Engineering Resources. Our love letter to engineering and hardware product development.
Engineering Articles
Deep dives into engineering topics for product development professionals. FEA, DFM, CNC machining and more!
Guides & Playbooks
Playbooks to help you and your team design, build, test, and deliver world class hardware products
Tools, Charts, & Calculators
Free engineering calculators, web tools, and reference charts to help you tackle common product development challenges
Blog
Where we write about best practices and how to use Five Flute for electro-mechanical engineering and hardware product development.
Engineering Articles. Design, build, test... repeat.
Fasteners and Bolted Joint Design
An engineering deep dive into fasteners and joint design problems for mechanical engineers.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Practical Finite Element Analysis
Understanding the fundamental math, guidance for building trustworthy models, and interpreting the results.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Practical Design for Manufacturability and Assembly
A deep dive into product development, manufacturing, and assembly cost reduction focusing on first principles and design best practices.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
First Principles of Manufacturing: CNC Milling Tolerances
A deep dive into machining tolerances and error sources in part design for CNC milling.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Introduction to Common Milling Tools used in Job Shop Machine Shops
A brief review of milling tools commonly used in modern job shops.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Introduction to Root Sum Squared (RSS) Tolerance Analysis
A how to guide to statistical tolerance analysis for mechanical engineering applications.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Advanced RSS Tolerance Analysis
Estimating manufacturing failures and scrap rates using RSS tolerance analysis and z-tables
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Drawings 101 - The Basics of Creating High Quality Engineering Drawings
A primer on the creation and review of engineering drawings for individual part manufacturing.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Five Flute Part Drawing Review Checklist
A comprehensive checklist for part drawings so you can streamline your drawing review process, catch preventable mistakes, and move faster with confidence.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Mastering GD&T - Building Datum Reference Frames
A foundational guide to selecting datum features that accurately communicate design intent with GD&T.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Mastering Drawings - Top Tips for Creating Better Sheet Metal Part Drawings
A how to guide for engineers and drafters designing sheet metal parts.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
GD&T Basics - A Comprehensive Introduction to Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing
A beginners guide to GD&T and it's application on engineering drawings
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
How to use Waterjet Cutting for Rapid Prototype Development
Best practices for rapid machine design prototyping
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Best Practices for Mechanical Engineering Issue Tracking
A primer for mechanical engineers developing complex and deeply integrated electro-mechanical products.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
How to Plan and Prepare for a Mechanical Engineering Design Review
A playbook for organizing efficient and valuable design reviews
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
How to Run Effective Mechanical Engineering Design Reviews
A playbook for running and moderating efficient and valuable design reviews
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Bearings and Bushings - Essential Components for Mechanical Engineers
An overview of bearings and bushings focused on construction and practical applications.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Engineering Drawing Review Best Practices
A primer for working design and manufacturing engineers
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Brainstorming for Engineers
A how to guide on brainstorming best practices for electro-mechanical product development.
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
CNC Machining in the Digital Manufacturing Era
An in-depth analysis of U.S. based digital fabrication providers - Protolabs, Xometry, FastRadius, Fictiv, and Fathom
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
8 Tips to Keep Hardware Product Development Teams Efficient
Practical approaches to speeding up engineering development
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Design for Assembly (DFA) Best Practices
An overview of DFA principles for mechanical engineers
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
Sheet metal DFM - design guidelines for formed and punched parts
A first principles look at sheet metal design for manufacturability for experienced engineers
William Burke
Five Flute Founder & CEO
CNC Machining DFM - Design Guidelines for Milled Parts
A first principles look at CNC part design for manufacturability for experienced engineers