What is involved in a mechanical aptitude test?

> how well do you know your tools and socket type test but after surfing the internet I am finding a lot of puzzle like questions.

It took me a minute to think up why they do this, and it does make sense. One of the ‘problems’ with power systems is that a lot of it is verrrry ooollllldd. On a daily basis techs have to deal with parts and pieces they’ve never seen before, and maybe tools to match, or maybe need to adapt modern tools to ancient parts. For speed and efficiency (and probably drastic lack of documentation) they need to do this with essentially -no- direction or instruction, just figure it out on the fly. *That’s* what the puzzles are about — how to solve a problem you’ve never seen before.

> Does anyone have experience with these tests

Yeah, in my jobs I dealt with those for about 15 years and it was *TONS* of fun. 🙂 🙂 When I was a kid, I guess around 12, they gave us some sort of aptitude test. There was a random geometric shape, then four more shapes. The trick was to rotate the shape until it matched -one- of the other 4 shapes. I zipped through that, and looked up. No one else had finished. and no one else finished for a looong while. Never did hear anything further about that test, maybe it was someone’s doctorate study or whatever. Fast forward 20 years, I was doing electronic prototype design and fabrication, and I was -the- guru. That’s one step up from wizard, the person the wizard goes to for advice. LOL! Handed just an electronics schematic, and with a stockroom filled with parts, I’d hand a working box back to the engineers to play with. The drawback though of having a left brain the size of a basketball, is that my right brain is the size of a peanut. Just the nut, no shell. [sigh] But that’s how life goes.

> how do you prepare if it is these puzzle type questions?

Well, that’s part of what aptitude is all about, something you have an innate knack for, with little or no ‘training.’ There are a -few- people who have such zero-mechanical aptitude that they look at a wood screw and can’t figure out if they need a straight slot or phillips head screwdriver. Or if they can get that far, have little clue why an assembly uses a pan or flat head screw. But everyone’s different – they have aptitudes that I never had and never will.

Look for jigsaw puzzles, but with geometric or abstract designs rather than pictoral images. That way you’ll get no clues from the ‘picture,’ all you have to work with is the shapes of the pieces and how those shapes fit together. I suggest you find real life puzzles, not just online, so you have to use your hands to work with the pieces.

That’s a pretty quick exercise, because time is kinda short for you for this. Another good idea would be legos or erector set, where you need to ‘see the design in your head’ first, and then build it. As a kid I never had legos but built aaaalll sorts of erector set projects that did -not- come in the instruction book. 🙂

I watch _How It’s Made_ as much as possible. I like learning about things that otherwise I have no -clue- about, yet I’m *fascinated* at solutions that others have devised.

Look up Rube Goldberg projects on the net! Especially at youtube. Study them and think about -how- they work to ‘make something happen.’.

GL at the test. You’re already doing the right thing thinking about what -might- happen and -preparing- for it.

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If you have good grades at A level physics and maths then you should be ok. I used to run these type of test in industry and there was usually more problems during the interview after the tests, so if you do have an interview, then be confident during this. You should do just fine.

There were so many woodworking plans with this collection and you will not believe this but there are over thousands plans in the one package deal. Go here https://tr.im/Kdbkf

This is really something to find that many all together. For someone like me who is just really starting to get involved with woodworking this was like letting me loose in a candy store and telling me I could have anything I wanted. That was my dream when I was a kid.