Excel your spreadsheet.
Anyone who starts their new job at Fabrique Invent will kick off their first week with Excel. A refresher course in “forget-me-nots” with the end result being a spreadsheet, in which you can find out all possible deflections, surface moments of inertia and forces with a few tests.
The Excel sheet contains all formulas that you will encounter during your design and engineering work at Fabrique Invent. It is therefore the perfect introduction. With the sheet you lay the foundation for a large part of your work at our agency. Many designs made at Fabrique Invent are tested on the basis of the Excel sheet. From there, designs go through the sheet several times in an realy design stage. This way we know early in the process what something can be done and we can set limits. Once something is in production it must be reliable, therefore it must be calculated in advance. Hence the famous quote from Theo; “Now let’s do the math first.”
The new Fabriquers therefore make the first calculations in their first week. By delving into the forces that occur when constructing a product and continuously asking yourself; what happens in this situation? What is the forces doing? Thanks to this cocktail of construction theory, the formulas and the hints and tips of Niels and Mike, you will find answers to the questions you ask yourself. These answers form your sheet of how it works for you. That is why everyone has their own sheet, you learn and make it your own. That is very important at our office, especially when you’re just starting out.
When your sheet is almost finished, we do the “validate your spreadsheet”-test. Testing your sheet is very important, after all you only know whether it works and is correct when you have tested it. For the test, Niels selects an aluminum extrusion profile from the shed and asks you to guess the weight of the person standing on the profile based on the deflection. After the necessary measurements, you dive into your sheet and find the answer. You immediately notice whether your setup works for you and whether the formulas are correct. You often adjust things immediately afterwards to increase the ease of use for yourself.
The Excel sheet gives the designer a tool to get the most out of a design. That is what Fabrique Invent strives for. It gives everyone who works here a handle to make reliable, innovative things that work for our customers.
Want to know more? Feel free to contact us.
Forget me not
The most important equations in construction theory.
Modular design in practice.
Our senior engineer Mike explains how we design in a modular way and think along with our customers.
Test, test, and test!
The importance of validating your designs and how to do this.