Welcome to the Newschoolers forums! You may read the forums as a guest, however you must be a registered member to post. Register to become a member today!
This is a funny thread.
Let me start off, I mean none of this in disrespect, but I see a lot of ideas of what people think engineers do and its quite confusing from what Ive read.
First: to "Nick" - I just want to help you get rid of a huge misconception on the following post:
"by the time i graduate i will be an expert in the injection molding and design process"
That statement is like saying "youve studied how to ski by reading books for the last 4 years, so when you actually go out to the slope to ski for the first time your going to be an exert."
By the time you graduate school, you'll still be a "kid" but with a piece of paper to hang on your wall and $30,000 - $130,000 school loans depending on how good of a school you went too. You will not be an expert in anything. You can argue all you want, but you will be no where near an expert. Then 10 years after you graduate maybe you'll remember...
Would you rather be the guy who has skied for 30 years of his life or the kid who has studied how to ski in books for 4 years? obviously the utlimate is the guy who has studied for 4 years and has the 30 years of experience on top. But you'll quickly find out, every industry in the world will take the 30 year experience over your 4 years of studying.
Second, maybe I can help clarify the difference between a Mechanical and Chemical Engineering background. Yes both schools of engineering have materials science, but they have different purposes.
Materials Engineer (with Chem Eng background) would be more responsible with the production of materials used in skiing such as metals, plastics, fibers. I imagine this is highly used in the actual fabrication process of skis being that all of these companies are coming up with new plastics or new fiber technology. Every ski made is coated with some sort of coating. Kind of like the 3M commercials, "we dont make the products you buy, we make them better..." (incidentally 3M is one of the biggest employers of Materials Chem Eng") I imagine in ski companies these people would be more invovled in the actual manufacturing process.
Materials Engineer (with Mech Eng background) would be involved in design of the shape of skis along with the selection of materials. . This person could help in terms of testing of material strengths and properties and then be involved in the materials selection. They would be involved more in the upfront design of skis and then the testing both to ensure the design of the ski (ie shape and materials used) meet the specifications of that ski in terms of performance, stiffness, durability.
Obviously there is a slight cross over between these two but they do have very specific different roles. Either one could do the actual production of skis, because what most of you probably dont realize is there is not much "Engineering" to be done during production. Most of the engineering is done prior...its not like other industries where they have engineering teams for each product line for years on end because most skis dont last more than a couple of years and they dont have moving parts to break and if there was a bad design 1 year, they make a design change in the next years production.
To be real honest, i think it all comes down to what type of ski company you want to work for. If its a huge name brand like Head, Rossi, Volkl, yes they all have engineering departments and yes, even Marker has a full time engineering department..They would all be idiots to only contract engineer for a year because what happens when they need to redesign..plus they are always designing new tecnologies.
However, if you want to work for a smaller company where they handmake their skis, I think experience in terms of like an apprenticeship would be way more beneficial than a degree on the wall. Typically because these companies are usually ran by expert skiers and people with just a general love of the sport and have 15+ years of experience of what works or doesnt work in ski design.
Lastly, For all of you who want to be engineers out there..please dont go into industry fresh out of college thinking your some flyboy because you have an engineering degree. Your work experience after school will count for way more than your paper degree. 5 years of working after college, no company will care what school you went to...the quality of your work and your experience will speak for themselves.
I am a chemical engineer and Ive been working for 5 years in the oil industry and Im still a nub. Fortunately for me I didnt start with this misconception that I was going to be an "Expert" so I was not hindered by this misconception, but you do see it all the time...I hope I can keep a few of you from making the same mistake.
