“Inspired mechanical design and engineering overwhelms through the simplicity of its solutions and may see a revival elsewhere in the medium distant future”.

Nick Rosielle is an associate professor at the Dynamics and Control group and the Control Systems Technology Group of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His areas of interest include the design of machines and instruments. He is responsible for the course Design Principles in the bachelor program of the Mechanical Engineering faculty for the past 28 years and Applications of Design Principles in the ME master program for the past 22 years. Research includes Thermo mechanic deformable mirror technology.  Image manipulation for wafer plane conformity in optical lithography systems, Design of Internally Over-actuated Stages, Optical chip to fiber connections, interventional X-ray equipment, superconducting actuator design, wafer handling robotics and robot systems with haptic feedback for precision minimally-invasive, eye, reconstructive plastic and bone sculpting surgery.

The statically determinate design method, evolved from the Philips Centre for manufacturing technology in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, is still considered the base for mechanical design of machines and instruments. Of some 140 design principles from the eighties, roughly 100 have survived to be applied for the latest design problems at companies like ASML, Fei, VDL, Zeiss and smaller engineering companies. A successful design is more than a mere combination of these design principles and convinces as a whole.

Nick Rosielle obtained his MSc in Mechanical Engineering from TU/e in 1980. Since then he worked in Dutch and International industry in materials research. From 1988 onwards he worked at the TU/e department of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor. In 1994 he received his PhD from TU/e. In 1996 he was appointed Associate Professor in design of precision machinery and instruments. Nick is the (co-)author of refereed and proceedings publications in fields varying from Precision Engineering and Biomedical engineering to Education Research and Automotive Engineering.

“The next generation of mechanical design educators may not be appointed at universities at all. They will face fierce competition from a multitude of colleagues to whom mechanical engineering is a field of endless proportions and an opportunity to score in science rather than in mechanical engineering. A new kind of educational institute may be aimed at producing a high level engineer/problemsolver type capable of serving society once more. Such Mechanical Engineering Institute aimed at application exclusively may have to be created outside existing universities.”