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...
Mechanical Design Handbook · Reference A working reference for reading and creating mechanical drawings under the two systems you will meet in practice: ASME Y14 (common in North America and US-linked supply chains) and ISO GPS (common in Europe and Asia). It covers drawing fundamentals, the geometric tolerancing symbols with use cases, worked bonus-tolerance examples, and a self-check quiz. Standards cited by edition are the ones generally current as of 2026. Tables are summaries for learning. For release work, check your licensed copy and the edition your drawing calls out.