Au Courant

Posted on January 23, 2016 by george

A multiple exposure picture (one of 68 Colorado Springs images created by Century Magazine photographer Dickenson Alley) of Tesla

au courant
Per Merriam Webster
adjective au cou·rant \ˌō-ku̇-ˈräⁿ\
Simple Definition of au courant
Popularity: Bottom 50% of words
: knowing about the newest information, trends, etc.
: stylish or current.

The 19th century started with the battle of the currents. Thomas Edison battled with George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla. The DC current generating system invented by Edison was less suitable for transmitting current over large distances. Westinghouse put in place a 3 phase AC system invented by Tesla at a generating plant beneath Niagara Falls to supply power to the businesses of Buffalo. The big advantage of AC was the ability to use a simple transformer to change the voltage. High voltage transmission lines make long distance transport of electric power affordable. The original 25 cycle AC morphed into the 60 cycle AC power grid that spans the country. DC power faded into battery powered applications like car starter motors and flashlights.

Even though the transistor was invented in 1947, it remained a low power DC device into the 80’s. Chrysler invented an electronic spark advance and introduced it in 1978. It was taken out of service in 1980 because the ballast resistor needed to protect the power transistor proved to have a poor service life.

Balast resistors protected the power transistor running the spark coil until 1982 picture by Mr Choppers

Finally in 1982 we had a transistor that could successfully process a higher amperage 12V DC application. We no longer think about changing points and plugs. This used to be a biannual ritual.

Even for the engineers leading the charge into the bright new future, technology advances catch us by surprise. Moores law on the ever increasing number of transistors on a chip is well known. Other related advances in silicon power transistors seem to happen invisibly. We all got used to 12 volt DC vehicle power systems. Now with have hybrids and electric vehicles with DC voltages north of 800 volts. Driving this charge is the serious drop in the price of power transistors. I was reading about a tiny DC to DC voltage converter that can squeeze a whole bunch of extra life out of a simple dry cell battery.

DC to Dc voltage converters have dramatically dropped in price

The harder part is switching gears myself and utilizing inexpensive 48 volt DC to 24 volt DC converters when designing my current new electric vehicle offering. They are a surprisingly good match to low current LED lighting.

DC current will splash back onto the public stage. We are seeing it already in very long distance transmission lines, electric vehicles, superconductive materials. The development effort needed to bring this to pass has been going on for a while. To the observing public the change will appear to happen overnight.

Options All in Families

Posted on January 9, 2016 by george

Jean Stapleton and Carol O Conner appealed to our nostalgia for past that they portrayed as simpler than the reality.

In 1972 the Auto Industry manufactured 2 million identical Chevy Caprices. Those were the days. Identical is boring for the assembly line worker. I am positive that a typical Caprice auto assembly line assignment of installing the same three bolts on every car going by, would drive me bonkers. As an engineer, it was all about manufacturing speed. 2 million per year works out to one part every 4 seconds for a three shift operation. And God help you if the vehicle needed 8 copies for parts like pistons. Henry Ford would be proud. You can have any color that you want as long as it is black. 1972 was the high water mark for utilizing mass production to reduce manufacturing cost by making only identical copies. The high volume price convinced most buyers to compromise what they wanted. (An Ford F150 pickup truck at 500,00 annual volume is the highest selling model today,but the volume includes two entirely different chassis in that quantity)
Computerized ERP systems increased our ability to manage a degree of variability. This is not enough by itself. In most cases a buyer cannot afford to have most manufactured products custom and designed just for them. The first test Chrysler Minivan that I built cost $1,000,000. This bargain price was only possible because we were building 100 test units. I never have had personal money of this magnitude to spend on having a vehicle designed just for me. In the real market place, it is possible to purchase optional features for those items that are sufficiently popular to have enough buyers to share the design, development and testing cost.
While we were planning the families of options to fit within the Chrysler Minivan family, we built in the ability to make a camper van.

VW offered a recreational vehicle version of their minivan to fill their sales queue

To this day there is a split within the Chrysler minivan sheet metal frame behind the front seats to enable creation of a camper vehicle frame. Chrysler Minivan sales have been high enough that they never needed to go after the camper market segment. Other makers such as VW discovered that niche in Europe.
The buyers would like to think that they can custom order whatever they want. The reality is that someone has engineered a family of product so that the buyer can customize within a range of options.

by Sarah Afshar – My love for Gatorade goes beyond

Yes, you can choose the flavor of gatoraid that you want but it comes in the same bottle off of the same packaging line

Diminishing Returns

Posted on December 27, 2015 by george

Stone monuments served as the earliest computer guiding the planting of crops in the spring.

The planting of crops was of critical importance to early societies. At Stonehenge an early computer was built to determine accurately the correct date to plant the crops. As a tourist you can visit and see for yourself the stones that were erected. Visually sighting the position of the sun at dawn establishes the season. Over many generations this computing instrument evolved into the smaller Astrolab.

Standing on the backs of giants, the concepts of the earth as a spinning sphere orbiting the sun were reflected in matching Astrolab geometry. Today using the accuracy of cesium atomic clocks we can use our computer technology to calculate the arrival of spring to the nearest billionth of a second. Diminishing returns have set in. Choosing the correct time to plant crops is every bit as important to our society as it was to early societies. Using more sophisticated computer techniques to calculated the date to higher accuracies has ceased to add any value to the original task of choosing a planting date.
Maybe the answer is “Big Data” Most farmers use long range weather forecasts to hedge their bets. This is all great until a volcanic eruption like the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa fills the upper atmosphere with reflective dust. No amount of current computer horsepower can factor in climate change, solar light emission variation, soot deposition on snow, or other causes we haven’t fathomed yet.
The pendulum swings. After a long run of disruptive computer based changes to society, more of the disruption will come from other sectors. In true “overnight” fashion advances in battery technology, materials, coatings, biology,medicine will splash onto the scene. Yes, the computer will have some role in these advances but it will not have the primary role. We are seeing the season start to change. Many of the new offerings being showcased at start-up conferences like South by Southwest include hardware becoming more than just software. My own www.mileagetrakker.com is based on a connected car hardware device which overcomes many of the frustrations of using an APP. This is not to say that there isn’t some good APPs among the 12 million or so offerings on Apple and Google. Most creators of APPs fight the “discoverability challenge.” Diminishing returns have set in.

Affordable Mass Customization

Posted on December 25, 2015 by george

The front wheel drive K-body became the parent for many vehicles including the successful Minivan

Chrysler almost went bankrupt when the first K-bodies came out. Fighting through dismal sales of historic rear wheel drive models, the K-body tooling bills, launch hick-ups, the finish line finally was in sight. Lee Iacocca was desperate for cash flow. All of the first vehicles in the initial build schedule were fully loaded with all of the options. All of the engineering thrifting needed to sell a vehicle for the $9800 advertised base price had been done right. Engineers become creative when their backs are to the wall. Changing the bumpers to shorten the vehicle by 2 inches so that 7 cars instead of 6 per row would fit onto the captive train cars used for vehicle delivery, saved $100 which was the profit on the base vehicle. Sticker shock killed the initial sales. Curious buyers attracted to the new model hype came into the dealers to see, but turned away when none of the lowest cost vehicles were on display. The funny part of the story is that the buying public did not want to purchase the base model with its manual transmission and vinyl seats. Chrysler did not want to make vehicles with manual transmissions or vinyl seats either because these components actually cost more than the cloth seats and automatic transmissions that actually sold. Actually, what turned out to be important was that the buyers wanted to judge the value of the options for themselves. Welcome to mass customization!
It is easy to determine whether a design is ready for mass customization. A manufacturer of excavators missed the mark by designing a custom frame for their combo dozer option.

Equipment that can fill multiple roles is easier to employ to generate a profit. An excavator that also functions as a bulldozer saves equipment mobilization.

It is possible that the mass customization that was accomplished through the use of welded mounting details showed as a cheaper manufacturing option. In reality a customized frame was never available to land a order from a customer who needed a timely delivery (Most customers do) For a little more piece cost, this offering could have been designed so that the option is nothing more than a bolted variation of the parent. I find it very interesting that companies such as Toyoda employ artisan craftsmen mechanics in separate facilities to flavor each vehicle to match the customers order. Yes, a change in thinking and a new manufacturing reality combine to satisfy a market demand for more customization without incurring excessive cost penalties.
Engineering is all about planning and implementing profitable future products. I am currently designing an electric vehicle.

A burden carrier delivers
parts at the Ford Rouge Assembly plant.

Even though lithium batteries like you find on a Tesla are a lower total cost option, it will be a while before the the buying public is educated enough to invest in the higher up front cost. This is where mass customization is all about planning for options. A good measure for my design success will be whether it is possible to offer all vehicle options from a common design frame. At the same time, it will be necessary to avoid penalizing the base model pricing when adding the design provisions needed to offer the full range of options.

The Swing

Posted on November 22, 2015 by george

Classic example of KISS

Digital Key

Posted on November 21, 2015 by george

Digital security will protect our connected
devices from theft

There has been much media attention applied to the massive hacking of various web sites to steal data. A lot less attention has been showered on the thieves that use radio receivers to capture and duplicate the electronic codes used for key-less car ignition. As a prudent strategy if you own a car that does not have a physical key, you should always avoid using the remote to lock the vehicle. This is especially true in a parking lot where it is impossible to detect whether a car thief is lurking in a nearby car. The current reality is unfortunate because our smart phones have the potential to increase security. It will take a lot more sophistication than we currently apply. We may need to delay the disabling of the device for a few days to enable a return trip home on a electric bicycle when your cell phone has died.

Electric bikes are less attractive as a theft target if they become disabled

Just like insurance has a cost, it may be necessary to subscribe to a cloud security service. Within the cloud it is possible to store unique key codes series for each device. The location capability of the cell phone system, combined with a suitable app, can create a cloud based log that records the cell phone number and when and where the device was unlocked which will enable multiple users. We will hear stories about stupid thieves who use their cell phone to activate stolen devices.
As a teenage at Halloween, we thought it was funny to do a drive-by garage door opener run. This worked because the system was based on only a few codes, and a collection of remotes would result in enough matches to be fun. If the activation codes are ever changing, there is no advantage in thieves listening in. Thieves who use a radio (or blue tooth) to obtain a code will discover that it has been changed. In the transition period, not everyone will want to use a cell phone based key. A chip key should also be included such that the device is active when it is plugged in. Obviously, the advantage of the cloud database is that it becomes possible to sell replacement keys. The cell phone based replacement can happen quickly but a physical chip based key requires delivery. We can all relate to loosing a key sometime or other.

Change

Posted on November 15, 2015 by george

Historic 2 man saws no longer match the OSB wood we build with today

My grandfather was a carpenter. In the Finnish community, this was a common profession. Finland is a land of many trees. Many of the immigrants arrived with the practiced skills and tools for working in wood. As a tiny boy, I was fascinated by the two man saws, augers, planes, chisels, files that were used in the craft. I inherited the Audels manuals that taught the methods for building a structure without using any nails. Sharpening was a key skill. Many hours are needed to file and set each tooth on a saw so that it cuts straight and true. This insight transferred into my occupation in custom metal cutting cutter design. The tools themselves are no longer relevant. A two man saw used to cut planks from timbers is not appropriate for cutting 4×8 (In true change fashion now a slightly different metric size) sheets of OSB (Oriented Strand Board). In a earlier age, ancient northern trees were cut down. The trunks were cut into timbers and floated back to civilization. The rest of the tree was left to decompose. As human population grows, it has become necessary to utilize more of the raw materials. Pretty much all of the wood of a tree can be shaved into the flakes that create OSB board. The sharpening skills of craftsmen have been replaced by mass produced cutting edges made from high technology materials.

All gas stations used to be full serve

My first job was pumping gas. This was consistent with my auto mechanic training and automotive design career goals. Not too bad in the summer. Out in open when the weather was bad. Checking fluids was necessity for most patrons. More reliable cars and self serve made all of that go away. A roof over the pumps made the task palatable for the general public. One of the interesting features of change is that old methods come back with a twist. As we adopt driver-less trucks, the gas pump jockey will reappear. Instead of fill the Truck with diesel, the fuel will be liquefied natural gas. Methane has 4 hydrogen atoms instead of 2 per carbon atom in diesel fuel. We need to make a dent in carbon and black soot emissions.
There won’t be quite as many trucks on the road though. Trains are more fuel efficient at moving goods. I suspect that the gentler grades are a big factor. The autonomous technology that guides AGV (Automatic Guided Vehicles) around warehouses will dispatch a myriad of driver-less train cars to the individual train sidings that lie unused around the country. Again this will come back with a twist. The size of the train car will be adjusted to match the sea land container that now dominates the transport of goods. The receiving plants will invest in the track fans needed to directly unload the cargo in the same fashion that multiple truck docks are currently implemented. As is true in most transitions, we will see loading docks with train rails that can also serve as truck docks.

Loading docks can serve either trucks or properly configured autonomous rail cars

In much the same fashion that the ocean shipping converted from bulk cargo to containers, this change will migrate into the rail industry. As always change happens with a twist.

Approximation

Posted on November 8, 2015 by george

The earth is a water world when seen from space

In the classic tale, 3 blind men encounter an elephant. Each of them gives a different report based on their encounter. A space traveler flying by earth would see a water world covered in oceans. While this is the most accurate approximation, it would totally miss the land masses that are home to the earth’s population. Just like the blind man in the tale, some people who live in the great deserts of the world lack the personal experience to confirm the wet nature of our world.
Quoting is an exercise that is based on approximations. Most customers are unwilling to wait for the time that it takes to assemble a fully detailed list of the costs required to supply a product or service. The pendulum would need to swing really far back for customers to pay for estimates. I have not seen engineers paid for creating cost estimates since my dad worked for an engineering consulting firm. Successful lean firms usually receive quote requests to supply most of the product sold in their industry. This is especially true if they have evolved to the point where they are normally one of the lowest cost bidders. Purchasing agents are evaluated based on their ability to secure the best price. One of their tools is removing suppliers who refuse to quote every job from their bid list. José Ignacio (“Inaki”) López de Arriortúa invented a cost cutting tactic which appeared to work, because if you ask enough suppliers to quote, someone would bid less that it costs. Disgrace finally caught up with him when he was forced to resign from VW. Volkswagen agreed to pay GM $100 million and to buy $1 billion dollars worth of parts from GM to settle Lopez’s misconduct. The poor Tier 1 estimators who were bombarded with an excessive Lopez-inspired barrage of quote requests, gained the ability to estimate quickly and triage. Spreadsheets with tuned approximations were invented.

Spreadsheet use approximations to
collect total cost

In triage fashion two-thirds of the quotes were returned with a quickly calculated price that was 35% over market. I can only imagine the effect of approximate high bid pricing on the cost planners at automotive headquarters. Usually you should make an assessment of the capability of the lowest bidders before you spend 2 billion dollars supplying them with custom tooling. The fact that this tooling never made a part for GM is also part of Lopez’s legacy. At this juncture the effect of this unnecessary cash flow on the GM bankruptcy is simply arm chair quarterbacking. I remember Neil Armstrong (a professor at the University of Cincinnati where I went to school) talking about the danger of space travel. “As an astronaut, you remember that the rocket is made by the lowest bidder.”

The IRS uses our tendency to save time by using approximations to their advantage. Yes, it is possible to compute your mileage deduction using the distances computed by MapQuest. I know this because I have spent many a Christmas holiday recreating the log of mileage needed to qualify for the deduction. Now that my http://mileagetrakker.com device generates an accurate log for me, I discovered that the approximate method left a bunch of money sitting on the table. Actual trips include gas stops, detours, errands, procurement stops, sales calls that usually get left off the recreated list. Having lived both methods, I understand how it happens. Most of my trips occur when my business is busy. It is unusual to have an extra second or two to record mileage when you are running behind.

Format Wars

Posted on November 1, 2015 by george

The VHS vrs Beta war raged for many years

The VHS verses Beta cassette tape war is the classic example of a format war. Consumers who purchased a video tape player desired to purchase every future tape in the same format. Once they had a collection of tapes, even wearing out a tape player was not going to get them to change. The furniture industry jumped onto the bandwagon making shelving units to house our collections of tapes. This war raged on without a winner or loser until the DVD splashed onto the scene.

The small size of the DVD
media displaced our use of Video tapes in a few years

. In the near future high speed internet and streaming video will displace DVD as the pace of technology accelerates. Streaming video will cause us to forget about the blue ray format war that superseded the Beta / VHS battle
Some format wars last for many years with no end in sight. A good example is the metric system. The engineering community had no problem quickly adopting metric dimensioning on drawings. In CAD especially, converting from one dimension system to the other is just a button click. The problem arose with legacy thread pitches. In the beginning of the industrial revolution, the first lathes were set up to create threads. In Europe these lathes had metric sizes. As luck would have it the imperial fine and coarse threads turned out to have better properties than fine and coarse metric threads. A rusted imperial coarse thread bolt can be loosened while a metric bolt usually must by drilled out. A imperial fine thread bolt will break unlike an overtorqued metric fine thread bolt that strips before it breaks.

Metric fine threads are prone to stripping

The imperial fine thread was invented by the Society of Automotive Engineers and is also called a SAE thread. They were looking for a thread that would not vibrate loose. A metric coarse thread is half way between a imperial fine and coarse thread. If it is perfectly tightened it will not vibrate loose. (US car mechanics had to purchase torque wrenches when metric bolts were adopted.) Most molds manufactured anywhere in the world use imperial coarse thread bolts. Companies cannot afford the expense of drilling fasteners every time they need to disassemble molds. The world conversion to metric is pretty much complete. It is possible that threads may be like pipe sizes. The world may continue to use the legacy imperial threads and pipe simply because they work better and the matching taps, fixtures, and related manufacturing equipment are already in place.

In the early days, when Microsoft was trying to displace Lotus, Timeline, Word Prefect, etc. they focused on interoperability. Once they became the dominate player they elected to create new file formats for Excel that could not be imported into Open Office. This may have worked for them if they had taken the time to verify that their newest version could successfully import legacy data. Companies which invested thousands of manhours in creating Excel files chose to continue to use the earlier version when the new release could not preserve the formatting. It is possible that Calc in Open office will never bother to write the code for importing the latest version of Excel. As a small fish caught in the turbulent format war water, my http://mileagetrakker.com application creates reports in the Excel 97 format.

Nail down your mileage deduction

Our users want compatibility. It does not matter whether they are using either version of Excel or Open Office Calc. The 97 format can transfer into any of them.

Visual Management

Posted on October 25, 2015 by george

Our eyes are heavily linked to the thought
processes of our brains

Seeing is believing. We rely heavily on sight to guide our actions. Accordingly, seeing something for ourselves is a powerful way of having us believe it. When we plan systems to control manufacturing activity, the ones that use things that we can see to guide our decisions work the best. This week I was attempting to solve an accuracy deficiency on a high RPM vertical CNC machining center. This machine is used to cut graphite to make EDM electrodes for mold making. The CAD/CAM cutter path software guided shapes, cut using diamond tipped tools, need to be accurate to better than 0.001 inch (0.04mm) on all surfaces. This shape accuracy is needed to obtain the taper needed to eject parts from the mold. 0.001 inch is a tiny distance that is difficult to see and measure. A experimental method that I call a 6 time repeat study is very effective adding visibility to the task. In this case, we machined a test shape using the CNC. After the graphite was cut we used a yellow paint marker to color all surfaces that were machined. The exact same cutting program was run again. Low and behold, one face showed uncut and completely yellow.

A painted test block shows the backlash in the X CNC axis

My machinist could not understand why I called the test a 6 time repeat study. We had only run the program twice. I indicated that once the machine flunks it is no longer necessary to run the remaining passes. Had the part been black on all sides after the first rerun we would have run the program five more times painting in between every cut to confirm that the machine consistently cuts accurately. I had originally thought that my problem was a worn spindle bearing due to the 15000 RPM cut. The actual test part only has a hint of the zebra stripe that a worn spindle bearing creates. The 6 time repeat test for metal cutting CNC machines is similar. I machine a precision bore as the test. A black Sharpy is used for coloring the bored hole between each repeat.

Segeo Shingo correctly taught that every manufacturing operation needs to leave a visual indication that it has been begun. He was careful to distinguish visually confirming that an operation has been begun from inspecting that it has been properly performed. His experience matches mine. For every part that is made with an operation that has been improperly performed, 9 parts are made with that same operation missed. A good example is a rough boring operation. After the part is finished machined there is no way to visually tell that the roughing bore (or drill) actually happened. A missed rough bore is a problem because the only way to achieve the desired roundness in a precision bore is to set the rough cut size so that it only leaves 0.010 inch (.4 mm) stock for the final cut. I am happy to report that the advent of CNC machining centers gives us a few more options. One of my favorite tools is to use a helix orbit to add a counter bore. I make this cut using the roughing cutter after it finishes its bore so that I can either gage or visually confirm that the cutter has not chipped. (In the pictured example, the helixed counterbore using the robust roughing cutters also protected the fragile finishing cutter from the weld located at the start of the bore.)

Adding a CNC helixed counter bore made by the roughing tool makes visually confirmation possible

Adding a CNC helixed counter bore made by the roughing tool makes visual confirmation possible

A classic example of a manufacturing operation that leaves no visual witness is bolt torquing. This becomes a problem when multiple bolts are needed to secure the joint. On a excavator, the turret is secured with 24 to 36 bolts depending on size. If one of these bolts is not tight, the operation of the unit will work it loose and zipper apart the entire joint. The repair, in one years time, is a $20,000 warranty cost. Confirmation of proper bolt torquing is further complicated by the locktite used to seal rust out of the thread. Checking bolt torque a day later only confirms that the locktite is working. This is where Shingo’s visual management concept fits in. Every operation needs to leave a visual witness that it has occurred. This warranty cost was eliminated by redesigning the bolt tightening wrench so that it left a mark when it was used to tighten a bolt. It became possible to visually see walking by that every bolt was tightened.

Final torque wrenches should leave a visual mark when they are used

Not every application can tolerate a scratch in the paint. I have also modified open end wrenches and sockets so that they leave an imprint on the bolt head or nut when the torquing operation is performed.

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Lean Engineering Solutions to Improve Profitability in the Areas of Manufacturing, Material Handling and 3D

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