While it was formerly the practice of many concerns to accept in their engineering departments only college graduates, it has been found that many of the tasks do not require or justify this training. For reasonable progress in design engineering, the candidate should, however, have at least the equivalent of a high-school education. As noted above, some companies maintain training courses or schools, in which high-school trained apprentices are given, on the company’s time and without cost to them, courses covering the essentials of design engineering along special lines.
First Duties and After
Under the direction of an experienced engineer the beginner will probably undertake first the making of computations for designs already under way or the checking or reckoning of data from curves of tests which have been made on apparatus which the concern has built. The beginner is often called upon also to plot graphs from values which are at hand or which he himself reckons. As the candidate develops efficiency, he may be expected to assume responsibility for the design of certain parts of machines or devices. Then, later, after a number of years of experience and study, he may become sufficiently conversant with the principles and processes involved to undertake the design of equipment on his own responsibility.
Only a man who is of a studious temperament is fitted for a vocation of this character, because to be successful at it one must study both in and out of working hours. The worker must become familiar with the principles of electricity and magnetism, and be competent to make such calculations as are required to the end that available material shall be utilized in proper proportions to provide desired results and performance in the machine being designed. However, the essentials of this theoretical training can be obtained by any man who is competent to handle formulas, and who is willing to devote a reasonable amount of time to study. While mathematical processes are the tools of an electrical designer, a good mathematician is not necessarily a good designer. To be a good designer, the individual must have also a practical temperament and an eye for proportions. He must be able to design a device so that it will give maximum results at minimum cost and upkeep expense.
Design Engineering is Almost All Desk Work
Although the designer must sometimes work over a drafting board, or go to parts of the shop where machines are either in process of construction or under test, design engineering is largely desk work. Any man who can see, think, and write may, assuming that he has the requisite temperamental and educational qualifications, develop into a designer. Loss of hearing is not by any means an insurmountable handicap.
Salaries and Hours
Engineering department employees practically always receive their compensation on a weekly or monthly salary basis. Beginners who have not had a college education may receive from $60 to $80 per month at the start. After some experience, which equips them for working without constant supervision, they can expect from $80 to $125 per month. Ultimately, salaries will be determined wholly by the capacity of the individual and may range from $2,000 on up indefinitely. Often designers conceive patentable ideas which, if practicable and adopted, may result in substantial salary increases for them. The usual day is eight hours, but in some shops the engineering department works only seven and one-half hours.
In the Drafting Divisions
For drafting in the engineering department the qualifications are somewhat similar to those for design engineering. Draftsmen are, however, ordinarily not so well informed or so well paid as engineers and frequently an able man is promoted from drafting to engineering work. When a man starts at drafting, if he has had no experience, his first task is likely to be that of tracing—he copies, in ink, on a sheet of transparent tracing cloth, a drawing which was made in pencil on drawing paper by a draftsman. In thus tracing a design, he can become familiar with many of the mechanical principles of the devices, and also with the drafting-room and machine-shop practices of the concern which employs him. By observing and asking questions he can learn much. After he has become a proficient tracer, he may be required to “work up” dimension drawings from rough sketches, or to design minor details. Thus he can progress, step by step, until his accumulated experience enables him to perform the work of an experienced draftsman. A man who has had previous drafting experience may not have to start in at the bottom, but may begin with such work as he is qualified to undertake.