Introduction To Engineering
Camera Lab - 0
Introduction to the Design Process
Agenda
 Presentation on reverse engineering
Let’s begin with a simple question:
What is engineering??
One possible answer, from the
Oxford English Dictionary:
Engineering is:
i) “the application of science for directly
useful purposes…”
ii) “the action of working artfully to bring
something about…”
Which raises some other questions:
Is engineering just “applied science”?
Is the engineer’s job the same as the
scientist’s? Engineers and scientists both
solve problems, right?
If that’s the case, why are we in separate
colleges at OSU?
More Questions
If engineers are just “problem solvers”,
then how are we different from
physicists, stock brokers, or
mathematicians?
And while we’re on the subject, aren’t
engineers famous for creating as many
problems as they solve?
The Real Question
Is there anything essential about what
engineers do that would clearly separate
us from every other profession?
An Answer
Yes, there is: engineers generally are
interested in creating something new and
different, based on what we know (or
think we know) to be true about the
physical world.
The word that gets used a lot in this
context is design.
A working definition of engineering:
Engineering is design performed in the
presence of limiting factors and
conditions.”
Design is the key: as engineers, we’re
about creating new things, based on our
understanding of the physical world.
What kinds of things do we design?
A new bridge (CE, WE);
A racing bicycle (ME, MSE, ISE,
ChemE)
A fuel cell for NASA (Aero, ChemE, EE)
A new operating system (EE, CSE)
The key point: in every case, it’s new
and somehow different than what came
before.
What does NEW mean?
However, it’s almost never the case that
our ideas are totally new. Almost every
engineered object is an improvement or a
refinement of someone else’s bright idea.
A few “for instances”…
“Smart” Car
A two-passenger
car for
over-populated
cities…
Planetary Explorer
How about a robot
explorer for a
neighboring
planet?
An improved exercise watch...
A new look at PCs
• A totally new take on a venerable product:
An Initial Step
Good engineers and designers
constantly look around to see what
other smart folks have done, before
they begin to work.
This avoids the problem of “reinventing
the wheel”. (This technique is called
“reverse engineering”.)
Analysis
When we talk about figuring out how the
world works, we use the word,
analysis.
Engineers spend a lot of time learning
to analyze problems, situations,
designs, and ideas.
More on Analysis
Analysis is crucial to engineering:
without our tools for doing analysis,
we’re not really engineering. We’re just
guessing.
One thing that sets engineers apart
from other people is our penchant for
attaching numbers to things… and we
have a lot of ways to do that…
What is analysis without design?
However, analysis all by itself isn’t
engineering. It’s science – usually
physics or chemistry.
(Warning: this is one professor’s view.)
It’s when we use analysis to help us
create something new, that we’re
actually engaged in the other side of
engineering, synthesis.
Synthesis
A five-dollar professor-word for “design”.
It’s what we do when we put our
analytic skills and our ideas to work
creating something new.
It’s what sets us apart from most of the
rest of the world...
How about limiting factors?
Usually we think of natural laws, but often
the really severe limits are imposed by our
fellow humans.
We call these limiting factors constraints,
because they constrain our designs in
some way.
Sometimes we see them ahead of time,
sometimes we don’t…
A famous example: the Hubble Space
Telescope
Some typical kinds of constraints:
Performance
weight
speed
rigidity
Cost
Material
Manufacturing
Aluminum Cans
A design
constrained by
manufacturing
Some questions to ask about any design:
What were the constraints?
How well did the designers deal with
them?
Did they overlook any?
What tradeoffs did they make?
How could we design it better?
Kodak Single Use Camera:
What constrains this design?
Performance
Economics
Materials
Manufacturing
???
How does the design constrain the
manufacturing process?
 The camera has to be:
Lightweight
Rugged
Light-tight
 The parts themselves must be:
Cheap to produce
Easy to assemble
Very complex
This means we need a production process that
can:
Make complex parts
Use strong, lightweight materials
Can produce lots of components very
quickly and cheaply
This leads us to injection molding… which
you’ll get to see in a few weeks (Lab 5)
But first, we need to get a sense of how
the camera works, and how it’s used.
First we’ll take some photos.
We’ll use the photos to estimate the
shutter speed.
The we’ll use the photos to look at the
optics of the camera.
 You’ll learn how the flash circuit works.
Finally, you’ll see how the camera is
manufactured.