A Tale of Incompetent Thieves

You never know what a day will bring.

This morning, when I arrived at work, the company service truck was astride the ditch, about 20 yards away from the driveway.

The first thing that went through my mind was that our service man was having a really bad morning. But it turned out that he had nothing to do with it.

Person or persons unknown had cut the chain on the gate to enter our compound, and stolen the truck. They then attempted to steal our big shop air compressor. One or more of them probably got a good shock in the process, judging by the wire blown in two and the carbon coating the arced surfaces. After that, they abandoned the attempt on the air compressor.

Then, they (or he) attempted to leave in the company truck; they were headed next door (the driveway visible in the picture). Being thieves, they stealthily pulled out of our driveway with the lights off, because, you know, that’s supposed to keep you from being noticed. Apparently blinded by their own stealth, they missed the driveway of the adjoining business, with the result you see. Down here in East Texas the technical term for people with this level of competence is “dumb ass”.

I guess we need to check the local hospitals for somebody with electrical burns and whiplash.

I understand that they did make off with some of our neighbor’s equipment. The only thing of ours they actually got away with was the chain off the gate, but we did recover a nifty set of bolt cutters that they left in trade.

What a bunch of morons.

-Popgun

Vacation was Good!

Vacation was good, but now I’m back at work.

For me, this was, in a way, an odd vacation. I almost simulated being retired for a week. We did make a few semi-local trips, but it was nice and relaxed; no planes to catch, or schedules to meet.

I did some maintenance work and minor improvements around the home-place, we took the grandkids to the zoo, we did a little shopping with friends. It was nice.

Just living. Not everything has to be exciting to be valuable and enjoyable. Sometimes, you have to just back off and spin down for a bit. It took me quite a few years to realize that.

I really enjoy a day when I can say I’ve paid the rent on my patch of Earth, though. That’s what it feels like when I finish one of those projects around the house. And that’s what it feels like after a good day at my day job, as well.

Have a nice day!

-Popgun

The Job’s Not Finished until the Paperwork is Done!

I don’t usually blog about work, but:

I just sent the last (I hope, I hope, I hope) document and transmittal on an order for a total of six pumps that began over two years ago. This last document was a piece of paper telling the customer that two other pieces of paper they wanted are not applicable.

The customer already knows that they aren’t getting those two other pieces of paper; but they have to get this third piece of paper that says that they aren’t getting those two other pieces of paper (four hard copies, plus two copies of the transmittal, plus one email copy), or they don’t officially know they aren’t getting those other two pieces of paper. For those who don’t know, a transmittal is a piece of paper listing what other pieces of paper you are sending someone.

All this so that somebody, somewhere, who already has this information, can change an O to an X in a spreadsheet somewhere.

This project has consumed, on my end, 140.2 MB on disk, for 598 files. A casual search turns up another 861 emails related to this project. Behind my desk is a roll-around that has about 8 inches or so of related documents.

For six pumps.

Our customer probably wonders why it is so hard to be competitive…

-Popgun

My Day Job

I don’t blog much about work. Not because interesting things don’t happen there, but I would never want to cause my employer difficulty by anything I might inadvertently say.

However, some of this last week holds lessons that deserve to be told.

My job entails a lot of different activities. A small company finds value in one person who can do many things, and often a willingness to learn will keep you in a job. I have around 34 years of experience as a mechanical designer / draftsman. Now-a-days, I also do in-house sales, purchasing, and all things computer. And what have you.

This last week, I wound up working on the design of a tensioning idler for a large belt drive. This has to consist of a (in this case) fairly large roller with bearings that has to be adjustable in such a way as to push against the belt drive and exert a certain amount of force. There are a number of different ways to do this, as you will see.

My initial idea was to use a swing-arm arrangement similar to the swing-arm on a motorcycle, but larger. This would provide stability in every direction it needed to be rigid, while allowing free movement in the direction it needed to press against the belts. It is a proven design that I knew would work on the first try.

That idea went by the wayside as too complicated and expensive. So then, my boss and I came up with a simple arrangement of a roller being pulled down by four threaded rods with nuts. I had some doubts about whether it would work under the loads involved, but it wouldn’t cost much to try it. So I modeled it in Solid Edge, which took about a day (elapsed), and we showed it to our customer. He didn’t like it, so we abandoned that idea. We are now two days into this, and are starting over. I am a bit frustrated by now, even though this is the nature of the business. This ain’t my first rodeo.

So my boss and I talked it over again, and I began modeling the swing-arm idea. This would have worked, but just about the time I finished modeling it, our customer called my boss and put forth his own idea, which was for a vertical guided slide arrangement. So we abandoned the swing-arm idea (again) and started over (again). 2 1/2 days into it.

This final idea, once modeled and some details were worked out, everybody liked. It will work. So tomorrow morning, I will be detailing it out for production, and purchasing components.

All of this happened under severe time pressure. Our customer is losing money when this equipment is not running. Machine-shop and purchasing lead times are a factor in the design.

This true story demonstrates some of the fundamental things about engineering and design that they don’t tell you in school.

• Design is a collaborative, iterative process.
• You are not usually in control of the design process – whoever signs your check, and his customers, are. Get over the ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome. I got over it about 30 years ago.
• Your input does matter, though – they will listen, if you shoot their ideas down. As long as what you are saying makes sense. By the same token, you must listen when they shoot your ideas down.
• There is a lot of ‘wasted’ time involved in the process; this time is not truly wasted, but is the result of following a design far enough to detect its inherent flaws. Don’t get frustrated when this happens, it’s part of the job. If you hit a show-stopper, abandon that design.
• Sometimes, the ‘too many cooks’ syndrome kicks in. This can be detrimental, but often it is actually helpful. One of the most important parts of design is that of ‘critic’ – finding the flaws that will make it fail BEFORE you go to hardware. More minds applied to this process is almost always helpful. Don’t take it as criticism. Your pride is in the finished product. Any valid criticism before then should be welcomed.
• When it’s in hardware, you will find out what you overlooked. The shop is always in a position to find your mistakes.

In a small company, at least, you are almost never allowed to work on one thing continuously. All of the above was interspersed at random intervals with phone calls, sales work, purchasing activities, and new jobs that needed to be processed. Multitasking is essential, even though it hurts your efficiency.

Life is like that. I sure was glad when the weekend got here, because it was an intense week; but I feel pretty good about the design we came up with.

-Popgun

Efficiency in Big Companies

Our company sold three pumps to a major engineering firm. We, in turn bought the pumps from the pump manufacturer. The pumps became ready to ship last Thursday.

It took 40 different emails, going in all directions, cc’d multiple times for a total of 241 recipients, to get these pumps shipped.

This is called “efficiency”.

-Popgun

Rainy Days and Mondays…

100% Chance of Rain today. Rats. I put the new Corbin seat on my Suzuki DR650-SE and haven’t had the chance to ride it yet. I don’t mind riding in the rain if I get caught away from home, but if the probabilities are above 50%, I leave the bike at home. Oh well, looks like it’ll be Wednesday, by the forecast.

And it’s Monday. My company is beginning to implement a safety program, and I’m the liaison with the company that is setting us up. Trust me on this, setting one of these up is not something you want to do from scratch; it’s worth the money to get informed help. Plus, we have to register all of the related information and records with a couple of on-line services which make your safety training and OSHA records and so forth available to your customers. Bogged down in paper, again. So it should be an interesting week.

As a business grows, you spend higher percentage of available funds doing things like this, which are requirements of your customers and the government, but contribute nothing to the bottom line. In my grandfather’s time, if you wanted to run a stable and be a farrier (the guy who shoes your horses), you put up a sign and went to doing it. Nowadays, you have to have insurance (in case you, your employees, or a customer gets kicked in the head), more insurance (in case your customer sues you if a shoe comes off), and even more insurance (in case the barn burns down), and you have to file OSHA reports (so the nanny state will know your accident record), and it goes on and on. And you have to file all this information with a third party online service as a requirement some of your customers has, or they won’t do business with you.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know it would be like this. Of course, I was a kid long enough ago that back then, it probably wasn’t like this.

Oh well. Life is as it is, and often not as you would like it.

-Popgun

The War Against Bahia Grass

Changed the blades on my mower this morning. I’ve got a Toro Titan Z5200 zero-turn mower, and it’s the neatest thing since sliced bread was invented. I now mow two acres in less than 1 1/2 hours, which used to take me 3-4 hours with my old Swisher. I use Gator blades, which have a pretty vicious set of blades cut into the airfoil that creates suction; they’re pretty effective. I sure got my money’s worth out of the old blades. When I got the new ones, I realized that I had not remembered that the blades are supposed to be square on the ends. You couldn’t tell it by looking at the old ones. I believe I had probably lost 2/3 of the metal in the outer six inches of each blade, and the blades were probably 1/2“ shorter than they were supposed to be.

No wonder I was having trouble getting a good cut. I’m actually looking forward to cutting the grass next time!

-Popgun

Colder than…

Howdy everybody;

It’s colder than a well-digger’s, uh, feet out there! I think I saw a cow with ear-muffs on the way to work this morning. It was 17.8 degrees at my house this morning at about 6:15 AM.

No busted pipes, so far, so I’m counting my blessings.

Work is back in full swing, that is to say, about 0.9 CM (Crisis Mode) on Pop’s Panic Scale. I’m getting things to do faster than I can do them. So I keep plodding along…

I am continually surprised that so many people listen to me. Four Macintosh laptops were bought at Christmastime, at least somewhat due to my recommendations. I hope they all have as much fun with theirs as I do with mine. Which I still love, by the way.

It’s nice being back in the saddle, I suppose.

Happy New Year to you all!

-Pop

Engineering Companies

I am in the position of quoting projects to customers of all sorts. Most of the time, this is a fairly benign process – the customer tells you what he wants, you do design work if necessary, and figure out the cost and how long it will take to provide the product. In our case, the product is pumps, or pump systems mounted on a base. We take our cost, apply a percentage to it, and tell the customer how much and when. They buy the pumps, we fill the order, and everybody is happy (usually).

When dealing with an engineering company, you run up against a paper mill that is nothing short of incredible. We just got an order for three vertical turbine pumps. That’s it – just three pumps. These are by no means huge pumps, but the order is for about a quarter of a million dollars. Our supplier can build these pumps easily in about 18 weeks. The order’s ship date is some 11 months in the future, so delivery is no problem. Easy.

Except – the request for quotation came with specifications 1 1/2″ thick – I just measured it. For three pumps. Now that we have the order, the specifications that came with the order measures about 1″ thick – so the bidding process thinned it down a bit. There is a list of documentation required with 85 line items on it, 3 1/2 pages long. For three pumps!

That list has items like “Barge Load Plan”, and “Past Experience”, and “Preliminary Training Plans”, and “Final Training Plans”. For three pumps!

I have around 20 subdirectories on my hard drive with documents that went back and forth in the six months it’s taken just to quote this job. 44 MB of data – before we even got the job!

The end user is paying an awful lot of money for a crew of engineers and MBA’s and lawyers and clerks to generate all that paperwork, and then to require us to provide even more paperwork, for three pumps. The overhead cost to the customer on this must exceed the price of the pumps by a fair amount, in terms of salaries, organization, office space, etc. But it will be very, very well documented.

They could save an incredible amount of money if the facility engineer just called us up, gave us his design characteristics, let us select a pump, provide our warranty, fill the order, and be done with it. But instead, I’m going to have to hassle with these three pumps until this time next year! The pumps will outweigh the paperwork – but maybe not by much. And all of it will have to pass through my hands.

Oh well, it’s a living.

-Pop

Jump!

Howdy, Everybody;

Well, our customer said Frog again, and we Jumped again!

Got a call yesterday just before lunch that they wanted us on site to startup the pumps, again. So we called everybody to meet us there, same as last time, and left the office just before lunch. Three hours later, back on job site. At first glance, things looked pretty good. But it turned out that most of the emergency shutdown sensors weren’t installed.

When the controls man showed up, about 3:30 pm, and then the pump manufacturer’s crew showed up around 4:00 pm, things began to move. It turns out that, because of the shutdown sensors not being wired in, the only way to run the pumps for startup was manually via the variable frequency drive controls. So after checking rotation on the motor (which was marked backwards – whee!) the pump guy bolted up the shaft coupling, and we started running the pump manually. They had enough water in the tank for around an hour of run time.

The pump worked as advertised. But we were unable to get the PID control loop setup to control the pump motor RPM according to the flowmeter reading compared to a set point. While we were struggling with that, the pump guys found a problem with the second pump, that they started working on.

That’s about where we were when we lost the light and had to quit. So we headed home, arriving around 11 pm.

When we were up there Saturday, it was clear and hot. On this trip, it drizzled all day long. Today it is even worse, and G is going back to the job site to complete the setup. I wasn’t needed for this trip. I hope he has better luck than we’ve been having.

-Pop