Mfg-A1 — Design and Manufacture of Machine Elements
Theory and methodology related to conceptual design; review of the methods used in stress analysis; simple design factor approach; variable loads; stress concentrations; bolts and bolted joints; welded joints; springs; shaft and bearing design; clutches, brakes, and braking systems. The role and characterization of manufacturing technology within the manufacturing enterprise is also examined. Topics include an overview of the deformation process, joining processes, consolidation processes, material removal processes, material alteration processes; composites manufacturing, nano-and-microfabrication technologies rubber processing, glass working, coating processes, mechanical assembly, electronics packaging and assembly, and production lines; and process selection and planning; quality control systems.
Subject outline
Mfg-A1 Design and Manufacture of Machine Elements is a Manufacturing Engineering technical exam (PEO National Examination 08-Mfg-A1) that pairs manufacturing process with machine design. Part A of each paper is the manufacturing half: bulk deformation by extrusion and forging, sheet-metal blanking and fine blanking, bending, springback and the forming limit diagram, and grinding and surface integrity. Part B is the design half: combined stresses at a point and Mohr's circle, the static failure theories, fatigue and the endurance limit with the Marin factors, shaft design by Goodman and the DE-ASME elliptic criterion, and keys, welded joints and brakes. The study notes also cover casting, machining, joining and process selection, springs, bolted joints, bearings, gears and clutches.
The paper is 3 hours and open book; any non-communicating calculator is permitted. There are six questions, divided into Part A and Part B: answer two from Part A and two from Part B — four questions constitute a complete paper, only the first four as they appear in the answer book are marked, and all questions are of equal value at 25% each. If doubt exists as to the interpretation of a question, state your assumptions clearly with the answer. Because the paper is open book, the formula sheet in this course is built to be checked against your own text and taken in — alongside the design text these papers are written from, Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design.
08-Mfg-A1 and 16-Mec-A4 are the same examination — the Mechanical Engineering listing carries the other code, and the question papers themselves are headed 16-Mec-A4. Same paper, same syllabus, two faculty codes, and this course is the same package.
What this course gives you
Worked solutions — all twelve questions from May 2019 and December 2019, set as live maths. Every published answer was checked; where a published step goes wrong, a flagged Note at that step gives the published value, the corrected value and why, and the final answers carry the corrected values — hidden until you reveal the solution. The largest corrections: May Q6's principal stresses, read off a hand-drawn Mohr's circle, fail the invariant check — the exact values are σ₁ = 1719.98 psi, σ₂ = −3056.59 psi and τmax = 2388.28 psi; May Q4 now uses the size factor for its actual 12 mm shaft and computes the bearing slopes from the resultant gear force; May Q5's shoe-lever moment balance now respects the pivot placed in part (a), and both shoe levers are solved and drawn; and December Q5's boxed 2.0686 in cannot be reproduced from the published working — with the refined stress-concentration factors the fatigue diameter is 2.06 in. Process questions — the six Part A questions (Q1–Q3 of each paper) answered at exam standard, with sketches: how a hard grinding wheel is made to act softer and how burn is cured; the strain state at a split on the forming limit diagram and the shape-preserving remedies; a deterministic process that bends a lever to exactly 90° despite springback; hydrostatic extrusion, its advantages and why it is little used; how fine blanking achieves its clean full-thickness edge; and the tool-wear cause of a mid-run bending fracture, with its remedies. Study notes — thirteen condensed topics: extrusion and forging; blanking and fine blanking; bending, springback and the forming limit diagram; grinding and surface integrity; casting, machining, joining and process selection; combined stresses; Mohr's circle; the static failure theories; fatigue and the endurance limit; shaft design; joints, keys and brakes; design factor, springs and bolted joints; and bearings, gears and clutches — each pointing back at the exam questions it answers. Practice & case studies — ten multiple-choice questions, five on each part of the paper, and seven full-length problems with worked solutions and figures, three of them on the Part A processes. Formula sheet — two pages with a notation key: failure theories, fatigue and the Marin factors, shaft design (DE-Goodman and DE-ASME), keys, welds, bolts and rivets, springs, bearings (Petroff, Sommerfeld and McKee with its unit set), gears, clutches and brakes, and the Part A process relations. This exam is open book, so print it at actual size, check it against your own text and take it in. Reference links — ten selected websites (course pages, handbooks and process guides) and eight specific YouTube videos, each with a note on what it is good for. Printable resources — six one-page reference sheets (a failure-theory selector, a fatigue and Marin-factor card, a shaft-design workflow, a joints, keys, welds and brakes card, Part A answer frameworks and an exam-day checklist) and four blank exam templates: a ruled answer sheet, dot-grid rough-work paper, graph paper and isometric paper. Practice papers — the two question papers on their own, unmarked, to sit as timed mock exams: May 2019 and December 2019, the same two sittings that are solved above.
Throughout, 123 figures were drawn for this course — 54 in the notes, 51 in the solutions and 18 in the practice set — alongside 9 images kept from the question papers, so forming mechanisms, the forming limit diagram, stress elements, Mohr's circles, failure envelopes, fatigue diagrams, free-body diagrams and the shaft's deflected shape are shown rather than described.