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Notes from the
workshop, the classroom, and the codebase.

Working notes and technical reflections across mechanical engineering, technology education, engineering research, CNC and manufacturing, maintenance and reliability, AI in engineering, and energy systems — written alongside the projects and research on this site, not as a substitute for them.

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Engineers reviewing test data on a laptop next to a wiring harness and robotics rig in a lab

Practice → Written Reflection

FIG. 01
02Featured Article

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Engineer holding a tablet on a CNC shop floor with five labelled machining centres — CNC1 running, CNC2 waiting, CNC3 running, CNC4 overloaded and CNC5 waiting — beside staging carts for turning, milling, drilling and inspection operations, looking at a wall-mounted production plan board showing a weekly schedule for four products, capacity-loading charts per machine, material-availability status and a list of key planning actions.
CNC and ManufacturingPublished

How Production Planning Affects Manufacturing Efficiency

A manufacturing process can be technically capable and still perform poorly. This article examines why manufacturing efficiency starts before production begins — in how production planning coordinates demand, materials, capacity, tooling, maintenance and sequence — using two original frameworks, the Production Planning–Efficiency Chain and the Plan–Execute–Learn Loop, to show why local machine utilization is not the same as system efficiency.

19 min read
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03Article Archive

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28 articles found

Engineer holding a tablet on a CNC shop floor with five labelled machining centres — CNC1 running, CNC2 waiting, CNC3 running, CNC4 overloaded and CNC5 waiting — beside staging carts for turning, milling, drilling and inspection operations, looking at a wall-mounted production plan board showing a weekly schedule for four products, capacity-loading charts per machine, material-availability status and a list of key planning actions.
CNC and ManufacturingPublished

How Production Planning Affects Manufacturing Efficiency

A manufacturing process can be technically capable and still perform poorly. This article examines why manufacturing efficiency starts before production begins — in how production planning coordinates demand, materials, capacity, tooling, maintenance and sequence — using two original frameworks, the Production Planning–Efficiency Chain and the Plan–Execute–Learn Loop, to show why local machine utilization is not the same as system efficiency.

19 min read
Close-up of a CNC vertical machining centre spindle above a clamped workpiece, with an overlay diagram distinguishing Machine Zero, the fixed reference point of the CNC machine, from Work Zero, the programmed origin on the workpiece, showing both origins use X, Y and Z axes but at different physical locations.
CNC and ManufacturingPublished

CNC Coordinate Systems Explained

A CNC program line as simple as G0 X20 Y10 is meaningless without knowing which coordinate system X20 and Y10 belong to. This article works through the relationship between machine coordinates, work offsets, program coordinates and physical tool position — using G53, G54–G59, G90/G91 and a worked milling example — to show why correct G-code cannot compensate for an incorrect reference setup.

18 min read
Four mechanical engineering students gathered around a workbench examining a partially assembled gearbox test rig, with one student adjusting a component, another holding a dial indicator against the shaft, a laptop showing a CAD model, and engineering drawings, a multimeter and machined parts spread across the table in a university engineering laboratory.
Technology EducationPublished

Project-Based Learning in Mechanical Engineering Education

Mechanical engineering problems rarely arrive as isolated textbook questions — they require students to integrate mechanics, materials, manufacturing, design and testing at once. This article examines why Project-Based Learning suits that integration, why a project is not automatically PBL, and how meaningful decisions, scaffolding, evidence, iteration and individual assessment separate genuine engineering learning from simply producing an artifact.

20 min read
Split-screen comparison showing a student on the left viewing a torsional shaft dynamics virtual laboratory on a monitor with adjustable parameters and a results graph, versus two students on the right working directly with a real torsional shaft test rig fitted with a motor, couplings, sensors and a digital readout in a physical engineering laboratory, labelled Virtual Laboratory and Physical Laboratory.
Technology EducationPublished

Virtual Laboratories vs Physical Laboratories

Virtual and physical laboratories are often framed as competing alternatives, but the more useful question is not which is better — it is which learning outcome each environment can actually provide evidence for. This article works through visualization, measurement, safety, troubleshooting and assessment to show why a deliberately sequenced virtual–physical laboratory design usually beats choosing one format outright.

19 min read
CNC machining line with a curved conveyor carrying aluminum housings past machinists and an assembly workstation, illustrating a lean manufacturing production system where multiple processes are connected in flow rather than operating as isolated machines.
CNC and ManufacturingPublished

What Is Lean Manufacturing? Principles Every Mechanical Engineer Should Understand

Lean manufacturing is often reduced to a toolbox — 5S, kanban, low inventory, working faster. This article works through the five lean principles, the seven classic wastes, takt time versus cycle time and a six-question engineering lens to make the case that lean is really about designing the production system so value flows, not about squeezing more out of any single machine.

19 min read
Three engineers in a CNC machine shop inspecting turned shafts with a micrometer and digital height gauge, with a screen behind them showing an X-bar control chart of shaft diameter with upper and lower control limits and a summary table of mean, standard deviation, Cp, Cpk and PPM, and a whiteboard listing the DMAIC phases — Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
CNC and ManufacturingPublished

Six Sigma in Manufacturing: DMAIC Explained for Engineering Students

A CNC shaft starts failing inspection and the instinct is to blame the machine. This article works through DMAIC — Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control — as an evidence-based engineering process rather than a checklist of statistical tools, using a fictional shaft-turning example, a DMAIC Engineering Question Chain and a DMAIC Evidence Rule to show why variation, measurement quality and verified causes matter more than memorizing which chart belongs in which phase.

20 min read
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