The Machine Doctor’s Ramblings

Hydraulics and Pneumatics magazine published a good article on hydraulic seals.  It’s worth reading.

Click here to check it out.

I hope you find it useful.

It has been a long time since I posted anything - I’m sorry… but I have a good excuse.

Last Thursday I spent all day slicing apples for our school’s fundraiser.  I was responsible for slicing of the apples because I designed and built four slicers for the event.  (This was actually the second year we used the slicers but I built new cutting heads this year.)  You can see the slicers in action by clicking here (the slicers are shown about 45 seconds into the video).

More importantly,  last Friday I took the PE Exam in Chicago so for the last 10 weeks or so my spare time has been spent brushing up on my engineering training.  (I am licensed in Wisconsin but Illinois won’t honor my license as I received my license based on years of experience not on taking the exam.)

I hate to admit it but the hours of studying have probably made  me a better engineer.  There are a lot of areas that I studied that I never had in college because they weren’t in my area of specialty.  The morning portion of the test was very general so you had to review every area of mechanical engineering.  And the afternoon session forced me to brush up on areas of design where, after 28+ years in the field, I would just use my experience and “rules of thumb”.