Future of Australian research in engineering RANT....

[wilmer]

HI guys,

I am a mechatronic engineer, master of engineering and PhD of engineering. I did my bachelor in another country (five years) and I did my master and PhD in Australia. I had been a tutor of PLC and MCU programming and recently started a position in a university in Australia. I am surprised that Australian Universities do not allow students to assemble their electronic experiments. They never use a protoboard and most experiments are done for them. Compare to my bachelor I don't see students running cables and setting experiments.

Now, I started a position where I have to design a machine for an external industrial partner, the machine require me to do the hardware starting from a previous version done by an automation company. But, I have to tell you that in all my year of industrial experience. I had found the most difficult environment to work in. 3 weeks to do an induction for a lab and now they ask for a risk assessment of the machine because they saw wires exposed. This machine connects to the wall with a 220volts power cable. I told them that we need to prototype and wires are going to be exposed to allow testing and programming but they need to confirm if a certified electrician needs to disconnect and connect the wires. The risk assessment is going to take at least 2 more weeks.


How other engineers work in Australia? do you get the same stupidity about running experiments and testing equipment?

 

[iMo]

As I can remember the students had to pass an exam on safety (within their study curricula) before they were allowed to work with something like >12V DC ( ie. here in EU many decades back).
It could be the same applies down under..

[wilmer]

As I can remember the students had to pass an exam on safety (within their study curricula) before they were allowed to work with something like >12V DC ( ie. here in EU many decades back).
It could be the same applies down under..

Now, is not only a safety course. If they are learning to control a servo. The experiment is prepare for them. They will only take measurements. And the worst is that in Australia a control engineer is not allow to wire an PLC.

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[tocsa120ls]

Australian Universities do not allow students to assemble their electronic experiments

jeez, that is going to kill enthusiasm in no time. I remember when I was at my university, we were given a box of wires, ICs, a protoboard and told to plug away - some smart guy even bough Soviet TTLs because they were unbelievably resilient. I mean sure it was slower than the Capitalist part, but it could take reverse 6V without any damage. I mean to the IC. Say bye to your fingerprints.

BTW stupidity excels, not just down there. In the 80s a company I knew made a VT220 compatible terminal - the display was essentially an off-the-shelf commecial 8" TV. Local certifier threw it back saying the components in the display were marginally sized at best. The case design was changed so the TV was mounted separately to the top. The commercial certificate for the TV was already there, and the product passed with flying colors.

We found out much later that the case of the TV was not self-extinguishing. Good times.

What I mean to say this is not a new problem and not specific to Australia. Just ask a British engineer how hard it is to get a product out there.

[wilmer]

Australian Universities do not allow students to assemble their electronic experiments

jeez, that is going to kill enthusiasm in no time. I remember when I was at my university, we were given a box of wires, ICs, a protoboard and told to plug away - some smart guy even bough Soviet TTLs because they were unbelievably resilient. I mean sure it was slower than the Capitalist part, but it could take reverse 6V without any damage. I mean to the IC. Say bye to your fingerprints.

BTW stupidity excels, not just down there. In the 80s a company I knew made a VT220 compatible terminal - the display was essentially an off-the-shelf commecial 8" TV. Local certifier threw it back saying the components in the display were marginally sized at best. The case design was changed so the TV was mounted separately to the top. The commercial certificate for the TV was already there, and the product passed with flying colors.

We found out much later that the case of the TV was not self-extinguishing. Good times.

What I mean to say this is not a new problem and not specific to Australia. Just ask a British engineer how hard it is to get a product out there.

But, at least you can design. If your need to test a module, you can connect the parts and test if it works. That is why laboratories exist to test. As an engineer I measure the risk and test. But now they are not allowing anything.

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[digsys]

Yup. I've (club members) worked / taught at Universities / schools for many years, and the level of safety standards is OUT of CONTROL !! and when you think it is utterly ridiculous, the next year it gets even worse again! Teams that design / make Formula SAE Electric and Solar cars pretty much can't do POO at their campus.
It all gets out-sourced (or they use someone else's premises :-) ). Stoopid way for them to learn now. They're not even allowed to use drill presses / lathes / etc
There's a paid full time licensed engineer who they have to give their designs to.

[m98]

Here in Germany you need a ~1 hour safety introduction to the lab and then one for each piece of potentially dangerous machinery you want to operate.
In the last big company I worked in, at least in my department, the rule for uncertified >50 V devices was pretty simple: Don't do dumb things, ask a electrician/technician or senior engineer if you're unsure, and don't make it a death-trap for other people in the lab.

[iMo]

When talking with my colleagues who work at Uni I get the world changed dramatically there in last 30 years. It looks like today's EEs are just better informed people, any practical experience and skills have to be gained after the study (except maybe programming as they are jobbing during the study as programmers). The technical universities are actually pretty happy people want are willing to study there, thus the students are actually treated as the clients in a five star hotel, teachers being the hotel personnel. Most universities are getting money from state based on the number of students they report, thus the universities adopted themselves to the model and are happily  producing the "right" amounts. Therefore no special need for messing with wires
 

[tocsa120ls]

Therefore no special need for messing with wires

  So basically western universities are producing indian EEs now?

[coppice]

From what several academics in different countries have told me, most "lab" work in undergraduate engineering courses is now just matlab work.

[bd139]

It wasn’t far off that 20 years ago when I did mine. Didn’t touch soldering iron until 2nd year and it was like monkeys at a zoo in the labs. Most people hadn’t even ever done anything EE related before. Not even built a kit or put a damn plug on. Dread to think what it’s like now. Spice warriors I suspect.

[wilmer]

From what several academics in different countries have told me, most "lab" work in undergraduate engineering courses is now just matlab work.

OMG

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[wilmer]

Yup. I've (club members) worked / taught at Universities / schools for many years, and the level of safety standards is OUT of CONTROL !! and when you think it is utterly ridiculous, the next year it gets even worse again! Teams that design / make Formula SAE Electric and Solar cars pretty much can't do POO at their campus.
It all gets out-sourced (or they use someone else's premises :-) ). Stoopid way for them to learn now. They're not even allowed to use drill presses / lathes / etc
There's a paid full time licensed engineer who they have to give their designs to.

Omg, looks like I will have to get other job.

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[ferdieCX]

I teach at a public technical university. Although our bosses try to force the use of “didactic circuit simulators”,
we resist and teach at the lab using decades old real equipment.
As for the students, some of them left the main university and came to us because they where tired of using simulators
and wanted to see “real things”.

[wilmer]

I used to share a lab with undergrad kids, and in that lab, not a single 34401A among a dozen of them has a working fuse.

Probably it's cheaper to let them run their creations in a simulator before third or fourth year. Anyway, they will have a capstone project to do later.

Is not better for them to make errors soon. I was in the lab in the first year of my bachelor. I did all power electronic circuits that you can imagine. We inclusive did a three-phasic triac control circuit that gets 600 volts(3x110 volts phases) and all that in a protoboard. You burn thinks, you get electrical shock sometimes but you learn how to work with those circuits.

Everybody burn the fuses, I remember a lecture burn an oscilloscope because he forgot to disconnect ground and he was measuring a communication been send in the AC signal.

[Berni]

Students not allowed to put together there own experiments? That's just silly.

Here it was mostly a <50V rule. Anything that involved higher voltages needed to be done under supervision. Just give the students cheap unfused multimeters and current limited 30V lab supplies and things are fine, but you can still expect a blown component here and there, but who doesn't blow up a thing here or there even as an experienced engineer. I seen my teacher put accidentally put 30V 5A into the supply rails of a PIC MCU, the thing went off like a firecracker.

As for soldering they just explain how its done and then let them have at it. As a result quite a few find out on there own just how hot a piece of wire gets when soldered by holding it with there fingers, but they only do that once.

Sure there has to be safety in place, but taking safety too far benefits nobody. Excessive safety rules just get in the way while a big enough idiot can still find plenty of ways to hurt themselves.

[wilmer]

[quote author=Berni link=topic=198765.msg2548002#msg2548002 date=1563171356

Sure there has to be safety in place, but taking safety too far benefits nobody. Excessive safety rules just get in the way while a big enough idiot can still find plenty of ways to hurt themselves.
[/quote]



Too much safety makes the work environment unsafe.

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[wilmer]

I did all power electronic circuits that you can imagine. We inclusive did a three-phasic triac control circuit that gets 600 volts(3x110 volts phases) and all that in a protoboard. You burn thinks, you get electrical shock sometimes but you learn how to work with those circuits.

We had an almost identical project done by undergrads, actually 4th year graduates, and they borrowed my bench and hooked the ground clip to the wrong place and blew up my scope.

When I came back the next day, I saw spark-burnt connections, exposed mains wires and parts used in their tests, plus a scope that won't power on.

Don't want to go racism or xenophobic, as me myself is an immigrant, but the two Indian kids just kept quiet and soon graduated, never to come back.

Thank God Keysight has superb service, so I didn't have to sue them and complain to the dean.

Since then, the lab manager has been pretty strict about getting students in the lab, unsupervised.

Did you borrow the equipment to them or the laboratory manager?

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[EEVblog]

I am surprised that Australian Universities do not allow students to assemble their electronic experiments. They never use a protoboard and most experiments are done for them.

Seriously? 
[/quote]

I asked David2 and he said that didn't happen at his university, there was no shortage of building.
But a predictable yes to the mains connection bureaucracy.

[EEVblog]

Most people hadn’t even ever done anything EE related before. Not even built a kit or put a damn plug on. Dread to think what it’s like now. Spice warriors I suspect.

Yep, even in the late 80's and early 90's literally only a handful of students had hobby backgrounds and any experience or knowledge at all.
Someone who was a published author was like a god  and word soon got around who knew stuff.

[wilmer]

Most people hadn’t even ever done anything EE related before. Not even built a kit or put a damn plug on. Dread to think what it’s like now. Spice warriors I suspect.

Yep, even in the late 80's and early 90's literally only a handful of students had hobby backgrounds and any experience or knowledge at all.
Someone who was a published author was like a god  and word soon got around who knew stuff.

Hahaha so much modesty on that comment. Now, they require a licensed technician to pull cables from a machine that was in a farm shed because the safe act prohibited the modification of an equipment.

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[digsys]

Hopefully, one day there'll be a middle ground. My most memorable incident as a mentor / supervisor was a long time ago - A particular University wanted to join the newish Formula SAE Electric competitions. Our club was asked to help get them started and mentor etc. We were not to do the work, just advise when asked, give options when they were stuck or intervene and discuss when a dangerous practice was spotted.
For days, It worked well, we took shifts in visiting the workshops. I came in one day and saw Bob Marley (our favourite Rastafarian) standing on top of an aluminium step ladder, head phones on - full blast, grinding the heck out of the roll cage. Not terrible you say, but he was DIRECTLY above the 400VDC 20KWHr 30C Lithium battery pack - which had massive exposed bus bars along the entire top of the pack !! PLUS, he had an assortment of tools - screwdrivers, spanners etc (non-insulated) on the top rail of the ladder !!
Yelling at him had no effect - he couldn't hear, so I shook the ladder. I called him down, gave him a stern lecture, explained everything that was terribly wrong with his setup, and got a thankful nod. Went away .. something told me to go back .. and bugger me, he was back at it AGAIN, same setup !! I had him banned.
There has to be a middle ground.
PS: One day I arrived to find a hole in the brick wall ... sheepishly, someone explained a screwdriver fell off a ladder, onto the battery pack. Never found the screwdriver :-)

[capt bullshot]

PS: One day I arrived to find a hole in the brick wall ... sheepishly, someone explained a screwdriver fell off a ladder, onto the battery pack. Never found the screwdriver :-)

If words and explanation doesn't work: Learning by Burning!