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Mechanical Design Notebook

Forty-eight unruled sketch pages, eight project pages, and notes for a mechanism worked from concept to dimension.

Specification

Trim: 148 × 210 mm · 5.827 × 8.268 in
Pages: 100
Leaves: 50
Sheets: 25
Signatures: 5 × 20pp
Spine: 5.72 mm
Paper: white
Ruling: blank
Ruling pitch: 4.94 mm · 14.00 pt
Rows per page: 35

Forty-eight sketch pages open the notebook, and they are unruled on purpose. A gear train drawn at an angle, then drawn again from above, does not sit neatly inside a printed line, and a lined page fights the second drawing instead of holding it.

Eight project pages follow, one to a design, for the concept, the dimensions, the materials, the mechanism and the revision history. A revision written down next to the sketch it replaced is a revision somebody can still explain a year later.

Thirty-one pages of plain notes close the book, for the calculation that does not belong on a project page. It carries no printed drawing standard or tolerance convention. Those come from the standard you design to, ISO or ASME or your employer's own, and a blank page cannot choose one for you.

What is inside

Sketch: 48pp; Unruled, so a mechanism drawn from two angles is not fighting a printed line.
Project: 8pp; One page to a design, for the concept, the dimensions, the materials, the mechanism and the revision.
Notes: 31pp; Plain paper, for the calculation that does not belong on a project page.
Reference: 13pp; The book closes with reference pages: length and angle conversions from definitions, emergency numbers checked against two sources.

The film

Page by page

A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.

A vertical film, 52 seconds: the cover, the ruling page, then 5 reference pages. Synthesised ambient bed, no dialogue — captions in three languages.

Real pages

Five pages from the Mechanical Design Notebook laid out as cards: a sketch page, a project page, a notes page, a conversion table, and the owner's page. — Five pages from the print file: a blank sketch page, a project page, a plain notes page, a conversion table, and the owner's page at the front. Unruled paper is the point: a mechanism does not always fit inside a lined margin, and a hinge drawn twice from two angles needs the whole sheet.

Specification card for the Mechanical Design Notebook: sketch pages, project pages, notes, and reference pages, 100 pages total, A5, five signatures of twenty. — 48 unruled sketch pages open the book, plain paper for a mechanism drawn from more than one angle. 8 project pages follow, for the concept, the dimensions, the materials, the mechanism and the revision. 31 blank notes pages close it out. 100 pages total, A5, five sewn signatures of twenty, spine 5.72 mm.

Made at the Hibrkraft bindery, Bogor · about the maker

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Questions

What does a project page cover?

The concept, the dimensions, the materials, the mechanism and the revision history.

What ruling are the sketch pages?

Unruled. Sketch pages carry no lines at all.

How big is it?

A5, 100 pages, spine 5.72 mm, unruled throughout.

Is it dated?

No. Open it with your first concept sketch.

Does it set a drawing standard or tolerance convention?

No. Dimensioning and tolerancing conventions come from the standard you design to, ISO or ASME or your employer's own, and a blank page cannot choose one for you.