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sota_pop 15 hours ago [-]
Impressive work for someone of any age!
- any project that involves hardware or physical objects (especially ones you are manufacturing!) is impressive
- the craftsmanship
- references to established standards
- documentation
- actually publishing
As others have said here you can drop the “wannabe” tag (or don’t, we’re all wannabes at heart :))
Nice job and keep up the good work!
OldSchool 9 hours ago [-]
Excellent example of a creative effort that even includes the physical satisfaction of building a physical object! Sometimes that makes it way more fun (motivating), and actually probably helps you learn and understand whatever you're doing more completely by involving another sense.
I think in general, there are too few people putting in the deep time that prepares them to be an engineer in their near future. You're practically there already: it will feel the same after perhaps you decide to call yourself a degreed "engineer" but you will have more mental tools, broader knowledge, confidence from having been able to make what you envision, understanding across disciplines. You have a lot to look forward to! As I told my kids: don't let imposter syndrome take hold of you for a moment! You are a rarity in any group.
cubano 12 hours ago [-]
Anytime you can turn a deep personal interest, like designing and building this impressive gearbox, into something that lands you a paid gig somewhere, you have basically hacked the typical employment system and you should be happy and proud that you saved all the time and expense of a 4 year degree to get what you wanted in the first place.
Now, it remains to be seen if this project will land you a professional level paid job doing what you seem to love to do, so I think the whole "engineer" question is still up in the air.
Yes, anyone can call themselves an engineer but I believe, in the West at least, that until you graduate from an accredited University or have 3-4 solid professional industry experience, calling yourself an engineer might be considered premature.
varispeed 12 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
two_handfuls 1 days ago [-]
What is it? Is this like a gear, where the output shaft turns at some fraction of the input shaft? Is better or worse than traditional toothed gears in some way?
tomilan 1 days ago [-]
It acts like a gearbox, allowing you to sacrifice rotational speed for higher torque output. What makes this gearbox type special is their low backlash, multiple points of contact, and high efficiency.
WithinReason 19 hours ago [-]
Might be worth adding that info to the README
tomilan 12 hours ago [-]
Its been added!
mlyle 13 hours ago [-]
:D Kids can do amazing things.
Adult engineers are already pretty bad at knowing with other people know and what's worth saying. This is the one area where students are markedly worse; "if I know it, everyone else must." Or just figuring out the important bit to explain.
cosmotron 1 days ago [-]
They're pretty cool. They can be good in situations where you don't want any backlash and lots of torque. I believe they're very popular as actuators in robotics.
fuzzfactor 12 hours ago [-]
The cycloid you may not know you already have could often be found mounted under the chassis of vans and pickup trucks to compactly turn the takeup reel for the cable that lowers and raises the spare tire stowed underneath the vehicle.
The reel holds fast its position naturally when the cable is at any length, and allows a heavy truck tire to be lifted manually using the light-duty hand crank.
Notice in the Github animation that the visible rotor has nine lobes and the stator has 10 stations, this can be confirmed if you take a screenshot.
I think you can drop the wannabe label. Of course you have a long way to go and much to learn but I think you are already an engineer, just one at the very start of what might be a great career.
achenet 18 hours ago [-]
agree. Do you engineer software? Congrats, you're officially a software engineer :)
Start doing it for money, and you're officially a professional software engineer.
Make software that genuinely improves peoples lives (like the Linux kernel currently running the computer I'm typing these words on), and you can call yourself a good software engineer ^_^
Yes but not a single software engineer or other engineer in my field has a professional engineer designation. It's not required to practice in most fields outside of civil/structural engineering.
The main qualification of one of the best electronics engineers I knew (UK) was Bachelor of Music.
ninalanyon 15 hours ago [-]
Most of us in electronics in the 1970s in the UK had physics degrees I think. And when I moved sideways into software much later the physics background was eminently useful when modelling machinery and physical processes.
But I too have met engineers with music and also medical backgrounds. But that's all more than half a century ago, it seems that employers expect much more narrowly focussed qualifications these days.
mcmcmc 17 hours ago [-]
Professional Engineer (P.E.) is the protected title in the US
Projectiboga 11 hours ago [-]
"15 Year Old Wannabe" clearly differentiates him from any credentialed engineer.
19 hours ago [-]
ant6n 21 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
joenot443 19 hours ago [-]
I'm Canadian as well and type this while wearing my ring, but I've come to accept that Americans use the term differently from Canadians and that's just fine. The Canadian definition is directly downstream of the Quebec bridge collapse, it's a pretty neat bit of Canadiana.
Just like writing favorite instead of favourite, while I'm here, I think the right thing to do is respect the customs of the country which welcomed me. It would be very ignorant of me to pretend I'm more of an engineer than my American colleagues with CS degrees.
I don't get the down voting. This dude is correct. An "engineer" is typical like a "doctor".
Yes I also carry the "system engineer" with me, and yes I have university background, but it's far far away from any serious engineering what's usually done by computer people.
I would also argue that an engineer more or less knows what he's doing and can predict the outcome. Most people I observe while they use a computer it's literally a monkey beating metal with flesh....
viccis 20 hours ago [-]
"Engineer" is a floating signifier and there's no reason to pretend it's anything otherwise in the US.
karambahh 20 hours ago [-]
It's a protected title in several european countries but I've never seen enforced, despite myself being part of an officially sanctionned body of engineers.
Afaik claiming to have an MD (for obvious reasons) or a PhD would land you in hot water much, much faster, despite technically being exactly the same "offense"
egeozcan 19 hours ago [-]
Let's accept that engineering has 2 different uses and that's okay. If I tell people that I'm a civil engineer with nothing to show for it, it'd be as big of a problem like pretending to be an MD. For software engineering, however, you'd just be at the start of your career.
I think it's fine.
LtWorf 20 hours ago [-]
There's at least tens of people who aren't born in the USA.
firesteelrain 18 hours ago [-]
OP is in the US where the term “Engineer” does not convey the person is certified or has professional training.
That doesn’t mean that certain professional engineering disciplines exist that are regulated in the US. Systems Engineer, Computer Enginner, etc are not in that realm.
In the US, engineering is regulated only where public safety is directly at stake. Most engineers work for companies that assume liability for their work.
rustcleaner 21 hours ago [-]
Nice.
I'm an over-40 year old wannabe engineer too, except I didn't get as far as you on my little pet project: designing a 'universal' gear, based on professor Jack Phillips' work "General Spatial Involute Gearing." So far I can model the basic helicoids in Siemens NX, such that they touch along the ISA (Intermediate Screw Axis) which passes through the CDL (Center Distance Line) in between the gear axes. I have no clue how to proceed from there with actual involute teeth.
My idea is to at some point write an NX Open script/module, which takes in various parameters (like selecting the shaft/axes vectors; inputs ratio, pitch, etc.) and spits out something structured like my model.
fho 20 hours ago [-]
Good luck with that. NX is such a pain to use compared to other alternatives (commercial and free/open source). NX Open being even more painful because it's basically 90% guesswork.
rustcleaner 19 hours ago [-]
I love NX (10-12), it feels very intuitive to me and it's absolutely rock solid compared to Inventor, Solid Edge, and SolidWorks, and it seems like it could run performantly on a literal potato (currently an offline Windows Server 2022 qube with 8GB RAM and 2 vCPUs, no GPU passthrough).
If only it were free for minors to play with as a toy, beats Minecraft as a builder!
fho 19 hours ago [-]
Version 10-12 is 10-ish years ago. They switched to yearmonth (e.g. 2604) release names long ago.
Let's just say things changed since then.
There is also a difference between intuitive and familiar.
I learned to CAD on Fusion 360 with no formal education and it just worked. I can use FreeCAD sufficiently well to be productive (it really has become better over the years). I tried OnShape and just started working. I like using OpenSCAD and CadQuery...
... but I still struggle to get spline extrusions to work in NX because you just have to know which buttons to press in which order.
19 hours ago [-]
koopuluri 1 days ago [-]
you're not a wannabe! you're an engineer! you made something awesome. wishing you the best :).
shuwix 22 hours ago [-]
He's probably American.
So he's not engineer.
He's V8motoreer under the hood, a guy from the hood.
shuwix 1 hours ago [-]
HAHAHA.
Couldn't even imagine someone being offended by reference of using motor instead of engine.
But HEY, it's 2026.
Open-minded Americans I've encountered on IRC are long gone.
Nowadays it's a different breed.
I have to keep silent, else even more people would get offended.
elsaicequeen 11 hours ago [-]
V2 to V3 iteration was actually impressive regardless of age
mohamedkoubaa 17 hours ago [-]
Note to the OP: Mechanical engineering textbooks that are two editions out of date are dirt cheap. If you can't afford them, email me and I'll send some.
ddlsmurf 1 days ago [-]
try making something without AI too, it will be valuable
speed_spread 20 hours ago [-]
AI will be required to maintain the piles of tech crap we've built and that society now stands on. New generations are no longer as tech savvy, pushed toward being simple users and consumers. The rare individuals that develop curiosity for how things work have their work cutout and will need all the tools they can get to dig their way through layers of undocumented, organically grown software and hardware cruft left by "engineers" of lore.
junon 15 hours ago [-]
Where do you think AI got its training material? Was it not from those very same "engineers of lore" and their respective "tech crap"?
amelius 18 hours ago [-]
Looks cool, but if you want people to judge your project on its merit, then don't post information about your age; it will make honest feedback difficult both for you and the sender.
PS: anyone who can keep their focus on a project for more than a few weeks and complete it can become a fine engineer so don't worry about that.
HtmlProgrammer 17 hours ago [-]
I feel the age here helps I’ve context for the feedback. like you aren’t going to recommend they go get a 5k worth piece of machinery or say this is absolutely amateur and is a simple concept and doesn’t deserve discussion
gnfargbl 16 hours ago [-]
It's cool that OP is enthused by engineering, it's a cool little thing they made, and it's great that the next generation of mechanical engineers are starting out seeing software as a tool in their armoury. Those are the merits I can see here, and in my judgement they're all awesome.
17 hours ago [-]
tim_tairov 19 hours ago [-]
Cool!
zachlatta 1 days ago [-]
Hey, you should join Hack Club! I was just at an event where a high schooler designed and built a continuous variable transmission (https://outpost.hackclub.com).
You’ll meet a ton of interesting, friendly teens who are all helping each other build awesome projects.
Cool project!
(Hack Club is a nonprofit and I’m the founder of it)
tomilan 1 days ago [-]
I was actually looking to join hackclub, how should I approach it?
kaladin-jasnah 1 days ago [-]
As a teenager that spent some time somewhat around Hack Club things, I felt that being a part of Hack Club pressured me to live live faster than I was ready to (like 16 year olds doing summer internships / cohabiting with their partners). I want to say a lot of the people I knew online on Hack Club Slack went to places like MIT, so I guess there's that, but there is some beauty in taking life more slowly. I also didn't want to be boxed into running my school's club with what Hack Club provided. I think they do good things (eg. Hack Club Bank helps students run events before they can financially) and I interacted with a lot of really cool people. But if it is anything like the past, I wanted to share this.
zachlatta 17 hours ago [-]
If you have any ideas on how we can better orient the community around self expression and self actualization, please email me!
It’s really important to me that Hack Club is a space that helps teens become the people they want to become vs. pressuring them down any one path.
zach@hackclub.com
dyauspitr 23 hours ago [-]
I hope your username is not a spoiler for wind and truth. I’m about a third of the way through it.
kaladin-jasnah 17 hours ago [-]
Well, I made this account far before WaT ever existed, so....
bunchy7s 24 hours ago [-]
Thanks!
poopiokaka 1 days ago [-]
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ethanhawksley 21 hours ago [-]
You can just join their Slack workspace (it's a bit like Discord) on their website: https://slack.hackclub.com/
Then in the #announcements channel you'll see all the different projects they're running, just pick and choose the ones that interest you.
I went to one of their meetups "Horizons Europa" last week and had a great time!
I took a look around hackclub, how should I approach starting an affiliated club?
zachlatta 8 hours ago [-]
If you go to https://hackclub.com/clubs, there’s an application form. Once you fill it out you’ll get a response within a week. If anything comes up, please email jared@hackclub.com who runs the clubs program (or post in the clubs channels on Slack).
tomilan 7 hours ago [-]
awesome will do thank you so much
moustache_hn 13 hours ago [-]
Cool man, really nice project! Awesome that you built and documented the whole thing. Following to see what you build next.
kbuchanan 1 days ago [-]
I didn't even know what a cycloidal gearbox was! Good work—you've kicked off an exciting career.
Arshad-Talpur 22 hours ago [-]
You are on track ! at the age of 15 you building fantastic, just one word, "Keep Moving Sky is not the limit anymore"
19 hours ago [-]
WillAdams 19 hours ago [-]
Nice! Can it output SVG files for cutting w/ a CNC?
tomilan 13 hours ago [-]
I do not believe so. It is a python script for autodesk fusion and I am not aware of any way to export SVG's from fusion.
xrd 17 hours ago [-]
CNC uses SVG? I am only familiar with 3d printers and assumed SVG would be too primitive and CNC would use STL or something like that?
WillAdams 17 hours ago [-]
Some of the CAM tools, esp. those oriented towards hobbyists will import an SVG --- Vectric Vcarve notably, and (ob. discl., I work for the company) Carbide Create.
Ages ago there was a Flash file, PartKam (also forked to MakerCAM) which used SVG as its native format.
yitchelle 17 hours ago [-]
Congrats! You are not a wannabe engineer, you are an engineer.
If you have the motivation to chase your passion to build these machines, you are already an engineer. Keep going!
throwuxiytayq 17 hours ago [-]
> You are not a wannabe engineer, you are an engineer.
And never let anyone tell you otherwise.
17 hours ago [-]
welcomezhangjun 1 days ago [-]
I built this because I wanted a better way to use multiple AI models during development...
Izmaki 22 hours ago [-]
Don’t listen to people telling you not to post your age on the internet. This is solid work and you did this instead of being stuck in one of the hundreds of +1 dopamine traps in Roblox or yelling at other (often times much younger) kids in Fortnite like many of your peers did.
You did something meaningful, you even waited to share it with the world until version three, and you learned a ton doing it. Well done, dude!
mathgeek 15 hours ago [-]
There’s no need to put down others to raise up OP. We can praise merit in one pursuit without acting like we are objectively better than others for it. How folks choose to spend their time is a fundamental part of personal freedom.
21 hours ago [-]
callbacked 1 days ago [-]
you're an engineer by doing, whereas wannabes don't! very cool project
19 hours ago [-]
bluelightning2k 21 hours ago [-]
You are a very talented 15 year old engineer. Not a wannabe. Just getting a head start on the imposter syndrome!
Welcome to the club
cubrift 23 hours ago [-]
Seriously impressive, you should be proud of yourself! As another (software) engineer your age, being able to be creative is always a thing to be happy about.
19 hours ago [-]
bunchy7s 1 days ago [-]
it is pretty cool, but posting your age + an (likely) AI project on hacker news is probably a bad idea.
WillMorr 1 days ago [-]
Nice work!
toplinesoftsys 1 days ago [-]
Great project! Keep pushing, do not pay attention to anyone saying that AI will replace all software engineers.
19 hours ago [-]
bilsbie 18 hours ago [-]
What is it?
tomilan 13 hours ago [-]
It acts like a gearbox, allowing you to sacrifice rotational speed for higher torque output. What makes this gearbox type special is their low backlash, multiple points of contact, and high efficiency. It is also unique for not having any teeth and just working due to its specific cycloidal geometry.
jbs789 20 hours ago [-]
Nice work! Great to see you’re having fun with the projects. As we get older we focus on being productive. Never lose the creativity!
19 hours ago [-]
Quarrelsome 18 hours ago [-]
wannabe? there isn't a guild, or a test, its a choice.
loloquwowndueo 13 hours ago [-]
Being pedantic, in many countries, engineering disciplines are regulated and you can’t officially call yourself an engineer until you’ve complied with some requirements etc.
So there’s kind of a guild in many places.
FabCH 10 hours ago [-]
FYI - There literally are guilds in some countries regulating who can use the title engineer.
Although they prefer „chambers“ as a name these days.
17 hours ago [-]
14 hours ago [-]
souravsspace 12 hours ago [-]
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morelikeborelax 1 days ago [-]
Don't post your age on the internet :)
Project looks cool
smalltalk7 23 hours ago [-]
This is a technical forum. One of the best traditions in engineering has always been taking beginners seriously and helping people who are trying to learn. Most of us are here because someone did the same for us. You come from a good place but I don't see why say a tech forum is a place you need to hide.
Izmaki 13 hours ago [-]
100% this. My favourite new colleague is an intern. Why? Because watching them grow just like I once did is worth every penny.
(Ps: yes, I'd rather have two passionate, eager interns under my wings than one burnt-out senior by my side.)
morelikeborelax 20 hours ago [-]
Those saying it's fine come from a good place. I come from a world where we see young people groomed, pursued and manipulated. There is no serious reason to posting your age as a minor on an adult forum.
It's crazy that in 2018 a cellular automata written in JS by a 12 year old was considered special (which it is) and today, nobody would even bat an eye because you can just vibe code this without effort.
noduerme 22 hours ago [-]
It would still be impressive if it wasn't vibe coded.
Izmaki 22 hours ago [-]
Hold up, are you the type of person wanting to fire software teams because we can just ask the Product Owner to vibe code the new features?
el_io 22 hours ago [-]
No, I think the bar is just too high nowdays.
The projects I built as teenager spending weeks, it's just would take half hour of vibecoding now.
noduerme 21 hours ago [-]
I'm going through this. It's demoralizing. I want to spend weeks coding something cool. The idea of asking an AI to do it in 30 minutes is like... what's even the point. I know I can, so why bother. I'd rather go get a beer.
It's like getting all the cheat codes and then the game isn't fun anymore.
herewulf 10 hours ago [-]
You learn much more by doing the actual grunt work. Some people enjoy learning for the sake of learning.
We can learn assembly even though compilers exist. We can learn OpenGL even though 3D engines exist. We can learn to write a relational database even though SQLite/MariaDB/Postgres exist. Et cetera.
You can also play games for which you have all the cheat codes and simply choose to not use them.
noduerme 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I'm this way. The best is when I have a job that gives me an opportunity to learn something new, or create a reason to learn something difficult along the way... but I'll try difficult things in my spare time for pleasure, too.
On the other hand, I'd also say there's one type of satisfaction you get from learning a new language, instrument or paradigm, toying around to see if you can write something difficult that proves to yourself that you understand it, and there's a different satisfaction from using your knowledge to make something truly large and impressive in scale and scope. And the large/impressive stuff does require a lot of boring boilerplate or rehashing things you already know how to do, with little creative flourishes along the way. But historically this would be when I would really discover the flaws and corner cases, too. And polish the end product.
So, like, you build some demo engine you think is amazing. Now you want to share it with people, so you have to write a bunch of UI. As you go along you get new ideas to add to the engine and you spot performance flaws or logical flaws, because the work of polishing it is meticulous, and you're actually using what you made the way someone new would use it for the first time. Seeing it through their eyes. This is where most of my projects would always fizzle before AI. But AI short circuits everything you'd get from this process because, for one thing, it feels like cheating. And for another, it disengages you. That core change to the kernel you realize you want to make, suddenly you let AI make the change and there's one less thing you actually own or understand perfectly in your code. It's no longer your hand crafted ninja blade. And yet the temptation to let it happen is very strong... so strong that I actually find it paralyzing. I neither want to write the UI myself nor let AI help me. I get depressed and stop caring.
I'm a musician, too. And I paint. What you get when you play music or paint is 100% yours, comprised of your knowledge and skill and whatever spirit happens to be inside you at that moment. Code was that way for me. It was art, part technical and part inspiration. But it's been robbed of some essence, the satisfaction of not only solving something but also materializing some piece of yourself out of sand for the whole world to enjoy. Some piece of thought that was completely yours. Nothing coded with AI completely belongs to its prompter. And honestly, losing that sense of craftsmanship is devastating to me and I think it's a huge loss for humanity.
Izmaki 13 hours ago [-]
Instead of spending weeks building a new wall in your house, you spend a week building a new house. With AI mundane problems are solved easily and effectively, giving you time to go bigger.
noduerme 48 minutes ago [-]
Yea but then instead of being an architect and an engineer, you're basically just a customer.
mohamedkoubaa 17 hours ago [-]
Be more ambitious, there are projects that take months even with frontier agents
SoftTalker 14 hours ago [-]
I get the most satisfaction out of building small solutions that work really well. Problems that are beyond the scope of an individual to solve are not really as motivating. At that point you are just one of a group who slings code at the problem and hopes some of it sticks.
mohamedkoubaa 13 hours ago [-]
If you place enough bricks you will behold a castle
noduerme 3 hours ago [-]
Or a pile of bricks.
darkwater 16 hours ago [-]
Exactly. Or you can go physical and do some HW+SW project, there is no AI (yet) for the physical world, at least at a price point for hobbyists. Although you can already go a long way 3D-printing
plastic-enjoyer 20 hours ago [-]
> Hold up, are you the type of person wanting to fire software teams because we can just ask the Product Owner to vibe code the new features?
No, and I don't even know how you can even read this from my post.
Izmaki 13 hours ago [-]
> nobody would even bat an eye because you can just vibe code this without effort.
To me, this is implying that software engineering in 2026 is less impressive than 10 years ago because "you can just vibe code this without effort". Having used AI a fair bit for both business and pleasure I can assure you that you can't always "just vibe code" something useful. Discrediting software engineering because a power tool was popularized in the field is... eh. I don't agree with that.
It sounded like you thought that with AI anyone, even children, can solve literally any problem with ease and therefore it's not very impressive (...and "perhaps we don't need 20+ software engineers building that app if 5 can do it with AI").
ninalanyon 22 hours ago [-]
Why not?
bulk_thumbnail 18 hours ago [-]
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shalom1112 22 hours ago [-]
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useiris 1 days ago [-]
cycloidal designs are a great thing to have actually built rather than just read about. the eccentric motion is easy to follow on paper and then surprisingly fiddly once real tolerances show up.
two things worth measuring if you have not: backlash, and how much it changes after a few hundred cycles. cycloidal drives are usually sold on low backlash, so knowing your real number turns this from a nice print into something you can quote a spec for. if you have a way to load the output shaft, efficiency under load is the other number people will ask about.
17 hours ago [-]
themaninthedark 17 hours ago [-]
There is a lack of project justification documents, need a CAPEX proposal and what is the expected ROI? /s
In a serious note, looks good and don't let the paperwork keep you down!
- any project that involves hardware or physical objects (especially ones you are manufacturing!) is impressive
- the craftsmanship
- references to established standards
- documentation
- actually publishing
As others have said here you can drop the “wannabe” tag (or don’t, we’re all wannabes at heart :))
Nice job and keep up the good work!
I think in general, there are too few people putting in the deep time that prepares them to be an engineer in their near future. You're practically there already: it will feel the same after perhaps you decide to call yourself a degreed "engineer" but you will have more mental tools, broader knowledge, confidence from having been able to make what you envision, understanding across disciplines. You have a lot to look forward to! As I told my kids: don't let imposter syndrome take hold of you for a moment! You are a rarity in any group.
Now, it remains to be seen if this project will land you a professional level paid job doing what you seem to love to do, so I think the whole "engineer" question is still up in the air.
Yes, anyone can call themselves an engineer but I believe, in the West at least, that until you graduate from an accredited University or have 3-4 solid professional industry experience, calling yourself an engineer might be considered premature.
Adult engineers are already pretty bad at knowing with other people know and what's worth saying. This is the one area where students are markedly worse; "if I know it, everyone else must." Or just figuring out the important bit to explain.
The reel holds fast its position naturally when the cable is at any length, and allows a heavy truck tire to be lifted manually using the light-duty hand crank.
Notice in the Github animation that the visible rotor has nine lobes and the stator has 10 stations, this can be confirmed if you take a screenshot.
From the channel description. I love it!
Start doing it for money, and you're officially a professional software engineer.
Make software that genuinely improves peoples lives (like the Linux kernel currently running the computer I'm typing these words on), and you can call yourself a good software engineer ^_^
But I too have met engineers with music and also medical backgrounds. But that's all more than half a century ago, it seems that employers expect much more narrowly focussed qualifications these days.
Just like writing favorite instead of favourite, while I'm here, I think the right thing to do is respect the customs of the country which welcomed me. It would be very ignorant of me to pretend I'm more of an engineer than my American colleagues with CS degrees.
Afaik claiming to have an MD (for obvious reasons) or a PhD would land you in hot water much, much faster, despite technically being exactly the same "offense"
I think it's fine.
That doesn’t mean that certain professional engineering disciplines exist that are regulated in the US. Systems Engineer, Computer Enginner, etc are not in that realm.
In the US, engineering is regulated only where public safety is directly at stake. Most engineers work for companies that assume liability for their work.
I'm an over-40 year old wannabe engineer too, except I didn't get as far as you on my little pet project: designing a 'universal' gear, based on professor Jack Phillips' work "General Spatial Involute Gearing." So far I can model the basic helicoids in Siemens NX, such that they touch along the ISA (Intermediate Screw Axis) which passes through the CDL (Center Distance Line) in between the gear axes. I have no clue how to proceed from there with actual involute teeth.
My idea is to at some point write an NX Open script/module, which takes in various parameters (like selecting the shaft/axes vectors; inputs ratio, pitch, etc.) and spits out something structured like my model.
If only it were free for minors to play with as a toy, beats Minecraft as a builder!
Let's just say things changed since then.
There is also a difference between intuitive and familiar.
I learned to CAD on Fusion 360 with no formal education and it just worked. I can use FreeCAD sufficiently well to be productive (it really has become better over the years). I tried OnShape and just started working. I like using OpenSCAD and CadQuery...
... but I still struggle to get spline extrusions to work in NX because you just have to know which buttons to press in which order.
He's V8motoreer under the hood, a guy from the hood.
But HEY, it's 2026. Open-minded Americans I've encountered on IRC are long gone. Nowadays it's a different breed. I have to keep silent, else even more people would get offended.
PS: anyone who can keep their focus on a project for more than a few weeks and complete it can become a fine engineer so don't worry about that.
You’ll meet a ton of interesting, friendly teens who are all helping each other build awesome projects.
Cool project!
(Hack Club is a nonprofit and I’m the founder of it)
It’s really important to me that Hack Club is a space that helps teens become the people they want to become vs. pressuring them down any one path.
zach@hackclub.com
Ages ago there was a Flash file, PartKam (also forked to MakerCAM) which used SVG as its native format.
If you have the motivation to chase your passion to build these machines, you are already an engineer. Keep going!
And never let anyone tell you otherwise.
You did something meaningful, you even waited to share it with the world until version three, and you learned a ton doing it. Well done, dude!
Welcome to the club
So there’s kind of a guild in many places.
Although they prefer „chambers“ as a name these days.
Project looks cool
(Ps: yes, I'd rather have two passionate, eager interns under my wings than one burnt-out senior by my side.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17871313
The projects I built as teenager spending weeks, it's just would take half hour of vibecoding now.
It's like getting all the cheat codes and then the game isn't fun anymore.
We can learn assembly even though compilers exist. We can learn OpenGL even though 3D engines exist. We can learn to write a relational database even though SQLite/MariaDB/Postgres exist. Et cetera.
You can also play games for which you have all the cheat codes and simply choose to not use them.
On the other hand, I'd also say there's one type of satisfaction you get from learning a new language, instrument or paradigm, toying around to see if you can write something difficult that proves to yourself that you understand it, and there's a different satisfaction from using your knowledge to make something truly large and impressive in scale and scope. And the large/impressive stuff does require a lot of boring boilerplate or rehashing things you already know how to do, with little creative flourishes along the way. But historically this would be when I would really discover the flaws and corner cases, too. And polish the end product.
So, like, you build some demo engine you think is amazing. Now you want to share it with people, so you have to write a bunch of UI. As you go along you get new ideas to add to the engine and you spot performance flaws or logical flaws, because the work of polishing it is meticulous, and you're actually using what you made the way someone new would use it for the first time. Seeing it through their eyes. This is where most of my projects would always fizzle before AI. But AI short circuits everything you'd get from this process because, for one thing, it feels like cheating. And for another, it disengages you. That core change to the kernel you realize you want to make, suddenly you let AI make the change and there's one less thing you actually own or understand perfectly in your code. It's no longer your hand crafted ninja blade. And yet the temptation to let it happen is very strong... so strong that I actually find it paralyzing. I neither want to write the UI myself nor let AI help me. I get depressed and stop caring.
I'm a musician, too. And I paint. What you get when you play music or paint is 100% yours, comprised of your knowledge and skill and whatever spirit happens to be inside you at that moment. Code was that way for me. It was art, part technical and part inspiration. But it's been robbed of some essence, the satisfaction of not only solving something but also materializing some piece of yourself out of sand for the whole world to enjoy. Some piece of thought that was completely yours. Nothing coded with AI completely belongs to its prompter. And honestly, losing that sense of craftsmanship is devastating to me and I think it's a huge loss for humanity.
No, and I don't even know how you can even read this from my post.
To me, this is implying that software engineering in 2026 is less impressive than 10 years ago because "you can just vibe code this without effort". Having used AI a fair bit for both business and pleasure I can assure you that you can't always "just vibe code" something useful. Discrediting software engineering because a power tool was popularized in the field is... eh. I don't agree with that.
It sounded like you thought that with AI anyone, even children, can solve literally any problem with ease and therefore it's not very impressive (...and "perhaps we don't need 20+ software engineers building that app if 5 can do it with AI").
two things worth measuring if you have not: backlash, and how much it changes after a few hundred cycles. cycloidal drives are usually sold on low backlash, so knowing your real number turns this from a nice print into something you can quote a spec for. if you have a way to load the output shaft, efficiency under load is the other number people will ask about.
In a serious note, looks good and don't let the paperwork keep you down!