Should a non-degree'd personal do product development ??

Yes, in the Laplace domain, T(s) has a zero for s=-0.5 and a pole for s=-3. But the w in T(jw) is positive and real.

He's indeed a bit sloppy in his use of K. The factor z1/p1 is the result of rewriting the function in the canonical form as outlined in eq 3.47. However, in the example on page 81, he lumps this all together and reuses K as simply the gain for w->0 and nothing more.

Strictly speaking, that's not very neat but it's quite common. I would have done the same without second thought.

Jeroen Belleman

ment ?

Will do. I still have the Simpson 260. (Yellow case). Just haven't had time to focus on that.... Will contact you this weekend about it. Thanks. -mpm

Drylabbing definitely brings down academic careers. Try as he might, a EE friend of mine, really smart and hardworking, could not duplicate the results his predecessor -- a freshly minted PhD, at that point an assistant prof -- had obtained. These results had wowed the government committee that had awarded their advisor a huge, multiyear grant.

My friend's seeming incompetence put him on his advisor's shit list. He tried to find another advisor with another project, but it was no- go, and he had to take a job. Eventually it came out that the predecessor had faked his results. The school's website has scrubbed every mention of the advisor, who had been a research powerhouse up till then. The perpetrator did not get tenure, but his employer let him stay on as a lowly lecturer.

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Plus his fellow students got penalized for their honest presentation of real data.

old lab, attempting to retain the useful gear. I, the mere "Research Associate", thought to save the manuals, software, and schematics for the gear, which they trashed. I then grabbed the special tooling for the systems.

explained how to evaluate their functionality.

source by merely looking at the material and its location. I keep a pancake  counter solely for this purpose. I work in some very nasty R&D  labs.

ones with a two year secretarial degree that screen resumes.  Once I do that, I can do very good work for my employers.

parents were married".

product mass produced. It gets worse when I tell them it was sold in Walmart, Radio Shack, and Sears Hardware. It gets even more difficult when I tell them my last commercial design was just bought by the Chicago PD, 8000 units at 8K a pop.

mill and a metal lathe will be at my disposal.  I try not to ask that question any more.

desired by employers. I'm not ashamed of it, it was a TOUGH program.

a closet as the location of his office, I might have had a chance.

his

afternoon

the

reson

error.

Wrong again.

I am honest. I don't lie to customers or employees. We we recently shipped five VME modules, out of a batch of boards that had some trace and via problems. Those five work, but I don't trust them, long-term. We told the customer, and we're going to replace them all when the new boards come in. They can keep the old ones, for software development or for spares, or send them back if they prefer.

You're sharing insults and cliches with JF now. An engineer gets the job done. Pardon me for using words like "job" and "done."

--

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

Real-life engineers can't fake results. Products have to work, and meet specs, and be reliable, or people will quit buying them.

--

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

I would have stated that the lab equipment was defective, and how. Then I would have described the alternate method used to get the results. Not only would it have shown that you understood the problem, it would have explained why the other students couldn't get the expected results. Also, I've never let anyone get away with shoddy work. Whoever was responsible for maintaining that equipment might get mad, but they weren't doing their job. I used to spend 5-15 minutes every day checking out my test equipment, before starting to work. If something was wrong, it went to the cal lab, and was replaced if a spare was available.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

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Which makes faking your lab results a less than ideal way of preparing for work in the real world.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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out a old lab, attempting to retain the useful gear. I, the mere "Research = Associate", thought to save the manuals, software, and schematics for the g= ear, which they trashed. I then grabbed the special tooling for the systems= .

em, and explained how to evaluate their functionality.

oactive source by merely looking at the material and its location. I keep a= pancake =A0counter solely for this purpose. I work in some very nasty R&D = =A0labs.

, the ones with a two year secretarial degree that screen resumes. =A0Once = I do that, I can do very good work for my employers.

, my parents were married".

a product mass produced. It gets worse when I tell them it was sold in Walm= art, Radio Shack, and Sears Hardware. It gets even more difficult when I te= ll them my last commercial design was just bought by the Chicago PD, 8000 u= nits at 8K a pop.

athe, a mill and a metal lathe will be at my disposal. =A0I try not to ask = that question any more.

highly desired by employers. I'm not ashamed of it, it was a TOUGH program= .

said: =A0"Look to your left, look to your right, count to nine, and guess = if you will be one of the nine we keep." I could not teach myself the math = fast enought. The math instructors were foreign TAs, so the profs did not h= ave to "waste" time teaching undergrads.

ven us a closet as the location of his office, I might have had a chance.

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What you may think of as "complex" seems unlikely to be rated as complex by more serious engineers.

If by "complex" we are merely to understand "not immediately obvious to John Larkin" you may indeed sort out a "complex" project every two and a half weeks, but that does seem to set the bar very low.

Or so you tell us.

That's careful cover-your-back behaviour, not per se honest.

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I've been in worse company. We have our differences, but we seem to have the same kind of problem with your egomania.

Don't let it worry you. I have good memories of the times when I had jobs and got things done - not at the rate of one complex job every two and half weeks, but I did get complicated multi-disciplinary state of the art stuff to work, though it frequently took longer than management would have liked.

Check out my thermistor-based Peltier junction temperature controller sometime

Sloman A.W., Buggs P., Molloy J., and Stewart D. =93A microcontroller- based driver to stabilise the temperature of an optical stage to 1mK in the range 4C to 38C, using a Peltier heat pump and a thermistor sensor=94 Measurement Science and Technology, 7 1653-64 (1996).

I think you got a reprint in October 2009 - if you've lost it I can send you another copy.

It's not all that multi-disciplinary as my projects went, but it has now got fourteen citations (and only two of them from me). The more interesting stuff didn't get into the peer-reviewed literature.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

For once, I've got to agree with Mike.

r

Not something I've ever done. If any of my test gear ever did anything unexpected, I'd find out what was going on and get it fixed, but we tended to assume that if it wasn't broke we shouldn't spend time working out if it need fixing.

Mostly we fixed it ourselves, if we could. Once Tek sent us a replacement front panel rotary switch - we'd worked out that it had worn out and had asked them what the quickest way of fixing it was ...

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Real world? Academia is anything but. I had a *real* job at the time, designing electronics for the S1B moon rocket, for the C5A cargo plane, and for the LASH ships, among many others. I was happy to get out of the make-believe of an afternoon lab, and bicycle over to my real job.

I knew what I wanted to learn in college, and I learned it. Graphing the frequency response of a triode amplifier, with broken test equipment, wasn't something I wanted to spend time on. I'd done that, properly, years before.

--

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

a old lab, attempting to retain the useful gear. I, the mere "Research Associate", thought to save the manuals, software, and schematics for the gear, which they trashed. I then grabbed the special tooling for the systems.

and explained how to evaluate their functionality.

radioactive source by merely looking at the material and its location. I keep a pancake  counter solely for this purpose. I work in some very nasty R&D  labs.

the ones with a two year secretarial degree that screen resumes.  Once I do that, I can do very good work for my employers.

parents were married".

product mass produced. It gets worse when I tell them it was sold in Walmart, Radio Shack, and Sears Hardware. It gets even more difficult when I tell them my last commercial design was just bought by the Chicago PD, 8000 units at 8K a pop.

a mill and a metal lathe will be at my disposal.  I try not to ask that question any more.

highly desired by employers. I'm not ashamed of it, it was a TOUGH program.

us a closet as the location of his office, I might have had a chance.

couldn't

flunked his

afternoon

all the

no reson

error.

experimental

Well, you can look at my web site. The OEM stuff isn't there, and it tends to be at least as complex as the standard stuff.

Says the guy who has been trying to build a 2-transistor oscillator for, what, four years now?

Check it out? You've cited that paper scores of times. Is that the best you've ever done?

--

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

I see, I was making a first person observation.

*I* keep notes on everything. I may have to duplicate something I did 10 years ago, or someone else here needs to, and crappy notes can kill ya'.

development;

Or the drink holder that quit popping out when she pushed the button.

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And even more "anything but" if you fake your lab results. As a graduate student, I got to supervise practical classes in chemistry. I'd done quite enough summer jobs in the chemical industry to know that practical classes didn't have much to do with the real world, and more than enough to know that I had to make the students take them seriously if they were to be of any use in preparing students for the real world.

So you went to university to get a label, not an education. It shows.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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ng out a old lab, attempting to retain the useful gear. I, the mere "Resear= ch Associate", thought to save the manuals, software, and schematics for th= e gear, which they trashed. I then grabbed the special tooling for the syst= ems.

them, and explained how to evaluate their functionality.

adioactive source by merely looking at the material and its location. I kee= p a pancake =A0counter solely for this purpose. I work in some very nasty R= &D =A0labs.

now, the ones with a two year secretarial degree that screen resumes. =A0On= ce I do that, I can do very good work for my employers.

ell, my parents were married".

ad a product mass produced. It gets worse when I tell them it was sold in W= almart, Radio Shack, and Sears Hardware. It gets even more difficult when I= tell them my last commercial design was just bought by the Chicago PD, 800=

0 units at 8K a pop.

g lathe, a mill and a metal lathe will be at my disposal. =A0I try not to a= sk that question any more.

so highly desired by employers. I'm not ashamed of it, it was a TOUGH prog= ram.

or, said: =A0"Look to your left, look to your right, count to nine, and gue= ss if you will be one of the nine we keep." I could not teach myself the ma= th fast enought. The math instructors were foreign TAs, so the profs did no= t have to "waste" time teaching undergrads.

given us a closet as the location of his office, I might have had a chance= .

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The classical Baxandall class-D oscillator is indeed a two transistor device. I've been working on variations on that theme that use more transistors to produce a sine wave with less harmonic content. The current version - which doesn't look anything like anything in Baxandall's 1959 paper - is now simulating with a third harmonic content about 95dB below the fundamental. It doesn't contain a single discrete transistor, though there's a argument for putting in a few if we want to do even better.

The list of parts that I'm going to buy is so I can build it is about done

Certainly not. The best thing I ever did was the EBT2000 electron beam tester, which amazed everybody by eventually working, but didn't look as if it was going to sell in sufficient volume to cover the price of putting it into production - it was never going to be more than a ten or so machines a year product, and the relevant years wasn't one where the semiconductor industry was going to be buying heavily.

We did publish some stuff on it early on, but we were more interested in frightening off the competition and fascinating potential customers than in being particularly informative.

The Peltier paper is certainly the best paper I've ever written - largely because I wrote it for my own satisfaction at a time when I didn't have anything better to do - and it was fun because it pulled together stuff that I'd first taken an interest in when I was a graduate student, and had come back to from time to time every decade of so after that - but it was a very specific and relatively short term project that solved a particular problem that had come up. Jim Molloy knew what needed to be done, and I did it better than he expected. Even then, one of the best bits in the paper - the heat-pipe based heat-sink - was entirely Doug Stewart's initiative, which is why his name is on the paper.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Certainly I wanted a degree. But I also wanted to be an engineer. I learned much good stuff: engineering design analysis, circuit theory, signals and systems, communications theory, electrical machinery, stuff like that. Chemistry was mostly stupid, and physics was largely a replay of high school classes.

I don't know what you mean by "it shows." I design electronics, and you don't.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro   acquisition and simulation

Jeroen Belleman expounded in news:jm60fs$9io$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

..

Ok, yes I see now.

So is the Example 3.4 _description_ the problem here?

It would seem then that actually > (not the 1/6 as reported in the problem description). That the 1/6 in the first term is as you say the result of rewriting (middle 3.47) so that you have the z1/p1 factor (which evaluates to 1/6).

If so, then the statement:

"The gain constant equals K = 1/6"

should have left the "K" out, saying instead:

"The gain constant equals 1/6".

Then things make sense (with K=1 assumed). I think this is what you're saying.

There is also glaring error on page 67, which infects equations on the pages that follow it, but I'll post separately about that.

Thanks for your help. I might get thru chapter 3 yet! Warren

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Chemistry isn't stupid. It's often boring - there are a lot of facts to learn and while there is over-arching theory, it there's a lot more devil in the details than there is in physics. Freshman physics was a replay of high school classes, but with added extra appreciation of what was going on. I never had to do an error anaylsis in a high school class.

Your comments about your chemistry and physics classes are revealing. If you'd been interested in learning anything then, you'd have been less bored. You don't seem to have learned much outside of electronics since then either and that's what shows.

Or so you'd like to think.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

development ?

Hell no. It is noticeably more likely that an educated person has the wherewithal though.

?-)