Practical Mechanics For Inventors II: Designing Custom Parts

Mechanical engineering goes beyond selecting components. It requires designing custom parts and structures that withstand real loads, maintain dimensional accuracy, and perform reliably under practical operating conditions.

Mechanical Engineering: Practical Mechanics for Inventors takes you deeper into mechanical design, building on the fundamentals of standard components to explore how engineers develop custom structures, analyze their behavior, and make informed design decisions.

You will learn how to translate functional requirements into mechanical designs, evaluate stress and potential failure modes, and understand the relationship between strength, stiffness, and elastic deformation. We will explore bending, torsion, fatigue, buckling, thermal expansion, vibration, resonance, and damping, along with the mechanisms that transform and control motion.

The course also examines material selection, comparing metals, polymers, composites, and advanced materials according to their mechanical properties, thermal behavior, durability, and practical limitations.

Throughout the course, the emphasis is on engineering judgment and real-world trade-offs. Rather than simply calculating whether a component is strong enough, you will learn to consider how geometry, loading, materials, mass, stiffness, and dynamic behavior interact to influence a design's performance and reliability.

Based on my book, Practical Mechanics for Inventors, this course is designed for engineering students, aspiring mechanical designers, makers, and inventors who want to strengthen their practical understanding of mechanical design.

Learn to design custom mechanical parts with purpose, analyze their behavior, and make better engineering decisions.