For engineers who already know the math—but still lose projects. For the last few years, I’ve been sharing technical guides here on Mechanical Design Handbook —how to size a motor, how to calculate fits, and (as you recently read) how to choose between timing belts and ball screws. But after 25 years in industrial automation, I realized something uncomfortable: Projects rarely fail because the math was wrong. They fail because: The client changed the scope three times in one week. A critical vendor lied about a shipping date (and no one verified it). The installation technician couldn’t fit a wrench into the gap we designed. University taught us the physics. It didn’t teach us the reality. That gap is why I wrote my new book, The Sheet Mechanic . This is not a textbook. It is a field manual for the messy, political, and chaotic space between the CAD model and the factory floor. It captures the systems I’ve used to survive industrial projec...
Putting Theory into Practice We have covered the theory of Buckling (Part 1) , the Slenderness Ratio (Part 2) , and the critical decision between the Euler and J.B. Johnson formulas (Part 5) . Now, let’s solve a real-world design problem. We will perform the calculation manually first to understand the physics, and then look at how to automate this in Excel. Search for Roark's Formulas for Stress and Strain Advertisement The Design Problem Scenario: A machine designer needs to calculate the allowable load for a rectangular steel column. Material: AISI 1040 Hot-Rolled Steel Dimensions: 80 mm × 30 mm cross-section, 380 mm length. End Conditions: The upper end is pinned; the lower end is welded securely into a socket (Fixed). Figure 1: Our design example: A 380mm long rectangular column with Pinned-Fixed ends. Note that it will buckle along its weakest (30 mm) dimension. Step 1: Geometric Properties First, we ana...