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Men Wanted For Hazardous Duty….

Jan 7th, 2012
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Men Wanted:
For hazardous duty
Small wages, bitter cold,
Long months of complete darkness,
Constant danger,
Safe return doubtful,
Honour and recognition
in case of return.

Sir Earnest Shackleton, 1914

This was the ad printed for recruiting men for Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole. What a different time that must have been! People willing would risk all for the glory of the accomplishment and not much more.

Shackleton should be studied for his expert ability in contingency planning. Every person, animal, and piece of equipment was carefully assessed for its usefulness on the expedition. Even the construction of the wooden supply crates were to be constructed to Shackleton’s specific requirements.

If there was ever a person who took Murphy’s Laws into account, he was it. I highly recommend reading “Shackleton’s Way” to gain insight into how to lead in times of great stress.

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Pressure Vessel Analysis

Jan 7th, 2012
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The tremendous advancements in FEA software has made conducting stress analysis on designs easy enough for non engineers to develop some potentially dangerous inferences about how a part may or may not fail.

One particular instance recently came up that involved the need to validate a design of dished ends of a pressure vessel.

The issue with FEA almost always comes down to material properties. In this case, the metal would have been cold worked and no longer homogeneous. This means the problem is now a non-linear analysis. This type of simulation will need to have materials testing to glean specific mechanical property changes at specific geometric locations on the part.

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Quoting Jobs….

Sep 27th, 2011
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Recently we receive a call from a new client that needed analysis work done very quickly. What’s infuriating, is that this very same client asked us to quote this project three (3) months prior. Why on earth wait until the last minute to ask us to do the job? Frankly, we shouldn’t have taken it. The 3D models were an absolute mess so it took way longer to get the assembly to mesh properly.

The adage of “never turn down work” must be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes its just better not to take a job on. Lesson learned.

Posted in: CAD, Engineering.

E-readers – Nook versus Kindle – An engineer’s perspective

Jul 21st, 2011
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I have a lot of reference books. Most people think they have a lot of books until the meet an engineer. We’re not like most people, we constantly have to research and look up tons of trivial bits of information to make sure our designs don’t kill someone by accident or at least, work properly. I’ve got close to 200 manuals, textbooks, reference volumes, and handbooks. Frankly, I’m sick of dealing with all these freaking books.

So, I decided to invest in an e-reader. Now the most economic is the Kindle. Simple, light, long battery life. Well, that’s about the end of the pros. The one book I purchased to through Amazon to use with the Kindle for PC software, (The Geometrical Tolerancing Desk Reference: Creating and Interpreting ISO Standard Technical Drawings), was so badly formatted, that I regret not trying to find it in PDF format.

The Nook comes in two flavors, color or no color. I should be a bit more technical, the black and white versions use what is referred to as E-Ink. The color version is really an Android tablet that has a special version for Barnes & Noble geared mostly for e-reading. So, it can do a lot more than just display e-books.

I chose the Nook color for one major feature, it can read PDF’s way better than the Kindle. I can buy a lot of technical books in PDF format especially through Google Books. Now, the default PDF reader in the Nook is lacking so, I decided to use ezPDF Reader found in the B&N app store. Wow, night and day difference. The ability to use a touch screen to especially with books that have tables and graphics, it makes a big difference and the Kindle is just behind the times with its hardware.

One last thing that I thought was pretty cool on B&N’s part is that if you take your Nook to any B&N store, you can read any Nook book, in it’s entirety, for one hour per day. Nice way to get you in the store and it beats the sample downloads.

I’m sure I’m going piss off a lot of Kindle fanboys out there so, flame away. :)

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Space Shuttle – We will miss you….

Feb 24th, 2011
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The last space shuttle launch will be either in April (Endeavor) or in June with Atlantis. As a minor tribute, we present an amazing video of the NASA launch cameras that are used to review the performance of the shuttle launches. Enjoy.

Elting Mechanical Enterprises, Inc.
www.eltingmechanical.com

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Elephant Trunk Gripper…

Nov 18th, 2010
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The Bionic Handling Assistant is an elephant trunk like gripper mechanism that was developed by Festo corporation.  It functions by precision pneumatic control of a series of different bellow like chambers.  Really amazing.

Posted in: Engineering.

Simulation – Post mortum or part of the design process.

Nov 18th, 2010
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More often than not I receive requests to do a FEA analysis of a design that has failed or is in risk of failure. FEA has for to long been used as an after thought instead of actually part of the design process.  This “post mortum” way of approaching simulation is highly inefficient. The time and money spent in the design-analyze-redesign process could be better used. For example, if during the course of the design a part or assembly is at possible risk of failure, those CAD files could be sent out for evaluation while the rest of the design work continues. Since most 3D CAD programs have associative capabilities with their respective 2D drawings, it only makes sense to bring in FEA concurrently.
Where companies that don’t have an analyst on staff, this may seem like an impossibility. But, with better, faster high speed internet connections, it is now worth a serious look.

One last point.  FEA simulation doesn’t mean “we don’t have to test it”.  There’s an old adage that says, “a single test is worth a thousand expert opinions”.  So, think of it this way, simulation will limit the number of tests.  :)

Steve

www.eltingmechanical.com

Posted in: CAD, Engineering.
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SolidWorks 2011… in a word, WOW!

Nov 7th, 2010
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At recently attended launch event, I got to see some pretty cool improvements to the latest release of SolidWorks. One of the most useful to the work I do (machine design) are the improvements to frame weldments.  Instead of it creating a solid for the weld bead, it now creates a cosmetic bead much like threads in a tapped hole.  This definitely helps with performance.

There are some tremendous performance gains in SW Simulation.  One of which I like is the 2D simplification option.  This allows to cut the analysis time drastically when dealing with parts that have symmetry.  Sometimes its the simple things that can make a big difference.

Posted in: CAD.
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Lite Rail…..

Oct 18th, 2010
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Very soon, the citizens of Tampa will be voting for a one cent increase to the sales tax to pay for a new lite rail system. The idea sounds great in theory but, its far more complicated than build it and they will use it.  One of the biggest problems with mass transit is about how the city is layed out.  If you look at the cities where lite rail works well, one major they all have is density.  European cities are really more like very dense townships than cities.

Hopefully, people use it and we find better ways to plan Tampa’s future expansion to better utilize the rail system.

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Project Management…

Sep 29th, 2010
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There is a lot of focus on PERT, Critical Path, MS Project, and Gantt charts but the topic that is badly neglected are the effects of multitasking and loss of focus on projects.

This can be best explained with an example.
Designer 1 begins Project A which is estimated to be completed in 5 days.  Then the PM tells her that the new Project B is the priority and needs it started.  Now, the original completion date for project A is now going to be delayed by the X amount of time spent on B.  Now it doesn’t end there.  What about all the little interruptions that Designer 1 will face during the day.    This loss of focus, takes more time away from the truly important task of completing the project.

The only way out of this downward spiral is to add resources and vigorously fend off distractions.  If you can’t add resources, then you’ll need to be brutally honest with your clients and give them an honest start date and a time for completion.  It’s a hard thing to do but, it’s better to be honest with a client and give them a realistic lead time than telling them what they want to hear.  Because when the time line goes South, you’ll have to make excuses as to why the project is going to be late.  You may not win as many jobs using this kind of honesty but, it’s better than getting a reputation for always being late.
For more info on this type of project management, do a web search for Theory of Constaints and more specifically, Critical Chain Project Management.  To get a feel for how it works pick up the book, “The Goal” and “Critical Chain” by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt.  Here’s a good website on Critical Chain PM:  www.focusedperformance.com/articles/multipm.html.

I’ll continue this topic in greater detail at another time so, stay tuned.

Posted in: Engineering.

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