When Calculating Something Isn't Important

No.

Your point about "educated fools" is well taken.

It is obvious many times here that original posters don't know anything about the practical side of life.

Thus they cling to the belief if they can run through some calculations they will derive a satisfactory answer to their question. Never mind they they have no clue what the calculations mean in the real world.

I've seen this with mechanical designers, who have never turned a crank on a mill or lathe, but by-god, they've got a design here and they want it built, per print.

Tolerances is another pet peeve of mine. Let's just make 'em all +- .001 whatever the unit.

Calculations should come AFTER practical knowledge of the widget in question.

Many years ago I worked as a tech for a very large company in their R&D department. They brought in 3rd and 4th year engineering students every summer for some 'real world' experience.

They gave them a project and couple of weeks to do the engineering. Then they sent them to us to get their project built.

It was fun working with the students who wanted to learn and also fun sending the arrogant ones out to look for muffler grease.

The learning in universities and the personal achievement depend on the person . We should talk about comptent students on the other side as well.

there is an inherent need to understand the applications.
Indeed!
Key word 'understand'.
I had a classic today...
I wanted to buy some Mother of Pearl (MOP) online, most of it is 1.5 mm thick, but I wanted at least 2mm.
I got onto one company who didn't specify a thickness and they said they'd find out and E-mail me...
Got an E-mail this morning saying their pieces are 90mm thick That must be one damn huge mofo of a giant clam they got that MOP from. They obviously didn't understand the product, the question, where a decimal point should go or WTF they are selling.
I'm assuming it's prob' 0.9mm?
Del
(I want it for arrow plates on my bows)

Perhaps it's a BFP instead. BFP= Big Freakin Pearl.

I think he was trying to sell you some "mother of all pearl"...

Probably measured width instead of thickness. Never mind the quality......

My guess is that they wanted to sell you the whole unfinished abalone shell. This would also explain also why the contact had to measure a nominal shell. An excellent example of not understanding the question.

Motor manufacturers should include no-load current in the nameplate,instead of confusing users.

Why is it so important to know the no-load current? After all, a motor in this condition is better switched off; it isn't doing anything.

After rewinding a motor for testing at no-load and to assess the sizes of capacitors required for PFC and starting(shunt cap starting)

the whole thing took less than a minute to troubleshoot.

Yeah right!

It takes longer than that just to give a cuss in the first place.

"And a large part of any engineer's career is spent troubleshooting"... this is true even right after the design, there is still the need to test and debug for any problem(s)!

As I remembered reminding my staff, to be effective in doing repairs and troubleshooting, they need to develop the ability to use / harness all God given gifts... Initially collecting behavioral information using the following;

Their Eyes - for observation if something is amiss. Noting both proper and improper operational behaviors?

The Nose - to smell if something is hot or burning,

Feel - develop a sense of abnormal operational temperatures or even the presence nearby HV,

Ears - listening for any abnormal operational noise or sound,

Only after conducting above exercises, they can do the analysis, comparing all collected observations to whatever theoretical knowledge they have stored in their brains!

If still not successful, this will be the time to pull out any test instruments to conduct further tests and analysis..

It will be incomplete if they don't undergo proper training.

It was a constant reminder, part of the staff's continuing education /and annual competency review program..

My old professor separated the issues in 4 groups:

The urgent important, the not important but urgent ,the important but not urgent and not urgent and not important.

If the issue is not important don't waste your time calculating something.

I think if you have not a catalogue or a respectable author book to consult it, you have no other possibility but to try to calculate.

The experience has to assist you to appreciate the result.

With all due respect to the software people I don't trust in a published program. I do myself a "handmade" calculation in excel or in

Visual Basic [6] and I compare the result with catalogue, standard or else [even not so "respectable author"].