British Engineering at it's best!

[ImanCarrot]

What to do if your chiller fan packs up on your CNC controller?

Rip a couple out of two old PC's and duct tape them to the case hehe.

(This is a server I fixed, but it'll work I s'pose on Controllers

Iain

[lakeside]

that looks like something NASA did on Applo 13 and it worked you are a true engineer

[NC Cams]

The supposed story on how duct tape became known as 200mph tape:

In the mid/late 60's, Ford was racing at Lemans with their GT40 cars. They were having a problem with the bodies fitting tight and a car or two lifted off the ground at 200mph going down the Mulsanne straight when the rear body work developed a gap and lifted the cars off the ground. - this was before they put in chicanes to slow down the cars.

Anyway, somebody phoned back to Detroit and told the purchasing dept to shake down the vendors for a fix. Somebody got hold of somebody at 3M who had this new product that they were playing with to fix furnace ducts - they were going to release "duct tape" in a short time and somebody said "WTF, (what the f***), let's try it".

Atlhough it was silver to match ducts they could make it in whatever color. So they crafted up some generic uncolored white tape and air shipped it to LeMans for them to try taping the bodys down to keep them from distorting and letting air in at 200mph.

The stuff worked and supposedly this is how "duct tape" got the nick name or "200mph tape". There isn't a race team ANYWHERE that doesn't have/use duct tape anymore and it is supposedly traceable back to Ford's invovlvement at LeMans way back when....

So, yes, racing does improve the breed and it does aid in product development in ways that go beyond the intended consequences. It would be interesting if someone could confirm this story.... Like is someone from "Mythbusters" a visitor to this site???

[posix]

I don't know if that could be confirmed or not but a good friend of mine who's an auto mechanic allways keeps a roll of duck tape in the boot. Told me it was the most important bit of kit to have when sh*t hits the fan. Fix the exhaust, make up a timing belt (women's nylon socks could be used for the alternator belt as well)...anything!

[mike hide]

bih !!!!!!!! keeps a roll in the "trunk" has to be somewhere in "limeyland" but where ?????

[posix]

W4 - right smack in the middle of london mate!

[greybeard]

My only claim to auto fame is repairing a carb with dental floss.
Came across a guy on the A14 at 6am with a broken down beetle. The inlet pipe casting had snapped off and was still in the petrol pipe.
Tied it up tight onto the carb with the only 'string' we had - dental floss.
Folowed him to the next garage ok, but don't know what happened after that.
John

[ballscrewed]

Thats funny that you could trace Fords way of putting a bandaid fix on everything so far back. I think that this is the main reason they are still around. It still think its amazing that Ford has not closed there doors long ago. Any other company that will come up with an idea and push it on the people to do there beta testing would have been gone along time ago. I have never seen a product any where that has as many mid production parts changes as a ford vehicle. Hurry up build a vehicle put it out there and if something breaks we will put a diffrent part on it and hope it works. What ever happened to long term testing? And why do people keep coming back?
Aaron

[posix]

I met a chap once who worked at the "cost-cutting department" at dagenham some years ago. He told me "buy a car that's 18 months into production, that's when the parts are best because all bugs have been ironed out and the best materials are used, after that cheaper and cheaper bits are substituted..." So there...

[NC Cams]

He's what happended:

As computers became more prevalent, the pressures came about to abolish testing and do more computer modeling. Cheaper and quicker is/was the manatra. Initially this works/helps but it does NOT address long term durability because you can't predict everything that happens as the part lives unless you continually tweak the model.

THen they started the kick with DFMEA's (design failure mode evaluation analysis). This is where you try to anticipate the design faults/failures and prevent them via NOT designing in problems in the first place. Good idea BUT many instances of prevention are best predicted by PAST experience. How can you anticipate failures if you've never seen some of the dumb a$$ way's people screw stuff up (flame or arc welding gas tanks without filling them with inert gas for one....)

Now, the coupe-de-grace - early retirements. When you force the old timers out, you ship out some deadwook BUT you also ship out your most well trained, knowledgeable experience base.

The guys who know how to get rid of axle tramp with leaf springs, how to intuitively apply caster stagger or what NOT to do with fuel lines or gas tanks are, of late, the first to be let go. Seems it is cheaper to retrain new, fresh college kids OVER AND OVER that to keep some veterans around.

"Technical continuum" is how I refer to it. Take the old knowledge and recycle, update and improve it rather than reinvent the wheel with each new model year.

I've yet to see where a CFD (computation fluid dynamics) study means squat as compared to an iteritively developed port done by someone who's spent hours on a flow bench and dyno making horsepower. But they still do it and are letting their legacy knowledge slip idly by or giving it walking papers.

Finally, the bane of the industry - MBA's. THis is where some fancy a$$ school teaches you how to manage a business via book learning and cook book formulae. Saw it first hand where some street wise experience based business people cleaned the clocks of the "whiz kids" from a noted business school. When the final straw took place, a call was made by a victor of the spoils to a competitor. The call was literally, "you won't believe what we sold those stupid SOB's (meaning the hot shot MBA's) this time...". This was the final straw that took a $200million cash cow and turned it into a faded memory.

Said it before - deserves repeating. Treachery and old age will overcome youth and enthusiasm. Don't they realize that we already did what a lot of the kids haven't even thought of. Moreover, MBA schools NEVER document the failures they facilitated via their self serving "case studies"???

[mike hide]

Never will understand the Brits, Could not make money out of the mini, people are standing in line here to buy them , I guess Dagenham is still in business but the only Brit owned car company I know of these days is Morgan, and with a name like that It's probably welsh. Where are the Rileys ,the Wolsleys, the Humbers ,the MG, the Austins, the morris's,the Triumphs,the Sunbeams and on and on ......mjh

[posix]

Uh someone is getting old(er)!