Is there an American style of engineering/manufacturing?

[Bill D]

I notice the old south bend lathe tailstock is all curves compared to today's rectangular designs. The modern ones have a lot of wasted metal. the quill housing forces are all around the quill the square corners sitting away from the quill hole add no strength.
One thing no one mentioned is inch units vs cm. I was installing fog lights on a Volvo and having a hard time getting them symmetrical before mounting them. Getting weird hard to divide fractions. Switched to cm and it became easy.
Bill D

 

[DDoug]

Well, I did say beautiful, not easy to maintain. Think Ferrari, Sophia Loren . . .

Sophia on the hood of said Ferrari....

 

[EmGo]

Sophia on the hood of said Ferrari....

Pete Weisman's wife was a mechanic on the Ferrari race team. Everyone said she was the brains of the pair ... moonlight might know the name

 

[DDoug]

I think what people are referring to "the style" can be seen on 2 machines.
1. American lathes, after WW2
2. Carlton Radial drills.

the lathe headstock has "streamlining" as well as "ridges"

Same with the radial drill, look at the base.

 

[EmGo]

I think Hardinges are beautiful.

 

[Oldwrench]

American lathes, after WW2

With that factory-new high-gloss paint job...yeah, like a really hot woman on enough steroids to bench press a car...

 

[DDoug]

With that factory-new high-gloss paint job...yeah, like a really hot woman on enough steroids to bench press a car...

K.D. Lang ?....

 

[ewlsey]

I'll toss in my $.02.

I generally like American engineering, but I feel there are some things we get wrong.

American engineers have a nasty habit of tossing out tried and trued designs and starting over with "clean sheet" designs whenever some new challenge comes along. You see this so often in the automotive industry, especially engines.

For example, in the late 1990s, the folks at Cummins realized that the tried and trued 14 liter diesel engines they had been making, with surprisingly few changes, for 40+ years was probably never going to pass the tightening emissions regulations. So, instead of modernizing a legendarily reliable engine, Cummins came up up with a "clean sheet" design called the ISX. It took them another 10 years to get that engine to last over 400,000 miles without creating new holes in the block. Working on them is a nightmare.

There are dozens of examples. GM replacing the 3800 V6 with the 3500 and 3600 DOHC. International replacing the 7.3 PowerStroke with the 6.0 and 6.4. Anything Eco: Ecotec, Ecoboost, etc.

You do not see this tendency in Japanese engineering. When something is not broken, they don't fix it! Now the flip side is that the Japanese tend to hold on to old designs to the point of feeling out dated and missing out on new innovations. For example, you could still get a factory cassette player in a Honda car until 2009...

I think you can judge successful engineering by the number of knock offs. For example, how many copies of the Bridgeport milling machine are there? Or the Deckel? Every small engine of dubious origin is a faithful copy of a Honda, to the point that parts are interchangeable.


I think that most of the problem with American engineering is the American consumer. But then again, maybe American engineering has created the American consumer...

 

[teamaker]

I'm told that over-complexity is the reason the Russians beat the Germans in the largest tank battle in WWII. Don't know enough of that history to know for sure. Also told that the Russians were basically given a US tank design we passed on, improved it a bit, and made enough of these simpler but more reliable machines to help win their bloody part of the war.

I will say that Porsche design -- and beyond its cars as well -- does a pretty nice job.

I heard that because the Germans continually improved/ tweaked their part designs they ceased to be compatible when swapping parts out in the field. Where others could take parts off a damaged tank and fit them universally onto of of their other machines, the Germans couldn’t do the same.

 

[Bill D]

The old checker cab company looked at existing designs and took parts from every maker that did not break and copied them. I do not know the specifics but say ford a arms never broke use those with chevy steering box, dodge rearend , hudson front brakes etc. They keep making the same car from about 1950 until the end. I understand they even sold to civilians not just companies.
Bil lD

 

[Boris]

I heard that because the Germans continually improved/ tweaked their part designs they ceased to be compatible when swapping parts out in the field. Where others could take parts off a damaged tank and fit them universally onto of of their other machines, the Germans couldn’t do the same.

When you look at the turret drive of a Tiger or Panther tank, its a work of engineering art... When you look at a T-34 its "Hell that works???? ! " but the russians could make more T-34s than the germans could Tigers and panthers.

The same could be said for our Sherman tanks (also known to the germans as the 'tommy cooker' or the 'ronson' ), they were rather under gunned and under armored when going up against the tigers and panthers.
But we could build 10 of them to 1 tiger... so it didnt matter if you lost 5 shermans to every tiger kill.

Thats german engineering in a nutshell, high quality and does a superb job (when they've ironed out the problems of the mark 1 versions)

When you think about it, does'nt all engineering really come down to the age old equation that says you can have any 2 of the following 3 things
Time, price, quality.

Boris

<<<stuck on lockdown with no apprentices to torment

 

[gbent]

If Germans made a paper clip, it would have at least 6 moving parts, all replaceable at $.75 each.

But it would work better than any other paper clip in the world.

The Russians wouldn't have beaten the Germans without "General Winter". No one without direct experience can understand how brutal the cold is on everything. German guns froze up and were abandoned. The Russians used butter for a cold weather lube and turned the guns back on the Germans.

 

[Speedie]

I like the euro-style. Over here in the USA we have kitchen appliances and we dont want to remember how much we paid for them. In euro style machines they look like kitchen appliances....almost like they want to think about break time all the time. HA! But the chinese are going to kick all of us in the nuts. They are using good components, cool designed sheetmetal and putting colored LEDs everywhere. So now they have covered all the bases. Except virus remedy

 

[enginuity]

Let's look at 3 modern machine tools:

Germany. Design for Performance. Let's Beat 'Em on Specifications and the Test Drive.

Example: DMG Mori.

Machines look fantastic. Very good performance. High accuracy. Expensive and doesn't age well in terms of reliability and maintenance. It's just like German cars. In my opinion on the showroom floor you can not top the Germans. The cars are beautiful and amazing machines. Ask anybody who owns a German car 5 years down the line and the overall experience isn't quite as positive. Maintenance costs will kill you. Electronics are generally terrible.

Japanese. Design for Quality. Let's Beat 'Em on Reliability and Total Cost of Ownership.

Eg. Makino.

Variation is the enemy. Poka Yoke. Focus on quality. The machines are extremely reliable almost to a fault. You can get sick of looking at the machines because they are on the shop floor so long. In Japanese eyes this is an extremely successful design. Part of the problem with this focus is that designs take a very long time to change. As a customer this can be frustrating and very boring. For the car example, it's like my Toyota Sienna. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, but there is absolutely nothing innovative either. Nobody cares if that I have a Toyota Sienna in the driveway. Personally that doesn't bother me, but it bothers a lot of other people. I also don't mind Fanuc either so there is something probably wrong with me.

USA. Let's Beat 'Em on Price Divided By Performance to Get the Sale Today!

Eg: Haas.

Haas builds a good machine for the price. Part of what makes American design great is they are constantly thinking about the cost / manufacturability throughout the design process. The end consumer's wallet is always forefront and the designers actually talk to the end users (unlike the Germans / Japanese). This focus also helps repairs and maintenance as generally a product that is easy to put together is easy to service. There are hundreds of examples of this throughout history, not just machine tools. The problem is to really make a good product great requires some forward thinking beyond the here and now. Starting working a Haas near its edges and you'll quickly find it's writing a bunch of cheques it can't cash. Most American are all about the quarterly results. It's about making money first. Sell, sell, sell.

 

[BugRobotics]

One long past company where I was an exec was given the job by Monarch of designing a successor to the 10EE. Our prototype made it to the IMTS, but those rightly worshiping the massive cast iron stance of a 10EE didn't much like it's equally stiff and cutting force damping look. We got the structural dynamics right, but totally missed the reassuring "look" of a 10EE.

Hey Pete, would love to read more about this project if you ever get the time/motivation. This kind of info pushes all my "nerding out" buttons.

It took about a month before we were contacted by Siemens and asked if we would create a technical note on how to do this.

Haha, bet that was a interesting email/call. Can you point me to the note Motion? Looked around a bit on the Siemens website but gave up after a few minutes.

 

[motion guru]

The Russians wouldn't have beaten the Germans without "General Winter". No one without direct experience can understand how brutal the cold is on everything. German guns froze up and were abandoned. The Russians used butter for a cold weather lube and turned the guns back on the Germans.

The Germans could not use butter for lube! It isn't listed in the lubrication specification for the weapon!!!

Oh, brother!!
That made my day!!

sure you didn't make up that part

I was baffled that they didn't try something like this earlier . . . the operators described in painstaking detail what a miserable job it was.

Haha, bet that was a interesting email/call. Can you point me to the note Motion? Looked around a bit on the Siemens website but gave up after a few minutes.

It is used as an internal guide for Siemens techs . . . still not supported to the general public but has come in handy for several large aerospace customers.

 

[PeteM]

Hey Pete, would love to read more about this project if you ever get the time/motivation. This kind of info pushes all my "nerding out" buttons. . . ..

Brief story is that the company I was with back then was a pioneer in structural dynamics. Started with testing - early Fourier analysis of vibrations and then went through rotor dynamics to finite elements, modal analysis, solid modeling etc. Some of the code is likely now (still) in Siemen's CAD software, just to close the loop with Motion Guru's example.

The proposed design used much less iron, would be cheaper to build, and had equal rigidity, freedom from chatter, etc. Also much better access for chip removal. But it didn't look massive and reassuring -- and, far as I recall, only the one prototype was built and taken to IMTS.

 

[theperfessor]

As a firearms enthusiest I can see the design differences between different countries mainly in the firearms they produce. Look at the weapons used in WWI or WWII by the major participants.

 

[BugRobotics]

Brief story is that the company I was with back then was a pioneer in structural dynamics. Started with testing - early Fourier analysis of vibrations and then went through rotor dynamics to finite elements, modal analysis, solid modeling etc. Some of the code is likely now (still) in Siemen's CAD software, just to close the loop with Motion Guru's example.

The proposed design used much less iron, would be cheaper to build, and had equal rigidity, freedom from chatter, etc. Also much better access for chip removal. But it didn't look massive and reassuring -- and, far as I recall, only the one prototype was built and taken to IMTS.

Sounds like a cool project, thanks for sharing.

 

[BugRobotics]

It is used as an internal guide for Siemens techs . . . still not supported to the general public but has come in handy for several large aerospace customers.

Ah, that explains it. I searched for another 15 minutes and couldn't find it. Thanks!