A LITTLE DIRECTION

Project guides.

Practical notes to help you choose, plan and understand your project.

Illustration of free website hosting: a laptop with a rocket launching a browser window into a cloud, surrounded by coins and a crossed-out price tag.B.E./B.Tech students deploying their final-year project website on free hosting tiers

Free Website Hosting for Students: Render, Vercel, Railway and GitHub Pages Compared

How do you put a project website online for free? Match the host to the project: static sites go on GitHub Pages or Cloudflare Pages (free, fast, no server), while a Node, Django or Laravel backend with a database goes on Render or Railway's free tiers with MongoDB Atlas or a free Postgres for data. This guide compares the platforms on real limits — sleep behavior, bandwidth, build minutes — then walks through two complete deploys: a static site and a Node API with a database.

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Editorial illustration of a steel shaft entering a machined bore beside a vernier caliper and micrometer, on a blueprint background with dimension lines.B.E./B.Tech Mechanical and Mechatronics final-year students designing and fabricating machine parts

Engineering Tolerances & Fits: Hole-Basis Systems, Tolerance Grades and Drawing Callouts

H7/g6 looks like alphabet soup until you decode it: the letter positions the tolerance zone, the number sets its width. This guide explains the ISO 286 system with a fully worked Ø25 H7/g6 example, a fit-selection chart, how tolerance grades map to real processes, measuring tools matched to your tolerances, 3D-printing realities, and drawing callouts — so your fabricated parts assemble the first time.

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Editorial illustration of a glowing API network with nodes and request arrows flowing between a laptop and server racks in indigo and cyan.B.E./B.Tech Computer Science and IT final-year students building backend APIs

REST API Design Principles: Resources, Status Codes, Pagination and Versioning

Design REST APIs evaluators respect: noun-based resource naming, correct HTTP methods, a status-code decision table, consistent response envelopes, pagination/filtering/sorting, versioning, JWT auth with real authorization checks, and idempotency — with curl and Python test scripts and a worked exam-system design.

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Editorial illustration of a cutaway deep-groove ball bearing with a steel shaft, alongside roller and thrust bearings on a light background.B.E./B.Tech Mechanical, Mechatronics and Robotics students building rotating mechanisms

Bearing Selection Basics: Ball, Roller and Bush Bearings for Student Mechanisms

Ball, roller, or bush? Learn to read bearing designations, size bearings with the L10 life formula (worked example included), choose shaft and housing fits that stop fretting, pick sealing for dusty environments, and mount bearings without destroying them — the complete selection chain for robot joints, rigs, and rotating mechanisms.

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Editorial illustration of arc, MIG and TIG welding torches laying glowing weld beads on steel plates with sparks flying and a welding helmet nearby.B.E./B.Tech Mechanical final-year students planning fabrication work for their projects

Arc vs MIG vs TIG Welding: Choosing the Right Process for Student Fabrication

Arc, MIG, or TIG for your fabrication project? Compare the three on learning curve, equipment cost, thickness range, and finish quality, with electrode/wire/gas selection tables, a defect-diagnosis chart, distortion control, safety gear, and a practice progression — so you pick the process that fits your project, not the one you happened to hear about first.

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Illustration of a home distribution board with circuit breakers and an ELCB, glowing fault-current lines tracing an earth-leakage path down to an earthing electrode.B.E./B.Tech Electrical and EEE students, and homeowners wanting a structured approach to nuisance earth-leakage tripping

Why Your ELCB Keeps Tripping: Earth Leakage Diagnosis, Testing and Fixes

An ELCB that trips is reporting earth leakage, not an overload. First identify which device tripped (RCCB vs MCB), then isolate the faulty circuit MCB-by-MCB and the faulty appliance plug-by-plug. This guide covers the seven real causes of nuisance tripping - accumulated SMPS leakage, dampness, damaged insulation, neutral-earth faults, wrong wiring, wrong device type, and ageing units - plus insulation-resistance testing per IS 732 and a symptom-to-fix table.

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Illustration of an exploded hobby servo motor and stepper motor with visible coils, gears and a robotic arm joint in the background.B.E./B.Tech Mechanical, mechatronics and robotics students selecting actuators for arms, walkers, CNC and gimbal mechanisms

Servo vs Stepper Motor: Torque, Precision and Selection for Robot Mechanisms

Servos give position-holding torque over ~180 degrees with built-in feedback; steppers give continuous rotation and strong holding torque but skip steps silently under overload. This guide compares torque behaviour, precision, control effort, power draw and cost, with worked sizing examples for robotic arms, hexapods, CNC axes - and the mechanisms where neither motor is the right answer.

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Illustration of a roller chain drive on sprockets beside a timing belt drive on pulleys, both driving a small conveyor roller.B.E./B.Tech Mechanical students designing power transmission for conveyors, vehicles and robot drivetrains

Belt vs Chain Drive: Efficiency, Maintenance and Selection for Student Machines

V-belts slip and absorb shock, timing belts give exact ratios quietly, and roller chains handle high torque in dirty environments at the cost of lubrication and noise. This guide compares all three head-to-head, gives a five-step selection procedure with service factors, belt-length and chain-link sizing math, worked conveyor examples, and an installation checklist covering the failures that actually happen.

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Illustration of meshing brass and steel gears in a reduction train driving a small robot wheel, with motion arrows showing speed reduction.B.E./B.Tech Mechanical students designing gearboxes, robot drivetrains and pedal-powered machines

Gear Ratio Calculation: Speed, Torque, Compound Trains and Module Selection

Gear ratio = driven teeth / driver teeth: output speed divides by the ratio while torque multiplies by it (minus ~5% per mesh). This guide builds the full calculation chain - terminology, compound trains, module and centre-distance selection, gear types, backlash and efficiency - with worked examples for a robot drive, a pedal-powered mill, and reading a vehicle gearbox.

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