<p>I thought about becoming an electrical/mechanical engineer. I understand that you have to draw many plans over and over again in order to do this job. However, do you ever get to literally work with tools and actually build things physically, or are you just drawing papers all day?</p>
<p>We get to design and actually manufacture things in IE, look up rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing, its pretty cool.</p>
<p>Not many engineers are drawing papers *all day<a href=“at%20least%20by%20hand”>/i</a>, but far fewer are building things with tools. You don’t need to know calculus and thermodynamics to build things with tools. Engineering is brain work.</p>
<p>Maybe you should look into being a technician of some sort?</p>
<p>Many colleges are starting to incorporate project-based learning, with lots of building and hand-on projects.</p>
<p>Leading the way is Franklin Olin College of Engineering. It is new and tiny and highly selective. Academics are intense, but interwoven with project work.
[Olin</a> College](<a href=“http://www.olin.edu/about_olin/]Olin”>http://www.olin.edu/about_olin/)</p>
<p>Let’s say you specialize in power turbines. You are not going to be hands on building the power turbine. There are specialists that spend their lives knowing how to work with the tools (are you going to spend years being a welding apprentice?). But, you can be there guiding its construction, and solving problems as they arise.</p>
<p>Think of an Architect. He doesn’t just draw pictures. He will not physically build the house. But, he is involved every step of the way.</p>
<p>In your personal life, there are lots of opportunities to be hands on. When you have kids, and they are involved in the school’s robotics team, you can use your EE/ME knowledge to help them design and build robots.</p>
<p>OP - to back up what some others have said, as an engineer you are not really qualified to build most of the things you design! Even at the lowest end, the tradesmen who actually do the building develop a proficiency that you just will not attain as an engineer - realistically, you cannot as an engineer devote enough time to “building” things, and if you could then your job should probably go to a technician! Just think about it - every hour that you spend in meetings or at a computer is an hour that some other guy is honing his skills with a soldering iron or a welding torch!</p>
<p>Now, there are short-term exceptions - engineers often do some manufacture on one-of-a-kind designs, and occasionally there may be conditions where those highly-skilled craftsmen simply are not available. I have done a fair amount of hands-on-work creating test rigs and other systems where it was not worth the time and effort to draw up plans and get authorizations for a tech. On another occasion, the only technician qualified to assembly my design went out sick for several weeks, leaving me to do the assembly myself… it was later estimated that I took approximately 5x as long as he would have taken, but still got praise because my superiors did not think I had a chance of pulling it off! (Please note that this design required hand assembly with ~0.001" accuracy. Yes, it was my first real design, and yes, the tolerances required were not realistic for mass production.) </p>
<p>There are also a handful of long-term exceptions as well. Big companies require ever more specialization, but small companies may actually expect their engineers to do some of the assembly. There are also some jobs that sort of straddle the gap between being a technician and being an engineer - integration & test and field engineering being notable examples. In these latter cases you should be aware that you are often in competition with senior technicians for the same jobs, and as a result pay is often lower than it is in other specializations of engineering!</p>
<p>To tell the truth guys, I have a very imaginary mindset and watch too many movies so I may be a little to far in fantasy land. The only real reason that I was even interested in engineering is because I saw the “Iron Man” movie with Tony Stark. I was very impressed with his ability to logically analyze each one of his inventions, plan it out, and map out how he would build it. Then, he would physically build it himself. That’s kind of what I wanted to do. I basically want to be an inventor I guess. So my question is, what should I major in, if I wanted to do that?</p>
<p>Some engineers stay far away from the shop floor, the lab or the job site, while others are there every day as the bridge goes up or the one-of-a-kind machine is built.</p>
<p>There is a huge range. You’ll find that engineers at small companies are going to be more hands-on, as are field engineers, applications engineers, plant engineers, facilities engineers and manufacturing engineers. Engineering Technology is more hands-on, but people with a BS in Engineering Technology tend to be more hands-on, but they normally do less design.</p>
<p>See if you can connect with some local engineers who will tell you more about what they do.</p>
<p>People with degrees in Industrial Design, which is really a different field, design a product and often make the prototype.</p>
<p>
Been a huge Iron Man fan since I was a kid, but I am not going to pretend that there is any real person like that. While you CAN certainly learn the design skills AND the manufacturing skills, doing so is like maintaining two distinct professions - it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for anything else. Typically the best you can do is to develop enough practical skills to handle some of the manufacturing, especially if you want to be on the cutting edge - just as the design skills at that level are high, so are the manufacturing skills.</p>
<p>
Any major at all. You need to first decide on what sort of things you want to invent, and THAT will decide your major. After that just seize every opportunity to get hands on experience and training, and hope that you have that spark of invention needed to create something genuinely new.</p>
<p>
The vast majority of positions that are available will require some compromise between design and assembly skiils - few positions require the talent, time, or passion required to master both. The guys on the shop floor do little or design work, there are others behind a desk with little or no assembly work, and there are others (mostly at smaller companies) who split time between both and usually sacrifice excellence at either.</p>
<p>
Some of these professions do little or no design, and those that DO design work are focused on designing tools, assembly lines, and other such industrial components. They are not usually involved in prototyping at all.</p>
<p>
Industrial Design is all about the appearance and user interface, so they only really design an interface that part of the design - such a person would not (for example) deal with the hardware of an iPhone and would not likely have the programming skills to even develop the operating system. These individuals are artists than engineers and do not get involved with all products by a long shot.</p>
<p>My husband started out as a rough carpenter in Alaska - that’s how he got interested in structural engineering. His carpentry experience has been invaluable as he draws details that are practical and buildable. He doesn’t help build his designs, but he still uses his carpentry skills in our house, helping friends, and on short-term missionary trips to the Dominican Republic. He also knows BS when he hears it from contractors, LOL!</p>
<p>The meaning of the word “engineer” has broadened significantly over the past hundred years or so. Yes, engineers used to be tinkerers, people who made things with their hands, but as technology becomes more sophisticated the engineer needs more sophisticated math and science tools as well as skills with technology (computer programming for example). But not every engineer does the same thing. I know guys who build special kinds of cars or automated aircraft that are very hands-on but that’s because they work in small teams. An engineer working on aircraft for Boeing won’t actually put things together will tools, the larger the team the greater the division of labor and the greater the specialization.</p>
<p>Basically, any time an engineer is actually doing stuff with his hands it is IN ADDITION TO his main duties of using his/her brain, it’s not his/her main thing. Even people with PhDs in physics will use tools, because you often need to put together your own vacuum chamber/etc. from existing parts or even learn machine shop skills to make your own parts from scratch, or take old chambers apart for spare parts, etc. But again, this is in addition to their main duties.</p>
<p>Then again, there are so many types of engineering and sub-types and industries and sub-industries, that there is probably an engineering job out there that is more hands-on than anything else, but I don’t know what it is. I do know that you can have two “engineering students” in the same room who have virtually no overlap between their respective curricula or experience beyond first-year calc and intro to engineering stuff, so get as many opinions as you can! Contact your local university and ask them to get you in touch with local engineering companies who will take on high schoolers as interns.</p>
<p>I just remembered a friend that builds assembly lines for a small company. He is really hands-on on building the equipment - or more specifically, modifying off the shelf equipment to work on their assembly line for the intended purpose.</p>
<p>All engineering disciplines will at some time or another require the use of basic hand tools, of the common sorts found in every hardware store in this country, and all engineers are more or less assumed to know how to use them - they are mostly low risk and require little or no formal training.</p>
<p>At the same time, all engineering disciplines I can think of ALSO design items that require much more complex and tool-intensive assembly techniques not generally taught to engineers in any real depth. As an EE I had training in soldering, but I can tell you from personal experience that I have yet to see a new EE grad* who could solder well enough for the more basic assembly groups I knew, much less the groups that did satellite work and wanted to see 3-6 months of exemplary 40-hours-a-week of soldering before they MIGHT offer you a spot on the line!</p>
<p>And even if you have those skills, and even if you have a non-union shop (because a union shop will not generally allow engineers to do such work if a tradesman has the time and ability), you still need to show your boss that it is a better idea for you to use the CNC lathe instead of that guy who normally runs it and can do it 3x faster and without wasting a ton of material.</p>
<p>*: WITHOUT prior technical experience and/or training such as my own, that is - I went through with a couple of Navy technicians getting their degrees, and they were of course excellent.</p>
<p>So this really leaves me wondering if I still want to do this. It seems like the difference between an engineer and a technician is like the same difference between an architect and a builder. I will really have to give this some thought now, as it seems that it nearly impossible to find a job with an overlap.</p>
<p>It is also the difference between telling someone what you want done, and being told what to do. Much more creativity with the engineer, but there is also a lot of art in what the technician does. As a rule of thumb, the engineer will make more than the technician.</p>
<p>I’m guessing that R&D may have more hands-on opportunity because they do a lot more prototyping.</p>