Saturday Morning Musings, Staying the Course, Quality Control, Your time in Jail for Emulating our Government's Plan..

02/21/2009

Machines tell a story same as books.

I went out and worked on the Redstone last night for few hours, I pulled off the enormously heavy engine mount that doubles as the pan.

 Phil has torn into the Redstone to the point where there’s no secrets left.

 His experience at the engine shop where they checked out the crank,  “Never saw a more stout crank,  well made, appears they also hardened the journals”.

 As I look at this machine, I see they have taken the care to surface cut the top of the sump, and the sides of the block, and it looks very nicely done, as good as anything machined here as per quality of cut on an engine block..  

 I would bet that this block was machined, and centers located in one of those rather HUGE machines that friends in China sent me pictures of.

 I truly believe that China has the equipment and procedures to build a heavy and square block with crank and other important shaft centers in the right place. Yes, I know what you might be thinking, BUT, there is no other engine on earth like this, if you want one, it’s here.

 Gear quality? Looks as good as it gets!

 Lee in Malaysia tells me that Quality in China is now anything you want to pay for, >BUT< the Chinese understand that price means almost everything to a lot of buyers. The Chinese are Businessmen first, when they ‘know’ you are shopping price, they know they will lose the sale unless they offer you the same JUNK that the next guy offers.   As a retailer, you also have the choice of buying the better stuff and watching a large percentage of your market buy from the ebayer who offers the lower price, And likely no real ‘hands on’ knowledge or support for the product”.

This has caused me to stop and think about what I want to do, what I want to sell. For the moment, I am attempting to keep in stock the pulleys, the cooling manifolds, and a few misc parts, that others depend on me having. The PMGs ARE now my principle focus, more about this in a moment..

My focus is on the OFF GRIDDER and people who want the same durable equipment, real-time reliable. The REDSTONE one of the only high mass dual flywheel engines being produced that offers the Precision, Quality of materials, ability to burn Alternative fuels, or lower quality fuels,  AND it is designed to be taken apart quickly with simple tools. The flywheels are on tapers, they can be pulled in minutes, everything on this engine is massive!

After many hours of research, after sifting through a lot of information I have accumulated over the years, this is the engine I would choose for anything at 12 >REAL< HP or above for stationary power at an off grid location where I lived or spent more than a few months at a time. This engine has flywheels that weight in at near 120 pounds each, we get some help starting the larger inductive loads like well pumps, we’ve learned the value of high mass flywheels, but we also know they are expensive to make, expensive to ship.

We now have a lot of hungry folks selling into our community,  One was even paying Google to deliver to his site ‘GOOGLE’ searches on the word utterpower, some would question the ethics, others would simply say “that’s the new world”.

We are left to analyze our surroundings and chart our course. We also need ask ourselves, what is our goal?

To make money? Simply sell the impossible!. How many examples do you need to realize that this is NOW the biggest selling product of all time! Look at all the web sites where they discuss over unity schemes. Look at the people ‘one finally jailed for a year or two’ that became rich selling plans for the machine that makes more electricity than it consumes!

But now we have the majority of our population believing in Over Unity, and we have our present Administration, the House and the Senate selling it! For those who have the IQ of a mustard seed, we know there is no free lunch, this is  true in physics, and in finance.

Why should it be ‘more illegal’ for any of us to sell the impossible dream?

But that ethical question remains, how can your feel good about ‘screwing’ your customer, or ‘screwing’ those who elected you to represent their interests? I guess you’d have to ask the majority of our representatives that, my thought is they totally understand that the majority of those who take time to cast their vote believe in the impossible and will throw anyone out of office that promises less.

I’ve been in touch with one young PhD in a very remote part of Africa. He and his organization are funded by Gates money, they have been working to install ‘platforms’ in an attempt to increase the productivity of small villages. The idea is to install an efficient small engine that can grind grains, pump water, charge batteries and more. Can the platform increase their productivity and therefore increase their quality of life? There are a number of groups working on platforms, and I believe the UN is doing similar work.

I think most of us are familiar with the analogy that were are all born square, and over time, all our corners are ground off by realities of our environment and we eventually become round just like those we report to. It is interesting to listen to what these young and smart engineers have to say. One tells me of the age old problem, those who have control of the purse strings and approve of purchases do not always understand how different products can be. Those of us who are familiar with Indian products know you can buy an engine that is so poorly made it will likely never give >any< service, and others that are quite good.

One of the frustrations these young engineers are up against is the procurement process. Accountants and Bureaucrats >often< have no concept of quality issues, so they put in place a bidding process. You want to buy something and have us pay for it?  Show us at least three bids. These young Engineers are far smarter than I was at their age, they already know it’s a waste of time attempting the educate those who hold their purse strings. Being realists, they are ‘Engineering’ around the insanity.

One email yesterday contained this..

“George, “poor quality delivered to the bush is very costly, it’s very depressing when we let down the people we attempt to help and serve”.

Here we find young an smart people working long hours for little money to do great things, and we sit here and wonder about those purse strings. Is it the

Brother-In-Law of the man who has the purse strings that supplies the equipment?  We have all heard the many stories about the UN and similar situations there. So we know of the reasons for the multiple bidding process, but how to deal with this? There is a technical answer, that is to spec every finish and every detail and get the provider to sign a contract with penalties for failure to meet the spec, but don’t hold your breath and wait for something like that to happen in this market. Allmand taught me there is a language and definition for everything in the machine world, you only need write the spec, and then QC every single part prior to assembly..    

I see our North American Market as being far less than one percent, we are those who are not satisfied with the goods we find at home depot or other big box stores. But we must be realistic and note that about 75% of our DIYer community is driven by the price, and has little idea how greatly an item with an identical description can vary in quality.

 I need to be able to sleep at night, I will focus on providing or supporting solutions that provide a return on investment. I may fail, but it will remain my goal.

 The 6/1 CS Lister Clone (listeroid) is an engine that can provide a good return on investment, it is a sad note that India has not moved away from the GIB key like the rest of the world, and there are those who are quit good at fitting them and removing them I guess. Outside of the 6/1, we need look hard at some of the other alternatives,  there are few reasons (in my mind) to buy Indian outside of slow speed (500-1100 Rpm). Certainly there’s lots of room for debate here.

 The PMG is proving it’s worth in the third world now, over time, I believe it will pay for itself many times over compared to other units in the bush. If it doesn’t work, it will soon be abandoned. There are many pieces of equipment abandoned in Africa because parts are either tooexpensive, or too hard to source.  

 There are two market segments I’m interested in, Off Griders here who know the value of KISS engineering and those missions and groups bringing solutions that work to the third world, we both should be attracted to the same thing, a good return on our investment. Poor quality never pays off in the long term. If we had a spread sheet, and we could track down time,  loss of productivity, labor to repair. parts and replacement activities we’d quickly get the message.

 Now to stay the course.. ‘offer solutions that provide a return of your investment’, I get a lot of performance data from around the world, I best make use of it

Al the best, 

George