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And the funny thing is, the old technology does it better because the frequency was controlled by a large physical inertia.

Large natural gas engines run at 1000 or 900 RPM depending on 50 or 60 Hz. (And all other multiples, 3000/3600RPM, 1000/1200RPM, etc). It makes writing and calibrating the software easy, you only have 2 operating points. But once they are at load and speed, they stay there.

I can't imagine how much 'inertia' is behind a coal plant.

The downside of batteries/DC power is that you need to rectify it. Cheap UPS don't even make a proper sine wave.

I would like to see a correlation of drift and what each any is using for power generation.

We have domestic companies doing the same thing: http://www.cat.com/en_US/artic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

For farms Case is doing autonomous tractors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The technology is there and easy enough that someone built his own version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

steering and brakes always have mechanical fail-safes

Not automotive but.

Cat D7E, M series motor graders and a whole host of other products are 100% by wire.

steering and brakes always have mechanical fail-safes

Not automotive but.

Cat D7E, M series motor graders and a whole host of other products are 100% by wire.

The idea that this all solved for something with a 180 horsepower engine is downright silly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://www.cat.com/en_US/suppo...

Maybe never "all on its own" but with a massively reduced number of people required.

It used to require a lot of people with shovels.

Then it required fewer people with bull dozers.

The big earth movers are already moving to semi-autonomous. Next step is a single 'drone' operator in AC working on the stuff that needs a human to do while a few other dozen in the fleet manage themselves automatically.

http://www.cat.com/en_US/artic...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

20 seconds on google would have answered that question

That equipment will be will do unused for most of year and not be in working order when it's needed.

You use a grader blade.

See above.

Southern states buy plenty of trucks. Attach a plow mount and spreader mount to a few of them.

See above.

It's a rock. As long as you keep it relatively dry which is a problem with known solutions, you have little to worry about.

It will be hard to fine a dry place large enough to store enough salt to cover all the roads in Atlanta.

Not once you factor in ALL the costs. How expensive was the shutdown in Atlanta?

A hell of a lot cheaper than wasting money on unused equipment. Even if they had the equipment. They will still need to shut down the city in order to have the roads clear enough to use it.

How exactly are you supposed to spread salt with dumptrucks?

20 seconds on google would have answered that question. Plenty of places do it. You don't even need a lot of salt spreading equipment as long as you get out in front of the problem on the main roads.

Multi-purpose earth-moving equipment is okay for parking lots and driveways, but would work really poorly and slowly on roads in which you need to continuously push snow to the side, not in front of you

You use a grader blade. Can be mounted to all kinds of vehicles from earthmovers to tractors and pushes the snow to the side. My municipality uses them on the dirt roads around here and on occasion the city streets. Every major city has them and even a lot of small towns do too. Hell you can even lease them on a contingent basis if you want to save money.

Likewise, most city vehicles wouldn't work very well in a task for which they are not designed... there's a reason northern states don't just use pickups with plows on the roads even when they only get an inch or two of snow.

They don't have to work great. They just have to work better than nothing. Southern states buy plenty of trucks. Attach a plow mount and spreader mount to a few of them. And you are wrong that northern states don't use pickups on the road. My own town does just that in many places to give the big snow removal vehicles time to work on the bigger roads.

Salt stockpiles don't last forever... moisture and time are their enemies. It also takes up a huge amount of space just to store.

It's a rock. As long as you keep it relatively dry which is a problem with known solutions, you have little to worry about. Sand can work pretty well too in a lot of cases. And are you seriously going to argue that a major city couldn't find a few acres to store it? Hell, the salt companies will probably maintain it for you for a reasonable retainer.

Most importantly, all of this costs more money to maintain than it costs to recover from not having it.

Not once you factor in ALL the costs. How expensive was the shutdown in Atlanta? How valuable were the lost lives that could have been saved? You seriously think the cost of some durable equipment and salt/sand and a little planning is lower than shutting a major metropolitan area down for days? Glad you aren't my accountant.

This is a boat, not a bus. Now, boats can be incredibly efficient means of transportation if scaled up large enough and loaded to capacity, but using a small boat for a small group is astoundingly inefficient unless you're looking at a sailboat, which won't be fast enough for commuter purposes (or if so, certainly not dry enough).

This is the boat designer and a similar boat: http://www.teknicraft.com/showcase/kachemak-voyager

If we assume that Triumphant is similar to this sister:

engines: 2 x Caterpillar C32 ACERT
hp: 1081kW(1450bhp) @2300rpm

That is apparently not combined hp but the hp of each engine. Only two Cat engines hit 2300 RPM and one is 1600 hp so it can't be that one -- the other one is a 1450 hp model that burns 77.4 gph -- with twins, that amounts to 154.8 gallons/hr. See pdf page 9: http://marine.cat.com/cda/files/1377726/7/Cat%20C32%20ACERT%20Spec%20Sheet%20-%20Commercial.pdf

So each passenger is probably responsible for 3-4 gallons of diesel per hour to ride this boat. In other words, it would probably be greener to send each employee to work alone in an F150.

In what way? I actually contend the opposite, international trade helps most people. The less paid for an item the more money people have. That money can be used to buy other items, pay down debt, or be invested. Of course, until recently, people here in the US lived beyond their means. They continuously borrowed money the buy more stuff.

As for Walmart/Sam's, Walmart now has stores in China. And Chinese make enough money to buy from Walmart, as well as upscale stores. I don't recall what newspaper it was but one reported the first week Apple's new iPhone was available in China more than 1 million were sold there. Seeing as Apple products are only affordable to the wealthy, there are a lot of wealthy people in China. And those people buy American products sending money to the US. Another American company making money in China is Caterpillar, which builds construction equipment in Indiana employing thousands of people. John Deere based in IL does business in Brazil, China, and around the world. There are many other US based multinational businesses who also are in Brazil, China, India, and Russia (BRIC) helping employ more American workers.

And without international trade you would not be using a PC, or a cell phone. The US does not have a ready supply of a number of metals used to make these products. A major source of Coltan, columbite–tantalite, is Congo. Unfortunately it's mining fuels the conflict there.

GE leads a call to develop rare earth minerals in the US to reduce our dependence on Chinese suppliers. If China wanted to it could shutdown a number of US businesses by stopping exporting these minerals ton the US.

So who's the jerk?

Falcon

Also, read their abridged company history, then contrast to my quick and dirty improbable history.

http://www.cat.com/about-the-company

Note, it is a relic from the 1950s, post military industrial boom. It is a relic from the durable goods era, and predates the disposable goods era. Rather than leave the us, it expanded into a niche market and stayed there.

Nice condescending reply, except for the fact that you should at least *triple* all the current draws you state for automotive starter motors.

Starter motors for 4 cylinder engines typically are about 1kW. Ones for V8s (and small diesel engines) are about 1.5-2kW. The starter motors I fit at work are 24V and 8kW, but they go on 18 litre V12 diesel engines. That gives 120, 240 and 350 amps, respectively.

And if your jumper leads are getting hot when cranking (or drawing 60A), throw away those more-plastic-than-copper ones and buy yourself a decent set. Hint: they should cost at least a hundred bucks and you won't be able to carry them out of the store in a plastic bag, as they'll tear through the bottom of them. The cheap ones are designed to merely join two batteries and share the charging current in the hope that you'll get enough juice into the flat battery for it to start the engine.

Oh, and IT miracles? Ummm. I once swapped our failing site server VM (for our minegem installation) over to one of our console PCs one night when the server decided it didn't have any network cards any more. Worked so good, we've dropped the server completely and now just have a few consoles with the VM installed as backups.

Or the time I had an array failure on our Proliant fileserver and had to crank up some netware emulation on our wheezy old linux mail server for the one (sigh) legacy dos-based netware-login PC that ran a bunch of process control gear for our lab.

Or the afternoon I spent reconfiguring a Tiny Tiger based board that I was using to interface some lab balances into a gadget that recorded the position/speed of a critical bit of sampling equipment because some idiot had dropped our ageing Compaq PenPC and killed its drive.

Actually, those last two were a giant pain the bum. I'm glad I left that place, because crap like that happened all the time.

Given Clinton raised taxes (the largest tax raise in history if the Republicans are to be believed) and he left office with a robust economy and a balanced budget

Given that Clinton raised taxes in 1993 and the boom in the economy was in the later '90s, it's more likely the 1997 tax cuts did more.

and Bush reversed all Clinton's taxes (and many other policies) resulting in enormous tax reductions, and he left office with a busted economy and unemployment rapidly approaching 10% I find it difficult to understand how anybody can still be pushing supply side economics

HAHA! In 1997 when Clinton was still president, not only were taxes cut but the economy boomed. The economy started souring, was in a recession, at the end of his terms in office, not on Bush's watch.

I would put in a law that requires some percentage of any product consumed in the US (say for products with $100 Million gross) must be produced at least at the 25% level (of products consumed by US people) by US workers.

Doing so would result in other nations retaliating and thus shut down trade. That, like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act wich had a hand in making the Great Depression worse than it otherwise would have been, would cause another depression. Maybe one in five US employees depends on exports and you would have many of them lose their jobs. Caterpillar has some stats on US exports. They like GE and other companies export a lot to China. Here's a list of United States Exports by Product Section in US Dollars from 2001 to 2005.

Falcon

A gas generator would make more sense as the infrastructure is already available to fuel them.

4 - G3516 LE should do the trick, plus there isn't a single point of failure. Get 5 generators and run them all at partial load.

What happens when BOB gets wet?

So why not run a gas generator?

Quite a few municipalities are already buying them for landfill gas and sewage gas. And they'll run a whole let dirtier fuel than I imagine these will. China bought a ton of them to burn methane from coal mines.

I wish they gave hard units on what these black boxes can do, but for $4.5M you could have 3 - 6.5 MW generators (PDF).

19.5MW of power for $4.5M, something tells me that these things don't generate 19.5MW of power.

So why not run a gas generator?

Quite a few municipalities are already buying them for landfill gas and sewage gas. And they'll run a whole let dirtier fuel than I imagine these will. China bought a ton of them to burn methane from coal mines.

I wish they gave hard units on what these black boxes can do, but for $4.5M you could have 3 - 6.5 MW generators (PDF).

19.5MW of power for $4.5M, something tells me that these things don't generate 19.5MW of power.

Here are the problems with immortal caterpillars... If they behead eachother, do they gain in strength? Do they ever turn into moths/butterflies, or do they maintain immortality by staying in caterpillar form?

So... we're not talking about the bulldozers? Well consider ME dissapointed. My bulldozer breaks down WAY too much.

I agree that there's an appealing aspect to "Buy Local", but the reality is that it's economically inefficient. I think you'd be surprised by the aggregate effect of this on the economy if everyone were to do it.

What about the subjective components of cost? More importantly, what about future costs? I'm sure you're familiar with arguments for protectionism, so what is your response to them?

When one nation enacts protectionist laws other nations follow suit shutting down exports. The protectionist law Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act made the Great Depression worse than it would have been without the law. No matter how it's sliced and diced national economies depend on international trade. As a recent example look at US based Caterpiller, the world's largest heavy equipment manufacturer for construction and mining. Because other countries can't buy Cats they have had to close down factories putting the employees out of work.

Why do you want to limit economic improvement to certain people?

There are a ton of answers for this. The simplest is selfishness -- if I help my physical neighbor, I get more benefit out of that than if I help some random dude across the globe. For instance, maybe he'll find the cash to put in better landscaping so I don't have to look at his ugly brown grass each evening.

By helping someone half way around the world you enable him or her to buy what the US exports, which creates jobs thus helping your neighbor. Or don't you have Cat employees next door? What about farmers? The US is the largest food exporter, largely because you the taxpayer gives hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) and Cargill. If you really want to help your neighbor then tell government not to give his tax dollars to large corporations.

Falcon

How exactly is the concept of a portable, modular power generator anything new? The construction industry relies on widespread use of portable generators for decades. Is this considered innovative just because the power outlet is connected to a computer?

If that's not enough, then move up to the 30 KW model. Kohler makes generators big enough to power your entire neighborhood if you are willing to buy it.

Kohler? Pfft! If you're gonna power the neighborhood, do it right! Cat G3412

5,000 cubic feed of natural gas per hour may get a tad spendy though...

Caterpillar offers such a system: http://www.cat.com/cda/layout?m=37516&x=7. Their flywheel UPS keeps the electronics up and running allowing the diesel/gas turbine generators to start. The idea is you don't need a big battery bank that holds minutes or hours of power. You just need enough power to allow the generators to kick in and transfer switch to resume power. It is much more efficient, cost effective and low maintenance than batteries.

Another idea for high density power storage is the molten salt battery. They are being used by GE for their hybrid diesel electric locomotives to store regenerative braking energy. The other interesting part is they can be built with relatively inexpensive and non toxic materials. The electrolyte must be heated but another interesting fact is when they cool down and solidify they can hold a charge for an extremely long time (50+ years!).

Actually you do.

Yeah, because of the fifty busiest ports in the world, Canada has one on the list (Vancouver) and the United States has six and five of them move more cargo than Vancouver.

The only ports that freeze are in the great lakes, you know the ones that ship out the majority of the grain to the rest of the world.

This confuses me. Not the freezing ports part, but the grain shipping, because the US exports twelve times as much grain as Canada. With 22% going via California, and the next 16% going via Washington and New York.

It means that if you throw a hissy fit, we simply say 'our market is now europe' and they buy our goods, or japan, or anyone else.

Yeah, because Asia is going to totally want to import goods from a half way around the world where it's twice as expensive to produce the goods, than they will from multiple countries right next door where labor is cheaper. I mean why import goods from Malaysia into Japan when you can ship stuff from Canada.

And yeah, I agree, it's going to be totally trivial for Canada to find new markets for 80% of their total exports. Not.

While you're very good at consuming our goods, and tell me something do you even have the manufacturing base left to make anything?

I don't know. Maybe air planes, heavy equipment, trucks, microprocessors, DRAM & flash. Then of course we have things like tanks, airplanes & submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter planes & submarines. And there are vaccines and medicines.

But, hey, we import our socks, so yeah, I can totally see why you'd think the US isn't capable of producing anything.

The only reason the US imports manufactured goods is because it's cheaper. Barring protectionist policies, every industrialized country does the same.

Yeah, who'd ever think you could trademark a common word?

I'm so confused and amazed at the lack of understand of the difference between a patent, a copyright, and a trademark around these parts. Trademarking something does not mean that no one can ever use it again for any reason at all.

Well, I'm not sure a 250KW generator is going to get a datacenter very far. Most require several MW. Someone posted this facility had 10 2MW generators when he took a tour. It may be more now. There have been many stories on /. about this in the last year. Datacenters are being delayed coming online because they can't get enough of the big generators they need. In the datacenters I've been in the generators are big - 10 feet tall, etc. They require specialized maintenance contracts to keep the 5+ generators up to spec. One place I was in even arranged to have fuel helicoptered or 4WD'd in should a natural disaster wipe out roads. They paid extra to ensure they had 2 months worth of fuel available to them via this method.

The reason why you have off-site replication is for when the redundant systems fail. And they DO fail. Water lines break. Things blow up. Literally. I know of a datacenter that BLEW UP (well, a wall did any way). It's a long story, that one. If your business can live with the very rare 2-3 hour outage (netflix) then you wouldn't pay extra. If your business would loose A LOT of money/clients if this happened, then you need to have off-site recovery capabilities regardless of the redundancies in place at site "A." Every time this happens it seems to shake up the money tree for the IT department.

If you run a large data center, you might buy power systems from these guys:
http://www.cat.com/cda/layout?m=37508&x=7

Since this is slashdot and everyone wants reasonable numbers, here we go.

First off. Gear ratios are normally specified as 2.3, 2.4. These are meaning 2.3:1. 2.3 revolutions of the engine per revolution of the tire. 1:10000 is backwards.

Find: Gear ratios required to move 200 car train to 100 mph.

Assumptions:
Gear ratio specified is final engine:wheels gear ratio. I'm not going to deal with separate gear rations, final drives and rear end ratios.
Train wheels are 18" in diameter.
Trains are pulling the same freight that goes over the road in those big boxes that move in between.
Gear ratios from a truck 'scale' well to large size. Meaning if 1 semi needs X:1 ratio to move 1 car. Y*X:1 ratio is needed to move Y cars. This is just to get the same amount of torque multiplication.
50% overlap in powerbands. On manual transmissions redline in 1st gear doesn't match up to idle in 2nd. There is a bit of overlap, allowing you to drive for speed, pulling, economy, etc.
Our manual transmission on highway truck for pulling 1 'car' will be a Cat C13. With 1550 ft-lbs. Our manual transmission locomotive will be running a Caterpillar C3516C
Since I can't find a torque curve for the 3516. We will use HP=Torque (ft-lb)*RPM/5252.
Diesel torque curves are flat for their operating range, 1000-1800 RPM.
Eaton 13 speed manual transmission, first gear 19.7:1. Eaton rear end ration of 2:1.
Calculations:
HP ~= 500 @ 1000 RPM. Therefore torque is around 2626 ft-lbs for the C3517.

Torque required to get 1 car moving is 19.7*2*1550 ft-lbs=61070 ft-lbs
Torque required to get 200 cars moving is 200*61070 ft-lbs=1.2E7 ft-lbs
If the engine puts on 2626 ft-lbs, the first gear ratio will need to be: 200*61070/2626= 4651:1.


18" wheels * Pi = 56.5 in / rotation.
Speed in First gear at 1400 RPM = Speed in Second Gear at 1000 RPM.
etc
This will allow the 50% overlap for operating in torque bands.


So you're in 1st gear. You're turning 1000 RPM (you finally got your massive clutch pack to sync up). You are going a blistering:
56.5 in / rotation * 1000 rotations / minute * 1/4651.1 * 1 foot / (12 inches) * 1 mile / (5280 feet) * (60 minutes) / (1 hour)=0.012 MPH


By time you're upto 1400 RPM you're now cranking out 0.016 MPH.


So you need to find your 2nd gear ratio
56.5 in / rotation * 1000 rotations / minute * 1/X* 1 foot / (12 inches) * 1 mile / (5280 feet) * (60 minutes) / (1 hour)=0.016 MPH.
Solve for X.
Second gear ratio is 3320:1.
Etc. I set up a spreadsheet to calculate all the gears (With much help from my TI-89 to get numbers). I published it through google docs here: "Manual Transmission Locomotive".

So you were correct, my hyberbole numbers were completely off. However I think it illustrated the point. A gear ratio of 4600:1 means one gear is going to have 4600 teeth for every tooth another gear has. In addition you're going to need 28 gears to cruise at 1000 RPM and 100 MPH. Not to mention the size of shafts and gear sizes needed to transmit 1.2E7 ft-lbs. On-highway trucks already have multiple clutch packs to get that amount of torque in a small overall diameter. (If you're patient, I could find my machine design books and I could calculate the number of clutch packs given an overall radius 1 ft/clutch. Heck I could run the numbers required to get the gear sizes to transmit the torques)

Plus you bring up tons of feasability issues. Braking would be quite difficult. Most locomotives use EMF braking. They turn all their electric motors into generators and dump all that energy to a grid. I suppose you could install a compression brake and make the engineer downshift thr

Since this is slashdot and everyone wants reasonable numbers, here we go.

First off. Gear ratios are normally specified as 2.3, 2.4. These are meaning 2.3:1. 2.3 revolutions of the engine per revolution of the tire. 1:10000 is backwards.

Find: Gear ratios required to move 200 car train to 100 mph.

Assumptions:
Gear ratio specified is final engine:wheels gear ratio. I'm not going to deal with separate gear rations, final drives and rear end ratios.
Train wheels are 18" in diameter.
Trains are pulling the same freight that goes over the road in those big boxes that move in between.
Gear ratios from a truck 'scale' well to large size. Meaning if 1 semi needs X:1 ratio to move 1 car. Y*X:1 ratio is needed to move Y cars. This is just to get the same amount of torque multiplication.
50% overlap in powerbands. On manual transmissions redline in 1st gear doesn't match up to idle in 2nd. There is a bit of overlap, allowing you to drive for speed, pulling, economy, etc.
Our manual transmission on highway truck for pulling 1 'car' will be a Cat C13. With 1550 ft-lbs. Our manual transmission locomotive will be running a Caterpillar C3516C
Since I can't find a torque curve for the 3516. We will use HP=Torque (ft-lb)*RPM/5252.
Diesel torque curves are flat for their operating range, 1000-1800 RPM.
Eaton 13 speed manual transmission, first gear 19.7:1. Eaton rear end ration of 2:1.
Calculations:
HP ~= 500 @ 1000 RPM. Therefore torque is around 2626 ft-lbs for the C3517.

Torque required to get 1 car moving is 19.7*2*1550 ft-lbs=61070 ft-lbs
Torque required to get 200 cars moving is 200*61070 ft-lbs=1.2E7 ft-lbs
If the engine puts on 2626 ft-lbs, the first gear ratio will need to be: 200*61070/2626= 4651:1.


18" wheels * Pi = 56.5 in / rotation.
Speed in First gear at 1400 RPM = Speed in Second Gear at 1000 RPM.
etc
This will allow the 50% overlap for operating in torque bands.


So you're in 1st gear. You're turning 1000 RPM (you finally got your massive clutch pack to sync up). You are going a blistering:
56.5 in / rotation * 1000 rotations / minute * 1/4651.1 * 1 foot / (12 inches) * 1 mile / (5280 feet) * (60 minutes) / (1 hour)=0.012 MPH


By time you're upto 1400 RPM you're now cranking out 0.016 MPH.


So you need to find your 2nd gear ratio
56.5 in / rotation * 1000 rotations / minute * 1/X* 1 foot / (12 inches) * 1 mile / (5280 feet) * (60 minutes) / (1 hour)=0.016 MPH.
Solve for X.
Second gear ratio is 3320:1.
Etc. I set up a spreadsheet to calculate all the gears (With much help from my TI-89 to get numbers). I published it through google docs here: "Manual Transmission Locomotive".

So you were correct, my hyberbole numbers were completely off. However I think it illustrated the point. A gear ratio of 4600:1 means one gear is going to have 4600 teeth for every tooth another gear has. In addition you're going to need 28 gears to cruise at 1000 RPM and 100 MPH. Not to mention the size of shafts and gear sizes needed to transmit 1.2E7 ft-lbs. On-highway trucks already have multiple clutch packs to get that amount of torque in a small overall diameter. (If you're patient, I could find my machine design books and I could calculate the number of clutch packs given an overall radius 1 ft/clutch. Heck I could run the numbers required to get the gear sizes to transmit the torques)

Plus you bring up tons of feasability issues. Braking would be quite difficult. Most locomotives use EMF braking. They turn all their electric motors into generators and dump all that energy to a grid. I suppose you could install a compression brake and make the engineer downshift thr

Actually, caterpillars are a well-known threat to the internet, although they tend to affect hardware more than software. (So you're still correct the icon is wrong, of course.)

This is a good step towards construction of a lunar or mars base. I was hoping for something that would get Caterpillar or Terex involved, though.

Also - are these structural building elements the standard concrete cinderblocks (CMU) that are used to build shopping malls, etc?

Chip H.

Easy!

1. Get some Cat powering equipment
2. Plug your MP3 player AC adapter into it
3. Sell excess Cat power to local utility
4. Profit!

'fraid not. One dump truck should do the trick.

Not really, especially for this size device.

Caterpillar (and others) now use a Rubber Endless Loop Track (i.e. BIG rubber band). No pins, no shoes, no clanking.

RE:
http://www.cat.com/cda/layout?m=37840&x=7

That is the wrong cat. Now this is a cat.

Why bother with that German toy when you can can get a good ole American Catipillar

You can take the putzy Liebherr 252 and fit it inside of a CAT 797B and the CAT will take it away at the ole double nickel on cruise control.
This beautiful CAT takes up 3 full Amercan lanes. However any vehicle under 41 inches high (attn: Ferrari owners) can easily blow by this in the middle lane. And don't worry about the driver, he'll see you comin' with his rear-view camera. And for the SUV-haters out there all SUV's would be stuck just waiting for this beauty to get there.

You mentioned that the output HP on the engines varied depending on the country of sales -- that's the key. The engine could have been exactly the same, but the emissions equipment might not have been, software or otherwise.

Here's an example: my previous employer has a certain 15 litre engine that can be set to at least a range of 435 to 550 HP @ 2100 rpm using the same engine hardware and merely a software change. For the 435 HP version, one exhaust path (smoke stack) on the truck would be suffient to vent the pressure/heat generated at this setting. However, if that same truck and engine were later flashed to the 550 HP profile, the driver would likely never see the total expected increase in power and would also see increased oil temperatures under load.

Looking at the engine specifically does not give a proper picture of all that's going on in the camera/car simile.

You mentioned that the output HP on the engines varied depending on the country of sales -- that's the key. The engine could have been exactly the same, but the emissions equipment might not have been, software or otherwise.

Here's an example: my previous employer has a certain 15 litre engine that can be set to at least a range of 435 to 550 HP @ 2100 rpm using the same engine hardware and merely a software change. For the 435 HP version, one exhaust path (smoke stack) on the truck would be suffient to vent the pressure/heat generated at this setting. However, if that same truck and engine were later flashed to the 550 HP profile, the driver would likely never see the total expected increase in power and would also see increased oil temperatures under load.

Looking at the engine specifically does not give a proper picture of all that's going on in the camera/car simile.

Yup. Its called a 797. Caterpillar 797.
V24 diesel engine, with four turbos. Three thousand, four hundred ponies. Yeah, you heard me: 3400hp.
Seven forward gears. 42 inch brakes. Can haul up to 380 tons of your kids crap.
Course, it only does like 42mph (loaded) while getting 0.3 mpg. Yes, at 47 feet long and 23 feet tall, its kind of hard to park. But you can rest assured that your 13 foot tires are bigger than your neighbours' Escalade! Or his entire Chevvy for that matter.

Yours for only 3.4 million! (Some assembly required).


(PS: All joking aside, i've seen one of these beasts up close, and they're just insane. The pictures don't even do it justice.)

Yup. Its called a 797. Caterpillar 797.
V24 diesel engine, with four turbos. Three thousand, four hundred ponies. Yeah, you heard me: 3400hp.
Seven forward gears. 42 inch brakes. Can haul up to 380 tons of your kids crap.
Course, it only does like 42mph (loaded) while getting 0.3 mpg. Yes, at 47 feet long and 23 feet tall, its kind of hard to park. But you can rest assured that your 13 foot tires are bigger than your neighbours' Escalade! Or his entire Chevvy for that matter.

Yours for only 3.4 million! (Some assembly required).


(PS: All joking aside, i've seen one of these beasts up close, and they're just insane. The pictures don't even do it justice.)

By far, the worst development job I worked on was a machine tool job.

The job sounded simple enough - take an existing line running on a fully maxed out Allen Bradley Pyramid Integrator, transition the entire production line (all 116 operator stations, plus automated part routing and testing) over to the new Allen Bradley ControlLogix. Now the kink - we had to do the transition while the plant was running and we could not shut down the line for any reason!

Did I mention that we also were expanding the data tracking for each part in the schedule system by 40% and were also adding 40% new I/O at the same time?

The project was slated to run for 6 weeks in the field. After 9 months - when I finally had enough and basically told the project manager to go get screwed - the project was probably half done.

It's pretty bad when you spend so much time on-site that the entire hotel staff is on a first name basis with you.

I wonder is DT Industries ever finished that project at Caterpillar Mossville Engine Plant.

Caterpillar makes a flywheel-based UPS system.

First off, just to let you know, these questions should be in the askslashdot section.

As for your questions.
1) Girlfriend, I have a fiance, trust me buddy they're over priced. There like a backhoe, you're much better off just "renting" the equipment. If you know what I mean.

2) Under arm fragrence, yes this is a natural defense mechanisim, It must work, you are still alive.

3) Ants, If they're the cute kind that don't bite, let them be, they are the poor mans maid, they will remove all the stale food from around your desk. and for god sakes man, you should know better than to let your self run out of Mountain Dew

4) Got Root... easy... here Now you can make all the k3wl shirts you could imagine.

Hope I could help

-Forget 0 to 60. It's 95 to 55 that counts!

Jet powered bikes? No, seriously, turbine generators are efficient and low-maintainence. Too bad all that waste heat can't be used more effectively (its used as a dryer or for general-purpose heating in some industrial applications). Check out this neat brochure.

Jet powered bikes? No, seriously, turbine generators are efficient and low-maintainence. Too bad all that waste heat can't be used more effectively (its used as a dryer or for general-purpose heating in some industrial applications). Check out this neat brochure.

*COUGH* fixs HTML *COUGH*

When ever a new pentium 4 CPU is released Germany experiences sudden lag.

When ever new office toys are sent out for review Australia takes a hit

and when ever some idiot with a backhoe digs up a backbone line, well hell, the entire USA goes ploink.

Its a caterpillar D9 model tracked bulldozer. They are pretty big almost 500 hp, and you would have to be in heavy industry, like mining or construction to be likely to operate one. Cat has a picture of one in action.

Caterpillar also are releasing GPS navigation and guidance as a factory fitted option in their Challenger MT700 series of agricultural tractors.

Caterpiller sent a little promotional flywheel to work one day, pretty novel idea I think, but the one from beacon has to be placed underground??? why is that, pretty difficult to implement! the CAT UPS is only 10 feet Square and performes comprably if not superiorly!

If it's a new house, meaning you haven't broken ground yet and you're still talking to the architect, then you can make the energy savings work. If it's an existing house, then there's quickly diminishing returns.

The Canadians experimented years ago with super-insulated houses located up on Hudson Bay. When I say superinsulated, I mean four-foot thick insulated walls with foot-thick panels that closed over windows at night. It wound up being that the body heat from the occupants almost heated the house. If you cooked, even in the dead of winter, you had to open a window. Some of the solar heating panels were disconnected because it actually overheated the house. If you insulated a Florida or Arizona house that much, you could keep it nice and cold inside. (Insulation doesn't just keep heat in.)

If it's solar power you want, well, that kinda works. You can live off it, but it takes a lifestyle change, and some rewiring. No distributed.net cracking for you, and you'll need to get rid of all those appliances (microwave, stove, VCR) that use power when they're not on (those little clocks and indicator lights add up). The Chicago Tribune ran an article a few months ago about apartment dwellers, in urban Chicago, who had gone solar. It can be done, it costs money, and a lifestyle change is mandatory. No blow-drying your hair, no clothes dryer, no electric oven.

Wind works pretty well, depending upon where you live, and depending upon zoning laws (neighbors may not want one looming over everything). There's some concern that wind power kills birds, but since they tend to place those flailing blades in prime bird habitat (open grassy fields), then it may not be a causal relationship. All the old windmills and wind-powered water pumps don't kill birds, so someone needs to get a big grant and do more research. It might be habitat/proximity, and it might be blade design. Maybe noisier blades would help.

What alternative energy for an existing home does do is cut down peak use, and perhaps spin your meter backwards sometimes. There's tax breaks for alternative energy sources, but basically be prepared to write the whole expense of installation off, and consider it paying off Mom Nature's bills. Figure $10-20k to get anything significant going. You'll need a big bank of batteries to store that peak power to consume during off times (like nighttime), or just spin the meter backwards and sell it to the local utility.

If you're lucky enough to have a running stream nearby, there are companies that sell mini-hydro devices. It's not a small dam, but just a small turbine that a head of water spins.

Try http://www.homepower.com as a great starting point.

Contrary to Bush's pathetic energy plan, the real solution is (in order), Lifestyle change, convervation, and consumption limiters (insulation, efficiency changes [better appliances]). Drilling for Alaskan oil won't create one watt of power for California since California doesn't have any commerical power plants that use Petrol as a power source. They may augment power generation with these things, but it's not really what you build a power plant from.

Fixed gas-turbine installations are common. Stanford University has its own power plant, installed in the 1980s and recently expanded. Those usually run full time, unlike the Diesels.