quote:

I feel the program should an interdicipline (mechanical, electrical, electronic) program like that currently being taught at Perdue and other universities.

Fluid Power has been the Mechancal Engineers responsibility forever and in my opinion that approach has not and is not working. It is not because the M.E. is not intelligent just not trained to make intelligent decisions about Fluid power circuit implementation.

My Electrical knowledge is minimal but I have no problem with that since every company i design circuits for has a trained electrical person or can get the epertise required from trained electrical types.

It is the same with Mechanical Engineers, they have no problem designing a machine and sizing actuators to perform the work but are not proficient at making the actuators perform as desired.

These M.E's. have Electrical Engineers to design the Control Circuits and oher electrical functions but usually depend on the Fluid Power Distributor to design the hydraulic or pneumatic circuits.

I still beleive there is something wrong with this arrangement and stll beleive there is a need for dedicated Fluid Power persons in industry.

However, I realize there will be no changes until and when the End User of Fluid Power pushes for one and from this and other discussions that does not seem likely in the near or distant future.

quote:

I feel the program should an interdicipline (mechanical, electrical, electronic) program like that currently being taught at Perdue and other universities.

I concur with this. Having the benefit myself of multiple discplines I see areas where individuals without cross knowledge cannot judge which approach among several would be best in a given application. If we consider the task of application engineering itself as a machine with an efficiency level I do not believe 3 engineers, one from each discipline, could ever approach the efficiency level of one engineer trained in all three.

C1ay;

I grew up with a saying that reminds me of the muliple discipline appoach to the dilemna I see in Fluid power.

"Jack of All trades, Master of None"

But that also brings up the daffynition of an "Expert":

"An Expert is a person who knows More and More abut Less and Less until they know practically Everything about Nothing"

My desire to see dedicated Fluid Power persons may be off base but I see even less chance of having people in an interdisciplinary situation and being proficient in the Mechanical, Electrical and Fluid Power fields.

A Fluid Power designer needs to be mechnically inclined so they don't propose a system that can't work or work efficiently or effectively and know enough about the Electrical field to realize there are no viable ways to implement their latest big idea. However, to be able to design the Mechanicl, Electrical and Fluid Power aspects of a machine, I feel, is beyond the capability of the average persons ability. Notice I said AVERAGE PERSON.

I applaud your ability to be able to design all aspects of a machines functions and then do the power and control systems as well, but I see that ability as the exception in my travels in industry.

It would be interesting to me to know of others who consider they are proficient in Mechanical, Electrical and Fluid Power design. It may surprise this country boy.

I do conceed that my own ability is not the norm but, I am only human, if I can do it so can others. I really see it as the only way to maximize the efficiency of designing integrated systems, particularly integrated components. Only a cross trained individual really understands all of the dynamics and variables of electrically dithering a valve spool, for example.

OTOH, I feel there is plenty of room for specialists as well. Many mobile systems are purely hydraulic or have only a minimal amount of simple electrical control circuits, on-off switches and solenoids. Much of the engineering in this field can be performed by a good ME and field service by a competent fluid power tech with minimal electrical training. On many of these systems cross trained people would be a waste.

Mr. Heney,

I just read your article in Hydraulics & Pneumatics magazine and I must say that I agree it is high time a full blown degree be offered in fluid power.
Gone are the days when you could scribble a few things down on a piece of paper and take it out to the pipe-fitters and expect them to build up something to get the job done. That is not to say that I don't respect the pipe-fitters but our customers are demanding more and more elaborate designs that include sophisticated electro-mechanical valves, switches, and ever increasing diagnostics.

I have been designing fluid power systems for more than ten years now and I was forced to learn everything I know while on the job. I took every seminar I could to help gain new knowledge and keep up with current products, specifications, governmental regulations, and industry trends but it seems as hard as I work at it, there is no way to make up for the lack of comprehensive training in fluids.

Several years ago I decided to return to school to complete my Bachelor's degree. I also design electrical equipment and found my lack of knowledge in the fundamentals was holding me back from moving my career to the next level. I approached the local community college with my problem and found that they offered quite a number of classes in electrical theory which I devoured like a hungry lion. Much of the information I already knew from working in the field but what I found most valuable was learning why I had to do some of the things I did and why they worked. Those fundamentals have served me well long after leaving the classroom.

The school also offers some basic fluid power classes but as I sat through the first one I realized that I had to know much of the information they were teaching just to make it through a day at work. I knew the fundamentals and how to build the basic circuits but there was nowhere to go from there. No advanced classes, no coursework that served to bring together electrical, fluids, and programming; knowledge that anyone working in the field must have to do their jobs.

Developing a degree for fluid power would fill the gap where learning from co-workers leaves off. Many people working in the field have limited experience themselves. I teach fluid power classes at my company to other controls engineers and it is amazing to see what they have and have not learned. I am far from a fluid power professional and it seems the more I learn, the more I know I don't know. Giving people the tools to succeed is the first step in moving towards overall success. I am certain that if these classes were available and basic courses were offered at the high school level to prepare people for college, the fluid power degree could be moved into the realm of reality.

Part of the initiative in Michigan right now is to retrain people from the automotive industry to do other things. Many of these folks have years of training and experience in the trades but without a certificate from a college, the knowledge can not be verified so is of little use moving into design and engineering.

I applaud your efforts and wish you success in your endeavor. If there is anything I can do to help move the process to reality I am willing to do what I can.

Regards,

Phil Laurette
Electrical/Fluid Controls Engineer
ThyssenKrupp Krause

Peter,

In an earlier post you wrote, "There doesn't need to be a separate degree. for engineers. There should be a 1 term 4 hour course though as part of a mechanical engineering or mechatronics degree. This class should be taught the junior year after the student has had differential equations."

Unfortunately that gives far too much credit to the MEs who design the motions and assumes that they are competent at their own jobs including fluid power.

It has been my experience that MEs think they know a great deal more about fluid power than they do. They design systems without any consideration for fluid dynamics and assume that all fluid power applications are a simple hydraulic cylinder, a valve, and a pump. Then they send a system out that is capable of lifting the weight they have calculated, with no consideration for miscalculations, and find that their precious software has not included all fasteners, bearings, brackets, controls components, etc. and now the pump can't do the job.

I think many of your comments are short-sighted and assume that all applications are the same. That is as demeaning as assuming that all mechanical engineers do is design a framework for my controls to move. A few classes in dimensioning and anyone can draw weldments and brackets right?

What I learned about hydraulics and pneumatics was covered in less that two weeks.[/quot]
Thats amazing. I have textbooks (Fluid Power Technology) by F Don Norvel that is almost 600 pages and you learned all that in two weeks. I didn't forget anything. The classes you mentioned would need to be considered but it would be considered by a committee of professionals from mobile and industrial fluid power and motion control fields. I love to learn as mush as the next guy but we need to get down to what is being used the most in both industries and teach that. Lets get down to a practicle program. If you want to teach everything go for a masters or a phd. I have a good two year plan that could be expanded to four. I will be looking for a way to make this available to

quote:

Originally posted by Bud T:
Tim;

Keep us posted on your progress with getting a degreed Fluid power program.

Where are you located?

Who will be teaching the Fluid Power classes?

Is it possible o get a copy of the curriculum?

Keep up the good work but don't tell peter.

I'm in West Virginia near Ohio and Kentucky. The problem with my proposal is that the school I proposed it to has only a small technical college and no four year programs at all. I needed help last year because we were so busy. After sending out adds and looking at several resumes of good people but who new nothing of fluid power I drove to the local vocational school and got some help to do the menial tasks so I could concentrate on circuits and troubleshooting. Management would like this person too eventually move into my position and this would happen musch sooner but now it will take years to get my help up to par. The bright spot is one young lady who did not know fluid power even existed has walked into a great career if she sticks with it. Yes, I will make my curriculum available. Keep in mind this is just a two year program but I feel that it is very balanced. J.H. Fletcher has a website. jhfletcher.com. go there to get the phone number and ask for me. I'll E-mail you the info. I did'nt develop this for money I just want to see people learn this discipline because it has been very rewarding to me and I would like to give back.

Hi All,

I am new to this forum and would like to share something with you all whoever is unaware of this. That, there are quite a few universities which do provide a degree in fluid power/hydraulics. They are- University of Bath UK, Univ of Tampere Finland, Milwaukee school of engg USA, Univ of Saskatchewan Canada, et al.

I am currently doing my masters in hydraulics from Univ of Bath and the course is just fantastic. I got really what I was looking for. It is a one year MS degree which is very well recognised by the fluid power industry.

Hope this information was helpful. If anyone wants details about the course or anything then you may find it on university website or You can write to me at pj225@bath.ac.uk

Cheers

P Jain

Too bad this and other great topics get buried by other great topics o forums like this.

Is there any way to keep them visible except by the method I am using???

Ah, my favorite subject, I have some input reading some of the posts I have read seeing how with some 36-years in the fluid power industry I may see things a little different than some.

1. I think a forum of success stories is a good idea, tired of hearing about wood splitters.
2. Bud is right Peter, you work in the less than 3-5% market, not that it is not growing or important, it is doing both, but not near as fast as you put on it does.
3. Now everyone has an opinion about degrees, from a few weeks to a full-blown PhD level. Has anyone figured out how you will get money invested in a degree back, working at the low wages most fluid power worker is paid? They still charge college tuition do they not, or do most let taxpayer’s pickup the bill?
4. Now with today’s people of take a pill get better, get a degree, work no longer than 3-5 years in one career, then do something else, and expect to make millions without spending too much time in one place, no wonder we cannot find anybody that knows anything. Most young people if asked, expect to be CEO in 2-4 years or they move on to something else.
5.
Peter, I am surprised you learned everything about hydraulics in two weeks; I still have not learned all I need in over 36-years. I due finding it amusing when you complain that the factory simply will not give you all the data you want. Part of learning the hydraulic trade is working with factory components and learning that each one has its own little quirks. A servo valve is not the same to each manufacture, nor is any other hydraulic component. Basic principle yes, but performance can vary greatly between products. In addition, the manufacture has not tried their product in every possible application, so the data you expect is simply not there for you to get.

A good hydraulic design is much like a puzzle with the same pieces. Its how well the parts fit and work together that really makes a good design. That takes time to learn, something young people do not want to do on their way to the CEO position or million bucks. Now you can keep asking the age-old question about, degree, 5 days or 5 years training, license or no license, put a fluid power person in every 7-11 store on every corner, it makes no difference if that person really does not like fluid power, and is in it just for the money.

One last hurdle to get over people, it is human nature to either let some one else pay for something or get it for free. As long as there are fluid power distributors out there willing to trade free design or engineering for a sales invoice for parts, you will have little incentive to upgrade hydraulics.

Peter,

Its never good to hear from me, you know that my old electrical opposition from the past, ha, ha.
I am a little surprised myself that I posted here, not really interested in much of the stuff posted.

Boy, I can tell you all about PhD’s, just run into one from Canada that thought he invented the newest pile-driving machine. I design him a hydraulic unit to run his wonder machine, and he shows up with some person from Australia that is supposed to be a hydraulic expert. They were all wearing red jump suits with yellow hard hats and I knew then we are going to have some fun today. He hands me his resume, which I gladly read over, PhD, MBA, and Doctorate of something and on and on. Anyway, he tells me for the last 10-years he has been studying this machine and he is ready to test today for his investors.

He then asked me to use one of my other machines to stand up and drive into the ground a 8” H-beam for him to hook his machine on too. Being the nice person I am, I said look buster, in the real world you pick your own beams up and stand them up, no body does for you. By the way, no one sets a bridge or high-rise building on 8” H-beams, how about driving a 24” diameter casing instead? Nope, had to be this small p**ker pole. Anyway it took his machine 27 minutes to drive this beam 6-feet into the ground, and just 13 seconds for one of my machines to drive the same beam 30-feet into the ground. I find that highly educated people are so detached from the real world they are useless when it comes to common sense. Not say they are needed some place, just not in hydraulics or anything that requires common sense.

Now, let us pick on Peter time. The capacitance of hydraulic hose, now that is funny. Just where are you going to get an application that takes the same size hose, at the same temperature of the hose, with the same oil temperature and use the same oil brand. Change any one variable and your data is wrong for any computer program you want to use. And the 20Sim program, I used one of the first when they first came out many years ago. After about 30 minutes I learned that none of the models for valves were correct, called them and their response was less the good, so bad the response I dumped the program and never went back to them. They call every once in awhile wanting me to spend more money buying the latest greatest Sims program. As long as you have a computer programmer modeling a hydraulic valve and that person has never really used or applied any hydraulic knowledge, then of course you will get the program asking for variables that are either not known or have little to do with the true hydraulic model.

And here we go again with the bang, bang jokes. That term was used 50-years ago by some wanna be electrical person hoping to sell more black boxes they call motion controllers. Which really do not control motion, but is some circuit boards with pre-programmed instructions that can be changed to try to get something to work half-right? A pre-programmed tinker bell box?

And I love tinker bell boxes, I have a Rockwell 700 with thousands of line code running the barge I redesigned. A foot note, if you want to see it run, it is down here close working on the river now. If you promise not to touch anything, I may be able to get you aboard for a fun ride, on my bang, bang machine.

Always good to hear from you Peter, do you hear that bell on your “you know what” clanging?

Ok, I will let you ride on my machine; will call when the next time I go out there, probably this next week.

I am not sensitive as long as I can call your controller the Tinker Bell Box, we can get along.

Quote – “It doesn’t sound like you have changed much; I guess that is a good thing”.

Why would you change something that works? Always good talking with you, take care and keep doing those servo circuits.

Gary wrote:

quote:

quote:

Peter, I am surprised you learned everything about hydraulics in two weeks; I still have not learned all I need in over 36-years.

Peter responded:
It took longer than that but that was all the time allocated to topics related to hydraulics in college. I have learned a lot since from the school of hard knocks then but mostly what is need for motion control.

I stil say the "School of Hard Knocks" is a poor place to learn any subject especially about a system used so extensively in the real world.

However, I don't see any changes in the near or distant future, but I would like to be proved wrong somewhere in this wide world.

Peter wrote:

quote:

There isn't a school that teaches one how to design hydraulic motion controllers and there won't be. I know we don't want to share our knowledge about making hydraulic motion controllers and I bet the Bosch Rexroth doesn't either.

Neither dose Eaton, Vickers, Parker, Denison, Numatics, Ross or any other of the numerous Fluid Power manufacturer or their distributor.

One of the fastest ways to get fired from the company I first worked for in Fluid Power was to be passing on information of any kind to competitors.

Don't tell anyone how we did that since they will cut our price and get the business. Keeping secrets is not the smartest way to promote growth in my opinion but I could be wrong.

Note all the new offerings of ELECTRIC ACTUATORS by the Electrical manufacturers. Are they crazy or just crazy like a Fox? They are building great equipment and have trained Engineers and Maintenance persons to give feedback to improve the equipments shortcomings as they show up.

At 74 I don't have a lot of time left to work on getting trained Fluid Power persons at the user level but I have not read a good reason for not having trained Fluid Power persons there, here or at the other forums. However, keeping circuit design and implementation a coveted secret could be a good one. But, I don't know of another discipline that secretive actions has helped, but, things do have a way of flip-flopping.