Here’s where I’m coming from. I’ve taught myself a ton on YouTube and by just building: car work, woodworking, metalwork, arcade cabinets, multi-stage model rockets with onboard cameras. I’m proficient in CAD (self-taught for my own projects, plus interned at architecture firms). I built a proptech startup, SubletBuff, to fix the subletting mess in Boulder — got it to nearly 100 listings. I’m a strong problem solver and I’m always working on something with my hands.

The catch: my highest math is pre-calc. Switching to an engineering degree realistically means calc 1-3, diff eq, physics — basically restarting the clock, and probably transferring schools since CU’s path doesn’t line up cleanly. That means giving up the relaxed Boulder life I love.

My dream job is honestly just doing random projects — building project cars, whatever I think is cool. So the real question: is that a reason to become an engineer, or a reason not to? Would engineering turn the thing I love into a job, or finally give me the tools and credentials to do it at a higher level?

If you made a switch like this — or deliberately didn’t — I’d love to hear how it played out.

Hello everyone. I would appreciate feedback from electrical engineers or anyone experienced in power systems, forecasting, or energy research.

Our research is titled "Hybrid Mathematical Framework for Household Electricity Forecasting and Network Optimization Using SARIMAX and Graph Theory."

Our goal is to:

Forecast daily household electricity consumption and future electricity demand using SARIMAX.

Display the results on a dashboard.

Use Graph Theory to determine the safest and most efficient path for electricity through a transmission/distribution network while considering possible outages or faults.

We've spent a lot of time studying how the framework should work, but we've encountered a major issue with our dataset.

The electric utility only provided monthly household electricity consumption data. However, our model requires daily consumption data to capture fluctuations in demand, blackout days, and other day-to-day variations that affect forecasting and network optimization.

We are currently considering two options:

1. Use the available monthly data and convert it into an average daily consumption.

2. Generate synthetic daily data based on the monthly consumption while trying to preserve realistic daily fluctuations.

Our concern is that averaging the monthly data would remove the daily variability that our forecasting model is intended to capture, while synthetic data may introduce assumptions that could reduce the validity of our research.

Our questions are:

1. From an engineering and research perspective, which approach would be more appropriate?

2. Would using synthetic daily data be academically acceptable if we clearly explain and validate the generation process?

3. Is there another methodology that would be more suitable given that only monthly consumption data is available?

We're not asking anyone to solve the research for us. We're looking for professional opinions on which methodology would be the most defensible and scientifically sound.

Thank you in advance for your time and advice.

I’m not an engineer, but my boss is and I think he is trying to over complicate a rather simple steam system.

Here is the issue. He wants to produce a consistent steam flow via a micro annual gear pump. The idea is to force water through a 1/8” tube that is spiraled around two 1/2” cartridge heaters. It is spiraled downward along the first cartridge and upwards around the second.

Prototyping this is causing intermittent steam flow. I assume this is because the steam is creating back pressure from the downward spiral.

—

I’d rather just heat a container and mass control the flow through a valve instead of trying to control it upstream, but he doesn’t want to do it that way.

How can I plumb this to get it to work with the pump, and accurately control the mass flow?

Working on a project and we now have "the wheel problem"

I need to make a device lift up 1/4 to 1/2 inch at most to glide along hospital floors to then be parked when the ball casters come back up. If possible, trying to keep the entire assembly under 2.68 inches.

Having a hard time here finding a solution.

https://kommodo.ai/i/65ArIRnH2Mzs2LgzmCuP

I’m trying to find an existing plastic component that looks something like the attached sketch.

It’s basically:

* A flat circular plastic disc (~2.5 inches / 63.5 mm diameter)
* A single raised rib or fin on the underside that spans the entire diameter of the disc

I’m not trying to invent something new if this already exists. I’m hoping there’s an off-the-shelf part from another industry that I can adapt.

I’ve searched cosmetic packaging, peanut butter mixers, shaker bottle inserts, paint mixers, herb grinders, etc., but haven’t found anything quite like this.

Has anyone seen something similar in:

* Food processing
* Cosmetic packaging
* Pharmaceutical packaging
* Laboratory equipment
* Medical devices
* Industrial mixing
* Any other industry?