In a world of Artificial Intelligence generative design and trades shows packed to the gills with cutting edge tech, it seems a waste to spend time understanding any engineering concept as simple and old as fastener standards. It’s not exactly…
…riveting.
But in a lot of ways, fastener standards maketh the engineer. The latest machine vision sensors or robotics still have to be integrated properly, and that’s done with fasteners.
I keep a six-inch McMaster Carr shipping box in my desk full of assorted random fasteners. Metric and standard, stainless steel and carbon steel dusted with the rouging of light rust, run-of-the-mill socket screws coated with obscure and exotic platings, each one different from the next. I keep this box solely for interviews. I’ve found few better ways to quickly gauge the experience of a mechanical engineer than simply ask them to tell me what they can about each fastener in the box.
By the end of this course, I hope that if you were faced with such a banal technical interview, you would be able to tell the interviewer something even they didn’t know about one of the screws in that box.