ITT. Materials engineering

[Anonymous No.8459942]

Just how do you learn this?

How do I force myself to like it? Reading the material, the manufacturing processes and their results feels like reading a cooking recipe.

I end up questioning whats the point of reading this, what is there to do with this information I am collecting if I am not going to really do any of this stuff.

Please guide this brainlet, tell me how do I get the most out of this?

[Anonymous No.8459965]

>>8459942
>studying something you don't naturally enjoy

[Anonymous No.8459978]

>>8459965

Its an obligatory course I will have to repeat because of the very same reasons.

I might not naturally enjoy it, but I have to. Besides I do have SOME interest in learning it because I know there has to be something in there that perhaps could give me a better insight on other things.

[Anonymous No.8459987]

>>>8459978
If it is an obligatory course then it is a core part of your major.

You picked the wrong major.

[Anonymous No.8459993]

What is a brainlet?

[Anonymous No.8459996]

>>8459993
the kind of person who would post joey, just like OP did

[Anonymous No.8460005]

>>8459987

Nah

>>8459996

WHOO WHOO WOEEYYY!

[Anonymous No.8460105]

>>8459987
>>8459965
It might not be.

I have a degree in metallurgical engineering. One of my earliest courses was called metallurgy for engineers. There were around 150 people in the class. The professor asked how many of you are actually metallurgy majors. Only 4 of us raised our hands. The rest of them were mechanicals, nukes, or areos.

That was the only explicitly materials course mechanicals had to take. Everything else they take are just mechanics classes.


I am fine with this set up because it guarantees me a job. Let the mechanical pick out his material and when it inevitably fails because he only knows how to a read chart of ultimate tensile strengths he will have to come to me to fix his problems.

I do a fair amount of heat treating and the amount of ignorance mechanicals have about materials boggles my mind.

Story time on how mechanicals keep me in buisness


As an example someone picked out 4140 steel for this 2" average diameter drive shaft . When the plans got to me I asked them why 4140 was chosen. He replied because it met all of their requirements for forces and fatigue life. I asked them where they got the info already knowing the answer. He replied out of a material selection chart he had from his school days. I asked him how he planned to keep the part from bending like a pretzel and snapping when it was quenched for the heat treat. I just received a blank stare.

For those not in the know 4140 steel is highly hardenable. Meaning it has an easier time to form martensite. 4140 has an ideal diameter of around 4 inches for quenching. When water quenching and you will have a good chance of through quenching using a smaller diameter. Which causes all kinds of internal stresses. That shaft would have had micro cracks all inside of it and would have failed. When I tried to explain this to him he just looked at me like i was speaking chinese.

I eventually got them to switch to a less hardenable plain carbon steel and they had no problems.

[Anonymous No.8460304]

>tfw no material engineers will show you the way

[Anonymous No.8460318]

>>8460105
Interesting story but I think you missed the point.

Using your story, those mechanical engineers had that class as a core part of their education. If they didn't like that little bit of material engineering then odds are mechanical engineering is not from them.

From your story I can gather that you work as a kind of consultant to projects mainly staffed by other types of engineers, meaning that you only come to patch up their couple of material related mistakes. Therefore, mech engs have to do all kinds of materials related decisions and thus it IS a core part of their education.

That's all. OP, before applying to his major, probably saw a description of the program and somewhere he saw "materials engineering". If he wasn't super pumped to hear those words then he simply picked the wrong major.

[Anonymous No.8460330]

>>8460318

>Interesting story but I think you missed the point.

I think it was you who missed the point entirely anon. Your logic is flawed and, in the process, you reached a wrong conclusion.

[Anonymous No.8460332]

If you don't like material engineering, then you're not a chemfag. If you want to like it more, then just get more into chemistry, and it'll feel less like a cooking recipe and more like a puzzle, just like most other STEM related subjects.

[Anonymous No.8460601]

>>8460318
My point is mechanicals design a part and figure out what kind of forces it under goes. Then they just look at a chart to see what satisfies their bounds.

The problem is that is a very shallow look at materials. Especially metal materials. Using 1040 steel as an example. If a mechanical actually took the time to look a at phase diagram they would tell you that the steel would be roughly 50% ferrite and 50% pearlite. However what he doesnt take into account is any sort of kinetics. Undercooling would cause more pearlite to form. It could cause the structure to be entirely pearlitic if it cooled in an area with a fan nearby. That greatly changes the behavior of the steel.

The point is you cant read off of a chart and know what the material is going to do. Thermal history matters. A 1040 steel quenched and the tempered at 325C will have shit characteristics. If you tempered it at 280C it would be fine.

My point is mechanicals think they know materials because they have tidy little charts. Nothing is that simple. Thankfully most of the ones i work with learn pretty fast they don't know shit after they cause a couple hundred thousand dollars of damages. After that they leave materials to materials people.


If you like doing autocad and designing parts go be a mechanical.

If you like actually making the parts and getting dirty go into materials.

[Anonymous No.8460847]

Say you want to build an engine. Plenty of people do it as a hobby.

How do you make the block? Casting then finishing or fully machining? 6160 is easy to machine, but relatively expensive. Beer cans are cheap but the grain structure is too large to get any definition in a casting.

What about air control? If you want to use poppet valves, you need something hard enough to not stretch but not so brittle you drop a valve. You could go with a rotary valve setup, so you'd want something hard and able to handle the friction.

What about gaskets? Silicon is cheap and easy to spooge into wherever, but you run into pressure limits. You could do neoprene, but you're limited to ~250F or so before vulcanization.

Piston rings, bearing surfaces, porosity, the list goes on.

If you're just doing theoretical math between your autistic fits and /r9k/ shitposts. But when you want to do anything in the real world, materials are very important to consider.