Electronics Engineers are Scared to Accept Challenges

Yeh...I'm soooo dull and lazy.

My mates say 'here comes Dull Dell...No imagination, no ideas, no energy'

....dunno why I don't just curl up and die.

Have electronics engineers run out of steam or the engineering degree is only a paper?

You may have a point about degrees... In my limited experience the lecturers were not up to date.

Your previous thread pointed out some trends. Eg towards more software and less electronics except in specialised fields.

I expect you will have stroked a few people up the wrong way...but I'm sure you are just trying to stir up a lively debate on purrrr puss!

Del

Dear Del

I truly believe that world will be much better if all electronics people work together and invent many new ways to push the technology in every sphere to the highest level. Who else will do that? It is the job and the opportunity for electronics engineers to show to the world that they are valuable and they can mean business. Going away cheap way is not the life for electronics engineers. That kind of thing perhaps means that person is scared to death in handling electronics circuits.

I have a plan to give training to few thousands engineers in top level electronics that only NASA engineers do. I will open all those facilities for engineers in India and also to those who want to come from abroad for learning. I can change the mind and thinking in just 4-weeks. I can only give start up kick, and there after each one should use the knowledge and build one's future in best possible way.

I have been trying this at low level, but now I want to make it to very high level in professional skill. Engineers should be able to learn to implement electronics for applications in medical, environmental, defense, nuclear power station, and industrial controls. Perhaps few more areas may also get covered.

Time has come that we put that kind of spirit in our engineers once again which is not available in Universities.

I am not yet a dull man and I really will never like to be one even to my last day on earth. I do not know why lecturers and professors have gone down so much in quality teaching that they have become unwanted elements.

Learning is one thing and making money in life is another. Industries must use the skill of the engineers else all skill will be waste.

I care for others as much I do for myself or even more. My dream is for all young people of the earth and a little for myself to survive here. I never lose hope.

Excellent...

I'm not really 'Dull Del' Very far from it...that was sarcasm. (I feel we may have slight linguistic missunderstandings...but it doesn't matter too much as we are both sufficiently polite! )

I try to do my own small bit to promote electronics as a fun and interesting.

When I retire I plan to go into one of the local schools to support the staff and hopefully provide some real world experience and enthusiasm to the youngsters.

I am currently assisting one of my colleagues who is doing an elecronics 'distance learning course'.

Iit is depressing how poor this course is....badly set out, irrelevant questions with unrealistic values. His 'tutor' was awful....he had marked a test paper which I had checked through as a 'D'... I got my colleauge to re-submitted it to be marked by a different tutor...it came back as a 'A'... It is this sort of poor teaching (it isn't really teaching) which puts people off.

I know this is just a very small thing, but I agree we should all do what we can.

Engineering is fun....

regards

Del

Dear Del

As long as you are doing something and enjoying in doing so, then I will say that it is a great thing you are doing. There is really nothing very big or short. We just fill the gaps and sometime filling small gaps is more difficult.

Hello Mr. Shyam,

I have read all the posts on this thread ... my conclusion from your original post is that you are starting up a school of some kind and are recruiting new students for your seminars from this forum:

I have a plan to give training to few thousands engineers in top level electronics that only NASA engineers do. I will open all those facilities for engineers in India and also to those who want to come from abroad for learning. I can change the mind and thinking in just 4-weeks. I can only give start up kick, and there after each one should use the knowledge and build one's future in best possible way.

A few thousand engineers is a lot of manpower and probably a lot of money. I am curious as to how you are providing training in top level electronics that only NASA engineers do... How much are you charging per engineer for your four week seminar?

Jules

Dear Photonicgirl

This is not for the first time, that I am doing such thing and this plan is a continuous process over three decades. By now a good number of engineers have received training in not so advanced technology.

Now, I feel that technology in advanced areas and using precision instrument and hands on experience in mission oriented sensors development should be part of the program. Basically sensors, information acquisition and information processing is something that gives insight and purpose to the engineers. Cosmic radiation, environmental sensors, bio-sensors, atomic and molecular content analyzers are the key areas. These advanced technology are now needed to survive on the earth in much better way. So far I find that only in research such areas are touched and this makes the fresh engineer/scientist to spend many year to come to some level. However, this kind of exposure can be given in rather short time.

There are about 5000 science and engineering institutes in India and each having above 1000 number of students. I believe I can involve many of them in few weeks programs in top class technology areas. From my past experience, I have learnt that even two weeks full time exposure can change the thinking process drastically in fresh young people. They all want to know something that was never a part of their life before. It is not necessary that should use the same thing in their future research or work. This gives them way to think and analyze and develop methodology for whatever problem they have in hand. I do not have a program that is ready made. I discuss with the group and make a program that they will like to take up and then we plan together and execute it. I know how to do it, and they learn to do it in the process. Students also contribute to the development process as it is also their idea.

I do have some resources for all this from my own saving and I allow students to use it. There is no contribution from any other other agency coming to it and only small contribution by the students themselves is used. Programs are often look like long workshops and become projects with orientation to get some good level of finishing touch to what was planned and started. Students derive satisfaction from their achievements. They also learn to handle things by planning. Take a case of robot they may build, which they think should have sensors for almost any type of problem they may visualize. They plan and place a sensors, add embedded computer and program the robot to handle the task. Each team comes with something new idea.

I get the parts made for the students from all over the world and also they get them made locally or in the workshop themselves. They can use wireless data telemetry on balloons or can fire a small rocket fitted with sensors. They can make on the ground mobile system or under water vehicle. I really never know what will be the idea on which students may like to work. There is no one kind of frozen idea in the program. Hence, for each group we hold one or two full length meeting, discuss over their imaginary plans and try to give shape to what was visualized as a dream.

In my training program each student spends about INR25000 or $600 and gets most of the electronics parts within that amount. There is no extra fee for using equipments and tools. The duration is often 2 weeks to 4 weeks and for locals 12 weeks to 24 weeks, as they learn slowly.

In my current plan, I will now like to give orientation in high technology, which I develop only for research. I will like to involve teachers as well as students in the learning process and this will start very soon from August 2007. I have space for 100 students at a time and do not intend to increase the number as one is to one interaction is required and often each student has lots of queries to be solved. I also provide class room type dialog to make the base understanding suitable to capture new knowledge.

Perhaps such method if adopted in large institute may bring greater results. There is also a need to have a teacher of my kind else will not serve the purpose.

What will be your idea to learn if you wish to do so?

Mr Shyam, thank you for your most excellent explanation. My interest in your thread is because I spent almost a year writing ISO documentation, MSDS updates, training manuals and performing Worldwide patent research for a start up company who manufactured photonic devices, such as attenuators. Each part was painstakingly engineered to perfection; however, once the parts were built by hand under a microscope, using the proprietary adhesives, the production loss reached up to 40%.

Your proposal to teach engineers new and dynamic methods of sensor development, combined, obviously, with finer building techniques to eliminate production loss (I'm assuming) seems right on the mark. I am very impressed with your offering and if we have any engineers who do travel to work with you, I hope they post here on CR-4 to provide information about their experience.

If you have anything published in this area, please direct me to it. Perhaps there's an article waiting to be written about your work.

Jules

Hi

Yes, photonic sensors often are part of the training. These are for different purposes. Chemical sensors, physical parameter sensors, bio-sensors, and analog and data communication are part of it. I am also planning to involve quantum materials and crystal structures, photonic energy converters and optically linked - electrically isolated measurement techniques in very high speed signals. Some experiments are for infrared sensing and oriented towards chemical detection and human motion detection. I am planning to bring out some books to place my experience for others. I did publish good amount of my work and yet 80% remains un-published with me and in my mind. I will like to bring it out and I will like to advice others to do the same thing. Only when it is on papers, or in material form it is useful for others. I am right now converting into material form as I am faster in doing that. I develop good number of technology each year, and those can be duplicated in each day without pains. Documentation is a difficult and pains taking job, however an essential evil and is to be done in parallel.

You are in right profession. I admire such people who take up such challenging tasks.

Mr. Shyam,

Actually, the writing part is easy, it's the inventing part that amazes me! My job is less complicated than yours...I do speak engineer so when I receive something crytically written on a torn piece of napkin, I find a way to decipher it. The trick is to go back to the engineer with my revised work, let him tear it apart, revise it again and have his blessing on it. Then we are in business! It's a process that works well for all concerned, and is virtually 100% technically accurate, a goal I strive for above all else in my work. That way, when the grant award, the repeatable science and audit of the books comes around, we are prepared and can even have a laugh or two. We took care of business back when the research was first completed so our backs are covered in a big way. That's my view of research writing from the trenches of places like RPI in Troy, NY; Fleet Bank in downtown Albany, NY; and Watervliet, NY, where multiple RPI start ups were once housed.

Jules

Hmmm...Perhaps you might also be interested in some Florida swampland?

Photonicgirl, what is that in your avatar?

It look like a picture of someone holding a paddle and a surf board???

John.

Del despairs: "....dunno why I don't just curl up and die."

-----

I know just how you feel, Del, but I can't help you. I thought to design you a personalized electric chair, but I lost interest. I try not to be apathetic, but I just don't care anymore. It's all so pointless, you know.

Even yesterday I tried to design a full-wave bridge rectifier (even typing the name of the damn thing is exhausting), but I got only as far as drawing a part of one diode on the schematic - the cathode, I think - and then fell fast asleep.

Sorry about the electric chair.

Hey ..this chair..

Will it have a massage and stroking facility built in?

Interest has been revived in the aforementioned chair Del. The current proposed version will have concatenated legs arranged in a scissoring fashion such that when DT pounces upon it, the weight of such a large feline will cause the mechanism to spring up and down violently, thereby causing the prrrrmanent magnets in the seat to induce a current in the windings of the complementary footstool. This should provide enough power for the attached swingarm and hand to provide the requested stroking. An additional power source (which may contain diodes) may be required to drive the, also attached, magnetic helmet assembly which will provide the previously mentioned cat-scan.

It has yet to be determined if a hairball remover mechanism shoud be included with the prototype.

After a short session on "the chair" a catic discharge may result, but remaining lives will nolonger be dull.

If it could serve drinks you could achieve a cat-a-tonic state!

I've dropped the electric part and have now built you a copy of the the dread Comfy Chair. _{the comfy chair? comfy chair? omg the comfy chair! the comfy chair?}

When I joined this thread I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.....

I'm a Controls Engineer (the lowest of engineer's according to some Post's I have read) but from what I have seen is that the Electronics Engineering realm has moved more into being Micro Electronic Engineering, still the same basic idea just smaller components. The "Computer age" has blurred some lines in my humble opinion.

Control engineers are not the bottom line but a great future zone. You can pick some skill that large industries use and these are; interfacing HART protocol, data collection in ORACLE files using VB front end and perhaps LabView like graphic interfaces and virtual instrumentation. This all will hardly take 4-8 weeks to master out in your free time and there are training classes all over the world. You need not be genius for all that. You will become in highly paid and highly in demand engineers. Right skill gets you to the right place. Worst thing you want to do to yourself then work in a small factory as maintenance engineers and great thing you want to do then move to large production house and manufacturing site or plant integrators job.

The simple logic of salary is that, if you make one machine to work you get paid part of the machines cost. If you make one new machine and factory makes millions of those then you get share in millions of them. Hence, work in a plant where million parts are produced and you are linked to that production for salary and not something that is small and can't afford to pay you high.

Future is something you visualize after seeing the world or by inner-self power. Perhaps for you, looking at the world is enough. Projecting your work, speciality and achievement in written form in public domain brings you a lot bigger name. Unless you put it in black and white, it is as good as it is non-existing. Document your work and project it. It hardly matter if you think your work is small. It is always so for any one who knows how to do things, but it is hard for the others to implement.

If you have any further question then write again.

I wish you good luck.

Don't get me wrong I love what I do and am proud of it. At sometime an engineers ideas need to be put into practice to make money and it is people in my position that make it happen and solve all those little problems that seem to get over looked.

Whatever you do may look simple, but is great and beautiful and purposeful. Not doing things is the biggest problem I encounter and that is the real concern of mine to voice it out here.

A team makes much better in creativity when individual fail to think alone to visualize the final outcome. Some people work alone as they expect no help and only trouble. Whatever way you do things, your doing things matter a great deal. Involving others makes many to learn and become like you. I have trained many road side fellows and made them research electronics technicians. They are now productive. Not all understand everything but they do their job in a best possible way and that is what counts.

We need thinkers, implementors, quality testers, and business managers to get finances to all. You do for fun and you do for money.

I studied computer engneering which is a combination of both electronics engineering and computer science. I feel that I am adequitely equiped to learn and create both hardware and software systems. I am currently working in the process control environement.

My major concern is that management do not seem to fully understand technology and its possibilities. This is why I am so demotivated to perform. If there was a culture that allowed for technological development in these industries, I would certainly become more involved and try new things.

I feel that it is not us that are at fault, it is mainly industry that s not ready for this technology.

Hi

While you are not alone and many engineers will say the same thing, I will like you to point out clearly of what you wanted to do that would have resulted in gain to the company which was not allowed or accepted.

Companies for example go by rule set by contractor for hardware and wiring used by them. If each engineer makes a change then the entire factory will end up in mess.

As per factory rule, all changes are to be documented and must come through approval. Do you think that is possible in your case. What is the major reason for asking for change?

Please put up the things clearly such that others understand it, Only if your view points are expressed, we will get a clear idea.

If there are 10 engineers and they make 10 types of changes then it will be very difficult to accept any change at all. No change is a best idea unless there is a serious problem. When factory runs into problem an expert comes in. Are you an expert to the job?

You can analyze and say whatever you wish to say here. I am hearing your point now.

I agree that there need to be certain standards that a company needs to follow in order to maintain order.

I work in a hydrometallurgical plant. At the moment the plant consists of six processes where only five have automation (PLC, SCADA and instrumentation). There is a fibre optic network using a star topology to allow all of the SCADAs to be connected on a VLAN on the business network. The work that I have been involved in is to historically log all of the plant data. This data is available on the business network through a web server. It seems there is no interest in this as certain managers just want to click on one button to give them an answer. Some of them are not completely computer literate or are technophobes. They would rather walk through a plant and listen and feel if it is running properly than analyze it with factual data.

What I proposed to do was to install a dedicated ring topology network to connect all PLCs together. What I thought one could do with this is allow a plant on the receiving side to monitor its supplier. Based on this the plant could possibly automatically speed up or slow down to cater for problems experienced at the supplier. (Right now they monitor it through feel). This idea was declined because they said it was illegal for one plant to control another.

I graduated in 2005 and have just completed a degree in metallurgy. I would not say I am an expert but I am the only one there with my background.

It is interesting to discuss these issues.

"This idea was declined because they said it was illegal for one plant to control another."

Where the smeg do you live?

It must be some hyper repressive dictatorship that is trying to regress to a pre industrial revolution agrarian society. The whole idea sounds pretty daft to me and I certainly have never heard of such a concept.

Maybe the advice came from the first in line for the chop if the system was successful.

The idea you have is good one but it requires proven technology and all tested structures in design. In 1998, I came across similar design that was being tried at Nanyang University Singapore by Dr. Baldev Singh and others and perhaps Deneb Engineering Limited engineers were helping the project.

Idea was on the these that each process is like a work cell and there are many parallel work cells. You manage the flow of production by controlling the traffic of production and have method of breakdown maintenance and optimization of product along with power saving feature etc.

Circular fiber optic data flow technology in early time was adopted due to fear of breaking a fiber from one side and still maintaining the flow through the other side. Star topology became much cheaper way to integrate like our brain is integrated and it does run into risk at times and also have parallel path wired in star topology. This topology inhibits all data path to all and separates backbone from distributed nets to speed up the actions. Resources at times become local.

Best thing for you may be to design complete structure as a model and show it up and place it in a new plant or in an expansion unit, You have to prove each and everything of the design that it will not fail easily.

It may be worthless to put each and every PLC on the backbone. Perhaps in production flow is better controlled using modular designs and maintenance is easier as such systems are easy to understand by simple observation in limited zone. If there is some failure then it is local and shut down not going to make you to look for fault in the entire plant system. If you use single brain system, then fault in the system will call for complete plant shut down. Larger and complex systems perhaps have to be only brain based and not manual labor based. You are perhaps pointing to such designs.

Our brain is isolated from local problems in the body and only when it wishes, it handles problems of the body parts. Such isolation allows it to give priorities and not to bother about small problems when there something big on hand to be given maximum priority.

Back in the good old days, we connected every PLC in our process to a single communications cable and did just what you said. We used Allen-Bradley PLC5 in our processes so we utilized their DH+ network instead of fiber optics (we were a little slow in using new tech).

The original intention was just to enable us to save the PLC programs to a file server. We, the maintenance technicians, quickly found that we could also monitor and troubleshoot the different processes from the comfort of our workshop! There were a couple of issues with that, mainly the management insisting that we troubleshoot at the site and not out-of-sight. But being able to fix something or find the source of the problem immediately (if it was a programming error) was a big plus.

Then, hearing operators say that they wanted us to lay out wires to send signals to other processes so that they can tell how fast they were running and make necessary adjustments (just as you proposed). Laying out wires and setting everything up would take a couple of days. We proposed to send the signal down the communications cable and take just a few hours to complete. That we did and it worked fine.

Today, we still have that communication cable but it is only used as a backup. Now we use Ethernet which is much, much faster. I set up our workshop with process monitors so that we could see how the different processes were running (just monitor, no control). We're also implementing some diagnostics so that we are immediately alerted to problems as they occur. We're also working on something that would give us warning on deterioration so that we can solve problems before they occur.

The only thing I couldn't convince them about was building a central control room.

I think you need to get someone who can talk to your bosses about the advantages of interconnecting your processes. You just need to be careful about how you set it up. You can't have an operator of Process A controlling Process B! I guess that's what your bosses are afraid of. However, giving operator of Process A information on how Process B is running will help him make better decisions about how to run his own process.

I am no longer using cables. I build wireless network that can work withing few km zone without repeaters and then for longer distances, I use relay towers. Signals that have signatures run small Teflon Coaxial cable RG58U type to analyzers and once the information is processed and is digital, we put it on wireless network again.

I use narrow band, FHSS, and Bluetooth topologies. My equipments are often placed in 10km zone and data flow from large distances on cables are costly and risky. It is easy that cable will get cut by trucks moving over the buried cables.

I like faster machine processing power in each node. I am planning billion events rate processing power as my instrument types and experiments demand such capability. These are industry like structures but are used in research plants similar to CERN, nuclear reactors etc. I am not yet manufacturing for industries.

In your case, local servers should be placed in different zones to speed up communication. PLCs can not do too much of work. Making a local or zonal server isolates the PLCs from high speed backbone.

Ah, but the difference between us is that you decide what to use. Although I can give my input, the final decision is not mine. Our company is a little slow in implementing new technology.

We implemented a fieldbus system only 1998, well behind other companies. When Ethernet fieldbus came out, we asked R&D if we could install it here but they said they'd have to study it first. Now, wireless networks are coming in and they still haven't decided on Ethernet!

Sometimes we resort to just doing it and letting them find out later but that's been discouraged quite a lot these days. They'd wonder why our processes are running better or, when they come to visit, they find something interesting that is working perfectly but is still under study in R&D. Occasionally, R&D would come and visit us to see what we're doing.

We're not afraid to challenge as long as it's safe to do so!

But as I said, those were the days. Nowadays I've been pushing papers than turning wrenches. I'm just squeezing in time on CR4 during my off hours. My numbers have been slow to climb unlike others who seem to have all the time to spend on CR4! Are you guys making money on CR4?

Nice post Vulc'..

Some of my best products have been designed in spite of being vetoed by a PAC (product appraisal committee) We just did 'em anyway!

Better to be working on something than being idle...it's amazing that management can say..'we don't want you wasting time on that!'

Do they think it's more productive if we sit reading the mail scratching our butts?

Do they think it's more productive if we sit reading the mail scratching our butts?

Perhaps not. If the itch is due to a fungus infection, make sure you wipe your fingers onto the paper and then send it off to the big boss .

Yes, management can be so oppressive sometimes. It's either "we don't want you wasting time on that" or "we want you to waste time on this".

A few years ago, our subordinates applied for overtime or leave by filling up a piece of paper and all we had to do was to tick "approved" or "disapproved" and send it off to someone for encoding. Then we computerized. 'Think things became easier?

Today, we review the time-in/out and fill in the blanks on the computer screen ourselves. The subordinates don't have to do anything. My eight member crew takes me about an hour to encode. I pity the guys who have 30 people to handle.

"A few years ago, our subordinates applied for overtime or leave by filling up a piece of paper and all we had to do was to tick "approved" or "disapproved" and send it off to someone for encoding. Then we computerized. 'Think things became easier?"

About 20 years ago a friend of mine that owned several hairdressing salons talked me into writing a software package that could prepare the pay for some 30 employees and gather statistical information on sales figures and performance.

Having seen many companies try and fail miserably at the so called paperless office I insisted that they had a good working manual system first. It took a bit over a year to design the paperwork but it was well worth it. Once there was a good workable manual system replacing it with a computerized system was easy. It also meant that in the event of a problem with a computer there was an workable manual system that could be use as a back up. Another advantage was that you can implement the system on a piece by piece basis and make sure that that component of the system is working prior to implementing the next phase.

I have seen many businesses get in a terrible mess when they have look at using a computerized system to solve their paperwork problems. It's a classic example of GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out except that computers manage to get past the concept of getting more out than in and only ever produce considerably more garbage out then they take in.

Wasn't that "Bell the cat"? You have to play, damage, learn, rebuild, replace and create things in time. This is very human nature.

"My numbers have been slow to climb unlike others who seem to have all the time to spend on CR4! Are you guys making money on CR4?"

I was forced to retire due to ill health nearly a decade ago so that gives me a distinct advantage when it comes to time I can spend on CR4 posts. At least it makes me feel like I am doing something constructive even if nobody bothers to listen.

"Ah, but the difference between us is that you decide what to use. Although I can give my input, the final decision is not mine. Our company is a little slow in implementing new technology."

I spent most of my working life as a field engineer running around either repairing things that had broken down or fixing up engineering stuff ups that had gotten through the design process.

One of the things I found interesting was how service or maintenance management assessed who was doing the best job. The usual parameter was to look at how many service calls each of the engineers were making. They would come out with statements like:

Why can Joe manage to do three time as many service calls in a week than you?

What are you sitting on your backside doing nothing?

The problem is they had it exactly wrong. The sign of a gook service engineer is one that has nothing to do. The ones that are sitting around with nothing to do are the ones that are preventing faults from happening by doing preventative maintenance, anticipating problems and taking preemptive action before a fault causes a customer to place a service call. The ones that are running around from emergency to emergency, pissing on fires and always carrying out band aid repairs are the ones that are not doing their job.

The trouble is that it is always the ones running around like a chook with its head chopped off are the ones that get noticed while those that are doing their job properly and don't have many emergency call outs get overlooked.

I have only ever had one manager that realized this and he had come up through the ranks. He achieve all his financial targets and so received bonuses. The trouble is this made him one of the more highly paid managers and the first one to get the chop when the sales people started to fail to meet their sales quotas.

Isn't it ironic how the incompetents rise to the top whilst the company simultaneously descends into mediocrity? Those that do make it to the top because of their technical competence are summarily removed to make room for the rising turds below. Shit floats.

Richard,

Controls Engineering is a specialized field, taking EE and applying it to Process Engineering and/or Manufacturing Automation. I love this field - from the micro (control circuit design & low-level programming) to macro (complete process control system design).

I still have a great deal to learn. Being a ChE, I didn't learn the EE basics in school, so I'm learning as I go.

I think that the most important thing in Controls Engineering to remain competetive is to apply new technologies ASAP (wireless, newer motion control, FPGA, etc.), while maintaining a solid fundamental base.

I don't know if you are into system designs or are on a lower level - there will always be a demand for good ClrlE's. Don't sell yourself short!

Mike

I agree. You make yourself valuable and you plan for it to happen and you can make it happen. Remain smart and learn in time to increase the library of your own brain. This is what you use in time. Document whatever you can't remember and refer to things.

Learn few more things.

1. Never agree to complete things in less time than you can finish. If you don;t finish then all dirt falls on you as you are against your plans. Keep good time margin.

2. Ask for written specifications.

3. Take time to analyze specifications and formulate estimates.Ask for corrections in specifications if there is problem

4. Reserve time for development.

5. Ask reasonable funds as you are not going to invest from your pocket. Who so ever wants things need to pay for the work and also for you for services.

6. Do your job in a professional way and if there is problem then accept it and disclose. You may be allowed some financial short comes and also time for adverse situations but you may have to justify it or you can keep some such margin in the contract at the first place.

These points are also valid for salaried engineers with minor alterations. You handle things in professional way to get more out of professional work.

"I'm a Controls Engineer (the lowest of engineer's according to some Post's I have read)"

I too am a control engineer by trade and while some may think that it is the lowest from of engineering it is probably the most complex, difficult yet most interesting of the engineering disciplines.

A controls engineer needs to have a good background in absolutely everything and they are likely to come across just about anything during their career. I have worked on things as divers as steel rolling mills, lumber sorting machine, sky scrapers, security systems, Boeing B-767, mines and the list goes on and on and on.

You really need a good understanding of the basic principles of engineering to be able to cut it as a control systems engineer so to say it is the lowest form of engineering is not doing justice to the skills of control engineers.

As for the problem Shyam is describing while there is a problem with the education being out of date if they teach the basics and how to apply the basics properly then it doesn't matter how much out of date they are. Any engineer worth their salt should be able to work at it from the basics. It may take a bit longer to do but they should be able to apply their knowledge no matter what the problem. Whether or not the education system is actually doing this effectively is another thing and I think it depends greatly on which country you are talking about. I do however believe that much of the education of engineers world wide has become too specialized and narrow and is not dealing properly with the basics.

On the subject of engineers not being willing to take on the harder more complex jobs, I don't think the problem lies with the engineers or their training but rather with the management. Management have got this screwy idea that thy need to measure everything only from a profit or loss basis. The look at anything that has any unknown factor as something that they can't control and so avoid it like the plague. It's one of my pet peeves and the slow degrading of the quality of engineering managers over the last quarter century is something that seems to be a global trend.

When I started in engineering all the managers were engineers that had come up through the ranks. However slowly but surely they have been replaced with accountant type manager that have come from some sort of management school and have absolutely no idea about anything to do with engineering. The effect of them trying to force their account driven ides on engineering problems has been catastrophic and the sooner we get back to managers that are engineers first and managers second the sooner we will be able to tackle the harder and more difficult engineering problems.

Well said....

Dear Mark

You are absolutely right and that kind of spirit makes a real engineer in control. Thanks for writing and making the point clear. good.

Without control engineers, industries will be out of control. Who will run such industry.

When I was starting off as a control engineer computers were only just starting to become small and cheap enough to be viable in a control environment.

I ended up working on strait computers that had nothing to do with controls and while the money was good the work was boring and lacked the diversity and proper engineering work that you need to work on control systems.

It was a huge mistake and something I greatly regret as working on control systems is the thing I enjoy the most and I miss not being involved. You can get enormous satisfaction when you hit the start button and everything falls into place and works together. It's analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra getting a really complex symphony and 100 musicians working together to create something that gives great pleasure to many.

I really miss that feeling of satisfaction.

In 1976 I made one system for my experiment nearly 99% automated. It was to read the thermoluminescence stored in different types of inorganic material due to gamma radiation exposure. System required linear heating cycle and light sensor photomultiplier tube and ADC to digitize current and finally to store in a file and plot on digital plotter as a graph. One could set the heating rate and maximum temperature using dials. There were few buttons to start the cycle.

Out of monkey habit, one of the engineer in the lab twisted the dial to set the 500C temperature and also kicked few buttons here and there and the cycle started. Now this man did not know how to stop the cycle so he simply slipped out of the place. When I returned to the place I found that a tablet of Teflon which I placed on the heater was missing as it decomposed and its fumes got deposited on optical filters. Luckily PM tube was saved by the optical filter.

You can see that now you not only need automated systems but also pass word protected systems.

We have more complex control needs and entire factory have moved into visual interfaces from bang bang Teletype and paper tape or card punch machines. Your ATM has moved into your mobile phone and factory into your Laptop which gives you control even in flight.

I think engineers have done great work in these 30 years and more to come each year to be seen that has never been seen before. I love this kind of change and I also inspire people to learn fast to get into top gear of the ever moving world of engineering and technology.

Can any one predict the way future control will be implemented? Perhaps by thinking and not by using any physical gears.

Interesting.

Music is a time-driven sequence. So are many batch and semi-batch control system programs.

It was a humorous bait but I am grateful that you took it and stated the scope of the career field so articulately. I used the lead-in that I did because I all too often hear/read about Controls Engineering being referred to as entry level engineering field in one form or another and have always disagreed but lack the eloquent words to effectively state so. Your comments were fantastic.

Thank you for being so well spoken.

Shyam,

Thanks for your post.

I am a ChE trying to cross over into EE. I have started learning how to design and build circuits - from simple - to now complex! I still have much to learn by way of math as it applies to EE and I have books to learn as time permits. I do a lot of circuit prototyping, using Express PCB to design and obtain my PCBs. I try to use the smallest components I can with the equipment I have to work with (a pair of tweezers, solder paste, and a toaster oven for reflow).

I am quite interested in sensors, but as yet I know only general stuff (TCs, pressure, force), so I'm still learning.

All of my work on this stuff is after hours, my day job being the Technical Director for a coating/laminating company.

Like you, I can't seem to sit still while there is so much to be learned!

Mike

You are doing it the right way. You can also look for Micro-machining MEM methods to make sensors and much of these may be available as facilities. You can also look into thin films technology, fiber optic sensors for the same purpose. Good starting point.

When I first started out, I was repairing televisions, tape decks, turntables (remember those?) and stereos. I wasn't the best but I got a couple of books and started reading. Soon, people were coming to me when they were stumped when finding what's wrong with a customer's unit. Still, I kept studying on my own, I got noticed and bumped up to R&D, designing audio and digital circuits and systems.

I left that company and got into fire alarms and security systems, things I knew little about. I learned the equipment, how they connected together and how to install them. On the side, I continued building electronic things as a hobby.

Going to another company, I learned instrumentation. I started out learning pH meters, then on to PID tuning (from which I developed intuitive tuning, very useful). From there, I learned about pressure, temperature, flow, and level measurement. I also became familiar with weighing systems.

When that company closed down, I went to my present company, learned even more and made it to supervisor. About three years later, a lot of the learning stopped.

I had to focus so much on maintenance scheduling, administrative works, following programs by upper management, that there was almost no more time for learning new things or even for hobbies. The only satisfaction I get is that I can teach my subordinates what I've learned.

Right now, I've found that teaching can be as fulfilling as learning. I've been making steps to do just that. My target is next year. I have to get out of this high-paying but stressful job and go into something I've learned to love...teaching. As my own boss, I can also find time to keep myself up-to-date, something I haven't been allowed to do for some time.

Dear Vulcan

You learn many engineering things in professional work and management is one such thing which is demanding and difficult. You organize an un-organized force to do something that none knows how to do. You achieve the unexpected and you become happy and you have achieved the goal without doing buy by making others to do it.

Hi Vulcan,

Another well said post.

"go into something I've learned to love...teaching"

The connection between learning/teaching applies to most all aspects of life. Years ago I started studying Shuri-Ryu (Okinawan) karate. I began considerably later in life than the mostly teens and twenty somethings that prevailed on the mat. However, I persevered and eventually achieved Shodan (black belt). Even though my knowledge and skills had increased exponentially, I discovered that when I, myself, began teaching that's when my knowledge really took off.

For years after that I taught karate to kids (4 years old thru 14 years old). That was truly satisfying. As you say, teaching can definitely be as fulfilling as learning.

-John

I don't know where you get the idea that EE are scared of challenges, just reading the posts here everyone seems to have taken on jobs which they knew little about and learned to do them...

If they were scared to accept challenges they wouldn't have accepted a jon that was new to them...

Just like my sig says, I think college / university is just a starting point for education, I'm still learning, and its exciting to have an unknown problem thrown at you! Especially when its from a large international company full of engineers who haven't a clue what to do about their problem!!!

That's the sort of challenge I love... and thrive on...

2 days ago a phone call from a company asking if I made leak calibrators... initially I said no but what is it for... The engineer replied and it sounded interesting so I asked for more details... He had to go and find the information and email it to me...

It appears that his company is measuring automotive parts for leakage without any idea of what units they are measuring or what units and limits they need to be measuring!!

Yet this is a major company producing critical parts for a very large car manufacturer!!

I've emailed him to ask for yet more information as to the test specs... I can't wait to go and visit and see what crap parts they are making...

As to the engineering education becoming worthless... I have volunteered a few times to give students a bit of a talk about the exciting things that happen in engineering, a few universities have asked me to give lectures and a few more have asked me to visit etc... Now that was a challenge and was FUN!!!

Of every school that I asked if I could talk to their students for 30 mins to inject some real life experiences into the classroom, none would accept the notion of me giving a talk...

Why? Well every one of them said that it wasn't on the school ciriculum and that safety aspects were a consideration etc...

Its not the kids fault, its the teachers' lack of imagination or foresight together with a government system that is totally inflexible!!!

John.

Dear John

Where do I get such ideas was your questions and my answer is from the environment in which I live in India. I am looking at this phenomenon over 30 years and in this period in India and find that engineers with electronics degree are scared to death is taking up electronics tasks. They are least prepared for it or they have found themselves in wrong discipline after looking through what it takes to be an electronics engineer.

Most of the people who say they love electronics are very often non-electronics people and less serious electronics handling tasks.

In India, most of the companies find hard to get an electronics engineer as most of them have migrated from electronics to software. I have requests received from UK from Radiometrix to get SMD machine handling engineers for their production line. I also received similar requests from USA and other countries. They all find hard to get right engineer for their job.

Just today my friend who has industry in Chennai told that electronics engineers are now leaving his company also. I do not find such problem yet and perhaps I am in remote area, where I take local help and there is little else for them to do.

You and me are very special and we can dig our well and can drink water. Hence, do not compare yourself with others. I am talking about engineering community as a whole lot. I take with me thousands of engineers all the time and I think about them, because they ask me what to do. I know the need of the country and I also know, what is good these people can do.

If there there are 100s of engineers like you in your town then what is your value? You will find yourself in Chinatown Point making those fortune cookies 12 hours a day for $1000 a month. You will not do as you can get that much in making that small sensor and support electronics in a day or two. That is why you are special. My question is why others are not so special?

There are still companies that have great electronics engineers else they can not make Boeing and Air Bus to fly and NASA shuttles and Space Station to exist. There is class of difference among those engineers and what we see in the cities. How many aspire to reach that height? There may be equal challenging opportunities in domestic and medical and industrial electronics. However we find few names.

You talked about the poor quality education and education without proper guidance. I think those points are important as not only students but also their teachers have problems.

I hate to be blunt, Shyam, but time and time again I've seen you post questions on this forum whose answers can be found simply and immediately by googling for the information you seek. But repeatedly you don't (or won't) do it. I've wondered, at times, whether Google is even available in your part of India, given your propensity to depend on others to supply you with help and widely-available information.

If you like, I can identify one particular thread in which, just to see if I could, I answered every question you posed on that thread based exclusively on information I found via Google - with the additional constraint that I could find it in fifteen seconds or less. I was able to do, to your satisfaction. What does that tell me?

1) You have no access to Google and therefore could not seek the information you needed, or 2) you were unwilling to do so; depending instead on others to do your work for you.

There are lazy engineers and, sadly, I rank you among them.

Again, sorry to be so blunt. But you brought it up, after all.

Dear Europium

The web sites are dead things and I prefer to evoke the minds, to see what my alike professionals think and act upon. Your communication, a line, is more vibrant with life for me than entire google searched information. Even if I search information, I will again prefer to communicate with the author to know if the author himself/herself believes in the information. Have you ever trusted a robot to get a proper reply to drive your life? If I find a Robot and a person then I am likely to ask the person and not the robot my lost way to reach home. It is very likely that robot may have much better information.

I am looking for experience expressed directly by a person. I do look for solution to the problem at times and do find good ideas here. Other topics are meant to look at the social problems in engineering profession as we see and experience in local and global zones. I am not alone and I have few thousands of engineers students here that come to me to learn and to build their future. I look for some solution for them also from what others feel, experience and do. My own profession is highly specialized and I have none in India to compete with and most of the time work alone and use engineers to do my work for payment I make to them.

I am now, looking forward to enlarge the circle and join hand with people abroad and mostly investors in the business and for profit sharing. As this part does not fit into our discussions well, I keep these points away from technology talks. Perhaps, you are the one I might like to join hands with. I am planning world travel to talk to people to make things to happen for a likely formed a like minded group.

Topics of the discussion like this one makes people to prepare well ahead of their professional life right at the starting point. I am looking for the experienced people to say something that will be useful for others and not much of direct use to me. I spend good amount of my time for others and this does not affect my work too much.

"The web sites are dead things..."

-----

I don't buy it. Books are likewise "dead" things, too, given your line of reasoning. So, from your post, shall I infer that you don't read books?

Non-forum websites are replete with useful information. That you call them "dead," and base your avoidance of them for that reason, is no excuse for not doing your own homework. You seek "live" websites, such as this one, precisely because there is no-one on the "dead" ones who can give you what you seek. No-one to do your work for you. Yes?

Your post is very nicely phrased, Shyam, but time and time again you post questions here which make it inescapably clear that you haven't done your homework, nor have you lifted a finger to answer your own questions. Rather, you depend heavily on others to do your legwork for you and, presumably, you use that information - supplied to on a silver platter by others on this forum - and apply it to projects from which you, exclusively, make a profit.

Not only are you lazy, Shyam, you are deceptive. And judging by your slick answer to my post and to others, you have been slick and deceptive for some time now. I know a rationalization when I see one.

You can fool some of the people some of the time...

Mr. Shyam:

Electronic engineers such as myself, have enjoyed the fruits of their success while, at the same time have had to "Run the guantlet" among their own peers until, accepted as I was, even as their mentor many times.

Then, when everything is going great, along comes the "Bubble buster or Credit taker" totally inexperienced in electronics, empowered by Management.

Larger entities, Corporations, are the more "Ruthless in that form, I call it Control." Simply, the same as closing the "Lid on innovation!" Knowledge, and experience, are the "Two Key Factors" possessed by an electronic engineer, on the path to success!

How do I know? My High Technology Designs, were accepted as Industry Standard Products all over the United States, and Canada, these past twenty years.

Advice to the starting engineer's: Always step forward, never backward, in your "Gut Feelings" in your beliefs and commitment to any project (Ready for riddicule, it will happen). In the 90% range you will find you are right (even if, it takes you working 90% of the time to discover yourself, and your belief), in the project!

In the event, more information is desired, the wealth of information I possess from experience alone, would fill several electronic engineering volumes to help the serious engineer, mind set.

Sincerely yours,

Ron (irongavisk@yahoo.com / "i" in front of ron, followed by my last name)

This world is full of all kinds of people and some of them are cheats by birth. If they don't cheat then they are cheating their own gene, so I feel all right if they cheat. It is better to keep moving forward in the life and do not bother too much that will not bring in any good to your life.

If some one cheats you for money then you lose money. When you think about it then you also lose happiness and that is not the one cheat has cheated but you deliberately made it to go along with your wealth. Just be happy irrespective of what world does to you. This is what I taught to by brain. At times it may be tough to practice but it is worth. Only thing I will like to remember is the good will of some friend some time in my life to me and to repay it in whatever form it is possible for me, if I can do that at all at some point in time and space. My memories contain their good deeds only and I rarely know the bad of others.

"If they don't cheat then they are cheating their own gene, so I feel all right if they cheat."

-----

Pretty much spells out your morals - or lack of them, neh?

There is no knowledge that is your own and it is only jumble form that you see in new shape which you call your own. Accepting the fact makes things better in your own mind and not accepting remains a point of disturbance. Moral is something not to be worried about to much and it is something you decide for yourself. Moral values for deer and lion are different and OK for both. I have understood this in the diversity of the nature and I do not give too much importance to it, while I try to live a restricted life in many ways and differ from animals to some extent. I can not hate the world and live happily into it. I set my own rules and I live with those rules. I can change them if I feel like changing as it is my world within me and that makes me Shyam. If you let others set these rules for you then you become a foot ball.

I have noticed this as well, with engineers in other parts of the world, outside the USA. Engineers in countries outside the USA could care less about innovation or experimentation. Sure give them a project and they get it completed, but ask them to push the limits of the project, forget it, they have no idea what you are talking about.

Especially engineers in Asia, they have no thought processes to experiment. Just plug in the numbers,pick the parts from a bin, put it together cheap, and sell it. Sad that we are going this route as a world community.

These sweeping assertions are begining to irritate me.

A year or so ago a potential client came to our company wanting a battery operated drain dosing system...he had assumed a peristaltic pump.

I came up with a flippant comment about reliabily and that gravity was more reliable than than a peristaltic pump.

We now have a reliable gravity based microcontrolled timed sytem which has been in service for over a year and has won awards. The battery life is also better than our competitors.

Us electronics design engineers do think outside the box.

Many of us have good working knowledge of many other disciplines, software, mechanics, chemistry, injection mold tool design.

What have you designed and built recently?

"Us electronics design engineers do think outside the box."

You are not thinking outside of the box, but within your own box, which is a different size and shape to everyone else's, based on your own learning and perceptions.

This is why some people stagnate in their work - they choose a direction early, and stay with it gradually loosing contact with the rest of the world. It is obvious from the comments on this forum that the most respected contributers have a wealth of experience in different fields - many closely related, but still different enough to keep them engaged with the learning process.

Compare that with the local council empoyees, for example, who get their job straight from education and keep them for life - they tend to think in a very narrow way. afraid to think in case it leads to a greater workload.

...outside the USA could care less about innovation or experimentation.

The phrase actually should be "couldn't care less". Think about it for a sec.!

Mike

Those bright blue LEDs you see in everything from architectural lighting to kids' toys? That's an Asian invention. From Nichia Chemical Industries, specifically. Two decades and millions of dollars in US research could not produce a blue LED worth a hoot.

In the 80s I designed the data acquisition software for a mass spectrometer made by JEOL - Japan Electron Optics Laboratories - Nihon Denshi. Their spectrometer could analyze samples as small as 20 femtomoles. That's roughly the amount of fluid that sticks to the outside of a mosquito's snout after she pulls it out of her victim (only females draw blood, btw). No spectrometer in world could handle samples that small. JEOL's technique for doing so was a stroke of genius. Not only was their ion detection technique vastly superior, but so was their means of splitting heavy ions into daughter ions for subsequent analysis. Their spectrometer was decades ahead of its time - and worth every penny of its exorbitant price.

Another Asian company, Avago Technologies, bought HP's line of optoelectronics and vastly expanded on HP's product line on several fronts; one of them being optical encoders. Not long ago they sold their five-hundred-millionth unit.

Not bad for just three Asian companies for which, presumably, innovation is an alien thing.

Engineers the world over are innovative and not "scared" to step outside the box.

Good observation. Recently the Nichia scientist moved to USA University. LASER diode by Hitachi was and high energy LED by Nichia did make lot a contribution to the world. It is nice learn that you did software for Japan based company for their special IMS. Something makes people to drive themselves into innovative world and perhaps that is something within the person and also the need they see around them. If asked to do things then many may do much better in life but opportunities are there for all.

Hi Shyam: I somewhat agree, but it is not only true of Electronics Engineers. In my field of machinery vibration analysis, users are doing things the same way they did forty years ago. I think the technologies become entrenched because of aggresive marketing by larger firms and every seminar or trade show becomes a rehash or a refinement of the existing approach and hardware.

It is very difficult to change old habits. In the sensor field, I spent years trying to convince engineers that charge amplifiers had serious short comings when used with piezo electric sensors and that low impedance constant current or constant voltage was a much superior approach. The major firms were all pushing charge! It took thirty years for the transition, but it eventually happened. All machinery analysis is now done with low impedance. [Except in very high temperature environments.> 400 degrees F.]

Today I have developed a new approach to bearing fault detection using acceleration impact analysis. I wonder if I'll live long enought to see it widely used.

The basic reason in mechanical engineering is that most of the calculation was already done using FORTRAN-IV on main frame computer and mechanical era came first. Initially it was thought that every thing including automation means gears, motors and hydraulic systems and perhaps fluid dynamics and FEM. World became very rich in mechanical engineering and metallurgy.

Now with nano-technology, there will more charm for you to build micro machines, and nano-machines. I am sure you people will be on top again and only have to learn more chemistry and quantum physics and perhaps numerical analysis than what was done before. Old is still gold and yet something else great to do in time for all of you in mechanical engineering,

In fact now all field unite when it come to research level job and we become one. Hence, we work on same project but use specialized knowledge of different people.

Dear Ms.Shyam & list members,

I agree that Industry is in demand for Electronics Engineers who can "work" on solutions like it used to be 20 years ago. when I say "Work", I mean you give a problem & it is solved with ingenuous electronics... rigging up a circuit & making it a gadget using a few components from the local market. I blame it on education & Opportunities. Education because, We don't see Profs & Instructors know sufficiently to teach! & Opportunity because people have shifted to more lucrative jobs like software or even call centers!...We still have this quest to make I build in a small group called HAM Radio hobbyists but with the advent of cell phone & internet, it is left with a hand full who are still active.

I think we need a movement to popularise electronics & help develop curriculum which can attract Young people to learn by doing and only this can bring electronics its deserving place , the money & good supply of skilled people.

The allied fields of Electrical & Electronics such as Mechatronics, Control Engineering, Instrumentation , Robotics , Industrial Automation sometimes clubbed as Hardware Engineers do suffer from deficiency of skilled manpower. If Industry trains has to straggle to retain them! So there is an urgent need for good teachers (who can demonstrate) with Passion are need to support the movement. One can think of a consortium (low tech!) for train Skilled manpower with a promise of good placement!

So If Shyam is looking for motivated few he should look for some active Hams...

Guruprasad.K

Mumbai

Necessity is the mother of invention. Demand always bring in the quality in people. If they are not educated in colleges then they will be trained by the expert by the companies in areas they need expertize. Only problem I can visualize that small industries will find hard to afford an engineer as they can not provide training and they can not wait for something to happen in time.

Small industries are actually operated by innovators by their own hard work and some help. Big companies are structured and planned for a purpose. Each person in big factory fits like lock and key.

"they will be trained by the expert by the companies in areas they need expertize."

Sadly, this does not seem to be true. Most companies in the west look for those already expert in the desired field, training within companies is becoming less and less. If you can't tick the "been there, done that" box, then they would rather look elsewhere.

This may mean that the person selected is so used to that work that they do not find any/enough inspiration to perform to their best ability.

It's an interesting observation Shyam, I don't know if it's true for many, most or even some engineers. But there are a number of reasons it could seem that way.

1. Any non trivial problem these days involves a significant investment of the engineer's time and resources, so many (including me) are reluctant to commit without a really good reason.

2. There's a huge inertia built into many real world engineering systems. Simply changing a sensor can create mountains of paperwork, involve retraining tradespeople and arranging new spares. Often it's easier, cheaper and safer to leave things as they are (since, if things go wrong it's always the engineers fault).

3. Many young people choose engineering these days (for the pots of money, public recognition, status and steady supply of sexual partners) as a good career move rather than because they actually love engineering. Such people can have great marks and a great work ethic etc but they quickly learn that progress through the company isn't made by mere "technical people" but rather by managers.

Jeff

for the pots of money, public recognition, status and steady supply of sexual partners.

!

Are we all talking about the same definition of 'Engineering?'

...0 out of 4 can't be right.

I think, possibly like Del, that this thread is going nowhere...

Guest, since when have engineers been enticed into engineering by pots of money, public recognition as well as supply of sexual partners!!!???

That last bit has had me in stitches laughing, Guest, are you really an engineer? and if so can I join your engineering group??!!

John

In this discussion we have come across the following points.

1. There are experienced electronics engineers busy doing things they are happy to be there.

2. There are control engineers who think they are electronics engineers and are ready to take up any talk in factory automation including modifications by their acquired experience.

3. There are non- electronics degree holders doing electronics because they know things by experience and they are trying to acquire experience.

4. Electronics engineers trying to make their way into this competitive field and are looking for point to start

5. Scared engineers who migrate to other areas as others migrate into electronics and there is some kind of equilibrium

I have not come across any one who is really scared or not so interested in this field, Perhaps those are scared are also scared to look at the forum. Hence, I conclude that all those participated are seriously working in electronics and love their profession. It is something to sheer up and to celebrate. I greatly appreciate the participation by all of you and contributing to the thread. The purpose of the thread completes with this much feedback and I appreciate it.

The last word to say is "Dhanyavad" or 'thank you".

"steady supply of sexual partners"

I'd like to know - where are all these babes?

Michael O. Hogan. P.E.

"I'd like to know - where are all these babes?"

-----

They're with me. Eat your heart out.

Over the last 30 years I have seen a revolution in industrial electronics.

In the 70's everything was hardwired relay logic, reduced voltage starters, Ward-Leonard controls, tube rectifiers, mercury pool rectifiers, carbon piles, moving on to custom designed logic circuits, op amps, SCR controls, designing 3 phase to DC phase controlled rectifiers, Introduction of programmable logic controllers, introduction of 3 phase VFD's, (all via logic gates), migration to PAL's , migration to programmable controllers, migration to machine logic controls being software based instead of hard wired, drives shrinking from entire cabinets down to a single board and a handful of chips.

Along with the changes where we needed many engineers to design the circuits the MBA boys pushed for "standardization", EE work moved to programming, as circuits moved from discrete devices to entire drives on a chip the work moved to highly specialized chip manufacturers, drives became standardized, and the engineers driven for productivity determined by how many gadgets went out the door.

Multiplication tables and slide rules became pocket calculators and powerful MCAD software type solutions (and engineers change how they model and predict performance).

The big companies don't want to see innovation outside their small R&D groups. The EE's in production are to use the cooky cutter, and will be branded a rouge if they don't.

I started my own firm to allow me to continue to innovate. I now determine the risks. And now the "Big Brother" companies don't know what to do with competing products that are using their own product as the base platforms. Reaction is everything from "you can't do that, you modified our product", "you know the warranty will be void", to "we wish we could do that".

And when the chips are down "Big Brother" comes and contracts us to solve their dilemmas when things no longer follow their book.

Or they come and buy that neat part they really needed but the MBA's said the R&D didn't justify it.

As an example GE used to be General Electric and electrical was their business. Now GE (financial) is far bigger and controls the company. The MBA's have control now and keep the stock holders of the company happy.

Reliance Electric was an engineering company and went the same way with LBO's, bought and sold, and now absorbed into AB. AB appears bent on the standard product distributor approach. The custom engineering is a small fraction of the business.

A changing world, we now chat by email, dozens follow our coffee break rants, and a few of us continue to irritate the system because we dare to be different. Some of us survive, many are hammered into the mold.

illegitimati non carborundum.

What's MBA?

What are LBOs?

I like your post and would like to know more about how to make money on my own. I've got a very eclectic engineering background - albeit with a lot of holes. What I want to learn is how to capitalize on my ideas. I don't have a "head" for business, so maybe I need to team up with someone that does. Any ideas?

Mike

As GW talked about, innovators at small scale level do most of the add on changes, refining of the products when there are short falls in developed products. Production line people easily do not make changes as that calls for investment and break in their existing market for the existing product.

Whatever you design, some one going to make a better one at some time later. This is an on going process and never stops.

Teaming up with capable like minded people and making a good working group always is of advantage. You get many hands and contributed funds and energy. Some time you also get into problem of lag pulling which often you can over come.

Teaming up with small innovators in early stage is much easier when each one wants to pool the resources and just started to look into gloomy world of future. After many years struggle, and after creating a niche, the small team member do not easily accept an external person who only looks at their usefulness and may not have much to contribute. Perhaps, investment and finance may be something that may be acceptable or the new comer should be a break away equally capable group member or a group.

MBA = Masters of Business Administration. Ticket to manage business to make money, without regard to people, core business strengths, or recognize what the "raison d'etre" of the company was. Make money for the stock holders to get that big bonus.

LBO = Leveraged Buy Out. Use other peoples money to buy a company. Tool MBA's use to make piles of money for share holders, and hence get the big bonus.

The entrepreneurial life is not for everyone. I started with 18 years with "Big Brother", chief design engineer, Engineering Manager for Canada. I was taught well, and the company hammered home the principles of management and profitable work, cost factors, margin, planning ahead for expenses etc.

To split away and try it on your own it helps to have a defined area that you know can generate income, no matter how mundane. I also recommend having enough savings for at least 1 year of no income, otherwise panic sets in. (Welcome to net 60, net 90 days with late payments.) Knowing a reliable customer base is also a huge asset, especially people that already know your capabilities and will risk the upstart company. Remember that to work for that large company you made only one sale, You will need to sell yourself 200 times a year in your own business. Starting your own business is not for everyone, and 90% disappear within the first year. Make it past five and there is 90% probability you will make 10.

Excellent thumbnail sketch, GW. I might also mention that if one goes on one's own, expect to fail at least twice before succeeding. The average is more like 2.5 failures per success.

Also note that patents, per se, do not make money, businesses do. One can have all the patents in the world, but if the products/processes/services they represent never see the light of day as real products; if they're never marketed and sold, expect nothing from patents. Patents are offensive tools, not defensive ones. Patents give the holder the right to sue for infringement, they do not protect from infringement in the defensive sense of the word. Expect to litigate at least 1/3 of your patent holdings, and this costs money - a lot of money. As the burden of proof of infringement is on the patent holder, the holder bears the burden of attorneys' fees and court costs - unless the holder wins and if the judge awards the holder compensation for such fees.

Patent is valid only if it can generate market potential and if you try to hide technology after taking patent then also it renders useless. Patent process was to make the technology available to others or was meant for technology marketing and not for technology protection or inhibiting others from adopting the technology.

If you want to duplicate the technology then also it is OK as long as you do not make money out of it.

I think people make more money is using others technology as reverse engineering has become much easy task.

Shyam writes: "Patent is valid only if it can generate market potential..."

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No. The validity of a patent is completely independent of it's ability to "generate market potential." A patent, once issued, remains valid whether or not the product it represents ever sees the light of day.

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Shyam writes: "...if you try to hide technology after taking patent then also it renders useless."

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Once a patent is issued, the patent's description, claims, and all other details of that patent are publicly available. In terms of secrecy, trying to "hide" the technology after obtaining a patent is the equivalent (in this country, at least) of having elected a president and then hiding the fact of it from the electorate.

If you keep the details of your invention as a trade secret, you can leverage trade-secret principles to enforce rights on the invention. If your invention is kept as a trade secret and you place it into commercial use, you must file a patent application within one year from the time it was used commercially, else lose your protections over your invention. You can file a Non-Publication Request with the PTO stating that it will not be foreign-filed. But if you fail to request non-publication, your patent application will be published in full after 18 months and the trade-secret details of your design becomes public and the trade-secret nature of your patent application will be lost.

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Shyam writes: "Patent process was to make the technology available to others or was meant for technology marketing and not for technology protection or inhibiting others from adopting the technology."

No. Not even close. IP (Intellectual Property) law covers legal principles that determine:

1) Who owns any given intellectual property,

2) When such owner(s) can exclude others from commercially exploiting the property; and

3) The degree of recognition that the courts are willing to afford such property (ie, whether they will enforce the owner's offensive rights).

IP law, in brief, determines when and how an inventor (or his/her assignees) can capitalize on an invention.

Patent law and, more generally, IP law has nothing to do whatsoever with making technology available, nor has it anything to do with technology marketing. None at all. Patent law is an offensive (not defensive) legal tool to enable an inventor to enforce non-infringement laws against those who would illegally copy or exploit that inventor's creation without the inventor's permission and without due compensation. It is a legal tool.

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Shyam writes: "I think people make more money is using others technology as reverse engineering has become much easy task."

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True. There is a simple, universally-understood term for such activities, Shyam: theft.

One company has placed their company LOGO on my PCB product which I asked them to process for me. They even justified their act of doing so even though my designs carry copyright marking and patent warning.

What do you say about this one? They have placed their company LOGO on my four new designs and over 400 PCBs.

Your "designs carry copyright marking and patent warning." Are said markings and warnings also on your PCB artwork such that when the boards are made, yours are present also? They claim to have not edited your artwork, so if your markings are present on the artwork, they should also be present on the final PCB. Is this so?

It is possible to add markings without editing the original artwork. They may not have edited your artwork, if this is one of your contentions.

Have you had your courts issue a cease-and-desist order blocking the inclusion of their logo? Have you issued a request to stop such marking?

Are they selling your design under their own name, without your permission, and without compensating you in any way?

Did you research that company and look at other PCBs they have made to see if this is a standard procedure? They claim it is necessary for their own company's ISO certification. Have you verified that this is so?

Did you read the contractual "fine print?"

Have briefs been filed against this company by others for this practice? Is this a standard practice performed by other ISO certified PCB manufacturers?

Did you do your homework?

I don't see a mistake here, Shyam. I see miscommunication from the outset.

Even though they say in the letter, they have not edited, actually they did it else how their LOGO appears on the final PCBs I received. They have inserted LOGO in copper as well well as in prints and at the place where I wanted nothing due to High Voltage present. They did not even ask me that they are editing my Gerber file to put something extra on it. Only after my legal warning to them they have written this letter. Boards have my company name and copyright and patent warning and unique board name/number. There was no need to add anything to the board but they did it as they wanted to have their name deliberately on it, and perhaps using like an advertisement rather than taking rights. Many people keep a copy of the board and also show to other engineers to find if this design was useful to them and try to sell. In my case that is nearly impossible, as I design something in my country no one ever comes near to that. They will never know the purpose of the design.

Had these people not modified the design, I might have given lot more orders to them by now as their work otherwise is OK. I am paying almost double price to them and yet they did something which I hate. My work is only my work and will never carry name of any one else. I have decided to scrap these modified boards and will ask them to fabricate new boards as per my files and not as per their alteration in my files. We are only phone call away and they were supposed to ask if they were doing something deliberately. They did not do that. They have already come across such thing before from other clients who disliked their such act and yet they did on my PCBs. They told me that some of their clients dislike it and have asked them not to do it. I think they are looking for free advertisement and do not expect any legal action due to what they are doing. I am going to initiate legal action as they do not even admit their mistake.

Shyam writes: "Even though they say in the letter, they have not edited, actually they did it else how their LOGO appears on the final PCBs I received."

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The processes used to manufacture PCBs are, in part, photographic. Older techniques used transparencies on which the artwork was laid out. The transparency was placed in contact with a copper-clad board which is coated with a photographic emulsion. It is then exposed to light (usually UV), developed and then etched.

Modern PCBs use plated-through holes, vias, can have extremely fine traces and many layers, but the process used to determine what is etched and what is not is still based on photographic techniques.

Modern techniques expose the sensitized board using a variety of computer-aided means, including tracing out the artwork pattern using a light beam sized to the trace width, or by raster-scanning the board at very high resolution (and at very high speed) using a finely-focused, relatively powerful laser. The laser does not remove the copper but, rather, exposes the emulsion. The points at which the beam is turned on or off, the beam size (in the earlier case), the trace geometry and so forth is driven by the data in the artwork file.

Any of the above techniques allow additional imagery to be placed on the sensitized board without altering the original artwork. Think of this in a photographic sense as a "double-exposure" in which, in your case, the second image was that of their logo/batch code. Before the board is developed and etched, you can project onto the board any image you want, or multiple images if you desire, and the composite image will appear on the final board in copper.

So, it is not necessarily true that your board manufacturer edited your artwork to put their info on your board. They could have added their info at any point in the process so long as it was done before the board was developed.

Did you specifically state, in writing and as part of your contract with your PCB manufacturer, that the area on the board in which they placed their logo was to remain empty because of high-voltage considerations?

These are my design and my boards and no one supposed to add anything to these and actually other people do not do any such thing. How do I know that some one going to add their company name on my product. It is like some one build your house and places their company name on the door. No one supposed to do any thing on the artwork which is like painting and have electrical characteristics which this company people sure know. Just to be stupid enough they made such thing.

Our court will not only ask them to remake the board, allow to crap the material but will also ask them to pay compensation for the trouble I need to take and the delay in the production line. We have consumer court in India which does not permit wrong ethics in business. I will ask them to show my authorization letter for changes made without that they have no rights. If they do so then they also lose the money. I need not accept the job as it differs from what I gave them and I can question them for it.

I do not really want to hurt a small company for their silly mistake but it is causing serious problem in my mind as I really do not like their name or any one's name on my products and will not mind scrapping so much material. I am waiting to have a letter of apology failing to which I will take legal action against the firm. I think they know the problem so may agree to send a letter in writing. One time I will like to forgive them. I am hurt as it is very unprofessional act. If I tell the court that the company has claimed my product and placed their company name on my copyright product then the police will pull the shutters on their company for sure and will put the people behind the bars. It is criminal act in India and is punishable crime. I do not want to do all that and only need letter of apology. I think they will do it or will suffer.

I would be careful about taking them to court as you may end up getting burnt. It varies throughout the world but I know in Australia that any company that wants certification must have a history for everything they manufacture, that enable then to trace what has or has not been done to a particular item. They must also put their name on it so anybody who later comes across it will be able to contact them and find the history.

As a result they may not have any option but to include their name and a serial number unless you have indicated in writing to them that you will be taking the responsibility of the tracking process.

It may be different in India but about 15 years ago when the company I then worked for went through the certification process, we were forced to add the company name, part number and a serial number to everything that we produced, sold or serviced all the way down to a repairable sub assembly level.

There is clear difference between a manufacturer and a service provider or fabricator or worker. When I give my design to a fabricator, then the fabricator has to use the number and details given by me and any modification to the design, including code or number is violation of my design and plans. This is an offence, if service provider places his name on the design.

Take the case of building restorer service provider or painting restorer. You give a work with a clear purpose and the person can not place his/her name on the building or painting as none are actually the part manufactured as per their own designs. You take your car to a garage for service and do they put their company name on the car? Why it is so difficult for you to figure out the difference? This design is mine and has some one else's name so to whom it belongs? The evidence says it belongs to the company who has name on it else why there is a name on it. I don't like it but he likes it so let him take all responsibilities thereafter. It looks as if I bought that persons designs and they are not mine any more.

This somehow differs in case of custom designs where manufacturer changes the design as per your need, but that is still the design of the manufacturer so has right to place name on it.

Now, that fabricator has placed the name on the design and something happens to the consumer, he is going to pull this person to the court as he has placed the company name as manufacturer and not a service provider of me.

Most of the large companies never send the design outside and is one such reason. ISO9002 companies if using others products then they also need to be certified. This is not others product and they can not claim as their product so why their name on it?

I have learnt one lesson and perhaps the company also have learnt the same lesson as none of us going to get into such thing again as we will have a written agreement in future. This time the company has given in writing that they claim nothing out of it so I am going to forgive them considering this their mistake.

I brought out this point to others such that they can also avoid such errors.

Perhaps you can sit down with your fabricators and come up with a win-win situation. They obviously want some way to advertise and you want to make it clear that your design is yours.

They can put their name on your products like:

this board was assembled for Sensors Technology PVt. Ltd by...

It then become obvious that they only assembled it for you. Lots of products have such a label. Some of our own products say much the same thing.

Just come up with an agreement (documented) that everyone will be happy wth.

I disagree with this suggestion. Each time you have a hair cut the barber puts a label on your head "July 17 hair cut done by Barbara's Barber" and then I have levels all around my board and no place for components. This person was only supposed to take my Gerber film photo-image and make a PCB and should have kept my work order and unique PCB number for his reference on his papers or box of packing and not on the material. There are PCB as small as few Milli-meters so this fellow will take all pains to put label of his company on those things. Think if you want a chemical from a company then they do not put label on chemicals but on packet. This person can also do the same thing. He preferred to spoil the chemical itself like they do now for your food by putting unwanted gene inside that may go with you to your children and grand children as their signature. Then there are so many genes from so many companies going inside you by this process and I wonder in the last if you will be able to find your gene among those genes. This is all monkey habit and we should keep the monkeys away else will suffer from monkey play.

Well, since you are the customer, I guess you have a right to demand what you want. The practice I described, however, is fairly commonplace.

Right now, I've got a printed circuit board on my desk and it says that it was fabricated, not by the equipment maker, but by someone else. It tells me that the equipment maker designed the equipment and the circuit but didn't actually manufacture the board. The fabricator got his advertisement and the equipment maker retained his property rights.

Actually, I remember back in my technician days, when I opened up a stereo or tv that was imported from the U.S. (says "made in the U.S.), almost all the components said, "made in the Philippines". So, they get the components from the Philippines, build a television and ship it to the Philippines for selling. That's business for you.

Nice touch with the barber though, couldn't help smiling at the image .

This means that the person picked up ready made board and used it for the purpose of his own. This implies that the board design was also not his and he preferred to use whatever was available in the market place. In that case the board was a product it itself by some one else. That is fairely OK. I do l my PCBs to the students and users. Now that this PCB is having a name of some one else on it then the buyer is buying my PCB or some one else's PCB. I think it is an infringement of the rights of the owner and PCB manufacturer is not a owner at all and who so ever is not a owner, can not place a name.

It is also not allowed a purchaser to remove the name of the manufacturer from the product and to call it by his own name by deleting others name. There has been cases of this kind as some people buy others products and print their name. You can buy such products in Hong Kong and Taiwan that are without name as they do not care about their name. I care about my name and my products are research of over 30 years and this person simply engraves his name just because I am asking him to make it for me. I will be careful in future and will not let such people commit such a crime. I am going to let them write in black and white. The fabricator has to work along with drawing given to the person and must not amend anything without prior permission else becomes responsible for it for acting on their own. They can do so for their product but not to other's products.

Ok, lets look at a scenario. Twelve months down the track you end up getting a stack of boards back that have all failed in a similar and unpredicted way. After much research on your part you eventually figure out that the failure was caused by improper manufacturing of the tracks on the PCB that you got manufactured by the other company.

Now, they may have produced the boards in more than one batch, or used different suppliers of blank PCB etcetera and unless they have a serial number that they can use to track the history of the PCB they can never figure out what when wrong and inform you which boards may fail in the future due to the same problem. It also works both ways and they may find out that failures of boards they manufactured for other companies may happen with your boards and so may inform you to look out for problems with the boards they manufactured for you.

If you what certification in Australia then you must be able to track your products to that level of detail and be able to then inform customers that have purchased the equipment from you that they may have problems. You also need this level of tracking if you need to do a product recall.

If the company that manufactured the PCB using your art work didn't add their own serial number and a method of identifying them then they would be in breach of the certification requirements and so could loose their certification.

Unless you have stipulated in writing that you will accept all the responsibility for tracking then they may not have an option but to place their name and a serial number on the boards they manufacture. Actually in Australia I don't think even a written letter from you would release them from the responsibility of the tracking and therefore they would have no option but to place their name and a serial number on the board.

This level of tracking goes right down to component level and even single semiconductors are supposed to have at least a batch number or manufacturing date that can be used to track the item.

In many cases this is all just a load of governmental interference and generates a whole stack of paperwork but that's just the way it is. If you wish to play ball with people and companies that have such certification then it is something that you have no option but to live with.

Yes if any such tracking number is to be inserted, then the company need to ask us about it. I am not against the tracking number but I am against the LOGO and arbitrary means to put without asking wherever person wished to do so. It is like using the board design as a football field.

I could have definitely allocated a space for the service provider had they asked for it before acting upon. I already have my tracking number and if they wanted another, then they should have done in consultation with me in agreed form. Now, this arbitrary development I consider useless and requires re-fabrication. Who is responsible for it? Had the fabricator not inserted the copper, the design was OK but having inserted at wrong place it is now useless.

Of course the person says that he will place the boards on the grinding CNC machine and will remove the copper if I return the boards. My technicians have already soldered many boards and found not working so they come to me. I find that design were modified so failed.

If this board was for medical use and caused a death then who is responsible for the death? Obviously me. Because I have to provide the right product. This one not going to be a right product, so the fabricator is responsible for lose in production line. Had I missed to notice and then there comes a claim then the fabricator is also responsible in your case as he is tracked down for the problem. You can now notice that, he is not only responsible for loss to me but also to third party as it was his wish to cause damage, knowingly or unknowingly.

In this case where copper was inserted, will cause high voltage discharge and sure death. This person inserted the copper as he finds free space in the mid of the board. Perhaps, they have factory but not so good education to understand and figure out consequences.

Don't get me wrong, they should have informed you of the addition. What I am trying to say is that they may have had no option other then to insert the information if they wished to keep their certification. It looks very much like a classic example of lack of communication.

The problem is that if you go after them with legal actions they may be able to simply state that according to their certification it was a legal requirement that they insert the information and that as a certified manufacturer you should have been aware of this and should have supplied an appropriate area for them to insert the data. If that happens you are sunk and will get stuck with the court costs, a pile of boards that are useless and one less supplier that will work with you in the future. You also have to be careful as word will get around that you took legal action against them and you may find it difficult to find other companies that are willing to work with you in the future.

I know it can be frustrating, but if they are willing to fix the problem then you may well be better off jut biting the bullet and accepting it as a learning experience. You may well be within your rights to sue them but you may also loose so letting it slide and remembering it for future reference it the path that is going to cause the least amount of grief to all involved including yourself.

No they did not inform me.

When I send the Gerber files, they told me that they will finish and send the PCB in 7-days. They actually did nothing for 30-days. Perhaps, after seven weeks I got a call that they have processed the boards. By then I already ordered through another fabricator the boards, manufactured the charge amplifiers and delivered them. Considering that this man did the job for me even though very late, I still felt that I can take the material for subsequent use. Only after we received the material, I asked the engineers to test the boards, they found problem that boards were edited and copper was inserted at wrong place and that it had LOG of that company added in the copper in that place which caused problem. I then written to them that I will initiate legal action and they responded with the explanation they have listed in the letter. They acted on their own and in an arbitrary way. He writes, clearly that they inserted the LOGO and other TEXT wherever they found space and did not ask or informed me even though they had email link, phone link and FAX link all working 24-hours from my side.

Now, there are two things here. They spoiled the boards, and they also placed their company LOGO to become responsible for spoiling as an evidence by their own choice. Do you think they are fit for ISO-9000 certification for doing all that in such a clumsy way? May be in your country it may be OK, I am going to skin them out if they keep doing such thing even once more. I do have feelings for people and more tolerant than others, so I do forgive for a while.

Shyam, try sending your Gerber files to this boys:

http://www.accutrace.com/

Jaime Soto, from Chile