital manufacturing, and just just 3d print those buy parts and stuff. But all it has to come back to knowing that the how knowing that those processes exist and understanding a little bit about them. And I guess just to give one more, one more quick example. I'm working on another project. And this one's kind of interesting. It's very similar to something I did 10 years ago. And it's an underwater component. And it has a small splined blind spline brooch in it. And I did it 10 years ago, it was really, we had we had to get a special tool made a rotary broach, to make this part because it's not easily manufacturable and find. And again, working with vendors and that part of the hell right and finding vendors that are willing to do this, have the machinery and are willing to work with stainless was difficult. Now 10 years later, there's direct, excuse me, direct metal laser, direct metal laser sintering has come a long way. So now we can get this part additively made out of stainless in days and not have to buy the tooling. So it's all just knowing you know what's out there and and kind of putting these puzzle pieces together by knowing that the different pieces even exist.
Rafael Testai:Absolutely. I'm so glad you mentioned that. When I learned mechanical design engineering, my mentor Aaron Moncure, he started teaching me and the first lesson that he taught me was about manufacturing processes before even diving into CAD. He's like you need to know how things are made. Therefore, you know how to design for them. So it makes total sense we just said All right, next question. You mentioned research is about search for knowledge but requires exceptional knowledge to know Where to look how to spa key details and what threads to follow. So my questions are, how do you know where to look? And how do you know which press to follow? teaches your instinct basically.
Dan Slaski:Yeah, right. That's the secret sauce. Right? So some of this is, is hard. Again, as I said, cuz some of this has just come from. It's good. It's a good exercise for me to think about things that I've slowly learned to do, over, you know, 20 years of experience, and now how to explain that to somebody else. So I'll do my best again. But I think there's a couple things here. So one is, is to have a curious mind, right? So just to have a curious mind to always be always be looking deeper, always be looking for things that that don't seem right, or another ways of saying it is scratching your own itch or asking good questions. So a lot of times, it's just there's just something that that fundamentally doesn't seem seem correct about something. And so you know, I'll just keep going deeper and deeper, right? So I'll read the datasheet. And, and I'm sifting through all this, a lot of it's just essentially marketing material. And then they'll just be one little note. And it just kind of, you know, it's a spidey sense, as you've said, but there's something about that note that I'm like, Yes, that's, that's the key here, right, that's answering this question, or that will point me to the next resource. To continue to go further until, I guess until I feel satisfied, until I feel like okay, now, now I understand this. Now, this now, this makes make sense to me. And, you know, again, a lot of this has to do with being a critical thinker, having a curious mind. And a lot of this, too, is what I call being like a T, I didn't invent this, but it's called a T shaped person where the, the upgrade of the T is kind of your, your depth of knowledge. So you have a strong a strong depth in, in your field, and in your specific application, that field and then and then a large breadth as well, because so many things can come from things that don't necessarily seem related. So hobbies or other areas. And so yeah, I'm not sure I answered your question there. But, but it's just kind of one of those things where you just feel it, you know, when it's right, and you know it when it's not, and you just keep, if you keep looking, there's kind of a, there's kind of a karma, where if you just keep looking, and if you just keep kind of following the process. There's just so many times where you think you've turned up every stone or you think you're about to give up and then and then this guy's part and then and then the answers presented if you're just willing to, to kind of keep keep searching.
Rafael Testai:Absolutely. And it makes total sense to me. Because reading one of your blogs, you mentioned this guy, Jude pullin, I don't know if I mentioned that incorrectly. But he has some lectures on YouTube. And I came across him because I came from your blog. And so I hyperlinked and open another tab in my browser. And then one of his lectures, he does talk about this tea depth person. I don't know if I said it correctly. Sure. Yep. And I just happen to watch that this morning. So when you said that I can totally visualize that tea in my mind.
Dan Slaski:Yeah, I think I think it might come from as well from this company idea, which is famous product design firm, but it's just so helpful to be to be a more well rounded person, it just, it's gonna provide insights and things. It's happened to me so many times where I like bicycles. And so I'll see something on a bicycle that it's just this kind of serendipity. That not not to start off on to airy fairy of note here, but I've just seen a work so many times that that I'm a believer in it.
Rafael Testai:For sure. I'm already thinking about the title for this podcast, and something to answer that. All right, next one. So if going back to school to take expensive industrial design classes is not an option for some of us, we have full time jobs, etc. What are maybe a list maybe of two or three things of industrial design skills that are great mechanical design engineers should possess? And would you happen to have any affordable resources we could look into?
Dan Slaski:Yeah, so again, a good question. So um, you know, full discrepancy here. I'm not an industrial designer, I do a fair bit of work that is, has a lot of industrial design. And so I would say I'm kind of a b b minus industrial designer, where I can probably do better than most mechanical engineers, but, you know, real industrial designers can kind of make things beautiful in a way that I don't claim that I can. Yeah, sure. Some great books out there. And there's one that's escaping my mind. But it's basically, I think it's called principles of design. And it's all these little one pagers on kind of interesting phenomena. So you know, why, why we like the way certain things look or why certain colors, so you know why the certain spirals are attractive and why certain ratios are attractive. So that's, that's certainly, that would certainly be a great resource. But again, I think a lot of this goes back to curiosity. So I love design. So I try and buy things from my own home that are often you know, pieces of art, you know, as much as anything else. So there's a lot of brands, oh, Excel, and a lot of these brands that make stuff that's, that's really clearly, you know, it's well designed. And it's also, it's also nice to look at, and so they've clearly put in that extra effort to make it look that way. So, yes, so be curious, go to museums, right? You go to art museums, go to design museums, you can go to high end furniture stores, or go on websites of high end furniture stores. All these things will kind of a lot of its personal right. So a lot of his personal aesthetics and personal style. So there's not really right or wrong, but it will, it will, it will inform that and it will give you things a lot of this is to that I'll say is is emulating, okay? Or copying, you know, so, recently, we were designing a speaker grille cover. And so we were looking around, and we, we looked at the nest cover, and it has this really nice spiral pattern on it. And another great resource to is actually, this is kind of funny, but if you go on Pinterest, you can find all kinds of collections where people have typed in speaker grills, for example, when you click on all these different speaker grills and kind of see what what's trending and what kind of styles are out there, and, and start to start to have that inform your design and we want to make products that are that are modern, and that feel appropriate with the time I guess a few tactical things, you know, is a lot of it's about making, making the product look look finished and look look thought out. So, you know, people can see that silver projects rushed, you know, and it got to the end. And, you know, they're sharp corners. And you know, holes aren't concentric all that kind of stuff, it's not going to look like a polished well thought out design. So there's a lot of simple things you could do you know, just put put put fillets on parts, learn SolidWorks surfacing methods, right you know, if you don't know those techniques, you're not going to be able to make things that look that look swept and look nice. Understand processes again, right, a lot of this goes back to injection molding. So you need to understand injection molding, if you want to make a lot of, you know, beautiful looking covers and stuff like that. Yeah, and then just develop a bag of tricks. You know, use Flathead screws, use brushed metal, you know, use things that, you know, look nice and look polished and look finished.
Rafael Testai:Absolutely, as you were saying that all these different things crossed my mind. Number one I wanted to recommend to the listeners, the the documentary called objectified that Dan recommended to me via email, really good documentary. And then it also reminded me when I shadowed a couple of industrial design classes in college, as I was trying to make up my mind as to what I was going to do. And I remember everyone using Pinterest, this was like, a year and a half ago, everyone using Pinterest. And I thought to myself just now like what if we were to make a social media just for industrial designers or people that do product design, but it looks like it was ready to be made in Pinterest. So this would be well go.
Dan Slaski:I want to give you give me one more thing if I could I think this will play back into your your serendipity title, but there's a quote that I like and I find this again works. It's when I'm working on a problem. I never think about beauty I only I think only how to solve the problem. But when I finished if the solution is not beautiful, I know it's wrong. And I find that happens a lot of times where by you know when something looks again, unfinished, it looks it looks like a Cluj. It looks like there's too many pieces. But when you simplify design to kind of its its barest elements, so when you're using mechanics of materials or using one piece to do multiple functionalities, there's kind of this inherent beauty that that can come from that as well. And so I find that happened so many times where it's, it's it's not my objective, but just kind of the, I guess you could say that the form ends up driving the function in kind of interesting and beautiful ways often.
Rafael Testai:Nice well going on. of serendipity. He just remember, this is a cool question. So Tim Ferriss has a podcast, he he wrote the four hour workweek, and he likes to ask his guests on his podcast, what's one purchase you've made in the past year or so? Under$100 that you absolutely love. And I want to rephrase this one to this podcast to what's something in your house, then that you absolutely love the design of? Oh, gosh. Um,
Dan Slaski:well, she's right now I'm looking at my my bike, I have a really high end, high end bike and it's it's a high end triathlon bike. So it's all it's all aerodynamically. It's called a track speed concepts. And it's all black. And again, it's kind of the the function is driving the form or, you know, there's aerodynamics involved. And they've hid the cabling. And so I try not to use use the word love on on objects, but I do really like this thing. And it is it is beautiful and well thought out, has a nice little compartment, everything fits. I don't I get a lot of joy out of that. So
Rafael Testai:I'm not gonna get mad at you, if you love it. Right on. Okay, so you mentioned reading the McMaster catalog as a tip as a tip for mechanical engineers. When I read that, I started sharing that tip with everybody I know. And they're like, well, that's actually really cool. Because the goal is to know what's out there. So when you're designing, you just can pull from the catalog. But my question is any tips on how to read the McMaster catalog online, because it's not a book, they can go from page one to page 1000?
Dan Slaski:Yeah, so don't read it as a book, unless you're a glutton for pain or in prison or something like that I don't like or filibustering, I don't recommend that. But the way, the way I like to do a lot of things is, is somewhat opportunistically. So if you're, if you're working on a project that involves a component of some kind, whatever it is a fastener or a spring, I would say don't just go you know, find the flathead screw that you need. Take a little extra time at that point and and read read that section. So read about all the different kinds of fasteners and all different kinds of fastener heads, for example, all the different kinds of, of drive, have styles that they will do these little blurbs and there will they'll explain things and even for certain they'll explain, you know, they will have like a page that explains like pipe threads and different kinds of stuff. So just take the time to to take the time to do it opportunistically, and it's hard to do when you're busy, but but it pays pays for itself in the long run. So I, I don't have the whole catalog. memorized. But I've looked through it so many times, over the year that there's often a time where there'll be some project where there's a little compartment in the back of my brain where I'm like, Oh, I know, I know, there's a thing, and I know, I've seen it. And so you know, I know if I can go look at a certain section, I can find it. And I mean, it gets even more, there's so many other catalogs master has 90% of stuff. But there's other other whole catalogs, you know, southco, and all these other catalogs as well. So it's really just about taking, taking that extra time again, being curious. And just just trying to be a sponge just trying to absorb as much as you can, because you don't know. You don't know when this stuff, you know, could come in handy. And it's just it's it's adding to your you know, your tool, your toolkit in quotes, right? It's just more stuff that you know about and more stuff that you can do. And more interesting ways that you can combine all these things to to solve problems.
Rafael Testai:Absolutely. Thank you so much for a golden nugget. So everyone that's listening right now, if you're driving, just make a mental note that whenever you go to McMaster and you're looking for a specific piece of hardware, don't just stop the search when you find what you were looking for, actually take the time to look at the section. So little by little we start educating ourselves to know what's out there. Thank you so much for that. Next one. I've noticed that there's a ton of content available to get certifications on CAD and SolidWorks. You can learn tips and tricks and convert drawings to parts. Usually when taking a CAD SolidWorks class in college, that's the essence they give you drawings, you turn them into parts. But there's not a lot of content to teach designers how to actually design what's in their head on CAD. Hence, when designing complex parts, which modeling technique Do you like to use and why?
Dan Slaski:So I like I love actually to Use a concept called top down or I call it in context, design. And just a quick explanation that people don't know basically what what I'm doing is, I'm editing parts within an assembly. And what that allows you to do is reference other features, lines, holes, etc, from separate parts. So for example, you could make if you're designing one part, you could make a hole, that is coincidence to the other hole. So if you move one hole, the other hole will move along with it. And I remember when I discovered this, it was by accident, maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago, or something I was just clicking around, and liberty Hall, yeah, he was like, Holy smokes, you can you can do that. And it has been such a game changer. I mean, there's no reason anymore. I mean, if you have parts with holes that don't line up when they come in, you know, there's just that's amateur hour, there's just, there's just no reason, there's just no reason to do that anymore. When you can do this kind of in context design stuff. It just lets you go so fast, particularly in the prototyping phase, I will say that there are some dangers to this. And you need to be careful about it. Because you're now creating links between these parts and these assemblies. So you need to be careful how you name things, you can accidentally break these links. If you I've seen all kinds of stuff happens. So you know, send the part to a vendor to machine it, and it has a link to an assembly to some other part. And the vendor doesn't have that and the whole moved or something like that. So I've seen this kind of stuff happen. So you need to understand what you're doing a little bit. And so what I like to do is when I get to release, I will undo everything. So I will break all those links, and I will fix everything. But from a prototyping phase. It just allows you to go so fast, it reduces design errors. It is such a powerful, powerful methodology. So as far as learning how to do it might be something I write an article about if people are interested. But yeah, I would, I would definitely search in SolidWorks for external references or in context design, or I'm sure there's a lot of good resources out there. But
Rafael Testai:I'm gonna ask her a couple things about the comments. So number one, if you could write an article on that, it would be amazing. Because I think there's a shortage on content on that specific topic. If all the designers and including myself, I am relatively familiar with top down modeling is synonymous with context modeling top down in context,
Dan Slaski:I believe they are synonymous. But you know, again, this is stuff that I've been doing for I'm kind of out of the student world. So this is just stuff that I do. And maybe I've forgotten a little bit of the DNA names for these things. But that's that's my practice, whatever you call it.
Rafael Testai:Okay, for sure. So, when doing top down modeling, if we don't want to learn by trial and error, which could take a little while, and we want to expedite the learning curve, I just wonder if there are any specific resources online that we can utilize? And you come to mind or no,
Dan Slaski:yeah, so again, I learned some of this so many years ago, there was, there was, at the time, I used a solid professor had very good video tutorials. And there was a book called The SolidWorks Bible. So this is like 10 years ago, but at the time, those were, were really good resources for me. And then again, using the SolidWorks help features pretty good. So I think if you put external references in there, a lot of what you're doing is is using the convert entities tool or the offset entities sketch tool. So understand those and understand basically, that you can click on a feature of another part, and then using those two sketch tools. Basically, grab that information and pull it into your part. So I think people started playing with those a little bit. And maybe I would say Do it carefully. So start on a project where risk is low. I think I think people could, could get going. Absolutely. I
Rafael Testai:think that's great advice. And of course, all the listeners. We know people that don't like to do a top down, they prefer bottom down, etc. But I really wanted to get dance wanted to get Dan's input on that. And I will be practicing top down. So looking for those resources. Thank you for that.
Dan Slaski:A lot of it. Yeah, a lot of it's just speed, you know, things are just going faster and faster. And so it lets me It lets me go fast.
Rafael Testai:It's easy. So next one is, let's say that I want to design and sell my own products that I design as a side hobby. So I have like a full time job and as a side hobby, I sell the products I design. You mentioned that Joey Roth does this in one of your blogs. So I have three questions about that. Number one, what resource would you recommend that I consume, if I if I want that to be my goal?
Dan Slaski:Yeah, so this is something that most of my work has been for other companies. So I have products that I've designed that I've yet to go to market. And so this is I'm kind of in the same boat with you. I would say one resource, there's a book called I think it's called the long tail. And basically, what it's about is trying to find, I guess, niche products that meet smaller needs that maybe larger companies have ignored, because it wasn't wasn't worth their time and effort to you know, to make. This, this might be kind of a Tim Ferriss thing to write, to find products that that meet a need that hasn't been addressed, but isn't huge, right. And there's a lot of advantages to that right, as a as a single person, that that pool might be very valuable to you, whereas it's not too big company. So to find products that meet to meet more niche industries, I would say, might be a great way to go. You're not you're not competing with other people, you don't have to worry about people trying to steal your IP necessarily, because it might not be worth worth doing that. And there's again, there's so many interesting 3d printing and laser cutting, there's so many ways to make products, cheaply without a lot of tooling and stuff. So I think that'd be a great recommendation. Because if there's one thing I've learned is that is that getting a product to market takes an order of magnitude more effort than you think it's going to take. And that's why so many fail, because it's gonna take three, four or five times more effort than than anybody thinks it's just, it's just the nature of the beast, there's just so much involved from sourcing to certifications, it's just, it's a very, very intensive process.
Rafael Testai:Okay, so can one truly make a sustainable living selling products that one makes? Because it sounds like making products only allows you to make one offs? Or maybe you don't have the ability to mass produce and package? Hence? How would you make a living from it? If you can only sell a few units?
Dan Slaski:I definitely think you can. And I think I think more people should, I think it takes a certain amount of guts to try and go off and do it. But I used to hang out at a makerspace a lot called Tech Shop. Rubber place. Yeah, yeah, as a big fan. And you'd see people doing it, there's all the examples of the the aura kayak and all this stuff that people people were doing, making there and you talk to people and I've known people since then that have gone off and, and done their own thing. But I guess kind of kind of my recommendation to would be it doesn't have to be one or the other. So if you've got a good job, do this after work and do is on weekends and step into it. And then you know, transition as you start to pass some success threshold where you where you see sales come in or or whatever it doesn't. You don't necessarily need to burn the burn the ships and go for it. Absolutely.
Rafael Testai:I wonder what the next step is, is let's say that you are, unfortunately Tech Shop and they don't operate any longer Do they?
Dan Slaski:know Yeah, unfortunately there Yeah, they didn't make it as a as kind of a franchise. So it's just that as far as I know, it's just a bunch of individual things that have popped up over the country.
Rafael Testai:Okay. Well, let's, let's say that like a tech shop, place, workplace comes back, or there's something similar and then you go there, you manufacture something, you make a prototype that works, that solves his niche, but he only made one, and you need to mass produce it. Any tips on what to do next after that?
Dan Slaski:Yeah, so I'll give a shout out to a local friend. His name is Kelly Kane, and he helps people do this. He's got a company called Red Blue collective. And he does exactly that. Because there there gets to be a whole bunch of new skills that you might need besides just the technical skills. So this is where it comes a lot into, like marketing and business for example. You know, engineers may not be great, great marketers, but that's that's really important to kind of educate people about your product and so there's a lot of cool ways to do it. A lot of cool cheap ways to do it, right. There's like you can you can Kickstarter project. You can build an Instagram campaign, but to actually do these things well and do these things successfully. Really Takes, I think a lot of takes a lot of strategy. And if you want to do a Kickstarter campaign, I think you have to do it really well. Or kind of not at all for it to kind of really blow up.
Rafael Testai:Right on I was just reading over red blue collective. definitely gonna check out that website and get a hold of him.
Dan Slaski:He'd be a Yeah, he'd be a great interview as well. He's He's a super, super interesting, super knowledgeable guy. So check him out, for
Rafael Testai:sure. Alright, so this is a good time to mention, who's sponsoring the podcast. test fixture design comm is where you learn more about how we can help medical device engineering teams could need turnkey custom test fixtures or automated equipment to assemble, inspect, characterize or perform verification or validation testing on their devices. Alright, so back to the questions. What are two technical magazines that you think are best for mechanical design engineers to read and stay up to date with the latest news.
Dan Slaski:So there's one that I've liked for a long time called machine design magazine, and has a lot of interesting articles. It's actually full of a lot of even the advertisements are kind of interesting, because it's kind of like going to a trade show where it's all the different companies that that you actually might be interested, all the switches and all the gears and pulleys and stuff. are in that. So that's that's one I would recommend that I've subscribed to for a long time. And then I don't know if you're intentionally trying to give me a plug here. But I got it. I got to give a shout out to the salad smack. So I'm not sure. Exactly a technical publication. I don't know what we are. But that's not true. We do we do we you know, we have the articles that I do, which I tried to have kind of be evergreen articles about my thoughts and philosophies on design. But there is a ton of tech news and we stay up to date on you know, all the all the different kinds of software that's coming out and hardware and all kinds of interesting stuff. So and we try and keep it fun. So let's check that out.
Rafael Testai:Now that's actually very true. Size mag is great. The only problem is I've already read all of Dan's articles. No more to read. But are you maybe the founder of SOS mag, or how's that work?
Dan Slaski:No, there's a guy, his name is Josh Ming's, and he's been doing this forever. So this goes back way, way back. And I was just essentially just a huge, huge fan and just kind of reached out as a fan and just wanted to pick his brain and pick their brain on a few things. And they say you should be a writer. And I said, No, I'm not a writer. And I did and it kind of went it kind of went from there. So ya know, it's very, it's there's a lot of writers it's it's very user community driven. So we're always interested in new writers or Yeah, I highly encourage people to reach out I was doing a series called Ask an engineer for a while, so people have questions or otherwise, I'll just keep rambling about things that I want to ramble about. So
Rafael Testai:I'm sure thing. Alright, so next one is, this one's kind of funny. You said it, typically, it typically takes three iterations or more to get to a working first article, understanding this rule of thumb, and more importantly, getting your organization to understand can be very powerful. If one tries to give you a hard time about needing at least three iterations. This is the funny part. Remind them how it famously took Dyson 5127 prototypes to develop this vacuum. So my, my question is, have you ever had to do this remind someone that
Dan Slaski:all the time, all the time, this is something that I'm actually still doing at work very recently, and it's kind of it's kind of the nature of the work that we do have physical products. So I so first of all, that that three thing is that I think that's the thing that I just kind of found kind of empirically over time. And I've heard, I've read this and heard this a bunch of other places as well. So there's a little bit of a rule of thumb magic to that. But what I see happen is once people see that first prototype, there's kind of this thing that happens to people's brains, where they say, that looks real, right? That feels real to me. Let's ship it what's what's, what's the holdup, right? You're telling me you have two more prototypes, and it's gonna have all the costs and all the time and all that never have two more prototypes. And what they're not seeing is like what happens between prototype two and three, which is all the like, typically all the design for manufacturing stuff, so where you're reducing costs and you're thinking about assembly and you're thinking about Can we make every one of these look like every other one of these and the drawings, and I, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? So it's a lot about education. It's a lot about setting expectations up front. So you know, if people don't know, you just have to set expectations. And it's a lot about, you know, you just got to educate and sell, you know, sell it. And it's in everyone's best interest. You know, as I said, the last one, reduces costs and reduces assembly time, but just being upfront and not making sure there's no surprises and and finding ways to sell the concepts. Like I said, the first one, often I'll call it proof of concept, or prototype zero, so that way, it doesn't really feel like a prototype to people, because it's, it's kind of a throwaway. So it's a challenge. Yeah, it's always it's always a challenge. But you know, it's a part of communication and being diplomatic and, and pushing for, for the best, what's best in the long run and the best quality products that you can in a fast way as well.
Rafael Testai:Oh, for sure. The next one is also about educating the customer. So all the freelance mechanical design engineers, or, or CAD technicians listening to this, this is can be very valuable. I've done some freelance work, too. And it feels like we have to educate the customer on the things that you just mentioned. And we're spending our time teaching people this instead of getting on the computer and doing what they actually need for us to do. So is there a more efficient way to educate the customer on the hand, maybe a process or like you send them some videos or some books, so you don't have to spend your time teaching them this, or there's no way around it?
Dan Slaski:This, this is, again, this is so tough. And this is the challenge. This is the challenge that we all all face, and someone says trying to find good customers. So you don't want customers to go to you a little bit, that's a you know, you know, you're the subject matter expert, and I trust you. And I know your process works, and you do great work. So I'm not going to tinker with that. But a lot of it, yeah, a lot of it is is, is educating and and one thing that can be hugely helpful is and again, so difficult is to get people to agree on product requirements. So a lot of times, you know, people kind of know what they want it to start, but don't exactly know what they want at the start. And so you end up spending a few cycles, kind of just getting them to really lock in what it is, what it is that they want. So again, as you guys totally in their best interest to at least try to come up with requirements, but but to work with them. So again, to say, look, let's just build, let's just get a super quick mock up, right, let's just do a 3d printed thing or something, you know, really small budget quick time. And, and then do kind of a phase gate process. And then we'll we'll evaluate that. And then we'll come up with requirements, and then we'll, we'll work on the next phase. So it's a little bit of pulling people along. And it's a, it's just something that you have to be diplomatic about. And you have to be, you know, you have to be patient about. And it's a little bit of a struggle, but you know, I'll tell you this, you know, the fact that this isn't this, so much of this is challenging, there's so much information to absorb, right, all this McMaster stuff is endless information, how to deal with customers, it makes our job exciting, and it makes it very difficult to you know, it means you can't automate us, right? There's all these different skills and all these different things. That's, that's all part of it. And so you could see it as a challenge, or you could just see it as as, as kind of exciting and job security. That's, that's good way to think about it. I like so I'm sorry, I'm not big into like, you know, the, the listicle. You know, here's the one thing that you need to say, you know, a lot of it is a lot of it's just patience and and, and grit and just getting a little bit better. Or maybe, you know, maybe trying to write articles and point people to the articles. But, you know, at the end of the day, people are just gonna ignore a lot of that. So you just got to just gotta keep fighting the good fight,
Rafael Testai:for sure. And that's an experienced response. Sounds like you've been through that process several times, you know what works. And I can totally see that people are so busy. Even if you had the perfect resource, they're probably not going to read it, you probably have to explain it. So I totally understand. And see. So the next one talks a little bit about the prototype, and they mentioned before, and sometimes you might have a virtual prototype on CAD, and you're ready to transfer to a physical prototype. And in your articles you said that if you suspect that it might be a time to transition to a physical prototype, then the answer is probably yes. But my question is, how do you gain that suspicion? That sixth sense that gut feeling that makes you want to make the physical prototype? I know it's hard to teach.
Dan Slaski:Yeah. So a lot of these questions, I feel like I like to think of us a little bit as as craftspeople, right, and this is, this is our craft, you know, it's a, it's a digital craft, but it's still our craft. So, you know, how do you know what tools to use? How do you know? How do you know when, you know, it's, it's a part of, you know, it's a part of being an excellent crafts person? I'll see a lot of this, too. Also, you know, the answer will be it depends. So it depends a lot on left, I'm always doing a little bit of a calculation in my head, which is a risk mitigation calculation. So if the real prototype is 3d printed, just do it, you can get a $300 3d printer in $20, spools, a plla. There should be no thought there. But sometimes, you know, we do stuff that has very high tooling cost and very long lead times, make a lot of custom cables, and there's not really a good way to prototype it. So you need to be you need to do a lot more analytical kind of stuff, you know, ahead of time, not not so much physical prototyping. But as a general rule, I find that engineers live way too much in the world of virtual prototyping. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that it feels safe, right? It's, it's a, it's a controlled environment, and it feels safe. And once it gets out of there, it's out of your hands. And it's real, and people can point at it, and people can criticize it. But when it's in that little box in front of you, you could say, Oh, no, you know, yeah, I'm still changing. I'm still working on it. You know, don't worry about that, but, but you're making it real. And it's scary. But you got to get past it. I mean, there's all these tropes, but you got to fail fast, you got to move forward, you're not doing it, you're not doing yourself any favors in the long run by virtual prototyping is amazing. I love it, I use it to the nth degree, but you got to make it real and you got to, you got to just take that leap. And you got to be you got to be kind of brave on some of this stuff. And, you know, be willing to, you know, have a thick skin and take your punches and learn from it and move on. Because, again, that's what makes you know, that's what makes there's, there's a thing called that the JRE window, which is your known knowns and your unknown on your now knowns, your unknown unknowns, it's this quadrant. And so when you make something real, you're figuring out your, your, your unknown, the things that you don't, that you don't know. And you can only do that really by by making it real.
Rafael Testai:That's amazing. such an amazing response. And right now is looking up a visual of the January window, so I can look at it very well. Well, I think that we just created possibly what I think is one of the best episodes on mechanical design and content on any platform, because I've thoroughly searched for mechanical design solvers, CAD, and I've listened to a lot of episodes. But this information right here should help any aspiring mechanical design engineer, take their game to the next level. So I really appreciate it. Dan, how can people find you?
Dan Slaski:Well, thank you. I don't I don't know if I agree with that. But I, I love what we do. It's Um, so yeah, the word passion gets thrown around. But man is so much fun. It is so exciting. We are helping people. I want help more people get into it and get excited about it. So if this helped anybody, that's, that's awesome. I've gotten a huge amount of value from your podcasts. And I want to go through and re listen to a bunch of them because there's just been so many great resources in quotes. So what you guys are doing here is really awesome. If people want to reach out to me, LinkedIn is a great way to do it. You can email Dan at solid smack calm. Yeah, those are those are probably two, two excellent ways. Excellent ways to find me.
Rafael Testai:All right. Thanks, everyone, for listening. And please don't forget to give it a five star review on your favorite podcast. It really helps other people find the podcast until next time.
Unknown:I'm Aaron Moncure, founder of pipeline design and engineering. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a positive review. It really helps other people find the show. To learn how your engineering team can leverage our team's expertise in developing turnkey custom test fixtures, automated equipment and product design, visit us at test fixture design dot com. Thanks for listening
