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.

quote:

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.

And I hope you are right because there is still plenty of room to grow then.

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.

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.

quote:

I due finding it amusing when you complain that the factory simply will not give you all the data you want.

This is one of my big pet peeves about the hydraulic industry. Don't you think that knowing the capacitance of a section of hose is worth knowing? It is if you are trying to figure out what the natural frequency of a system is.

1. I am still wondering what a PhD in hydraulics knows that is so special.
2. I don't know what good it does to have a PhD unless one is designing parts.
3. Since the engineers don't have decent specifications on how the parts work the ability to due fine calculations is not worth what it could be. Trial and error is still required.
This limits the usefulness of a PhD.

The point is that the education is great but if one is till reduced to making 'guestimates' in most designs then experience will win out. This may not be a problem in simple bang-bang systems.

We have a hydraulic modeling package where one can draw diagrams of hydraulic circuits and simulate the position, velocities, flows, pressures etc. It uses a system of non-linear differential equations and could be very useful but we must GUESS at what values to enter for the components. GUESS!! OK estimate. Still I would never use the simulation to say a design would work. I would only use it to say a design will not work.

GLK, it is good to hear from you. Things were getting boring here. I was just about to e-mail you about stirring up the pot on some topic so you could find that bell and try to pin it on my...
You must have read my mind.

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?

quote:

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 that is my point! You can have the best simulation program but if you don't know how the individual components work it is close to worthless. We too have 20sim. Mathematically it is OK but the there are no models for hose and other components that one can use. You have to guestimate! The whole simulation ends up being one guestimate with a few assumptions thrown in.

Yes, I want the capacitance of hose as a function of length and temperature and what ever else the capacitance depends on. The simulators may have more numbers to crunch but this time is short compared to mistakes or the 27 minutes to drive a pole in the ground.

This also backs up another point I made. Experience wins when there isn't a means to do calculations that mean anything. Having a PhD doesn't mean anything then unless the PhD was finding out the parameters for the hose and the valves.

As far as bang-bang goes I don't see why you are so sensitive. How else would you do pile driving?

It doesn't sound like you have changed much. I guess that is a good thing.

quote:

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.

What is a Rockwell 700? I have never heard of one before. I can keep my hands in my pockets. I wouldn't want to touch anything oily.

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.

quote:

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.

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.

GLK, I don't care what you call the Tinker Bell Boxes but I don't think we deserve the title. We can't do magic or make things happen by just believing or think happy thoughts.

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.

quote:

Originally posted by Bud T:
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.

Keeping secrets is essential.
1. If you have a competitive advantage you can keep it.
2. If you have weakness then the competition will not exploit it.
This is fundamental and ancient knowledge.

There are people that write books on how to design hydraulic motion controllers. If you look you can find them but what are their qualifications? What do they really know. If they really knew anything they would be my competitors.

quote:

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.

Yes, and you can get specifications and they are VERY easy to set up. We can control those too. One can design systems with those electric actuators because they are known quantities.

They do have weakness though. They aren't perfect for a lot of applications.

quote:

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.

Keeping hydraulic circuits secret is hard because anybody can just look and see what was done. It is different with hydraulic motion controllers.

quote:

But, I don't know of another discipline that secretive actions has helped, but, things do have a way of flip-flopping.

Do think the valve and pump manufacturers share their designs? I know that I have my favorite valves because they work better than others. Why? I think the competition would like to know.

I have customers that have asked me to add a feature so they can password protect their programs 'intellectual property' they add to our controller.

I think things are much different when you are talking about designs.

I still would like to know what a PhD in hydraulic knows that is so special.

Bud,

I simply do not understand what you want or expect to happen in the fluid power industry. Peter and I, have given you some good reasons why trained people are not at all the locations at user levels you want, you just refuse to listen.

Quote - Keeping secrets is not the smartest way to promote growth in my opinion but I could be wrong.

You are wrong Bud, if you did that to me, after I fired you I would then sue you for damages. There is a big difference between teaching basic hydraulics, which is common knowledge, and providing design and engineering information to just any body that wants to copy and use it.

I read either on this forum or another some person made the comment that every fluid power person should share all their knowledge for the common good of fluid power. This fool, had no knowledge or experience and wants me to give him my knowledge and experience free without any effort on his part.

Another dumb quote - I don't know of another discipline that secretive actions has helped, but, things do have a way of flip-flopping.

What company would hire you if you gave out your customer’s designs, process, manufacturing information to competitors or just any body that asked for information? I cannot think of any company or industry that does not consider information the same as gold, and closely guards all information. Secretive action DOES HELP, it forces people to come up with a better idea, rather than copy some one else’s work. More ideas, better ways of doing some things, instead of the same old stuff copied repeatedly.

I do work around the world and trust what I say, a big mouth or sharing information is not allowed. If you are, dumb enough to do it, your competitors will use it to take your market share and your money and never do business with you again.

I cannot believe you take issue with Peter because he will not share information, no body I know that wants to stay on top will either. Your wonderment with electrical we have heard before, and the doom and despair of replacing fluid power for years now, still has not happened and most likely will not happen. The next time you drive over a large bridge, think about the size and cost of an electrical actuator needed to drive a 200-foot long, 36-inch steel casing into the ground that this bridge sits on. Or how about this, remove all the hydraulic cylinders on an excavator and replace them with electric actuators, with a long drop cord snaking around town looking for a power grid to run them.

Now let us really promote fluid power with Bud’s thinking; first let us ask Paul J. Heney not to charge for fluid power certification, or Hydraulics & Pneumatics magazines, and no more charging for ad space. Then Bud will teach basic hydraulics free, all materials included and at his expense. In addition, you get a free electrical book if you complete the class. All fluid power workers are to take a lie detector test to reveal any hydraulic secretes to be posted on the internet free, to be used by all who can read.

Now there is an idea you cannot disagree with, it conforms to your thinking, and will promote fluid power beyond your dreams. You can die a happy man knowing you have given so much to fluid power.

When you get this done, call Peter or me, and we will consider telling you some of our secrets.

Disclaimer: As with any statement in today’s world, these comments are mine, and do not represent any one else. These comments are not a personal attack on anybody or any thing, and simply reflect editorial comment only. If some one is offended, then like a politician, I say I am sorry and we move on.

I see Peter making another post.

Quote - Keeping hydraulic circuits secret is hard because anybody can just look and see what was done.

Not true Peter; it is a little harder than you think to fully understand hydraulic circuits that involve some advanced circuitry. I have reversed engineered some advanced machines and you never get every detail out of just a circuit drawing. I have been studying a Komatsu PC9000 for months now and still do not have what I need to make some changes. However, Bud has a good idea; I will just call them and ask for information on how to change their design. I never thought of that idea.

WOW!!!!

Two against One. Change my "I could be wrong" to I am wrong and stand corrected.

thanks Gary and Peter for setting me straight. I really appreciateit.

Would you believe Gary actually wrote this:

"There is no shortage of fluid power applications out there, but there is only a hand full of people knowledgeable enough to do them. Too many basic hydraulic people, not enough advance hydraulic people with the knowledge required, therein lies the problem with fluid power."

Maybe he will someday decide there is a need for trained, even degreed Fluid Power Persons.