He Blows Things Up So You Don't Have To

Red Wolf writes "Popular Science reports on what is possibly the world's coolest job. During his 19 years as a laboratory technician for Underwriters Laboratories, Chuck Cramer has set coffeemakers on fire, knocked computers off desks, short-circuited fans, and blown up everything from toasters to curling irons - all in the name of consumer safety."

Comments

Cool job

[hdparm]

Sounds like a cool way to make living.

I'm affraid though, that consumers won't ever be safe, unless Chuk's lab employ my son and few of his friends. Fresh thinking is always good.

Even Cooler Job

[occamboy]

I've got a buddy that tests jet engine failure modes. His group does things to engines that are mounted on BIG concrete blocks and set running at full throttle.

What kind of things do they do to engines? Well...

• firing assorted frozen birds from a cannon at 600 MPH into the engine to see what happens.
• Setting off explosive charges in the engine to make sure that the resulting blizzard of metal ejects out the back of the engine, rather than the sides, where it could wreck mayhem.

The results are filmed for analysis - unfortunately, the films are are confidential.

Re:UL approval means less than it used to

[Surak]

Let's look at what you said backwards a bit shall we? You said:

Many national chains (Wal-Mart etc.) will not carry anything electrical if it doesn't have that UL logo. The testing costs money and takes time which can put small companies at a disadvantage. If your creation is so innovative that UL's quickie lab doesn't quite know what to make of this thing from a company they've never heard of, then it may take a long time (longer than your capital lasts) to get your new widget into national distribution.

But *before* that you said:

Now component makers get UL approval for their components (power supply, power cord, etc.) and then a manufacturer buys this component, uses it in some design that the folks at UL never even saw.

I think you just solved your own problem... :)

Been there, done that ..... almost .....

[ajs318]

My last job involved a lot of testing work, since I was working for a company that made electronic control modules that went in larger items -- tractor transmision controls, gas boiler ignition / fan controls, and the like. Unfortunately, most of the stuff we made was just too well designed to pack up, and there were few spectacular failures. Maybe all the interesting stuff happened on the complete systems ..... we did once send out a batch of tractor gear controllers with the wrong firmware in them. Shortly after that we had to send a technician with a laptop and a programming lead. Shortly after that we had to send another technician with a USB-to-RS232 converter .....

Of course, sometimes the test equipment would give way instead! For "live" testing gas boilers, we had this contraption with a pump, expansion vessel and heat exchanger, allowing the boiler to heat water which was simply chucked down the drain {not much else you can do with it unfortunately .....} and occasionally it would leak big-style, or someone would forget to put the hose in the drain. Never got a decent gas leak though ..... although you could get some interesting smells! {I'm talking modern UK appliances with fan-assisted combustion here, so no CO by definition.}

We had surge test equipment for inducing high-voltage spikes onto the power lines of equipment ..... mains stuff {230V low-current} was never as interesting as automotive stuff {13.5V high-current} when it packed up. The latter would sometimes go on fire. The surge kit was also known to have deleterious effects on oscilloscope input preamps, but how else do you make sure that there really are noise pulses on the leads? Oh, and it used some really brain-dead software that refused to accept any filename longer than 8.3 characters, despite running on Windows 95 OSR2.

One product whose testing I missed was a 12kW electric water heater, which involved passing some 50-odd amps of current {approaching automotive levels and now with the added delights of sensible voltages as well!} through {very fat!} PCB tracks close to a copper tube filled with fast-moving water. As you probably can imagine, one bad connection on that contraption could have led to interesting results.

I don't miss the lousy wages they paid, though ..... nor the way they treated their workers .....

Re:Protect them from themselves?

[The Tyro]

I disagree, but only slightly.

These guys not only protect from poor manufacturering... they're also in the idiot-proofing business.

Manufacturers these days have to take into account nearly every stupid, "hey guys, watch this!" scenario that anyone can do with a product.... and either improve it, or add a warning label (much of this is driven, of course, by our litigious society, and a cadre of personal injury lawyers happy to help).

As an example, I just got a little fire-truck, sit and scoot/walker thingie for my young son. It came with a bunch of stickers you could apply to it... but by far the largest sticker (already applied by the manufacturer) was the enormous trilingual warning label on the back. Man, was I relieved! After all, without that label I might have let him run the thing off the top of the steps or something. I can take a paternalistic lecture from somebody so Uber-1337 in their field that I have no chance of ever understanding it or reaching their level of expertise... but I wish they'd save the common sense hand-holding advice. Most people resent being treated like idiots, so I don't think I'm beyond the pale on this one.

These guys help the manufacturers... but they also help protect joe citizen who puts waaaay too damn many devices on the power strip (Hmmm... nobody HERE would be guilty of that, would they?)

Re:Protect them from themselves?

[Lumpy]

They're not protecting consumers from themselves, but rather from poor manufacturing.

then why is there a warning on my Girlfriends curling iron that states "Do not insert this appliance into any bodily orifices.. severe burns will result."

Sorry, but the UL listing requires warnings for the absolutely stupidest people... like toasters with warning to "do not use in a bathtub"

there is a large part of our population that has an IQ under 100.. (Almost all of them in marketing and sales departments.. ohhh it was a cheap shot but it felt sooo good!)

the UL protects the idiots from themselves by requiring certian warning labels.

Re:Misleading subject

[don_carnage]

You can! We blow stuff up all the time.

My great uncle had a better job at REI

[Neuticle]

- My great uncle Cal used to be the lead engineer for REI. He was responsible for testing all the equipment. Lab equipment was used to test things like the breaking force of carabiners, but a lot of the time he tested stuff in the field i.e. go backpacking or mountaineering with some new gear and abuse the hell out of it. In the attempt to push things to the limit, he often came up with crazy ways to test things, e.g. one time he set up a tent, affixed it to the top of his car and hit the highway to simulate 70mph winds on the tent.

CNN did a spot on him a few years ago before he retired (I need to dig up that tape), profiling him and his job. He invented a few climbing gadgets (I can't remember which now) and improved many others, climbed a load of mountains with some of the more famous mountaineers, and got paid to play outside. Now THAT's a cool job. Last time I talked to him (`02) he was still backcountry skiing out to yurts. He's in his 70s.

(Needless to say: our family's co-op numbers were LOW)

Actually, the world's best test job is...

[panurge]

I once sat on the plane next to the guy who was the quality manager for a large hotel franchise. Yes, he really did get to travel round every exotic location in the world, frequently with family, to test to the limit the facilities, service, you name it. (during the flight he benchmarked the entire cabin crew, pointed out the one that would get promotion and the one who was heading for the DCM - interesting stuff.)

He said that during the Gulf war he had visited more than one hotel which usually had a significant number of visitors from arab countries, and turned up unannounced late at night in full gear with four "wives" in tow to check that the current Middle Eastern situation wasn't adversely affecting the guest experience. I guess that the hours were long and the reports tedious but the compensations were interesting. (including hiring the actresses, I suspect.)

Used to do something similar...

[CharlieG]

I used to be in a slightly different branch of the field, and I knew a lot of the guys from UL when it was on Long Island

You know rugged "Mil-Spec" stuff is. You know how you see the terms "Tested to Mil-Std-810". Thats what I did. Now, this was more than 10 years ago, but I've seen how you can mount hard drives to survive being in a tank. I've seen films of what can go wrong if an external fuel tanl lets go on a Carrier Landing, and I've helped folks design stuff to survive this

BTW think about a computer in a tank. Your in battle, and another tank shoots at you, and ALMOST penetrates, say the turret. That BIG piece of steel if just been pounded big what is effectivly a HUGE hammmer. The computer that as mounted to it has to keep working, so you can return fire, and hopefully live to another day

Or, you mount your hard drive to the Space Shuttle, or to a Delta/Titan/etc. Do you have ANY idea how much those things shake? Not only by transmitted vibration, but by sheer NOISE. The noise alone will rip most consumer items apart

Some fun tests I saw films of? Let's say you have a door (Nuke reactor building). What happens if there is a tornado? A telephone pole can be picked up, and thrown against the door, narrow end first, at about 300 MPH. That door better hold. So you build a prototype, build a wall, and fire a telephone pole at the door at 300 mph, more than once

Other fun tests? Look up the term "Naval Heavyweight shock". Now imagine do that for a living

Re:Used to do something similar...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you build a prototype, build a wall, and fire a telephone pole at the door at 300 mph, more than once

My only question is... where do we get the video?

Re:UL approval there's two types

[lcsjk]

The UL approval process has two parts. One is the Component Recognition program (UR), and the other is the Product Certification program (UL). Components which cannot be used except as part of an assembly cannot get a UL label, only a UR (printed backwards) label. Only your coffee pot, TV and other final products can be "certified". By using only components that have the UR label, a small company can have almost instant approval, and at very low cost. Certain components that have not been submitted to the recognition program, and especially those that connect to voltages greater than 40.2 volts, require very extensive testing in order to get full product certification. By the way, that is why we have so many power cord "bricks". By having the 120 VAC circuit outside the final product, be it a printer or laptop power supply, the "low voltage" product meets most UL (and most european CE) requirements.
I'm here today because that Underwriters approved fuse blew instead of me when, as a four old, I poked a wire in the socket. (Mommy said not to - so I did! I had to know how it worked! Now I'm a analog hardware design engineer)- surprised?

Dot Org (sorta OT)

[robson]

From UL.com's "About" floater:

Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) is an independent, not-for-profit product safety testing and certification organization. We have tested products for public safety for more than a century. Each year, more than 17 billion UL Marks are applied to products worldwide.

Okay, so... isn't this a textbook case for a .org TLD? It bugs me when organizations, for whatever reason, utilize .com when they should really be .org.

Testing template?

[UnknowingFool]

Like all tests, there has to be some sort of design. For example, toys for small children cannot have small parts that can detach and might cause choking. I wonder where he gets his ideas for test templates: Scientific research, common sense, industry standards, or does he scan the Darwin awards for winners and honorable mentions?

That reminds me of the good old days..

[twoslice]

I used to work for a clone manufacturer a long time ago who made IBM PC and AT clones. Every time we built a new model it had to go through CSA testing (Canadian version if UL). When we got them back I swear that some of them were still smoking. To top it all off we had to use working parts! If it did not boot it did not pass inspection.

Interview

[nocomment]

We have got to interview this guy!

Question 1> What what the coolest thing you ever got to blow up, and what were the results of that?

Question 2> What was the most dangerous thing you ever tested that made it to market?

yadda yadda...