Engineering↗
Properties of Wood, Ceramics, Plastics and Metals
How the material classes compare: stiffness, strength, density and their weight-adjusted forms, the surprising result that the common metals share one specific stiffness, and ho…
Content type
Guides
Structured, multi-part guides that take a subject from first principles to applied practice. 3043 pages.
Engineering↗
Reamers
Reaming to finish a drilled hole to size and finish: how a reamer works, the reaming allowance and why it must be small, hand and machine reamers, speeds and feeds, and fluting …
Engineering↗
Retaining Rings
The circlip and its relatives: how a sprung ring in a machined groove replaces a shoulder, nut or cover, the external and internal families, and the computation showing the groo…
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Rivets and Riveted Joints
The permanent fastener and its arithmetic: proportioning a joint with Unwin's rule, the four ways a riveted joint fails, working a lap and a butt joint through all four checks, …
Engineering↗
Rolled Steel, Wire, Sheet Metal and Wire Rope
Stock as a component: hot- and cold-rolled character, the sheet-metal bend worked to its allowance, wire as bottled cold work, wire rope's many-small-wires bargain with the shea…
Engineering↗
Screw Machines, Band Saws and Cutting Fluids
Three production essentials: automatic screw machines that turn parts by the thousand, band sawing with the three-tooth rule for pitch selection, and the cutting fluids that coo…
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Screw Thread Systems
The helix that runs through all of engineering: thread anatomy, pitch against lead, why every fastening thread is self-locking, the efficiency arithmetic that makes a bolt a del…
Engineering↗
Self-Threading Screws
Screws that make their own thread: forming against cutting, the self-drilling point, how much a thread in thin sheet can actually hold, the drive-strip torque window that produc…
Engineering↗
Shaft Alignment
The element every other element assumed: offset and angle as four numbers at the coupling, dial readings decoded — TIR halved, sag corrected, soft foot first — the similar-trian…
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Shafts
Shaft torsion: the torsion formula and polar moments, converting power to torque, design for shear strength, design for torsional stiffness with the degree-per-metre guideline, …
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Sheet Metal Working and Presses
Shaping sheet metal in a press: blanking and piercing and the force they take, bending with its allowance and springback, and deep drawing with its ratio limit — with worked fig…
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Simple, Compound, Differential and Block Indexing
The dividing head and its arithmetic: the 40:1 worm heart, simple indexing worked across the plates, the compound trick of two motions, differential indexing with its gear train…
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Soldering and Brazing
Joining metals with a molten filler without melting the parts: the soldering-versus-brazing line at 450°C, capillary action and the joint gap, why lap joints carry the load, the…
Engineering↗
Solution of Triangles
Engineering trigonometry reference: functions of angles, degree–radian conversion, right-angled and oblique triangle solutions, identities, computed function tables, interpolati…
Engineering↗
Splines and Serrations
Splines and serrations as multi-tooth shaft-to-hub connections: straight-sided versus involute splines, why many teeth beat a single key, torque capacity from bearing area, fits…
Engineering↗
Springs
Helical spring design: geometry and spring index, rate and deflection, shear stress with the Wahl correction, ends, solid height and buckling guidance, stored energy, and notes …
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Spur Gears
Spur gear fundamentals: the involute tooth and why it is used, module and diametral pitch, the pitch, base, addendum and dedendum circles, pressure angle, gear ratio and centre …
Engineering↗
Standard Steels
Carbon and alloy steels for engineers: what carbon does, the SAE/AISI four-digit designation system and how to read it, the alloying elements and their effects, the carbon equiv…
Engineering↗
Standard Tapers
Machine tool tapers: how a taper is defined, self-holding tapers such as the Morse that grip by friction, self-releasing steep tapers held by a drawbar, the self-locking angle c…
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Surface Texture
Surface finish: roughness, waviness and lay, the Ra average and Rz peak measures with computed examples, stylus measurement and cutoffs, typical roughness by process, the N-grad…
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Symbols and Abbreviations
Writing measurements correctly: the grammar of SI symbols, case sensitivity, spacing and compound units, the base-unit and prefix symbols, the Greek alphabet as used in engineer…
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T-Slots, T-Bolts and T-Nuts
The workholding interface of every machine table: the T-slot family, the strap clamp as a lever and why bolt position doubles or halves the clamping force, and the computation s…
Engineering↗
Tapping and Thread Cutting
Cutting the thread by hand and by machine: the taper-plug-bottoming tap set, spiral-point and forming taps, dies and chasers, single-point threading on the lathe, and the consta…
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Taps
Cutting internal threads with taps: the tap-drill size and percentage thread engagement, cutting versus forming taps, taper, plug and bottoming taps, flute types for through and…
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Thread Grinding
The precision end of thread making: a diamond-dressed wheel carrying the thread's negative, single-rib and multi-rib practice, the tilt-to-the-lead-angle geometry, why hardened …
Engineering↗
Thread Milling
The CNC way to a thread: a rotating cutter driven around a helical orbit, the geometry worked for an M20 with a twelve-millimetre tool, the 2.5× feed correction that scraps thre…
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Thread Rolling
The thread that is squeezed, not cut: why the blank is exactly the pitch diameter, the machines from flat dies to planetary heads, the fatigue case for rolled roots and grain fl…
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Tool Steels
Tool steels for cutting, forming and dies: what sets them apart from structural steel, the AISI letter-grade groups (W, O, A, D, H, M, T), red hardness and wear resistance, and …
Engineering↗
Tool Wear and Sharpening
How cutting tools wear and when to regrind: flank and crater wear, the wear mechanisms of abrasion, adhesion and diffusion, the flank-wear limit as a life criterion, the speed–l…
Engineering↗
Torque and Tension in Fasteners
What tightening a bolt actually does: preload as the purpose, the torque-tension relation and its unreliable friction factor, how little of the applied torque becomes tension, t…
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Transmission Chains
The positive drive between belt and gear: roller-chain anatomy as a string of tiny plain bearings, chordal action worked across the tooth counts, chain speed and the pitch serie…
Engineering↗
Twist Drills and Counterbores
Drilling holes with the twist drill: point and helix angles, the chisel edge and thrust, speed and feed, and the counterbores, countersinks and spotfaces that finish a hole for …
Engineering↗
Unified Screw Threads
The inch 60° system: how wartime incompatibility produced the Unified compromise, the basic profile from H = 0.866p, reading a designation, coarse against fine worked at half an…
Engineering↗
US and Metric System Conversions
Converting between US customary/imperial and metric units: the exact inch and pound that anchor every factor, computed conversion tables for length, mass and force, pressure and…
Engineering↗
Welding
Joining metal by fusion: how welding melts the parts together with a filler of like composition, the main arc processes, heat input and its calculation, the heat-affected zone a…
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Whitworth Threads
The 1841 original: the fully radiused 55° form, its geometry worked at quarter-inch BSW, what the radius buys in fatigue and sealing, why 55° never mates with 60°, and where the…
Engineering↗
Wing Nuts, Wing Screws and Thumb Screws
The fasteners tightened by hand: wing nuts, wing screws, thumb screws and knurled heads, the computation of what finger torque actually achieves on a thread, and the design cons…
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Worm Gearing
Worm gearing for high single-stage ratios on non-intersecting right-angle shafts: the worm and wheel, lead and lead angle, ratio, centre distance, the self-locking condition, sl…
Engineering↗
Window & Door Hardware — Durability and Corrosion Resistance (ICP-002)
A practitioner's guide to Industry Code of Practice ICP-002 — how the corrosion resistance and cyclic durability of window and door hardware for housing and residential building…
Engineering↗
Forced Entry Resistance of Window and Door Assemblies
A plain-language guide to the AWA Industry Code of Practice for forced-entry resistance of windows and doors — the graded performance levels, the window, sliding-door and swingi…
Project Delivery↗
Actor–Critic Methods
Combining value estimation (critic) with policy gradients (actor) so a forecasting model and a decision rule improve one another.
Project Delivery↗
Algorithms for Decision Making
A risk-focused field guide to deciding well under uncertainty: 26 chapters across five parts, from probabilistic reasoning to multiagent systems, re-read for the project profess…
Project Delivery↗
Approximate Value Functions
Scaling sequential decision-making to realistic projects by approximating the value function from features instead of tabulating every state.
Project Delivery↗
Beliefs
Tracking a probability distribution over hidden states — Bayesian filtering, Kalman and particle filters — to reason about project status you cannot directly observe.
Project Delivery↗
Collaborative Agents
Aligning independent decision-makers toward a shared objective — coordination problems, equilibrium selection, common knowledge, and the role of communication.
Project Delivery↗
Controller Abstractions
Representing a POMDP policy as a compact finite-state controller — a small graph of modes and observation-driven transitions that
Project Delivery↗
Exact Belief-State Planning
The partially observable Markov decision process and its exact structure — planning over beliefs, alpha vectors, and why exact solutions don
Project Delivery↗
Exact Solution Methods
The Markov decision process and its exact solutions — value and policy iteration — for optimal sequential decisions across a project lifecycle.