down at the friend's shop again this morning and I spotted this little gem on the test bed. He figures its the high side of 200 years old, English and was a good quality clock... note the pinned plates and forged iron bits.... this is cool old handmade stuff! Except the owner, an aerospace engineer who shall remain nameless, corrected the excessive wear in a few pivots by shortening them, drilling out the plate and tapping it to accept CARBURETTOR JETS! The jets have tapered bores and when fitted with locknuts as shown actually allow the end float of each shaft to be adjusted! The clock is in the shop because A) its suddenly a really poor timekeeper and B) the fly which regulates the speed of the clock's striking mechanism spins so fast after its "jet" modification that the mechanism for the hammer has torn itself to pieces! and yes, that is a rolled tinfoil shim! A for effort! A+ for stupidity!
If that was done by an aerospace engineer, I completely understand every malfunction and resulting tragedy that happened in the space program. Good thing the clock doesn't have O rings or the guy's house would have burned down.
Now now guys, aerospace Engineer in the room.... Interesting mod by someone who should probably know better but, there are many disciplines in aerospace Engineering and he's probably an hydraulic systems specialist or such and not mechanism or structures based. If so, asking him to understand bearings is a bit like asking your ear, nose and throat consultant to perform a vasectomy... By the way, it wasn't his pivot mods that caused the fly to fail. It's a regulator so if it span too fast it's because the regulator part failed. Mind you, he probably modded that as well! Cheers, Chris
After years of working in the automotive industry with "the engineers", I swear that little iron ring they wear cuts the flow of blood off to the brain. And yes it was a mod to the fly that let 'er rip and uprooted some of the strike mechanism due a touch too high an rpm level.... Given the nature of the parts used... carb jets, he's probably an unemployed fuel system engineer who just couldn't make the transition to fuel injection. He likely has an electric lawn mower so he doesn't have to clean airfilters.... and bugger the engine up... again.
Ahem...and an engineer who worked in the automotive industry for 23 years... Although I can understand your frustration, I can assure you not all engineers have oxygen deprived brains.
Very true Al, I run into some truly brilliant guys. Older style schooling seems to be the key, those educated years ago when you were expected to be able to make what you designed, actually use your hands rather than just your brain seem to be the best. From previous communication I know you've been around enough that you know what I mean by "old school" guys. (I'd like to think we are actually) personally I've been in quality & engineering in the automotive, aviation and medical industries for 30 years as of last month (gad! where's the time gone!) mostly as the department head. oh.... and a touch of munitions work.... that was fun. lately I've worked with quite a few guys who only recently graduated. Last year I built a series of 30 prototype LED headlamp assemblies with one of our engineers and couldn't understand why he couldn't keep up with the process. We had set up the a production cell to build the lamps per the latest control plan (his) to test the assembly methods themselves prior to production. It was a two person cell with me taking the lead assembling the electronics into the lamp and closing it up and the design responsible engineer finishing the mounting brackets... a carefully calculated 50/50 labour split. Imagine my shock when I told him to pick up the pace as the lamps piled up between us and was answered with "but this is the first time I've ever used an allen key"! its very depressing to work with this latest generation of guys, they've got zero hands on training and really are useless without their CAD systems. I was recently asked by a University of Western Ontario educated P.Eng if two screws were interchangeable in our assembly... He was holding out a #6 machine screw and a #6 wood screw.... same number after all, so they should both thread right into our carefully tapped castings. He was genuinely surprised when I told him they weren't interchangeable and I had to take some time to explain why. Another completely f***ed up an Ikea Billy bookcase he was assembling for his office.... how the hell does a professional engineer screw up a Billy bookcase! Just out of school I worked as an assistant to an engineer from England, trained in the 50s he talked about having to design and make simple machines as tests during his schooling, the guy was properly fantastic to work with and taught me tons!
As I said, I can understand your frustration. I learned to draw on a drafting board, not a computer screen, and of course this teaches you how to plan ahead, and think something through before committing pencil to paper (or funky waxy pencil lead to plastic vellum at the end of the drafting board era). I still have a drafting board in my basement here at home, and still have a lot of those tools I used from even back in high school. Unfortunately after CAD became common, when my boss would hire someone he would always proudly proclaim that this new person "knows AUTOCAD" or whatever the flavor of the day was in CAD programs. I tried in vain to tell him that knowing how to operate a software program is not the same as knowing ho to make a proper engineering drawing. For the last decade of my engineering time, I was the one who assigned and approved all drawing revisions for our facility, and I can tell you that many newer guys struggled to make a proper drawing. And yes I have explained what a socket head cap screw is to many new engineers. No one is born knowing this stuff, so we all get it through experience. That's why I said in another thread that there is value in doing things with your hands, rather than looking at a screen all day. The physical world is not open to opinion - something works or it doesn't. I once remember having a debate with a fellow engineer about a shear calculation I did on a clevis for a lifting device I was designing for loading bearings into a furnace, when he told me I had the area of the pin wrong. I tried to point out it was double shear to no avail. That was 30 years ago and that experience still sticks with me as he and another engineer there were very condescending to me at the time (I was the new guy fresh out of school). I handed him my physics (statics) textbook and told him to check it again before I took it to the boss to settle the argument, and the sheet of paper drifted over the partitions between our desks, with an "okay" and his signature on the bottom. Experience is good, but it can sometimes lead to overconfidence. Not every "new guy" is an idiot, so I learned from that experience, and tried my best to treat the subsequent new guys with respect - mentor rather than criticize, and I try to carry than on with those I help in watch repairs. Yes, it's frustrating to see bad work on watches/clocks, and trust me I see it almost every day. Cheers, Al
Agreed! Drafting boards.... I do miss those. Last year I found my nice old folding T square had been use in the garden to assure the rows went it straight, it was then outside overnight in the damp to warp beyond repair or use. It was likely the only time I ever considered domestic violence but in the end I tossed it out and said nothing. Its not like she left my 30T2 out there with it.
I think the important point here is to bring people on. My generation were lucky in some ways as I started as an Engineering apprentice back in '76 (yes, 40 years man and boy). We were taught how to use tools and have a basic background coupled with having to work on our 1960s cheap cars so it soon becomes obvious how things go together. There's no need for twenty or thirty year olds to do that and modern cars (hi-fi, washing machines, etc) are far too complex in the main to fix. So, my job has a lot of time spent educating people in the same way as Al does with Watchmaking. As Chief Engineer of a project, you're expected to know something about everything such as: aerodynamics; design for manufacturing; drawing standards; the latest FEM and CAD systems; project management; corrosion protection:calming down clients and so on. My specialty really is lightweight structures design and analysis and I sign off many structures to be manufactured and fitted to aircraft, be they wing components, sections of fuselage or vertical/horizontal tail planes. It's been satisfying but it is becoming more political, cost conscious and also more analysis based. I used to size hydraulic system brackets by eye but now we can have a thousand load cases to consider just to get to a similar point... I get many newly qualified (typically M.Sc) people in who don't have that feel for how to use a spanner or ratchet or Allen key. I've often taken my garage tools in to show people and they pick things up quickly, it's just they don't have the experience. I've some very good guys who in thirty years will be saying the same as I could now. There are also some who are not so good but, that's always been true. One question I ask sometimes is "How many original Minis can you hang in tension on a 1/4" bolt?" having just produced one from my desk drawer. That's an aircraft bolt of a slightly smaller diameter than a Bic biro. Not steel or Inconel, just titanium. Most people look aghast as they may know it's allowable is 22300 N but that doesn't mean much in practical terms. The answer is four by the way and that's also true if it's in pure single shear - double shear is twice that (). Oddly, I took some hairspring calcs in to discuss with my people and they were very interested as the hairspring is just a beam (as I often say, everything is a beam or a shear panel) and immediately followed how to calculate the required spring stiffness for a given train count and balance inertia. They were far better with the units than me as I'm either imperial or proper SI - what the hell is a Dyne? Well, it's defined as 10^-5 Newtons and there's a unit I can use. Let's hope that when this current generation of senior Engineers stop working (am counting my remaining time in weeks now and only at four half days each week) there are people who will step up. In my business, I already have a deputy who, after 20 years in the business, has excellent skills and will resolve everything for the future so, it's all certainly in safe hands. He is also excellent at explaining things, that may be considered trivial to us, to other people so, he'll keep bringing the Engineers on. Drafting boards, pah! I'm still using my slide rule (okay, only for drawing straight lines!). Cheers, Chris
Multiple times I had to explain to my apprentice the difference between a coach bolt and a coach screw. For about a month, whenever I sent him off to the stores for one or the other, he came back with the wrong ones.