Yep, it is the crew. The guys who test the electronics make sure of that. I can show you items that would have broken just because of the vibration during a road march, never mind combat. When we got done, it was rugged enough to take what gets dished out. As for improving the design of the crew? Talk to your choice of either the man upsairs, or Darwin
The "Hammer shock" tests are the Lightweight and MediumWeight shock tests - been there, done that. The one with the explosives is the heavyweight shock that I talked about in my first post
Your right about the paperwork
BTW I was involved with the ADCAP MK48s, various BRIs, and some periscope projects (retrofitting a replacement for the cable reels on the 688 boats)
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
Surplus PLGRs have been around for a while, and as far as I know, are NOT a problem. The problem is with the encryption card that goes WITH the PLGR. Without the card (which changes regularly), the unit is no more accurate than a civilian GPS unit, as it will not be able to decode the P-code, and falls back to CA only mode, which is the same signal civilian units use
Yes, it's exponential in the "Non-interesting" part of the curve. When you look at total failures (as a percentage), less than 10% of the total parts will fail during the "Bottom" of the curve, and the rest are fairly evenly split between the 2 sides. It's one of the reasons that companies can offer extended warrantees on electronics as cheaply as they do, and for it to be their greatest profit center
Buy the product, use and abuse it during the original warrantee period, and it'll break if it's going to break. REAL quality minded mfgs can do stress screening for less $$$ than the return cost of repairs, and cut the infant mortality (in the field) to almost nothing. This is where the often heard "Quality is free" mantra came from. It's that Quality can cost less than repairs do, and has the side benefit of getting a rep for good products
Of course, the real problem is that neither electronics, nor mechanical items have a exponential failure curve
Mechanical items tend to fail due to wearout - aka, they become more likely to fail as time goes on
Electronics follow a "Bathtub" curve. A high initial rate, that rapidly drops to a VERY low rate. It stays at that LOW rate of failure for MANY hours, and then the rate increases rapidly during "wearout" - sort of like the cross section of a bathtub - hence the name
The whole concept of "Burn In" - or better yet, Stress Screening is to remove the initial high rate of failure defects, with removing ANY of the bottom of the curve. A properly defined Stress Test can do this. These tests usually involve some sort of temperture/power cycling, along with some sort of vibration testing (usually a pseudo random vibration profile)
I got my start in programming while running a stress screening lab. When the tests run 24/7, you either automate your data collection, or have folks work 24/7 - guess which is cheaper? So, I got to design the tests, and then write the software to run the test racks
And technically, in almost all states they are illegal. Here in NYC, they have just started enforcing that law. ANY cover over your plate, expect the red and white lights in your mirror, and a ticket that looks a lot like a speeding ticket - Points and a fine
Re:Changing Voltage CHanges nothing
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 1
Dude - I missread you first post - My bad. I wasn't even thinking about rigs and RF, but more like the general power stuff in the car! (I had just finished discusssing why 42 volts helps in general)
Charlie 73 de kc2ixe
Re:Changing Voltage CHanges nothing
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 1
actually, your current 12V battery is a 13.8 volt battery (we nominally call it 12) - the 42 Volt system was specifically chosen to be a multiple of 3x. The intital cars will probably have 3 batteries in series. Yo will get 12V by tapping off the first battery above ground.
One of the big problems they have in cars is I^2R losses. So, if the amount of power a device draws stays the same, you will be reducing the current drawn by 3X, which reduces losses by that I^2 factor. It allows them to use smaller wire, which saves resources, money, and most important - weight! They figure they can lower the weight of the car, and therefore increase fuel economy
Re:dang, I need a jumpstart...
on
42-Volt Autos
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I have to agree with this. I remember when Mom and Dad's 69 Catalina went over the 100k mile mark, they held a party on the side of the road (Yes, they knew it would happen on the trip, and brought a cooler). Nowadays, it's no big deal - My truck has 325k miles on it, and has never needed any work
Believe it or not, some of this is die to one of the few true current uses of "Nanotechnology", which is defined my most scientist as anything involving stuff hat has one dimension 1um
The use is in cutting tools. The industry has switch to all "insert carbide" cutting tools. The big advance in this is that the particles used to make these inserts to are smaller than 1um. This allows the cutting tool to be both hard and tough. This allows things like machining some parts pre-hardened and others at higher speed (which gives a better finish). Plus the cutting edges ware out much less often. This allows the tolerances of a machined part to be a lot tighter, which means that the average car coming out of the factory is much closer to "Nominal". That allows them to move the nominal design point closer to the part of the curve they want (Performance or economy, or whatever)
It's one of those places where materials science has really improved out lives
Punchcards - pencil fill in ones at that. The reader was hooked to a HP1000e, but we were seriously timeshared. You would submit your deck, and get it back the next day. But it was cool, because you actually got to run a COMPUTER program. I have a nice circuit board at home that is a 8 bit memory. Replace price was in the hundreds of dollars. All descrete components
Hand them a bunch of pencil fill-in type "Punch cards" and WAIT 3 days to get your output back
That'll teach'em
(Feeling really OLD today). I can remember the Apple ][ and the Commodore PET/CBM series coming out, and wishing I could get my hands on it! My 2nd year in HS, you actually got to use....
The teletype!
If you can't remember the JOY when folks came out with cheap (read under $200) 300 baud modems, you have not been doing this long enough
And yes, this is a poor attempt at being funny, but true
As for some jobs not being worth it - Yep, been there, done that. Leaving that job for a 15% pay cut was one of the best things I ever did! I really KNOW it's time to leave when you start thinking "You know, I could reach across the desk and kill him, right now. Prison is better than this" (I was gone within 2 weeks from that day)
The company firewall will not allow certain kinds of files though (read things like source code and exes) - fair enough, but even if you zip the file, the block it. This not only occurs through the firewall, but inside the company too. So when we want to send a file, we zip with encryption. They can't open it to see what is inside, so they let it through
Your right - You know how I ended up buying my first lathe?
Years ago, I was taught to use a lathe and mill at one job. I ended up moving into electronics, and at that same company, programming. What was cool about that job was that I had full access to the machine shop in the plant.
Eventually, I moved on to more traditional programming - read that as Wall St. No lathes and mills there. Then one weekend I had to repair an old machine I had. The parts were no longer available, BUT I knew if I had a lathe I could make the part. Within 2 weeks I had a small lathe.
Now it's gotten bad - When we moved in Aug 2001, I paid as much to move my machines as I did to move everything else, and the riggers didn't even put the stuff in the basement. I did that a few months later - 2 days of back breaking work, even with the right gear. When I watch folks do case mods, I laugh
Gee, Metal Lathe, Mill, woodworking tools, welding gear, I cook, I bake, I raise 2 children, I hunt, camp, can build and true a bicycle wheel (and USED to ride), can run a steam boiler, know something about knife making, have a darkroom, have a ham radio setup, I've been trained in first aid, and even worked as an electronics tech
Add the other geeks at work, and not counting the overlap, we have actors, concert pianists, an ex-cop, 2 fair good bass players, etc
No home brewers though (Bummer - I used to work with one - PUMPKIN BEER!)
I know that communities get funding from the Feds - and THAT is part of what I'm complaining about - it's NONE of the Federal Governments business - hense me reference to "the switch in time that saved nine" - The USSC was going to rule that much of FDRs "New deal" was an illegal upsurpation of State/local rights, and FDR let the USSC know that although he could not impeach them, if they DID rule against him, there was no law saying that the USSC had to only have 9 justices, and he would appoint enough new justices to allow the new deal to pass - The USSC changed their mind. It's the whole process of the erosion of States Rights via 2 main clauses - "General welfare" and "Interstate Commerce" - In fact, there had been NO rulings against the Federal Government expanding based upon "Interstate Commerce" until about 10 years ago. It was a BIG deal when the USSC finally said "No" Heck, there are laws on the books that have been upheald beacuse the wheat a farmer COULD grow COULD be entered into interstate commerce - and if THAT isn't a stretch...
I can see that being the job of the LOCAL government (plumbing in the streeet), but the actual toilet, and the hookup? Private matter IMHO.
So, if we assume this is part of the State/local/private section, why is the FEDERAL government asking?
Of course, I still believe we are supposed to be "several states" with a common interest, and that the rights of the state outweigh the rights of the Federation, and that the rights of the person are greater than that of the State - In fact, the State/Federation have NO rights, they have powers GRANTED them - rights remain the provision of the people (and G_d, if you believe in one).
Of course, this argument got kinda bloody the last time it was resolved. I agree with the North on the Slavery issue, but with the South on the States Rights issue
Yep, RRs have done this. In fact, you may have heard of an outfit called "Sprint"
Southern Pacific Internal Network Telephone
Yep, it started as SPs internal telephone system. The RRs make a LOT of money leasing their right of ways
Also reference the Baltimore Tunnel fire a year of so back, that knocked out a good portion of the internet service in the Northeast. Why do you thinl that fibre was in the tunnel
Just one nit to pick - although your description of how the census works is PERFECT I have one problem with
2. Marklars are not properly being serviced by their government
Where does it say that it's the Government's job to make sure that Marklars have the same number and kinds of toilets? It's fairly obvious that it's NOT interstate commerce, even if that is the excuse the courts use!
The Federal Government upsurps way to many powers that were reserved for the states or the people, but thats the way it's been since "The switch in time that saved nine"
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, it is the crew. The guys who test the electronics make sure of that. I can show you items that would have broken just because of the vibration during a road march, never mind combat. When we got done, it was rugged enough to take what gets dished out. As for improving the design of the crew? Talk to your choice of either the man upsairs, or Darwin
Charlie
The "Hammer shock" tests are the Lightweight and MediumWeight shock tests - been there, done that. The one with the explosives is the heavyweight shock that I talked about in my first post
Your right about the paperwork
BTW I was involved with the ADCAP MK48s, various BRIs, and some periscope projects (retrofitting a replacement for the cable reels on the 688 boats)
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
Surplus PLGRs have been around for a while, and as far as I know, are NOT a problem. The problem is with the encryption card that goes WITH the PLGR. Without the card (which changes regularly), the unit is no more accurate than a civilian GPS unit, as it will not be able to decode the P-code, and falls back to CA only mode, which is the same signal civilian units use
Yes, it's exponential in the "Non-interesting" part of the curve. When you look at total failures (as a percentage), less than 10% of the total parts will fail during the "Bottom" of the curve, and the rest are fairly evenly split between the 2 sides. It's one of the reasons that companies can offer extended warrantees on electronics as cheaply as they do, and for it to be their greatest profit center
Buy the product, use and abuse it during the original warrantee period, and it'll break if it's going to break. REAL quality minded mfgs can do stress screening for less $$$ than the return cost of repairs, and cut the infant mortality (in the field) to almost nothing. This is where the often heard "Quality is free" mantra came from. It's that Quality can cost less than repairs do, and has the side benefit of getting a rep for good products
Of course, the real problem is that neither electronics, nor mechanical items have a exponential failure curve
Mechanical items tend to fail due to wearout - aka, they become more likely to fail as time goes on
Electronics follow a "Bathtub" curve. A high initial rate, that rapidly drops to a VERY low rate. It stays at that LOW rate of failure for MANY hours, and then the rate increases rapidly during "wearout" - sort of like the cross section of a bathtub - hence the name
The whole concept of "Burn In" - or better yet, Stress Screening is to remove the initial high rate of failure defects, with removing ANY of the bottom of the curve. A properly defined Stress Test can do this. These tests usually involve some sort of temperture/power cycling, along with some sort of vibration testing (usually a pseudo random vibration profile)
I got my start in programming while running a stress screening lab. When the tests run 24/7, you either automate your data collection, or have folks work 24/7 - guess which is cheaper? So, I got to design the tests, and then write the software to run the test racks
Newbie
And technically, in almost all states they are illegal. Here in NYC, they have just started enforcing that law. ANY cover over your plate, expect the red and white lights in your mirror, and a ticket that looks a lot like a speeding ticket - Points and a fine
Dude - I missread you first post - My bad. I wasn't even thinking about rigs and RF, but more like the general power stuff in the car! (I had just finished discusssing why 42 volts helps in general)
Charlie
73 de kc2ixe
Wrong - think I^2R losses
actually, your current 12V battery is a 13.8 volt battery (we nominally call it 12) - the 42 Volt system was specifically chosen to be a multiple of 3x. The intital cars will probably have 3 batteries in series. Yo will get 12V by tapping off the first battery above ground.
One of the big problems they have in cars is I^2R losses. So, if the amount of power a device draws stays the same, you will be reducing the current drawn by 3X, which reduces losses by that I^2 factor. It allows them to use smaller wire, which saves resources, money, and most important - weight! They figure they can lower the weight of the car, and therefore increase fuel economy
I have to agree with this. I remember when Mom and Dad's 69 Catalina went over the 100k mile mark, they held a party on the side of the road (Yes, they knew it would happen on the trip, and brought a cooler). Nowadays, it's no big deal - My truck has 325k miles on it, and has never needed any work
Believe it or not, some of this is die to one of the few true current uses of "Nanotechnology", which is defined my most scientist as anything involving stuff hat has one dimension 1um
The use is in cutting tools. The industry has switch to all "insert carbide" cutting tools. The big advance in this is that the particles used to make these inserts to are smaller than 1um. This allows the cutting tool to be both hard and tough. This allows things like machining some parts pre-hardened and others at higher speed (which gives a better finish). Plus the cutting edges ware out much less often. This allows the tolerances of a machined part to be a lot tighter, which means that the average car coming out of the factory is much closer to "Nominal". That allows them to move the nominal design point closer to the part of the curve they want (Performance or economy, or whatever)
It's one of those places where materials science has really improved out lives
Punchcards - pencil fill in ones at that. The reader was hooked to a HP1000e, but we were seriously timeshared. You would submit your deck, and get it back the next day. But it was cool, because you actually got to run a COMPUTER program. I have a nice circuit board at home that is a 8 bit memory. Replace price was in the hundreds of dollars. All descrete components
Hand them a bunch of pencil fill-in type "Punch cards" and WAIT 3 days to get your output back
....
That'll teach'em
(Feeling really OLD today). I can remember the Apple ][ and the Commodore PET/CBM series coming out, and wishing I could get my hands on it! My 2nd year in HS, you actually got to use
The teletype!
If you can't remember the JOY when folks came out with cheap (read under $200) 300 baud modems, you have not been doing this long enough
And yes, this is a poor attempt at being funny, but true
I think you did the best job of summing it up
As for some jobs not being worth it - Yep, been there, done that. Leaving that job for a 15% pay cut was one of the best things I ever did! I really KNOW it's time to leave when you start thinking "You know, I could reach across the desk and kill him, right now. Prison is better than this" (I was gone within 2 weeks from that day)
yep, and for a stupid reason
The company firewall will not allow certain kinds of files though (read things like source code and exes) - fair enough, but even if you zip the file, the block it. This not only occurs through the firewall, but inside the company too. So when we want to send a file, we zip with encryption. They can't open it to see what is inside, so they let it through
No, we can't stop, your just trying to pull the wool over our eyes
Copper pipe is actually a tad more complex than that
For instance, what a plumber calls 1/2 pipe, and HVAC mechanic calls 3/8 pipe, and you have to worry about wall thickness
The best way is to just think of it as nominal
Your right - You know how I ended up buying my first lathe?
Years ago, I was taught to use a lathe and mill at one job. I ended up moving into electronics, and at that same company, programming. What was cool about that job was that I had full access to the machine shop in the plant.
Eventually, I moved on to more traditional programming - read that as Wall St. No lathes and mills there. Then one weekend I had to repair an old machine I had. The parts were no longer available, BUT I knew if I had a lathe I could make the part. Within 2 weeks I had a small lathe.
Now it's gotten bad - When we moved in Aug 2001, I paid as much to move my machines as I did to move everything else, and the riggers didn't even put the stuff in the basement. I did that a few months later - 2 days of back breaking work, even with the right gear. When I watch folks do case mods, I laugh
Gee,
Metal Lathe, Mill, woodworking tools, welding gear, I cook, I bake, I raise 2 children, I hunt, camp, can build and true a bicycle wheel (and USED to ride), can run a steam boiler, know something about knife making, have a darkroom, have a ham radio setup, I've been trained in first aid, and even worked as an electronics tech
Add the other geeks at work, and not counting the overlap, we have actors, concert pianists, an ex-cop, 2 fair good bass players, etc
No home brewers though (Bummer - I used to work with one - PUMPKIN BEER!)
I know that communities get funding from the Feds - and THAT is part of what I'm complaining about - it's NONE of the Federal Governments business - hense me reference to "the switch in time that saved nine" - The USSC was going to rule that much of FDRs "New deal" was an illegal upsurpation of State/local rights, and FDR let the USSC know that although he could not impeach them, if they DID rule against him, there was no law saying that the USSC had to only have 9 justices, and he would appoint enough new justices to allow the new deal to pass - The USSC changed their mind. It's the whole process of the erosion of States Rights via 2 main clauses - "General welfare" and "Interstate Commerce" - In fact, there had been NO rulings against the Federal Government expanding based upon "Interstate Commerce" until about 10 years ago. It was a BIG deal when the USSC finally said "No" Heck, there are laws on the books that have been upheald beacuse the wheat a farmer COULD grow COULD be entered into interstate commerce - and if THAT isn't a stretch...
I can see that being the job of the LOCAL government (plumbing in the streeet), but the actual toilet, and the hookup? Private matter IMHO.
:)
So, if we assume this is part of the State/local/private section, why is the FEDERAL government asking?
Of course, I still believe we are supposed to be "several states" with a common interest, and that the rights of the state outweigh the rights of the Federation, and that the rights of the person are greater than that of the State - In fact, the State/Federation have NO rights, they have powers GRANTED them - rights remain the provision of the people (and G_d, if you believe in one).
Of course, this argument got kinda bloody the last time it was resolved. I agree with the North on the Slavery issue, but with the South on the States Rights issue
That said, TIGER files are kinda useful
Thank you - I was about to point the guy to the National Traffic Service nets, and ARES
73 de KC2IXE
EC - Queens County ARES
Queens County Radio Officer - RACES
Yep, RRs have done this. In fact, you may have heard of an outfit called "Sprint"
Southern Pacific Internal Network Telephone
Yep, it started as SPs internal telephone system. The RRs make a LOT of money leasing their right of ways
Also reference the Baltimore Tunnel fire a year of so back, that knocked out a good portion of the internet service in the Northeast. Why do you thinl that fibre was in the tunnel
Just one nit to pick - although your description of how the census works is PERFECT I have one problem with
2. Marklars are not properly being serviced by their government
Where does it say that it's the Government's job to make sure that Marklars have the same number and kinds of toilets?
It's fairly obvious that it's NOT interstate commerce, even if that is the excuse the courts use!
The Federal Government upsurps way to many powers that were reserved for the states or the people, but thats the way it's been since "The switch in time that saved nine"