Show HN: I'm a 15 Year Old Wannabe Engineer, This Is a Cycloidal Gearbox I Built
github.com216 points by tomilan 12 hours ago
216 points by tomilan 12 hours ago
I think you can drop the wannabe label. Of course you have a long way to go and much to learn but I think you are already an engineer, just one at the very start of what might be a great career.
agree. Do you engineer software? Congrats, you're officially a software engineer :)
Start doing it for money, and you're officially a professional software engineer.
Make software that genuinely improves peoples lives (like the Linux kernel currently running the computer I'm typing these words on), and you can call yourself a good software engineer ^_^
There are places (eg Canada) where engineer is a protected title like lawyer or doctor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en...
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I'm Canadian as well and type this while wearing my ring, but I've come to accept that Americans use the term differently from Canadians and that's just fine. The Canadian definition is directly downstream of the Quebec bridge collapse, it's a pretty neat bit of Canadiana.
Just like writing favorite instead of favourite, while I'm here, I think the right thing to do is respect the customs of the country which welcomed me. It would be very ignorant of me to pretend I'm more of an engineer than my American colleagues with CS degrees.
Of course you can call yourself an engineer without formal training in the US. https://www.vice.com/en/article/man-fined-dollar500-for-crim... https://www.vice.com/en/article/oregon-unconstitutionally-fi...
I don't get the down voting. This dude is correct. An "engineer" is typical like a "doctor". Yes I also carry the "system engineer" with me, and yes I have university background, but it's far far away from any serious engineering what's usually done by computer people. I would also argue that an engineer more or less knows what he's doing and can predict the outcome. Most people I observe while they use a computer it's literally a monkey beating metal with flesh....
"Engineer" is a floating signifier and there's no reason to pretend it's anything otherwise in the US.
It's a protected title in several european countries but I've never seen enforced, despite myself being part of an officially sanctionned body of engineers.
Afaik claiming to have an MD (for obvious reasons) or a PhD would land you in hot water much, much faster, despite technically being exactly the same "offense"
Let's accept that engineering has 2 different uses and that's okay. If I tell people that I'm a civil engineer with nothing to show for it, it'd be as big of a problem like pretending to be an MD. For software engineering, however, you'd just be at the start of your career.
I think it's fine.
There's at least tens of people who aren't born in the USA.
OP is in the US where the term “Engineer” does not convey the person is certified or has professional training.
That doesn’t mean that certain professional engineering disciplines exist that are regulated in the US. Systems Engineer, Computer Enginner, etc are not in that realm.
In the US, engineering is regulated only where public safety is directly at stake. Most engineers work for companies that assume liability for their work.
Note to the OP: Mechanical engineering textbooks that are two editions out of date are dirt cheap. If you can't afford them, email me and I'll send some.
Looks cool, but if you want people to judge your project on its merit, then don't post information about your age; it will make honest feedback difficult both for you and the sender.
PS: anyone who can keep their focus on a project for more than a few weeks and complete it can become a fine engineer so don't worry about that.
It's cool that OP is enthused by engineering, it's a cool little thing they made, and it's great that the next generation of mechanical engineers are starting out seeing software as a tool in their armoury. Those are the merits I can see here, and in my judgement they're all awesome.
I feel the age here helps I’ve context for the feedback. like you aren’t going to recommend they go get a 5k worth piece of machinery or say this is absolutely amateur and is a simple concept and doesn’t deserve discussion
What is it? Is this like a gear, where the output shaft turns at some fraction of the input shaft? Is better or worse than traditional toothed gears in some way?
It acts like a gearbox, allowing you to sacrifice rotational speed for higher torque output. What makes this gearbox type special is their low backlash, multiple points of contact, and high efficiency.
They're pretty cool. They can be good in situations where you don't want any backlash and lots of torque. I believe they're very popular as actuators in robotics.
Cool!
Nice! Can it output SVG files for cutting w/ a CNC?
CNC uses SVG? I am only familiar with 3d printers and assumed SVG would be too primitive and CNC would use STL or something like that?
Some of the CAM tools, esp. those oriented towards hobbyists will import an SVG --- Vectric Vcarve notably, and (ob. discl., I work for the company) Carbide Create.
Ages ago there was a Flash file, PartKam (also forked to MakerCAM) which used SVG as its native format.
Don’t listen to people telling you not to post your age on the internet. This is solid work and you did this instead of being stuck in one of the hundreds of +1 dopamine traps in Roblox or yelling at other (often times much younger) kids in Fortnite like many of your peers did.
You did something meaningful, you even waited to share it with the world until version three, and you learned a ton doing it. Well done, dude!
you're not a wannabe! you're an engineer! you made something awesome. wishing you the best :).
He's probably American. So he's not engineer.
He's V8motoreer under the hood, a guy from the hood.
You’ll certainly enjoy the “Not an Engineer” channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFJJkZm796I
Nice.
I'm an over-40 year old wannabe engineer too, except I didn't get as far as you on my little pet project: designing a 'universal' gear, based on professor Jack Phillips' work "General Spatial Involute Gearing." So far I can model the basic helicoids in Siemens NX, such that they touch along the ISA (Intermediate Screw Axis) which passes through the CDL (Center Distance Line) in between the gear axes. I have no clue how to proceed from there with actual involute teeth.
My idea is to at some point write an NX Open script/module, which takes in various parameters (like selecting the shaft/axes vectors; inputs ratio, pitch, etc.) and spits out something structured like my model.
Good luck with that. NX is such a pain to use compared to other alternatives (commercial and free/open source). NX Open being even more painful because it's basically 90% guesswork.
I love NX (10-12), it feels very intuitive to me and it's absolutely rock solid compared to Inventor, Solid Edge, and SolidWorks, and it seems like it could run performantly on a literal potato (currently an offline Windows Server 2022 qube with 8GB RAM and 2 vCPUs, no GPU passthrough).
If only it were free for minors to play with as a toy, beats Minecraft as a builder!
Version 10-12 is 10-ish years ago. They switched to yearmonth (e.g. 2604) release names long ago.
Let's just say things changed since then.
There is also a difference between intuitive and familiar.
I learned to CAD on Fusion 360 with no formal education and it just worked. I can use FreeCAD sufficiently well to be productive (it really has become better over the years). I tried OnShape and just started working. I like using OpenSCAD and CadQuery...
... but I still struggle to get spline extrusions to work in NX because you just have to know which buttons to press in which order.
You are on track ! at the age of 15 you building fantastic, just one word, "Keep Moving Sky is not the limit anymore"
Hey, you should join Hack Club! I was just at an event where a high schooler designed and built a continuous variable transmission (https://outpost.hackclub.com).
You’ll meet a ton of interesting, friendly teens who are all helping each other build awesome projects.
Cool project!
(Hack Club is a nonprofit and I’m the founder of it)
I was actually looking to join hackclub, how should I approach it?
As a teenager that spent some time somewhat around Hack Club things, I felt that being a part of Hack Club pressured me to live live faster than I was ready to (like 16 year olds doing summer internships / cohabiting with their partners). I want to say a lot of the people I knew online on Hack Club Slack went to places like MIT, so I guess there's that, but there is some beauty in taking life more slowly. I also didn't want to be boxed into running my school's club with what Hack Club provided. I think they do good things (eg. Hack Club Bank helps students run events before they can financially) and I interacted with a lot of really cool people. But if it is anything like the past, I wanted to share this.
If you have any ideas on how we can better orient the community around self expression and self actualization, please email me!
It’s really important to me that Hack Club is a space that helps teens become the people they want to become vs. pressuring them down any one path.
zach@hackclub.com
I hope your username is not a spoiler for wind and truth. I’m about a third of the way through it.
If you go to https://hackclub.com/programs, there are a bunch of things you can join right now! Another commenter mentioned it - but you should also join the Hack Club Slack at https://slack.hackclub.com
You can just join their Slack workspace (it's a bit like Discord) on their website: https://slack.hackclub.com/ Then in the #announcements channel you'll see all the different projects they're running, just pick and choose the ones that interest you. I went to one of their meetups "Horizons Europa" last week and had a great time!
try making something without AI too, it will be valuable
AI will be required to maintain the piles of tech crap we've built and that society now stands on. New generations are no longer as tech savvy, pushed toward being simple users and consumers. The rare individuals that develop curiosity for how things work have their work cutout and will need all the tools they can get to dig their way through layers of undocumented, organically grown software and hardware cruft left by "engineers" of lore.
Congrats! You are not a wannabe engineer, you are an engineer.
If you have the motivation to chase your passion to build these machines, you are already an engineer. Keep going!
> You are not a wannabe engineer, you are an engineer.
And never let anyone tell you otherwise.
What is it?
I built this because I wanted a better way to use multiple AI models during development...
I didn't even know what a cycloidal gearbox was! Good work—you've kicked off an exciting career.
you're an engineer by doing, whereas wannabes don't! very cool project
wannabe? there isn't a guild, or a test, its a choice.
Seriously impressive, you should be proud of yourself! As another (software) engineer your age, being able to be creative is always a thing to be happy about.
Nice work! Great to see you’re having fun with the projects. As we get older we focus on being productive. Never lose the creativity!
it is pretty cool, but posting your age + an (likely) AI project on hacker news is probably a bad idea.
Great project! Keep pushing, do not pay attention to anyone saying that AI will replace all software engineers.
Nice work!
You are a very talented 15 year old engineer. Not a wannabe. Just getting a head start on the imposter syndrome!
Welcome to the club
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Don't post your age on the internet :)
Project looks cool
Brothers think alike ;)
It's crazy that in 2018 a cellular automata written in JS by a 12 year old was considered special (which it is) and today, nobody would even bat an eye because you can just vibe code this without effort.
Hold up, are you the type of person wanting to fire software teams because we can just ask the Product Owner to vibe code the new features?
No, I think the bar is just too high nowdays.
The projects I built as teenager spending weeks, it's just would take half hour of vibecoding now.
I'm going through this. It's demoralizing. I want to spend weeks coding something cool. The idea of asking an AI to do it in 30 minutes is like... what's even the point. I know I can, so why bother. I'd rather go get a beer.
It's like getting all the cheat codes and then the game isn't fun anymore.
Be more ambitious, there are projects that take months even with frontier agents
Exactly. Or you can go physical and do some HW+SW project, there is no AI (yet) for the physical world, at least at a price point for hobbyists. Although you can already go a long way 3D-printing
> Hold up, are you the type of person wanting to fire software teams because we can just ask the Product Owner to vibe code the new features?
No, and I don't even know how you can even read this from my post.
This is a technical forum. One of the best traditions in engineering has always been taking beginners seriously and helping people who are trying to learn. Most of us are here because someone did the same for us. You come from a good place but I don't see why say a tech forum is a place you need to hide.
Those saying it's fine come from a good place. I come from a world where we see young people groomed, pursued and manipulated. There is no serious reason to posting your age as a minor on an adult forum.
There is a lack of project justification documents, need a CAPEX proposal and what is the expected ROI? /s
In a serious note, looks good and don't let the paperwork keep you down!
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cycloidal designs are a great thing to have actually built rather than just read about. the eccentric motion is easy to follow on paper and then surprisingly fiddly once real tolerances show up.
two things worth measuring if you have not: backlash, and how much it changes after a few hundred cycles. cycloidal drives are usually sold on low backlash, so knowing your real number turns this from a nice print into something you can quote a spec for. if you have a way to load the output shaft, efficiency under load is the other number people will ask about.
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