Mechanical engineering for people who design things — with almost none of the maths.
Engineering for industrial designers and inventors
Thomas Ask's Fundamentals for Designers of Wonderful Things (O'Reilly Media, May 2016) is aimed at designers and makers who can picture a machine but aren't sure how to turn it into something that can actually be manufactured, sold and used. Ask — an industrial design professor who spent close to twenty years as a practising engineer — presents mechanical engineering concepts rigorously but in a largely non-mathematical form, leaning on narrative and imagery rather than equations.
Alongside the engineering, the book spends real time on the softer influences that decide whether a product appeals to anyone: aesthetics, ethnography, brand management and material culture.
What it covers
- Design process and the non-technical influences on it — aesthetics, tradition, ethnography, creativity
- Material mechanics and materials: stress, fatigue, buckling, failure modes, metals, ceramics, plastics, composites, corrosion
- Thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and heat transfer
- Human factors — ergonomics, anthropometry, kinesiology, biomimicry
- Sustainability across a product's life
- Mechanical systems and components: pumps, motors, gears, belts and chains, brakes and clutches, bearings, seals, fasteners, springs
Details
- Author: Thomas (Tom) Ask
- Publisher: O'Reilly Media, May 2016
- 212 pages, English
- ISBN: 9781491932612 (print), 9781491932605