This is a post by Chris Woerther on the EAC Site.
No, I do not mean the game. I mean those engineers “back in the day” that would make sure every drawing released from engineering was as correct and accurate as humanly possible.
Longer ago than I care to mention, I started out in the engineering field as a draftsman. I started out using lead pencils and electric erasers, if that gives you a clue as to how long ago this was. In a very large room with many drafting desks I was the low man of the group. At the top there were Checkers. These were the top of the engineering group at the time. They had the most experience and were some of the highest paid people in Engineering. A drawing of any type could not be released for production or customer consumption without one of the checkers first reviewing it. What stands out the most for me is that there were very few, if any, drawings that did not get some sort of red markup on them. I know, because when I started out I was the guy stuck fixing all the mistakes the checkers found. Keep in mind that they were not only checking the aesthetics of the drawings, but they were also checking all the geometry, equations, mass properties, interferences, and many other aspects of the design. They would even check if it was accomplishing the design intent for the overall project. At the end of the day I rarely heard of manufacturing having to come back to engineering for missed dimensions, or interference issues or anything else for that matter. It did happen of course, but not as much as I see in today’s engineering / manufacturing companies.
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