I've had a few discussions lately with people who distain the IFPS and considering certifications a bunch of BS. Why is this? Even Joe Blows who do nothing but weld all day, have a certification test, and that certification is respected. It's the closest thing hydraulics has to a 'ticket.'

I've heard complaints that it's too easy to pass certification, and that any jerkwad can pass it. I can tell you this, I know guys who have taken the HS test 3 times before they passed, and when I took my test, half the guys failed. There aren't schools with fluid power engineering programs on every corner, so it's the best thing we have. I think the IFPS should be encouraged and embraced.

Fluid Power Engineer is a qualification, but it's almost too hard to achieve. I think you should be able to take a test for that one, but it would obviously require a massively higher understanding of physics, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics than even the HS exam.

Thoughts?

Oh yea, sounds like this could be a heated debate. The province of British Columbia has a provincial apprenticeship, I would have to check my paperwork, but I believe it is officially titled "Hydraulic Component Repair Technician" It is a 5 year apprenticeship, but because they are so few people enrolling in this program, there are no current courses or exams. Someone from the board comes around to your employers work sight to determine if you will recieve enough on the job training. They pop in once in a while just to make sure your not racking up hours pushing the broom around or working on the bosses car, and after you 5 years presto you get your papers. Your wage starts out at 50% of journeyman and every 6 months goes up 5%.
I have met people that have their papers that are complete morons. I have met people without any papers that border on genius.
I don't really have a strong opinion on IFPS at this time, but could it be possible that they have an undertone of commercial interest because they have had to source their information from those interests? Anyone with a decent amount of knowledge in the fluidpower industry works commercially in the industry.

My Bad, it reads "...trade in Hydraulic Servicing" shows you how much value it has, I don't even know what my own certification is called. Anyway, it is supposed to cover everything, but the field is so diverse that you could not possibly be trained in every aspect of the trade. In most mills that I have contracted to, I could almost guarantee that I have been the only person that has completed that apprenticeship, most of the technicians that tend to the closed loop motion control equipment are the electricians. The milright trade courses spend very little time on hydraulics.

As far as design goes, that's a good question. I think the best designer is someone that has spent a lot of years troubleshooting, and that typically is not an engineer.

So then I pose this question; who is doing a better job at setting and testing standards throughout North America?

I think the nature of every fluid power training course has vested interest from manufacturers. Even my local college, Mohawk, focuses primarily on Vickers. Because the training course was initially aimed at guys in the steel mills, and was sponsered by Vickers. There are Vickers hand outs, Vickers VHS tapes (so sad) and Vickers components. One of the industry standard text books, the Eaton-Vickers ones, are the most common I've seen around.

Peter, are you telling me that your training courses do not use Delta Motion controllers?

Show me any form of fluid power education which does not have any commercial influence.

Josh quipped:

quote:

Show me any form of fluid power education which does not have any commercial influence.

Take a look at the Ebooks here: http://www.hydraulicspneumatics.com/200/eBooks/
for 2 books that are generic and do not push any companies products but covers Fluid Power items from all companies.

I also have a third book that I use to teach Hydraulic Trouble Shooting that may be presented later.

I wrote the basic book out of frustration of trying to actually teach "FLUID POWER" with any single book that was available.

In my early days, for Basics, I used Vickers or Rexroth, depending on the companies preference, plus Womack Vol.1 and 120 pages of passouts to actually try to teach "Fluid Power" (Hydraulics & Pneumatics.) However, the cost and the trouble finding which piece of literature to reference was frustrating, especially to the students, and made for a very cluttered work space.

Would you believe, the classes got great reviews and everyone, except me, appeared to be happy with the situation.

So, I first wrote the basic book that covers Fluid Power in general terms and shows all the components and how they operate.

The Advanced Circuits book shows how all the circuits are designed and how they should operate, plus all the normal ways they fail that I've come across.

Here is some feedback from a person who is using this book for an advanced class in Michigan:
"Just to let everyone know, the college has procured the Fluid Power Circuits Explained book. We are on our 7th class now and following the outline Bud provides the class is going smoothly, we are working the explained circuits on the trainers (I have 3 to use) and I feel the students are getting their money's worth out of the class."

The third book covers Hydraulic Trouble Shooting with ways to diagnose individual components failures. Early on I found that 90%+ of the persons taking a Hydraulci Trouble Shooting class had limited knowledge of anything Hydraulic and especially reading of Schematics. So the class is about 50% getting students familiar with components and the symbols that represent them. The rest of the class goes into trouble shooting circuits that have something wrong with them. At company sites we trouble shoot actual schematics and tour the machine circuit to show how difficult it can be to even find some of the components that are clear on paper but buried so deep on the machine that you may suspect they are not there. Actually, on real machines it is common to find parts missing and others added but the schematic was never updated.

I said all that to indicate there are other material that can be used for training Fluid Power. Needless to say, mine are not the only books by independent writers. Here is a link to most of the Flud Power books that have been written over the years.
http://fluidshop.com/bookstore/alpha.shtml

Good points, Peter, but no different from how universities don't fully train every engineer to be able to work in their chosen fields after they graduate. Just because my HS certification didn't spend much time on applying servo valves, it doesn't mean it's not my responsability to learn it myself, and it doesn't mean my certification process was worthless.

quote:

A hydraulic system cost much more and would take up a large part of the garage. I wonder how many people have their own hydraulic system.
Think about that Bud.

I used my customers Hydraulic and Pneumatic components, that I sold them, in the old College of Hard Knocks in their LARGE SHOPS. Not all of the designs worked first time but no one ever complained as long as the circuit could be modified and made to work.

Fortunately my customers knew a lot less than I did and never complained when it worked as requested even if it took some added components.

I still believe that a Country as progressive as the USA should not be allowing the College of Hard Knocks to be the way a discipline, used as extensively as Fluid Power, continues to be LEARNED and APPLIED.

It may be great for the few good persons who stuck with it and learned how to use Fluid Power in the old College of Hard Knocks. However, the new generation may not think that is a good idea and go into fields of endeavor that have College and University courses where they can learn all the necessary Physics and Math required. Then they can be competent in applying their expertise with equipment that has documented/known parameters to work with. I believe that would be much better than depending on a Fluid Power salesman to design Fluid Power circuits like the world I grew up in.

Oh Well, SOmeday, MAYBE???????

quote:

Originally posted by Bud T:
I still believe that a Country as progressive as the USA should not be allowing the College of Hard Knocks to be the way a discipline, used as extensively as Fluid Power, continues to be LEARNED and APPLIED.

I'm going to have to comment on this one too. Without even getting into all the political reasons the USA isn't a progressive country, how can you make a statement like that when the majority of our industry still uses SAE/Standard units of measurements???

Thank heavens for Bosch-Rexroth catalogues!

As seen by the disparity between US and Canadian manufacturing standards, and the standards of the rest of the world, we folk in North American can hardly be called industrially progressive.

Right now, the Chrysler's CAW workers here in Ontario are fighting tooth and nail over Fiat's demand that Chrysler must drop their $75/hour wages by $19/hour where they're still higher than the Toyota and Honda workers here before Fiat will merge with Chrysler and save their butts from extinction. If these workers were progressive, they'd realize they got recruited out of high-school, with no post-secondary education and where their job is to install dashboards for the lowly price of $75/hour, and that the dream is finally over. Engineers make $75/hour because they spend 4 or 5 years in university, not high school graduates who have no skills outside of putting together shitty cars.

quote:

Originally posted by Bud T:
I still believe that a Country as progressive as the USA should not be allowing the College of Hard Knocks to be the way a discipline, used as extensively as Fluid Power, continues to be LEARNED and APPLIED.

Josh replied to my quote above:
Right now, the Chrysler's CAW workers here in Ontario are fighting tooth and nail over Fiat's demand that Chrysler must drop their $75/hour wages by $19/hour where they're still higher than the Toyota and Honda workers here before Fiat will merge with Chrysler and save their butts from extinction. If these workers were progressive, they'd realize they got recruited out of high-school, with no post-secondary education and where their job is to install dashboards for the lowly price of $75/hour, and that the dream is finally over. Engineers make $75/hour because they spend 4 or 5 years in university, not high school graduates who have no skills outside of putting together shitty cars.

Josh Cosford, CFPHS

Josh, I'm sure you see some comparison between Workers who got recruited out of High School to work on an assembly line to a person who is proficient at designing Fluid Power systems, but, except for the wage situation I have a problem seeing even a remote comparison. Even to a Fluid Power person who only has a College of Hard Knocks degree.

Enlighten me.

I'm sorry Bud, I don't understand the question.

Josh;
Your comparison of assembly line workers to Fluid Power implementers seems to me like comparing Apples to Livestock Feed.
My rate was $75.00/Hour when I was consulting and there was no Union Dues and years of striking involved. No product or anything tangible just experience in a discipline that almost every phase of the Industrial and Mobile areas have in abundance. The problem was, the number of persons who understood anything about Fluid Power was almost non-existent. And, the reason I decided for the lack of knowledge was the lack of education in Fluid Power.

Many of the persons I consulted with had a 1 or 2 week class in Hydraulics and a few even had some Pneumatic seminars and they were sold the idea that these short courses was all they needed. However,when a problem in a hydraulic circuit arose and they got out a schematic, if they could find one and it was up to date, they quickly understood it was not as simple as they were led to believe.

Being able to tell someone which valve to adjust/change or what circuit design will eliminate the Shake, Rattle and Roll their hydraulic powered machine is experiencing takes a lot more skill than inserting Screw #1 into Hole #1 all day.

Even when that skill was learned in the College of Hard Knocks at the same customers over the years.

I am still of the opinion that Fluid Power needs to come out of the Dark Ages and have Trained/Educated/Dedicated persons designing, applying and maintaining it. I also believe that until these type persons are the norm Fluid Power will be thought of exactly as it is today by many of the persons that have to use it. And, these persons will try any other way possible to replace Fluid Power anytime they can.

I could be all wrong, but that has been my experience in my little area of working with small and large companies since I started in Fluid Power sales in 1966.

I said all that to say the question is "If Fluid Power is so simple and being educated in the discipline is not necessary, why are there so many Log Splitter questions and so many different answers from so few persons on this and the other three Fluid Power Forums?

If you have a look at the Electrical and Electronic Forums you would notice a big difference in the quality of the questions and the numerous educated persons answering them.

quote:

Originally posted by Bud T:
I am still of the opinion that Fluid Power needs to come out of the Dark Ages and have Trained/Educated/Dedicated persons designing, applying and maintaining it.

It will not happen, give up and get over it. Having people dedicated to electric motors will not fly either. It is just to limiting unless you have a lot of drives or hydraulic systems. Why do you think hydraulics is so special?

I give up Peter. I've been beating a Dead Horse for too many years with and the response has been less than positive. I should have buried it long ago.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter Nachtwey:

quote:

Originally posted by Bud T:
I am still of the opinion that Fluid Power needs to come out of the Dark Ages and have Trained/Educated/Dedicated persons designing, applying and maintaining it.

It will not happen, give up and get over it. Having people dedicated to electric motors will not fly either. It is just to limiting unless you have a lot of drives or hydraulic systems. Why do you think hydraulics is so special?

quote:

I also believe that until these type persons are the norm Fluid Power will be thought of exactly as it is today by many of the persons that have to use it. And, these persons will try any other way possible to replace Fluid Power anytime they can.

Yes, because there aren't any dedicated drive guys UNLESS they work for a drive manufacturer. On www.plcs.net there is one person that is dedicated to drives because he sells/installs ABB drives.

quote:

I said all that to say the question is "If Fluid Power is so simple and being educated in the discipline is not necessary, why are there so many Log Splitter questions and so many different answers from so few persons on this and the other three Fluid Power Forums?

Simple, these people own their own log splitters and know little about them they are job another tool. Few on the www.plcs.net forum own their own PLC and if they do it is used in their hobby like controlling a model train set. Some use PLCs to control temperature in their house and to automate things but they are few and these few know what they are doing because it is their main interest. I don't think anybody splits wood for a hobby.

quote:

If you have a look at the Electrical and Electronic Forums you would notice a big difference in the quality of the questions and the numerous educated persons answering them.

That is because there is a critical mass of intelligent people their where one or two people will not screw up the forum. The forum is moderated and obnoxious people are removed. They don't have people making "there should be dedicated plc training" comments on every other thread that move the thread off topic. They don't have people that insist year after year that "flow makes it go". There may be a few but they are a very small minority. When I post things on PLCs.net I know only 2 or 3 out of 20000 will understand I don't get a bunch of crap there like I did here. It isn't my job to dumb down my posts or educate the other 19998 people. It is their job to educate themselves. And..... They don't have PLC certification At least in north america.

I think you are too easily impressed by the questions and answer on plcs.net because you don't understand them. Many of the questions show a lack of basic skills like first year algebra. Many of these plc people shouldn't be in the business as they have no problem solving skills and should find jobs flipping burgers. There are some threads about projects that 700 post and many weeks long. I would be embarrassed as the job should have taken a few hours at most. There is a core of people that know what they are doing and can provide good answers.

Josh, how many questions on this forum were answered using information learned during certification?

Fuck off, Peter. This forum was better when you were gone. If I were moderating this forum, I would have removed you long ago. Your net effective contribution has been nearly zero. You are demeaning, socially ignorant and stuck up. You are mentally unable to answer a question at face value; only capable of showing everyone how wrong they are, instead of helping them be right.


Bud, I wasn't saying what you did or do wasn't worth $75/hour, and my comment was only related to how you said America was a progressive country. Progressive countries don't pay their unskilled workers $75/hour.

peter:
your contribution has been good, and you have every right to choose to leave if you wish.
However, to go back and delete past posts seems like a childhood version of taking the toys and going home.....
IMO, if the goal is to instruct, then you could have left the posts as is.
I would like to think we are more mature and professional.

And yes peter, 'Flow makes it go' IF the circuit is flow limited. Force makes it accelerate or decelerate IF the circuit is pressure limited. Motion control is (usually) pressure limited, but both circuits exist in the larger world of simple fluid power. I think important that readers understand that. It is not a question of either/or being right.

and yes, we have used Delta controllers and they are great products. ....

kcj

For the record, I joined this forum to learn, not to teach. Please keep in mind, that I was working in Hydraulic retail 6 months ago, and have only been in the business for 2 1/2 years.