originally posted in:Sapphire
A friend was recently talking to me about how he is a machinery technician for the coast guard. He fixes up boat engines and takes them apart and all.
I'm a mechanical engineer and what he's doing sounds awesomely interesting and is making me want to join some sort of armed forces as a tech/engineer.
I'm only worried about my career path after working for such a service.duty for about 4 to 6 years. I would like to go on to invent things afterward, but I feel mechanics don't really do that and after doing that kind of work for 4 to 6 years I might forget a lot of my college stuff.
Anyone with any advice or tips?
English
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Edited by Dragon029: 7/10/2013 6:47:32 AMGenerally in the armed forces (at least with Australia); technicians / mechanics do all the hands-on work and physical work, engineers coordinate and organise the technicians / mechanics, as well as sometimes do design work. So for example, a plane might come back from a flight and the pilot will inform the engineer(s) that there was a strange rattling noise. The engineers, using their knowledge will then direct technicians to open up the life support system, cockpit back panel, etc and ask them to check for loose components. The technicians will find it, fix it and then report to the engineer who will sign off that the plane is good or needs a test flight.
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From a purely civilian perspective, engineers build and mechanics maintain. From a military perspective, as Dragon said, mechanics still main but engineers are now co-ordinators. They still build, too. They lay out and destroy minefields, and build and destroy bridges.
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You mean pre in tinychat? lol Mechanics fix the problems Engineers create :OOOOOO