Customer Reviews

Mechancal Engineering Design

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This book is not a reference on all the topics it mentions, but it will give you the fundamentals you will need most often. I have often come to this book after looking through more "advanced" texts and have been amazed by its simple treatment. This book, along with a design handbook is a must have for any mechanical engineer. Also as another reviewer mentioned, it comes in real handy when checking FE analyses. Because most of the text gives formulas, checking your mesh becomes very easy. But this is not a "one-stop" design book. You will need your basic texts on solid mechanics, engineering materials, and a good design handbook. (I use Rothbart, but you could use Marks')

The original Mechanical Engineering Design book written by Joseph Shigley, and later, with Larry Mitchell, was an excellent undergraduate text; it was readable at the introductory level, and it contained enough information and methodology for use as a good reference book after graduation. Unfortunately, this revised text, which was rewritten by Charles Mischke, is thoroughly unreadable, obfuscating, and is totally unsuitable as a text for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. The book is full of nuances, subtleties and informative data that do make it useful as a reference book on the shelf of an experienced design engineer, but not as a text for students learning the subject. For those who plan to teach a course for mechanical engineering majors on this topic, I recommend other texts such a Jack Collins' Mechanical Design of Machine Elements and Machines, Wiley, 2003.

It's not a complete guide but relatively comprehensive. I used this book in my undergrad studies and continue to use it on a monthly basis ten years later. My first copy suffered from binding failure (as noted by another reviewer) and was replaced by my employer.

It may not be a good text for self-teaching but it is a fine reference later in your engineering career. Both the authors are well respected and the methods are classical yet readily accepted as "good engineering practice."

If you're a mechanical engineer who deals with mechanical assemblies, you must have this book. It was used as a textbook 10 years ago in one of my college classes, and I sold it back, only to re-purchase it later to use for my job. There's really no substitute.

Like I said, the back of the book has some great tables (although they could use some organizing). The rest of the book is pretty bad. The review problems ask you to do things the book itself never mentions. Lots of material my professor even said isn't even in the book, but it requires you to know how to do it anyway. The example problems are seldom helpful, because it skips too many steps. I think the author assumes too much about what a beginning design student knows. It goes from Step A to Step P, all the intermediate steps you have to figure out yourself. I don't recommend any professor to torture their students with this book. Get a better one.

I purchased the paperback version of this book for economic reasons. I first bought this book while out in industry, working as a design engineer. As far as a usable reference, I put this book high on my list. It doesn't have all the answers, but it provides plenty of knowledge and technical insight to keep my supervisor happy, my vendors honest, and throttle the sales/marketing group every once in a while. Cudos to Joe and Larry.

This is a "must keep" book for any undergraduate level engineer. I've been out of school 6 years and still find myself frequently turning to this book to answer a design question. Often an excellent reference point for complicated FEA problems; get the back of the envelope answer in about twenty minutes and verify your model before too much computing time has been wasted.

This book is good at first glance, being accessible and reasonably well indexed. The problem is that it lacks the thoroughness required of a good reference. There is only limited information on the most basic methods and means. It lacks simple things like how to design pinions which mesh with multiple gears, or gears that run under a variety of conditions in normal operations. This fault runs throughout the book, making it almost useless for the slightly obscure applications seen in anything innovative.

I had the 6th edition of this book as the primary text book in my ME design class. It certainly has a wealth of data and formulae for design, but I found its explainations and examples very vague -- particularly if you're coming to it for the first time, or even the second or third time. In fact I frequently found myself confused by information I already knew well before reading this text. If you just need a formula, this is certainly a great reference. If you really need to know how that formula is applied or how to approach the problem, I'd look elsewhere. I also agree with a previous writer: the fatigue section is particularly lacking.

Goodbook for graduate engineers but for us undergrads, this book is a little bit hard to learn from simply because there isn't enough example problems. Also, more answer to the problems would help.