Southern MN and Central IA | plowboy - 4/21/2009 13:31
LOL....excellent point....what is the point of figuring it to the fifth decimal and then using a 3x factor? Would it really matter if the figures were off just a little? My MO is to overbuild everything. The potential cost savings on the single units we are building is not of any significance.
Overbuilding is one of the reasons that older equipment lasted longer. Before the days of computers, simulations, and models, engineers and designers had no choice but to overbuild things. As the computing technology advanced, it allowed designers to remove a significant portion of the material and still (for the most part) have a reliable machine (I understand there will be disputes on this). The problem these days is the cost of overbuilding, as many posters above have stated, cannot be justified in todays economic environment.
As an engineer myself and being involved with an ag equipment manufacturer, I have worked in test engineering and understand the difficulties of fixing/repairing equipment. As much as design engineers would like to be involved in the hands on fixing of equipment, management and deadlines do not allow for this occur very often. And deadlines do create a lot of the challenges in fixing equipment. Engineering in large equipment manufacturers are not the ones that set the deadlines as to when a project design is initiated and when the final product is scheduled to be released. Therefore, they have a limited timeline in which to release a functional piece of equipment. A lot of times decisions have to made which are not ideal but allow the design group to be close to the timeline. |
Why do engineers (rant)
