Here are the top 50 commonly asked questions in Manufacturing Engineering interviews. Whether you’re just starting your preparation or need a quick refresher, these questions and answers will help you tackle your interview with confidence.
Basic Manufacturing Engineering Interview Questions with Answers
1. What is a manufacturing process?
A manufacturing process is defined as the way by the raw materials are converted into useful products. A useful product is one which, we, as human beings can utilize for the well-being of our life.
2. Why do we study manufacturing processes?
Manufacturing processes are important to study because these give us the knowledge of how products are being made and what are the processes involved in order to make them in a sustainable manner.
3. What are the basic requirements of a manufacturing process?
The basic requirements for carrying out a manufacturing process are men, machine, method, money and material.
4. What are the types of manufacturing processes?
Manufacturing Processes can be broadly classified into five categories that are forming, casting, joining, machining and powder metallurgy.
5. How does manufacturing affect economy of the country?
The prosperity and degree of comfort depend on the ability of people to convert the raw resources available in to useful articles of consumption and to distribute these articles equitably among its citizens.
6. What is a manufacturing system?
A manufacturing system is a collection of manufacturing processes and operations resulting in a specific end product. For example, forging of crankshafts, front axle beams, or any other series of connected operations or processes.
7. What is the meaning of the word “manufacturing”?
The word “manufacturing” comes from two Latin words: manu (which means “hand”), and factus (which means “to make”), meaning, “made by hand”. In the modern context, manufacturing involves making products from raw materials by using various processes.
8. What is the challenge of a manufacturing process?
The main challenge in any manufacturing process is to develop better production processes, minimize the cost of manufacturing, waste and maximize the quality of the final product keeping cost in control and ensuring right supply of materials and their usage.
9. What are the factors affecting the manufacturing processes?
The factors that affect the manufacturing process are supplies, equipment, labour, land and distribution channel.
10. How subject knowledge of manufacturing processes is essential to all engineers?
Manufacturing process helps engineers to know the various processes available for a single job, capabilities of a process, quality standards offered by a process, advantages and limitations of a process.
11. How manufacturing is considered an economic activity?
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There is no standard indicator available to assess the growth of the country and well being of the people. Thus, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is an indicator of country’s resources usage and consumption. The GDP is determined by adding all the goods and services produced by the country.
12. How manufacturing is considered a technological activity?
Manufacturing involves the proper usage of talents, skills, engineers, etc. to give a conceived design, planning, processing, quality, etc. So, the availability of raw materials combined with appropriate usage of work force can only make a society and country prosperous and strong.
13. What is the importance of materials engineering in manufacturing processes?
Materials are the basis of all things in the world and in the people’s lives. Everything that is made depends on the materials. There are customer requirements, level of availability, etc. that govern the manufacturing process and materials engineering is a very closely related to manufacturing process.
14. How manufacturing process has evolved?
The evolution of manufacturing processes is related to industrial revolution and globalization. The process, speed, etc. involved to make products at a faster rate to make them available to the whole world is considered to be an evolution of manufacturing processes.
15. What is the synonymous word used for manufacturing?
The word “production‟ is often used interchangeably (or synonymously) with the word manufacturing.
16. What does DFP (or DFM) stand in context of a manufacturing process?
The abbreviation “DFP‟ (or DFM) stands for Design for Product (Design for Manufacturing). It is another basic requirement of a manufacturing process other than 5 Ms (Men, Machine, Material, Money & Method).
17. Why is manufacturing often referred to as production?
Manufacturing is also defined as the production of goods from the raw material through the use of men, machine, method, etc. That is why, it is often referred to as production.
18. What do you understand by agile manufacturing?
Agile manufacturing is the term used to mention the manufacturing with flexibilty. A same manufacturing unit can produce a variety of products.
19. What do you understand by lean manufacturing?
A methodology to minimize waste at all levels through assessment of each activity of a company. A systematic approach to the identification and elimination all forms of waste from the value stream.
20. How does manufacturing activity play its role in standard of living in a country?
Manufacturing is one of the most important fields of human endeavor which effects day to day life. The people are getting goods which are comforting their lives and making world a better place to live along with the right usage of god-gifted natural resources.
Intermediate Manufacturing Processes Interview Questions with Answers
21. What is welding?
Welding is defined as a metallurgical fusion process by which two or more workpieces are joined together with the application of heat, with or without the application of pressure and with or without the application of filler material.
22. What is forming?
Forming is defined as the metal plastic deformation process in which the required shape and size is obtained by applying forces higher than the yield point of the material but lower than its fracture limit with or without the application of heat.
23. What is powder metallurgy?
Powder metallurgy is an art of making products using metal powder. It uses metal powder as the basic raw material and then turns it into a final product. Powder metallurgy is composed of several steps including compacting, sintering and secondary operations.
24. What is shielded arc welding process?
Shielded arc welding is an electric arc welding employing shielding gases to protect the weld metal from the action of atmosphere (or atmospheric gases). A flow of shielding gas around the weld zone forms an envelope around it and thus protects the weld metal from the atmospheric gases.
25. What is casting?
Casting is a process of making products from the molten metal. It involves preparing a mould cavity, pouring of molten metal and finally achieving the product called casting. Casting is one of the most traditional manufacturing processes.
26. What is heat treatment?
The process of heat treatment is the method by which metals are heated and cooled in a series of specific operations that never allow the metal to reach the molten state. The purpose of heat treatment is to make a metal more useful by changing or restoring its mechanical properties.
27. What are stages involved in heat treatment?
The three major stages involved in heat treatment are heating stage, soaking stage and cooling stage.
28. What is recrystallisation?
Recrystallisation is the process of formation of new unstrained grains at a certain temperature. The temperature at which the process of recrystallisation is said to complete is known as recrystallisation temperature. The recrystallisation temperature is different for different materials.
29. What is grain growth?
After recrystallization, the grains are smaller and somewhat regular in shape. The grains will grow, if the temperature is high enough or if the temperature is allowed to exceed the recrystallisation temperature.
30. Why steels are tempered after hardening?
After hardening, the steel becomes excessively brittle because of high martensite constituent. In order to remove this excess brittleness, another heat treatment called tempering is done. Tempering also improves the toughness of the steel.
31. What is the purpose of tempering?
The purpose of tempering is to reduce the brittleness imparted by hardening and to produce definite physical properties within the steel. Besides reducing brittleness, tempering softens the steel.
32. Why uniform temperature is maintained during heating stage of heat treatment?
The primary objective in the heating stage is to maintain uniform temperatures. If uneven heating occurs, one section of a part can expand faster than another and result in distortion or cracking.
33. Why nitriding heat treatment is only limited to alloy steels?
Nitriding forms a hard nitride layer over the metal surface. This hard layer of nitrides is formed by a chemical reaction between the alloying elements and nitrogen. That is why, nitriding heat treatment is only applicable to alloy steels.
34. What is hot working?
The plastic deformation of metal carried out at temperature above the recrystallization
temperature is called hot working. In hot working, any extra heat left in the material after working will promote grain growth, leading to poor mechanical properties of material.
35. What is cold working?
The plastic deformation of metals below the recrystallization temperature is called cold working. It causes more noticeable changes in the mechanical properties by increasing the tensile strength and yield strength of cold worked metal with a corresponding loss in the ductility of metal.
36. What is warm working?
The plastic metal deformation carried out at temperatures intermediate to hot and cold forming is called warm working. It adds lesser power and tooling requirement, lesser scaling on components and better surface finish.
37. What is forging?
Forging is the working of metal into a useful shape by hammering or pressing. Various useful shapes are obtained by compressive forces (impact, hand or power operated or from the large mechanical presses) that are applied on workpiece through various dies and tools.
38. What is forgeability of a material?
The forgeability of a metal is defined as the capability of the metal to undergo
deformation without cracking.
39. What is a machine tool?
A machine tool is defined as a tool which while holding the cutting tools would be able to remove metal from a workpiece, in order to generate the requisite job of given profile. It is capable of providing relative motions to the tool as well as to the workpiece for the machining.
40. What is grinding process?
Grinding is a process carried out with a grinding wheel made up of abrasive grains for removing very fine quantities of material from the workpiece surface. It is also done to obtain close dimensional accuracy and surface finish.
41. What is machinability of a material?
The machinability of a material is defined as the ease with which a material can be machined to get the required profile and surface finish. Machinability is a qualitative term in machining terminology and depends on many factors such as tool, workpiece, cutting fluid, etc.
42. What is the difference between forming and forging operation?
Forming is a plastic deformation process which is done by means of applying forces and passing material through required profile cavity. On the other hand, forging is a plastic deformation which is done by means of striking the metal to get the required shape.
43. What are pattern allowances?
A pattern is made oversized in comparison to the actual product dimensions to compensate the natural phenomena like shrinkage during solidification, difficult withdrawal and further operations like machining. These oversize in a pattern are called as pattern allowances.
44. Why is core always made of dry baked sand?
Cores are always surrounded by the hot molten metal that exerts extreme pressure on core walls. Also, if there would be moisture in the core, it would evaporate under this high temperature of molten metal. That is why, cores are always made of dry-baked sand.
45. What are the functions of riser in a mould?
Risers are provided in a mould for two purposes. The first purpose is to get to know that the whole mould cavity is filled upon pouring of molten metal. The second purpose is to compensate for the shrinkage of metal during solidification.
46. Why is sprue in mould made tapered?
A sprue in mould is the passage that connects the pouring basin to the runner. It is made tapered in order to prevent effects of aspiration phenomenon that can happen upon pouring of molten metal.
47. What is aspiration effect in reference to casting process?
Aspiration is a natural phenomenon that occurs upon pouring of the molten metal into the mould cavity. It is the entrapping of atmospheric air in the area of sprue due to the formation of low pressure than atmospheric pressure. To avoid this effect, the sprue is made tapered, exactly to match the liquid metal stream.
48. What is rake angle?
The rake angle is the angle between the face of the tool called the rake face and the normal to the machining direction. It signifies the ease with which a metal is cut. It can be either negative or positive or zero.
49. What is clearance angle or relief angle?
The clearance angle is the angle between the newly machined surface of workpiece and the underside of the tool called the flank face. It is provided to prevent rubbing of machined surface against the flank face of the tool.
50. What do you understand by tool life of a cutting tool?
Tool life represents the useful life of the tool, expressed generally in time units from the start of the cut to some end point defined by a suitable failure criterion. Generally, flank wear is considered as the failure criterion for a cutting tool.
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