Show HN: I'm a 15 Year Old Wannabe Engineer, This Is a Cycloidal Gearbox I Built
Posted by tomilan 1 day ago
Comments
Comment by sota_pop 23 hours ago
- 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!
Comment by OldSchool 17 hours ago
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.
Comment by cubano 20 hours ago
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.
Comment by varispeed 20 hours ago
Comment by two_handfuls 1 day ago
Comment by tomilan 1 day ago
Comment by WithinReason 1 day ago
Comment by tomilan 20 hours ago
Comment by mlyle 21 hours ago
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.
Comment by cosmotron 1 day ago
Comment by fuzzfactor 20 hours ago
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.
Comment by eleventen 1 day ago
Comment by herewulf 18 hours ago
From the channel description. I love it!
Comment by ninalanyon 1 day ago
Comment by achenet 1 day ago
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 ^_^
Comment by Rafert 1 day ago
Comment by BrokenCogs 23 hours ago
Comment by Rafert 22 hours ago
Comment by linker3000 23 hours ago
Comment by ninalanyon 23 hours ago
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.
Comment by mcmcmc 1 day ago
Comment by Projectiboga 19 hours ago
Comment by ant6n 1 day ago
Comment by joenot443 1 day ago
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.
Comment by Ovah 1 day ago
Comment by _bernd 1 day ago
Comment by viccis 1 day ago
Comment by karambahh 1 day ago
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"
Comment by egeozcan 1 day ago
I think it's fine.
Comment by LtWorf 1 day ago
Comment by firesteelrain 1 day ago
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.
Comment by koopuluri 1 day ago
Comment by shuwix 1 day ago
He's V8motoreer under the hood, a guy from the hood.
Comment by shuwix 9 hours ago
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.
Comment by iwontberude 5 hours ago
Comment by rustcleaner 1 day ago
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.
Comment by fho 1 day ago
Comment by rustcleaner 1 day ago
If only it were free for minors to play with as a toy, beats Minecraft as a builder!
Comment by fho 1 day 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.
Comment by elsaicequeen 19 hours ago
Comment by ddlsmurf 1 day ago
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Comment by junon 23 hours ago
Comment by mohamedkoubaa 1 day ago
Comment by amelius 1 day ago
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.
Comment by HtmlProgrammer 1 day ago
Comment by gnfargbl 1 day ago
Comment by zachlatta 1 day ago
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)
Comment by tomilan 1 day ago
Comment by kaladin-jasnah 1 day ago
Comment by zachlatta 1 day ago
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
Comment by dyauspitr 1 day ago
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Comment by tomilan 21 hours ago
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Comment by xrd 1 day ago
Comment by WillAdams 1 day ago
Ages ago there was a Flash file, PartKam (also forked to MakerCAM) which used SVG as its native format.
Comment by yitchelle 1 day ago
If you have the motivation to chase your passion to build these machines, you are already an engineer. Keep going!
Comment by throwuxiytayq 1 day ago
And never let anyone tell you otherwise.
Comment by cubrift 1 day ago
Comment by welcomezhangjun 1 day ago
Comment by Izmaki 1 day ago
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!
Comment by mathgeek 23 hours ago
Comment by callbacked 1 day ago
Comment by bluelightning2k 1 day ago
Welcome to the club
Comment by bunchy7s 1 day ago
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Comment by tomilan 21 hours ago
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Comment by loloquwowndueo 21 hours ago
So there’s kind of a guild in many places.
Comment by FabCH 18 hours ago
Although they prefer „chambers“ as a name these days.
Comment by bulk_thumbnail 1 day ago
Comment by souravsspace 20 hours ago
Comment by morelikeborelax 1 day ago
Project looks cool
Comment by smalltalk7 1 day ago
Comment by Izmaki 21 hours ago
(Ps: yes, I'd rather have two passionate, eager interns under my wings than one burnt-out senior by my side.)
Comment by morelikeborelax 1 day ago
Comment by liamilan 1 day ago
Comment by plastic-enjoyer 1 day ago
Comment by noduerme 1 day ago
Comment by Izmaki 1 day ago
Comment by el_io 1 day ago
The projects I built as teenager spending weeks, it's just would take half hour of vibecoding now.
Comment by noduerme 1 day ago
It's like getting all the cheat codes and then the game isn't fun anymore.
Comment by herewulf 18 hours ago
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.
Comment by noduerme 11 hours ago
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.
Comment by Izmaki 21 hours ago
Comment by noduerme 9 hours ago
Comment by Izmaki 3 hours ago
I've been vibe coding a large project the last couple of days and while it is pure magic, I have little understanding of the actual code (yet!) and the output is probably worse than if a team of Software Engineers spent a few months on it, but I still get to have sane discussions with Mr. Claude Sonnet about software design patterns and code coverage. And like I said: days, not months. My "role" in this project has of course shifted from "developer" to "overseer" or "architect" even, but if I hadn't have a Software Engineering background my LLM would have produced a rather poor result.
Comment by mohamedkoubaa 1 day ago
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Comment by noduerme 11 hours ago
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Comment by plastic-enjoyer 1 day ago
No, and I don't even know how you can even read this from my post.
Comment by Izmaki 21 hours ago
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").
Comment by ninalanyon 1 day ago
Comment by nomadfreejobs 7 hours ago
Comment by useiris 1 day ago
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.
Comment by t23414321 2 hours ago
Comment by shalom1112 1 day ago
Comment by themaninthedark 1 day ago
In a serious note, looks good and don't let the paperwork keep you down!
Comment by poopiokaka 1 day ago
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Comment by Sovereign34 1 day ago