I get asked to design the strangest things----

This spring, I will have 43 years in as a design engineer. Over that time span, I have designed any number of weird, wacky, and wonderfull machines. Of course, the first 36 years, I worked for large engineering companies, and designed whatever product they were selling. The last seven years, I have been working from home as an independent consultant, and I am absolutely amazed at the range of different things that I get involved with. I work with a few inventors, and much of the developmental work that I help them with is proprietary, so I can't say too much about it. In the last 3 months, I have worked on manipulating devices to assist line workers at General Motors to lift heavy automotive parts into place on the assembly line, a machine that raises and lowers the lighting arrays on 100 foot tall lamp posts (like you see in the big chain store parking lots) so that the bulbs can be changed without renting a crane, a pair of machines for making jig saw puzzles, a spill proof watering dish for a dog,----and, the strangest one so far----I went to Oakville this week, and talked to a prospective customer about a cookie dough mixing machine. Damn, I never really thought much about cookies!!! I can remember my mom, rolling out the dough with a rolling pin, and cutting out cookies with an old tin can with one end removed.--But I'm talking about mass produced cookies---millions of cookies. Every grocery store that you go into across USA and Canada, and I suppose cities all over the world, there are always fresh cookies for sale. The dough is mixed in 1500 pound batch lots, dumped into a stainless steel hopper, and then goes thru a series of extruder rolls, shaping orifices, orbiting guillotine knives onto a conveyor and into an oven or off to be frozen and sold as "ready to cook" frozen cookie dough. A large industrial size cookie dough maker costs upwards of $250,000.00 and is all PLC controlled. Who'd a thunk it!!! The customer I spoke with wants me to design a "scaled down" cookie dough maker, and has a budget of $100,000.00 to spend. No wonder I still work every day. This stuff is too much fun to stop!!!:LOL: :LOL: ---Brian

Hey Brian!!!!! Any chance you could get me a deal at wholesale on a bunch of chocolate chip cookies????? Having too many chocolate chip cookies would be liking having too much horsepower......can't imagine it ever happening to me!!!!!!!:LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

someone mention COOKIES?????????????:D

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Originally Posted by flh4speed

someone mention COOKIES?????????????:D

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x...kiemonster.jpg

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Hey!!!!!! Don't ya be putting pictures of me on the site unless you ask first!!!!!!! Geez!!!!!:rolleyes: I gets no respect.....:p :p

Darned you Brian, you made me run out to the store and pickup some chocolate chip cookies! :LOL: :LOL: Worth the trip though, thanks. :3dSMILE:

Don

You certainly do not have to worry about getting bored working on the same thing everyday, now if you just put into your contract that you get free samples of the items made by the devices you create you will have it made!

COOKIES, COOKIES give me COOKIES

It's nice to have variety in your work. Sounds you've been involved with alot of very interesting projects. But with the cookies, remember: all things in moderation :LOL:

Brian, You have my dream job. I've done a lot of equipement design in the past and I hope to do more in the future. But right now I have to build every thing I design. I just want to design the stuff.

This is a dream job.---This spring is my 43rd year!!! I particularly have enjoyed the last 7 years working on my own. Next week I start a 2 month contract on some big machine that was built in Germany and purchased by a company in Canada. The relationship between the 2 companies went off the rail some time a few years ago, and now the German company has gone out of business. Now the Canadian company wants me to "reverse engineer" the machine and create new mechanical details of it, to produce a new machine.

Brian,

My Son is just starting (well, he's in his 4th Year) in your business-I am truly amazed at what Designers do, at what must be going through their minds when they design, and how do they keep it fresh. I sometimes have trouble trying to figure out how to make a bracket to hold stuff on my build :whacked: .

I think most Designers are first-borns, because first-borns are typically creative-as posted earlier, I think it's great because you are always doing something different every day-

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Originally Posted by brianrupnow

This is a dream job.---This spring is my 43rd year!!! I particularly have enjoyed the last 7 years working on my own. Next week I start a 2 month contract on some big machine that was built in Germany and purchased by a company in Canada. The relationship between the 2 companies went off the rail some time a few years ago, and now the German company has gone out of business. Now the Canadian company wants me to "reverse engineer" the machine and create new mechanical details of it, to produce a new machine.

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That's all really kewl Brian... BUT WHERE ARE THE COOKIES!!!!!!! ????????

:LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

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Originally Posted by Dave Severson

That's all really kewl Brian... BUT WHERE ARE THE COOKIES!!!!!!! ????????

:LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

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Did you notice he changed the subject hoping everybody would forget about the cookies. Someone should check and see if the milkman made an extra large delivery to his house!! That is a surefire way to find out if he is hoarding all the cookies.

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Hmmmm... Ahhhh... Cookies! Wal Mart has pretty good chocolate chip cookies in their bakery.:rolleyes: Ooh, Snickerdoodles.:rolleyes: No, white chocolate macadamia nut.:HMMM: Wait! The only thing better than that is original Toll House chocolate chip...:) I'll be back in a while; I need to run to the store right now...:D

Haven't heard back from the "cookie customer". Sometimes guys go into sticker shock when they see what an automated machine with PLC controls really costs, and I never hear from them again. If its a machine shop wanting to build a machine for a customer, then fine, they just pass the design costs on to the customer. However if its a guy who wants a machine built for his own use, and he has to eat the costs himself, quite often I put in a preliminary cost estimate, along with an estimated design cost, and they dissapear, just like magic!!!

Brian, when I do a proposal for a customer that I havent worked with before, I ask the upfront question "do you want a budgetary price or a detailed proposal?" Then, I always hit them with a one or two page writeup with an estimated price so they can either tell me to continue with my pricing or to help them breathe again. I also ask the upfront question "do you need a real bid or just a third bidder?" If they only need a filler bid, I will give them the short version and some close-but-a-little-high price.

It takes me at least a week to write a 75 page propsal for an automation machine so I dont like to do it for a job that has no chance of happening. If you ask a customer if he wants a quote, he always says yes without consideration for how much time it consumes.

mike in tucson

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Originally Posted by robot

Brian, when I do a proposal for a customer that I havent worked with before, I ask the upfront question "do you want a budgetary price or a detailed proposal?" Then, I always hit them with a one or two page writeup with an estimated price so they can either tell me to continue with my pricing or to help them breathe again. I also ask the upfront question "do you need a real bid or just a third bidder?" If they only need a filler bid, I will give them the short version and some close-but-a-little-high price.

It takes me at least a week to write a 75 page propsal for an automation machine so I dont like to do it for a job that has no chance of happening. If you ask a customer if he wants a quote, he always says yes without consideration for how much time it consumes.

mike in tucson

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On new customers who I haven't worked with before, I just write up a 2 page "quicky" and fire it off to them. I absolutely do not believe in working for nothing!!!! If the "quicky" cost estimate scares 'em off, then I've only wasted an hour or so. If they want it more detailed than that, they are "on the clock" and pay for it.

Try the chocolate chip cookies at Subway........they are pretty good. :D

Brian, how does that work for you? I guess you get consulting fees or preliminary design fees up front? So if they decide against going ahead with the project you are not out the work you already performed?

Whoops, I was reading the
1st page and missed the discussions you guys were having on this subject already.

Don

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Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Haven't heard back from the "cookie customer". Sometimes guys go into sticker shock when they see what an automated machine with PLC controls really costs, and I never hear from them again. If its a machine shop wanting to build a machine for a customer, then fine, they just pass the design costs on to the customer. However if its a guy who wants a machine built for his own use, and he has to eat the costs himself, quite often I put in a preliminary cost estimate, along with an estimated design cost, and they dissapear, just like magic!!!

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:LOL: :LOL: :LOL: Them guys come around here too Brian.... We call them tire kickers!!!!!!!!!:LOL: :LOL:

Estimating the Design and Build of a piece of Automation is not an easy thing.When I was in the business I would take high dollar pieces of equipment on a cost + basis only.After the inital design and build were completed I would have a base to work and quote from for building multiple machines of the same design.

Automation is very complicated from a design standpoint.Programming PLC's to perform a given task was a job I handed over to my son (book smart) to do.
Automation in a sense is eliminating human workers and error,sad but true.Labor cost drive automation.

Robot's play a key role in Automation but thay don't work for all applications and you have to design and build custom equipment.

It is rewarding to see a product turned out by a piece of equipment you have Designed and Built.

Estimating is not easy. In order to estimate the cost of any peice of machinery, you have to know so many things. A very good knowledge of "how things are made"---i.e. lathe, mill, electronic discharge machining, welding, fitting and all the other processes required to make a peice of equipment, and the knowledge of how long each process takes. The approximate cost of purchased items i.e. pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders, gearboxes, motors, limit switches, and power supplies. And above all, for automated machinery, a knowledge of how a programmable logic controller "thinks" for a machine to lay out all the sequential operations, based on feed back from arrays of micro switches at all the critical motion points. Hell, I don't even know exactly how I do it myself!!!! Its just based on years and years of doing it over and over again.---Taking all of this knowledge and designing a new machine to do a new job or process that never previously existed is a thing that I really can't explain either. It almost seems like a form of magic to me, and I do it every day.

Oh Boy!!!! I just got a call from the cookie dough guy!!!! He wants to give me a P.O. to design a new machine. And here I am, right in the middle of a 3 month contract designing machinery to crush and reclaim old computer monitors and CPU's. I sent him an email telling him he'll just have to wait. Damn, it always happens this way!!!!

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Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Oh Boy!!!! I just got a call from the cookie dough guy!!!! He wants to give me a P.O. to design a new machine. And here I am, right in the middle of a 3 month contract designing machinery to crush and reclaim old computer monitors and CPU's. I sent him an email telling him he'll just have to wait. Damn, it always happens this way!!!!

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Brian - it's called feast or famine. And in the current recessive problems we North Americans are experiencing, you seem to be not on the famine end.

Now - about cookies(more feast) - since I'm in the minority (and considered strange) when it comes to chocolate.....I hope it will do oatmeal cookies. Or sugar cookies. Or date-nut cookies. :o :D

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Originally Posted by brianrupnow

Oh Boy!!!! I just got a call from the cookie dough guy!!!! He wants to give me a P.O. to design a new machine. And here I am, right in the middle of a 3 month contract designing machinery to crush and reclaim old computer monitors and CPU's. I sent him an email telling him he'll just have to wait. Damn, it always happens this way!!!!

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Brian,maybe you should consider off loading some of that design south of the border,say around Austin.LOL,LOL I know of a retired guy that designed a system for cookie dough that would mix,package and label.It was later frozen awating distribution.It is now running in Lockart Tx.It operated with PLC technology.

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Originally Posted by Don Dalton

Brian,maybe you should consider off loading some of that design south of the border,say around Austin.LOL,LOL I know of a retired guy that designed a system for cookie dough that would mix,package and label.It was later frozen awating distribution.It is now running in Lockart Tx.It operated with PLC technology.

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Well Don, I never rush to give work away, but at least now I know who's brain I can pick if I get hung up while working on the cooky dough machine!!!:LOL: :LOL: