Workshop In An Alternate Homepower Environment

[Morris Dovey]

Cliff expostulated:

| On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:39:39 -0500, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Maytag | | My impression of themis one of overpriced stuff that's | no better than anyone else's.

Their top end (like their competitors' top end) products /are/ highly priced. In at least Maytag's case the top end products are, in fact, as good as they can make 'em. The R&D guys actually talk to the production assemblers, pay attention to what they say, and make product changes on the basis of their suggestions. More usually (elsewhere) an assembly person has to tell a foreman who might or might not tell a supervisor - and so on up the ladder until there's an information "bridge" back down the chain to the R&D guys.

The Maytag link to the customer call center is disconcertingly direct. When I first arrived I had a "recycled" R&D phone number and got calls from CS call center operators demanding that problems be fixed *RIGHT NOW!* That I wasn't the person they thought they were calling didn't seem to make any difference - nor did the fact that I wasn't even a Maytag employee. One gal told me that didn't matter and that I'd better get up off my butt and *FIND OUT* who should be fixing this problem and make 'em aware of it and have them get back to her posthaste.

Maytag could never get away with showing a commercial of that scene (can't admit right out loud in front of God and everybody that someone's had a problem with /our/ product!); but after I came out of shock I decided it was actually pretty impressive. Again, it's noteworthy that in all of these "hot" calls the communication was between "indians".

Convinced me that Maytag's problems are top-down rather than bottom-up.

I'm not in a position to comment on "overpriced" - but I think that when someone buys a washing machine (or whatever), not all of what's being purchased arrives on the delivery truck.

Hmm. Reminds me of some current threads about CNC equipment and perceived value (or lack thereof) of customer support organizations.

| Perhaps unerelated ... Sears seems to like to | sell models that they (Sears) are the sole supplier | of spare parts for .... so take a standard model, | rebadge it & alter a few key failure prone or | consumable items ...

That would match up pretty well with some of the (very biased) comments I heard voiced around Newton. :-)

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[twillmon]

On 2005-06-24 [e-mail] said: >Newsgroups: alt.energy.homepower,rec.crafts.metalworking,rec. >woodworking >Me writes: >> In article , >> "Arnold Walker" wrote: >>> Many steamtrains are now ran on air due to boiler code worrys by >>>insurance companies. >> CFR (Call for Reference) on the above. as I believe it to be >> Bullshit.... >I think so too, especially because even without the water an old >boiler pressurized with air is also no small danger. >> the only Steampowered Trains still in existance, >> and in commercial service are in third and fouth world countries, >There *might* be some stored steam engines still running, typically >in chemistry or power plants where steam is available anyway and >can be filled into the engine easily. >-- >Dr. Juergen Hannappel

>de/~hannappe >Physikalisches Institut der Uni Bonn Nussallee 12, D-53115 Bonn, >Germany CERN: Phone: [phone] Fax: ..77930 Bat. 892-R-A13 >CH-1211 Geneve 23 Smith Brothers in Galesville, MD (a marine construction and equipment rental firm I used to work for) has an old steam crane operated from a 1000CFM air compressor, used for plucking barge sections from the water. Makes a merry chug.

You are aware of coal-fired steam excursion trains? We have one in northern New Mexico (Cumbres & Toltec) and there are many in Colorado.

Tom Willmon near Mountainair, (mid) New Mexico, USA

Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered

[Morris Dovey]

F. George McDuffee expostulated:

| As a followon to another post I just made, see WSJ article Wed | June 22 on this. | | I ask the same question about Whirlpool that I asked about | Maytag. How much did they claim on their tax returns for market | research and product R&D over the last 5 to 10 years? It is | clear they did not do any.

I think you're mistaken. Whilrpool has introduced some well-developed new products (this according to engineering folks at one of their main competitors) and I've purchased a number (more than a half dozen) of top rate new Kitchen-Aid (a Whirlpool brand) appliances for my own home. The folks at Maytag weren't exactly thrilled to hear me praise Whirlpool/Kitchen-Aid, but did pay close attention when I listed the features I liked best.

I have to believe thay spent some reasonable amount of R&D money to produce just the products I happened to buy - and that new products don't just appear gratis on some design engineer's CAD screen. FWIW, I suspect that they spent really serious money developing their "Duet" laundry appliances.

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Arnold Walker]

Then you are bullshit ....Time Warner Theme parks for starts have done that on most of thier trains. There are historic trains all over the US running at this time.

[Arnold Walker]

[Peter Zisson]

I'm just jumping into this thread, so I haven't seen what set it off, but here are a few facts...

There are still a lot of steam locomotives in service around the country in excursion service. They all run in the traditional way - oil or coal or wood burned to make steam to move a piston. Note the repeated changes in the state of the energy. Each time you make such a change you lose a lot of energy - simple thermodynamics.

Reconditioned/restored old steam locos are often run on compressed air for safety testing. They don't actually go anywhere that way.

Let's look at an energy balance. Energy to heat water from 60 F to 212 F -

152 BTU/lb. Energy to convert water at 212 F to steam at 212 F and 0 psig

- 970 BTU/lb. Energy to take steam at 0 psig to 300 psig - 235 BTU/lb. Adding these up, the total energy to take water at 60 F to steam at 300 psig is 1357 BTU/lb. The only portion of this that is usable is the energy in the steam. If the steam enters the cylinder at 300 psig and leaves at 0 psig the actual energy used to do work is 235 BTU/lb, or 17.3% of the energy added to the water in the tender.

Now add in all the losses involved in converting coal or oil to steam (less than 50% efficient) and you can see that a steam locomotive is very inefficient.

So what about compressed air? If you look at the volumes involved you will see that it is just not practical. 1 cu.ft. of air at 3000 psig is about

200 cu.ft. of air at 0 psig. 1 cu.ft of water is about 1630 cu.ft. of steam at 0 psig. A UP Big Boy locomotive used about 100 gallons (13.3 cu.ft) of water per mile on flat ground with a full 7000 ton cargo load. That means that to run on compressed air it would need a storage tank capable of holding 3000 psig pressures of over 800 gallons to run one mile! Just how close would the compressed air refueling stations need to be, and how much would it cost to compress the air?

Sure compressed air is great in the shop, but do you really care if it costs you 6 cents/hour instead of 2 cents/hour to run your pad sander? By the same token, why are there no table saws that run on compressed air? Probably because most of us have neither the money nor the space for a compressor large enough to do the job.

Note that this is a reply to the whole thread, not to the actual poster the reply is posted to. In face, he is right. Going from the rotary output of a deisel engine to compresed air to reciprocating motion of pistons is very inefficient, and that doesn't even take into account all of the other problems (non-energy related) of reciprocating piston locomotive drivers.

Peter

[lionslair at consolidated dot]

I've seen 125V used in high density housing - simply to lower the current in the same wires.

Our house in the mountains of No. Ca. was a few miles from a swinging transformer. Under low load, the transformer was at one voltage, as the current increased, the transformer switched in another set of windings up until it hit an end. The swinging transformer had massive make-before-break contacts that always rang (voltage hits) as it moved. I called the power company when it started hitting my lines heavy (I was logging them on my APC's) and they found a burnt contact.

So at one time or another, depending on load and speed of the swinger - it could be many voltages.

Martin

[Robert Bonomi]

[[.. munch ..]]

[[.. munch ..]]

At one point I lived "across the parking lot" from the local sub-station. the feed came out of the substation, down *one* pole, with the transformer and the drop to the 6 apartment building I was living in. the building was turn-of-the-century construction, with -- I think -- still original wiring. I could get an *nine* volt drop at the wall, by kicking on one of my pieces of electronic test gear -- one that drew about 8 amps. *OUCH*.

Anyway, I'm across the street from a school, 2 blocks from a *big* hospital, And had several other sizable 'commercial' users within a few blocks. A line-voltage monitor showed as high as 133V in early AM, with it slowly and somewhat erratically falling to about 127V by somewhere after 9AM on a week-day.

*THAT* led to a call/complaint to the electric company, Demanding that they get the voltage down to the 'proper' level. (That degree of excess voltage _is_ hard on equipment, and other things. Reduces the effective life of incandescent bulbs by about _half_, in fact.)

For some reason, customer service didn't want to believe me -- I guess complaints about "too much power" are *really* rare. :)

They suggested that what I was reporting "couldn't be happening". That whatever I was using to read the voltage must be 'in error'.

I pointed out that I had _five_ separate pieces of test equipment, by five different manufacturers, that were all telling the _same_ story, within about

2V (analog readout uncertainty on some of the meters). That all were industrial- and/or lab-grade gear. That the precision-reading unit (readable to 1/4v or finer) had been used for 'reference checks' at half-a-dozen other locations around the city, and registered 118.5 - 121.5 at *every* other location. (About the only thing I didn't have was a _recording_ meter / data- logger. :)

They _grudgingly_ agreed to send an engineer out to see me. He took one look at my 'bench', and said "Hell, you've got better equipment there than _I_ do." Then, looked at my readings and said "that's not right!" (He didn't even bother to cross-check with his own gear.) Borrowed my phone, called in to the office, and ordered an _immediate_ roll of a maintenance team to the substation, and goes outside to wait for the crew to show up. Which they did, in less than 15 minutes. Less than half an hour later, my instrumentation is showing a "respectable" 117V. rising all the way to 123V when the rest of the neighborhood shut down.

I even got a credit on my bill -- where they went back an re-figured what the kilowatt-hours _should_ have been if they had not been delivering 'too high' voltage. I'd only lived there a few months, but they back-credited to the date I moved in. It was about 15% of everything I'd paid.

[daestrom]

Nor, does George seem to contribute anything other than his definition of 'days of autonomy' and his harping on Wayne about it. George might consider some help since his 'days of autonomy' mantra seems to have taken over his entire existence and pushed out any other helpful contributions.

The subject is 'workshop in an alternate homepower environment', but it has degenerated to YAWVGM (yet-another-wayne-versus-george-match).

The OP might as well just start a new thread to ask any new questions, these two guys will not contribute anything more to the discussion, and most of us recognize the YAWVGM and ignore the thread from here on.

Moving on..... daestrom

[Tim Thomson]

I call bullshit on the credit! As if..............

[wmbjk]

You're mostly right, but don't discount the lesson served up by George's setup. It's a perfect example of tunnel-vision design, decreased utility, and how to spend less in the beginning, but more in the long run. For those considering hiring an installer, it also demonstrates the importance of seeking out one with well-rounded experience, as opposed to someone with what I call "contractor's" disease. That's where a tradesman can't see the forest for the trees, and continues to make the same assumptions and mistakes for an entire career.

Wayne

[John P Bengi]

I am onboard totally with you on this one. Must be the Great Lakes environment...LOL Hot huh?

[John P Bengi]

You must live in a tiny town if they sent out an Engineer for that...LOL

Did he have ditch digging caluses on his hands too?

Nice going. Never give up when you know you are right.

You would never get a rebate here for high voltage. power delivered is power billed.

[Tim Thomson]

As a matter of fact would his metor not run less with some things like his fridge, vacuum, hair dryer, washing machine, dish washer, etc. What makes a power metor spin? If voltage goes up does the amp draw go down? I would give my left nut to have a little more voltage. Switch mode power supplies love a slightly higher voltage and often run cooler when they are run at max voltage.

[John P Bengi]

Energy meters spin by the combination of current and voltage creating torque on the non-ferrous disc as it tries to get out of the magnetic AC fluxes created at 90 degrees to each other.

On resistive devices and most devices the current and power goes up as the voltage increases. You bulb will be brighter etc..

On synchronous devices like AC motor compressors and furnace fans etc. the speed is locked to the power line frequency. 60Hzx 2 changes x 60 sec/min / #poles in the motor will pas the electromagnetic pole that creates the torque and you typically get 1800 RPM. This is fairly constant, which means the work that it puts out is constant also (constant workload) When you lower the voltage to the motor now is has to draw more current to do the same work and can eventually burn out by overheating from the high current.

BTW: If you have a disc or equivalent in your Electric Meter you can determine the load of your house going through the meter at any given time by clocking it with a stopwatch.

Look at you meter and observe the disc. You should notice a little black mark passing on the edge of the disc every revolution. Time a couple of these revolutions and mark the time (in seconds) down. I usually do about 60 seconds worth. There also may be fractional marks if your meter is moving really slow and don't have an hour to wait (exag)

Also notice on the front of the nameplate of your meter there is a "disc constant" noted as kH. This is the amount of energy (in watthours) that the meter has measured each revolution of the disc. It will probably read something like kH 7.2 or kH 12. This is the part that is tightly regulated for accuracy.

Now apply it to this formula:

revs x kH x time(secs) / 3600. sec per hour

This will give you your home load in watts (power). This technique can be useful to check the power of appliances to see where you hard earned energy dollars are going each month by shutting off all the breakers except one and looking for the energy pigs.

If you have a solid state kilowatthour meter on your house there will be a blinking LED or simulated disc in LCD but the same thing will apply. Look for a constant for the "equivalent disc revs" or LED kH.

Best of luck.

[Cliff]

None of that would give any hint of what actually failed in the field and flooded out the end customer or anything similar. For that you'd need to know what went wrong, not just how to make it cheaper.

[Cliff]

I once met their engineer that suggested replacing all those custom hoses, fittings, pumps, etc. on their washing machine models with a single set of standard ones. I gather that they did it.

To this day I wonder how they got the contract for the toilet(s) on the International Space Station.

BTW, They used to use ComputerVision IIRC.

[Morris Dovey]

| On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 19:10:57 -0500, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Cliff expostulated: || ||| On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:39:39 -0500, "Morris Dovey" ||| wrote: ||| |||| Maytag ||| ||| My impression of themis one of overpriced stuff that's ||| no better than anyone else's. || || Their top end (like their competitors' top end) products /are/ || highly priced. In at least Maytag's case the top end products are, || in fact, as good as they can make 'em. The R&D guys actually talk || to the production assemblers, pay attention to what they say, and || make product changes on the basis of their suggestions. More || usually (elsewhere) an assembly person has to tell a foreman who || might or might not tell a supervisor - and so on up the ladder || until there's an information "bridge" back down the chain to the || R&D guys. | | None of that would give any hint of what actually failed in the | field and flooded out the end customer or anything similar. | For that you'd need to know what went wrong, not just | how to make it cheaper.

Of course. Did the paragraphs following the one you quoted make it to your server? If not:

[Morris Dovey]

| On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:47:34 -0500, "Morris Dovey" | wrote: | || Whirlpool | | I once met their engineer that suggested replacing | all those custom hoses, fittings, pumps, etc. on their | washing machine models with a single set of standard | ones. I gather that they did it.

Seems like a "no-brainer to me" - though the no-brainer solutions are sometimes the most difficult to get approved.

One of the other no-brainers (for CPU-controlled washers) should be to allow either hose to connect to hot and the other to the cold water supply. The controllers monitor both temperatures and control the flow valves independently anyway...

| To this day I wonder how they got the contract for | the toilet(s) on the International Space Station.

Interesting - I wasn't aware they'd done that.

| BTW, They used to use ComputerVision IIRC.

Ok. My primary software tools were gcc, Visual C, and Excel (in order of high to low quality) - No CAD/CAM needed for what I was doing. I did notice that the mechanical engineering types had some pretty nifty packages for designing gears 'n' stuff, though. One of the guys took time to teach me a bit about making gear trains quiet - and that was so fascinating I skipped lunch. (I suppose that makes both he and I hopeless geeks :-)

-- Morris Dovey DeSoto Solar DeSoto, Iowa USA

[Cliff]

They made it but did not seem to be on that issue. Perhaps you had to be there?