Category: Blog

Why go to trade shows?

Every time I say I’m going to a trade show I am questioned about it: “Ugh, such a hassle”, “But there’s lots of people!”, “The food is terrible!”, “Really? They’re pointless”, and my favorite: “Boring, they’re always the same”. So I thought I should do a quick post about my reasons for going to and…

The USMSG part 3 – Determine the accuracy

Once we know our motor’s torque specification we’re almost ready to start looking at catalogs. We just need to define the level of accuracy or resolution that our motor and gear train need to have. This all comes, obviously, from our initial high-level specification. Let’s make it specific now.

The USMSG part 4 – Evaluate the torque curves

We’re getting close to being able to finally select a stepper motor for our application. Armed with a high-level set of specs for our mechanism, a complete torque specification for the motor, and a clear idea of what resolution and accuracy we need, it’s time to start looking at vendor catalogs and their torque curves to evaluate…

Forget about Facebook, it’s you who’s leaking your info.

How many times we’ve heard about an online company’s sketchy privacy policy? Each passing day we are all more concerned about how much of our personal information is available on the web and permanently hosted and shared by questionable companies with questionable privacy policies and security systems. We then receive countless advice on keeping personal…

How to get an engineering job at a design firm

I am a Senior Design Engineer at Pensa and recently have added the role of Engineering Intern Coordinator. This new extended role puts me in charge of coordinating the tasks of our current interns and of giving them guidance and advice. But more importantly and better related to this post, it gives me the responsibility of interviewing and evaluating…

Woozy

Old school music blasting on the ear drums. Eyes reading old school writings of colorful yesterdays. Re encountering myself with my old school thinking. Mind trying to make sense of all that nonsense. Now it’s time for old school blogging.

Work-life balance, Mark Watney style

Over the past months I got really excited about The Martian, both the movie and the book… But I mean, who hasn’t? It’s one of those super believable sci-fi stories with an awesome character in an incredible setup and lots of SCIENCE. What could be better than that? But ok, nerd side aside, what does…

Truss builder

“What’s a truss?” You may be asking yourself. Well, trusses are some of the most ubiquitous structures holding our world together. They are light and very strong structures that can handle loads in many orientations or directions. They are “easy” to build when made in large scale, there are many equations and tables to help with…

The power of a bad review

Yelpers are a tough crowd, and it’s good. They say no publicity is bad publicity and I might agree… Let me explain you why with an example.

Communication is first. Lessons Learned

If there’s anything that you want to say (especially to your manager), say it. Think about how you’re gonna say it, but say it. There’s nothing worse than being the last one to speak when you know you were right.