MORE THAN ONE FORM OF KINETIC ENERY

A Second Set of Eyes

Bob Niemeyer

There are some projects that engineers become so focused on that they can no longer “see” the solutions to simple problems. One of the many talents of a good engineering manager is recognizing when such situations arise, and time becomes an issue that overrides ownership of engineering tasks.

I had just started a new job at a company that designed and built digital plotters. We were in constant competition with other companies for sales and spec-man-ship, and in the plotter world of that time, acceleration was the most important selling point for how fast a plotter could draw lines on paper.

by Bob Niemeyer

One of the most difficult aspects of being an engineer is working with people who have no idea how to produce what they want. They come to you with a “statement of objectives” rather than either a design criteria, or even a list of requirements. For example, I had a client (you could substitute “boss”), tell me, “I want something that will somehow detect if the velocity is so slow that it will not be able to make it up an incline.” To make matters worse, some potential clients simply cannot get an idea out of their head in a way that would make sense to those who could produce their objectives!

– by Dr. Christopher Jacobs PhD.EE
– Senior Member
At USC (University of Southern California) the mechanical engineering department was developing a gasoline engine with the advantage of being extremely fuel efficient. Unfortunately, a major disadvantage was that the efficiency was only over a very narrow range (+ 50 rpm). All valve and ignition timing, as well as air fuel ratio, were optimized for this RPM. An experimental engine was designed to run at exactly 1,800 rpm at full throttle. Outside that range and throttle setting, the efficiency was awful! One of the practical problems of using such an engine to power a street-driven vehicle is in changing vehicle speed if the engine can only run at a single RPM.