PHds tend to be overrated for practical work. But a MSEE can be useful. There is simply no way I could have learned as much communications theory, crypto etc while on the job. Some disciplines require significant theoretical knowledge. Solid state physics as another example.
ts of useless scum-of-the-Earth types there. The only good thing about many of them is they're gone.
Exactly, this is the reason the profession suffers. The old-timers are not willing to change their outdated ways and constantly bitch about the young er generation without doing anything special themselves. I'm glad to see s ome of the company names in their signatures, I will definitely steer clear when looking for potential employers.
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From what I've seen, most MS are earned without thesis option so all they d o is sit through 10 courses, which look a lot like undergraduate level mate rial to me, and only one or two courses distinguish one EE "concentration" from another. I even met one PhD in EE who had no concentration whatsoever, never even heard of the concept. The schools have been become diploma mill s for the most part, and a lot of their graduates end up in the "hospitalit y" industry.
Yep. What the low end machines do is measure the backlash (gear slop), store the value, and then tweak the travel distance by this amount. That works just fine with most drives, but the worst case is what I saw on the Velleman 3D printer. It was two spur gears, apparently made on the 3D printer, with plenty of slop. (The one I saw didn't look this good). I did a quick measurement with calipers and determined that the big gear was slightly elliptical, which produced different amounts of backlash at different positions of the gears. Bleh.
A 3D printer is probably the best case machine for using anti-backlash, spring loaded drive gears. The only load on the gears is drag as it's not driving a cutter. Instead of compensation, just eliminate the problem at the source.
My point was not about which solution for the backlash problem was the correct solution. Rather, that I had to explain the basic principles behind backlash compensation and some of the tricks used to eliminate it. The owner of the Velleman machine was solving all his problems with one tool (software) and making no attempt to become aware of other possible methods or solutions. It's much like asking a group of people how to solve a problem. They will invariably use solutions derived from their experiences and background. It's a rare person that can support a solution outside of their primary area of expertise. The overall effect is that we're creating a nation of specialists, able to do one thing very well, but little else. Of course, you're not going to be paying a programmer to do machine design, or a mechanical designer to write control programs.
I'm undecided as to whether this trend toward specialization is a good thing. I've seen too many good people have their careers disappear when their specialty became obsolete.
Yep. I didn't know that Whitney made big punch presses. I have two Whitney hand punches. Very useful for punching PCB's instead of drilling.
Machinists that are used to scribbling their own G-code probably won't have much difficulties with adapting macros to do some of the grunt work. Until fairly recently, the computerization of the low end of the CNC was a fairly crude affair[1]. A friend owns a local machine shop. It's not beneath his dignity to edit the code or post processor code directly. That's because the compilers tend to generate sub-optimum code. However, the next generation of CNC programmers probably won't be able (or willing) to hand edit the G-code.
[1] I stock a small collection of 386, 386SX and 486 motherboards to replace the controllers in some CNC machines. It's not unusual to find a $15,000 machine being run by what should have been ewaste long ago.-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Everybody, and I mean everybody, should have to take a machining course in high school. There's a high-end (like, $45K per year) private high school here in SF where everybody has to take the welding course.
That beast would slam around a 20'x4' sheet of steel and punch BIG holes in it with amazing precision. All servos, no steppers, big hydraulic punch. We used it to make marine automation consoles.
We recently got a Tormach. It's great. Has fancy PC software.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
How about all those ancient 3.5" floppy drives?
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
I have about 30 assorted floppy drives buried in a box somewhere. for now, I can also get all I want from the local recycler. Finding a good one is problematic. I usually find only 1 out of about 4 that work without tweaking or major cleaning.
Note that floppy drives are no longer being manufactured and will eventually become difficult to find. I still get calls for converting
8 inch or hard sectored 5.25" floppies. I have the drives and controllers, and charge outrageous prices for the service. Most such fire drills are inspired by court orders demanding ancient financial records from long forgotten computer systems.I was also selling floppy disk drives specifically for Korg DSS-1 keyboards for a while: (about the middle of the page). I think I sold 4 drives in 3 years. Someone in China got the clue and is selling floppy disk emulators that accept a USB stick.
For dirty environments, I prefer to use solid state adapters: or if the CNC machine has IDE connectors, install an IDE to CF (compact flash) card adapter. The vaporized lubes are murder on anything that moves. However, the good ones are expensive and the cheap one's die early or have odd problems. (Hint: Add some grounded aluminum duct tape to front panel to dissipate static discharges when inserting the USB stick).
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Agreed. I had all that an more. At the time (late 1960's), Cal Poly Pomona was known for "hands on" engineering. There was the usual theory, but supplemented with very practical laboratory experience. I had welding, machine shop, engines, electric motors, and a wide array of electronics labs. These were 3 hr labs, twice per week, so they had time to dive into details. Graduates at least knew what was involved in manufacturing processes because they experienced them first hand.
In the late 1970's, Cal Poly Pomona the administration decided to have the skool accredited. A committee of academics revised the curriculum to include more "socially relevant" classes, resulting in the severe dilution of the technical classes and labs. I don't know about the current situation, but I've been told that the pendulum has swung back in the desired direction.
Such experience is invaluable, but limited. The skools are a fairly artificial environment. Industrial reality is very different. I was once hired to troubleshoot, repair, and if necessary, redesign a production peach processing and canning control system. Before proceeding, I had to clean the rotting peaches out of the NEMA boxes and contactors. I then had to fix some very hazardous wiring. I then had to arrange for maintenance on the drive motors, lube the conveyor belts, replace the broken air fittings, and duct tape some hoses until replacements could be found. Only then could I deal with the timing problems, pneumatic oscillations, sensor problems, and things that I was allegedly hired to fix. Had I not had a background in grease, oil, dirt, filth, electrical wiring, construction, and hammer mechanics, I would have been stumped.
Please do not ask how rotting peaches entered a locked NEMA box.
These daze, that's done with water jet cutters. Somehow, over the years, I never got involved with big sheet metal fabrication. I worked for companies that used plenty of sheet metal chassis parts, but not the machines that made them. The closest I got was drilling holes in a chassis and pounding in PEM nuts for PCB mounts.
Nice. I'm jealous. The local electronics store has a Tormach 770 on display. The owner is very much into home machining. They also sell the Velleman 3D printer. Note the rough teeth and burrs on the stepper drive gears.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Don't assume that he would be any more functional as a programmer. I'm the worlds worst programmist, and therefore hire programmers to do what little programming I need done. In most cases, it's cleaning up a database mess at one of my customers, usually caused by custom software. I once hired a student from the local university to clean up a name, address, and phone number list. The records had become misaligned and there was no database rebuild, relink, reindex, or cleanup utility. My ace programmer claimed expertise in a dozen languages and demonstrated some impressive image manipulation software that he had written. Writing a simple name, address, and phone number database cleanup utility should be a trivial task, or so I thought.
I'll skip the chronology of my frustrations and just mention that after 2 months, nothing useful was produced. I had created a few test databases to see if his program could find and fix known problems. His program would invariably fail to fix at least one test database, and didn't even come close on the real databases.
Eventually, I just paid him for his efforts, and ruined a weekend doing it myself with shell scripts and Unix tools. I've been told that my code was the perfect example of spaghetti code and that it violated most programming principles. Fine... it worked except for finding junk characters in the data, which I fixed with standard Unix text processing tools (grep, awk, sed, etc). It was ugly, non-elegant, very slow, but it worked.
When I hire programmers these days, I ask a fair number of questions about how he or she planned to test their code. In some cases, they claim that if the program was properly designed and written, it should not require any testing or debugging.
I've also met programmers who didn't understand the importance of debouncing contact closures, skewing problems, actuation time, input noise immunity, sensor noise, and all the hazards of a non-perfect world. These are areas where practical experience, either in skool or on the job, are invaluable, but apparently quite rare.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
On Saturday, December 14, 2013 9:14:26 PM UTC-6, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com w rote:
do is sit through 10 courses, which look a lot like undergraduate level ma terial to me, and only one or two courses distinguish one EE "concentration " from another. I even met one PhD in EE who had no concentration whatsoeve r, never even heard of the concept. The schools have been become diploma mi lls for the most part, and a lot of their graduates end up in the "hospital ity" industry. What's the connection to the hospitality industry?
ey do is sit through 10 courses, which look a lot like undergraduate level material to me, and only one or two courses distinguish one EE "concentrati on" from another. I even met one PhD in EE who had no concentration whatsoe ver, never even heard of the concept. The schools have been become diploma mills for the most part, and a lot of their graduates end up in the "hospit ality" industry.
Dunno for sure, maybe its for people overqualified for fast food industry j obs.
he's implying they have no useful qualifications.
eg: flipping burgers, waiting tables, mixing drinks, would be hospitality
but he put quotes on it, so it could be a euphamism.
-- For a good time: install ntp --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: news@netfront.net ---
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Aw, poor baby. You finally butted up against the reality that most of SED regulars have dealt with for at least the last 20 years.
?-)
Maybe something of the boiled frog syndrome. It's slowly but steadily gotten more difficult to find marginally competent people, despite impressive-looking resumes and apparently sterling academic credentials. If they can triple or quadruple their salary and have a chance at a big payoff by participating in a fun dot-com, few sane individuals will choose to do the hard work.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
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