Burners 101

[Panik]

5 hours ago, Frosty said:

My main issue in this mental image design is controlling flame flow in the annulus. It WILL want to take the most direct path NOT circulate around the whole liner. What I really want hot is the floor and dome, HOT walls are nice but it's the floor and dome that are really my target radiators.

Thank you for sharing! I'm excerpting your text because there is a lot of absorb and a GREAT DEAL that is going to be spinning in my mind for some to come.. even then I'm not going to say I'll be able to process all of it.

Something that did come immediately to mind when you brought up the issue of exhaust path and burn out casting methods were tire treads and tire grooving tools. I certainly don't know the pattern necessary, but would it be possible to use raised ridges to both work as a spacer and to channel the exhaust as it travels through the annulus Or would doing so create the need for a greater induction force than a NARB or blown burner can produce?

[Frosty]

I've thought about making the spacers into vanes to direct the flow, I figure if I can get some moving the way I want more will follow. Unfortunately I'd have to know in advance which direction it WANTS to flow before I can direct it my way. I don't want to make a clear plastic model and use smoke streamers. It is an option I'd considered and the overall PITA factors have kept it on the back burner for 30+ years.

Frosty The Lucky.

[Mikey98118]

I especially like Frosty writing about nigh-end metal spinning for NASA. It saddens me to think of the decline in technical skills these days.

[Frosty]

Shhhhh, some of that stuff was classified and I don't want to get Dad in trouble. 

 Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

A lot of what got us to the moon was hand work done by experts; I got to see the ladies hand sewing parachutes at the (now) Johnson space center in Houston once back in the 1960's.  With the demise of expertise we have to rely on fab now.

[Frosty]

The "advances of science vs. human skill" has happened before, the Victorian era being one of the more spectacular. I'm not sure what drives us, maybe an instinctive desire to be in charge or have servants or something but making "machines" our servants by endowing them with a form of autonomy was exhibited is things like automatic doors, elevators, etc. in ancient Greece not to mention Da Vinci's devices. 

Today we have "AI" and CNC. Write a little code and the machine does the job. Worse the machine makes the decisions or "offers" us suggestions. I REALLY hate nested menus, need help? Menu after menu of check boxes listing things THEY think might be a problem. Find your problem? More nested menus or worse a link to a blog. Typical of systems designed by people who's expertise is with the system, NOT doing a job. In most cases 5 minutes on a phone solves the issue, once in a while I need a walk through so it takes a little longer. Hours sifting through menus is worse than worthless.

It'll get sifted out eventually but putting up with the experimentation in the "New WAY!" is frustrating for folk who just want things to work and they weren't broken before. 

End morning Frosty rant.

 Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

I think some of it is due to "modern management practices" that equate jobs with slots that anyone can fill and find older workers more expensive.

Ever had a previous employer call you up to ask how to do something a week after they had security walk you out?

[Mikey98118]

38 minutes ago, Frosty said:

It'll get sifted out eventually but putting up with the experimentation in the "New WAY!" is frustrating for folk who just want things to work and they weren't broken before. 

End morning Frosty rant.

Katherine took time out to get a degree in degree in computer science, then put almost thirty years in IT; computer glitches can still get her just as crazy as they do me (no where near as often though).

[Frosty]

1 hour ago, ThomasPowers said:

Ever had a previous employer call you up to ask how to do something a week after they had security walk you out?

No but I have been asked by guys having to do my old job. If they're not one of the reasons I left I usually help. . . a little.

Is she trying to follow the directions for new software? They just LOVE telling you all the things a "feature" is good for without one word about how to do anything with it. I have a pair of wireless ear buds and in 3 pages of "instructions", not ONE WORD about how to turn them on. 

 Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

I got a call once from someone who was being offered my old job and wanted to know if I had any recommendations. The first words that came out of my mouth were "Run away screaming."

1 hour ago, Frosty said:

not ONE WORD about how to turn them on.

You LISTEN to them.

[Frosty]

3 hours ago, JHCC said:

You LISTEN to them.

The voices in my head know how to turn the earbuds on? 

 Frosty The Lucky.

[Panik]

20 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

A lot of what got us to the moon was hand work done by experts; I got to see the ladies hand sewing parachutes at the (now) Johnson space center in Houston once back in the 1960's.  With the demise of expertise we have to rely on fab now.

Not that everything is rosie  (no riveter puns intended), but not everything is lost either: 

- I’m 43 and I remember my dad arguing numbers and design for laminar flow with his partner while building custom composite free style canoes. (Was about the same time as the first Olympic kerfuffle about low drag suits.) These were the folks that produced Canoesport Journal, which eventually became Paddler magazine) 

- it’s my understanding that smokejumpers still sew and pack their own chutes, as well as fabricate their own gear. Most of the after market equipment supply companies catering to that industry are founded by former wildland fire personnel who want to combine personal experience with materials science to provide more ergonomic end user products. 

- I watched a high school educated friend not more than two years ago teach himself architectural design principles as well as CNC/CAD so that he could expand his business further into the restoration of historic wooden structures. It’s been a neat melding if technical skills, computer guided production and theory. 

While a lot has been shifted to menu driven computer algorithms there’s still cool stuff happening in the strange eddies and back currents of tech..... this forum and AFB’s printed mixing tubes and nozzles as example? 

Heck, while end users may have to wade thru 27 thousand menus to create a torus in a design programs, algorithm design for such programs (especially for open source programming) still requires grass roots understanding and manipulation of concepts) 

I’m not necessarily disagreeing that much technical expertise have been lost to the average person due computer aided product development...... I‘ve seen and been a part of it generationally..... more its just I’d very much like to believe it’s not fully a black and white thing. 

Aside from the obvious fire bug on my back, the above is one of the reasons I very much enjoy prescribed fire.

There’s two very separate sides of that field that come together in a Venn Diagram. There’s is a side that strives to be driven objectively and by discrete data collection (duff accumulation measurements, material drying rates, flame speed, micro-macro atmospherics, etc ad nauesum). However, much like weather broad scale predictive capabilities are coming along but fine granularity in predictive capability

On the other hand that still leaves wide space for, what is to me, the spiritual side.......intuitive understanding based upon both experience and hard science....That sometimes unconscious decision making that says “If I put fire here, it may burn hotter and therefore create room 6 months down the road for species X to better thrive”. At least in the SE US you’ll still regularly hear about the idea of “painting the landscape using fire as your palette” 

In any case, I have once again been writing prior to finishing my first cup of coffee and somehow managed to muddle empiricism and the idea of spirituality in the strictest sense (i.e profound respect for that which we don’t fully understand).

Apparently I’ve been listening to Mike and the Mechanics on Pandora too much. Feel free to call my BS. 

[ThomasPowers]

What my contention is that big business has moved away from expertise.  It seems like your examples were small businesses and niche markets; perhaps they opened up because expertise was still needed that the Big Businesses no longer could provide.   When I was hired by Bell Labs it was to understudy an Engineer retiring in a year with 35 years of service so that there would be a seamless transition of customer support for a product and also to bring certain aspects into more modern times---I learned to CAD stuff that used to have a multi week turn around time in drafting.   When I was laid off 14 years later a lot of the work was going offshore with no training time.

(You forgot to mention Little Giant Hammer dot com; a very small niche business chock full of expertise!----I've been talking with them about my 1915 25# LG).

[Frosty]

Oh goodness, most of that made perfect sense to me!  Maybe not in some specifics but in general and even spiritual I'm with you. 
I wasn't complaining about menu driven as a degradation  in general I was complaining about it's current application and what it says about folks belief they can design machines to predict non linear systems. Sure tech has advanced, our smart phones, heck wrist watches have more ram that any of the Apollo craft had, heck my smart phone might out ram any one building at Apollo era mission control. It's still a long way from AI.

True AI scares the stuffins out of me, how long will true AI put up with the unpredictability of humans once it doesn't need us to keep it fed?

Without getting off on that sidetrack, I've stopped believing in black and white in all but a few areas. Things are rarely good/bad in a black/white way. There is still a lot of good hands on skills at work, just not running many large systems, especially education systems. Large systems must be flexible in some areas but rigid in others without the belief they can predict what will be desirable educationally in the future. desirable certainly isn't a college diploma just because. 

Life, skills and marketable skills is more constantly changing than ever. Some skills are more necessary now than ever and are being ignored. The 3 Rs are as necessary as they were for my grand parents and logic. basic logic wasn't taught in my day, laughed off in fact but I was taught the new math. I'm still getting over that distraction from useful.

 Frosty The Lucky.

[Panik]

Thomas, Frosty - I agree with you both you and didn’t intend for anything I wrote this morning as a refutation of your thoughts.  

I’m reasonably certain I was among the last to be taught how to use a stereoscope and interpret stereoscopic aerial photos at the water management district I worked at before they switched to fully digital databases of aerial mapping. It was a shame because there are skills in interpreting stereoscopic images that can inform analyzing digital images. 

My post was more about reminding myself, and anyone else willing to come along for the ride, that there is still a lot of cool “chit” happening out there.... even if it is largely absent from big businesses.

Back to more topically relevant posting... 
 

[ThomasPowers]

And some of the old experts are making a LOT more money as independents when businesses learned they still needed their input.

[Dillon Buck]

Machinists are a great example of the old, suddenly becoming valuable.

At 50, I have friends that are at an interesting place in that business.

They learned on the old machines as the Computer controlled ones took over.

The old guys have retired, and my buddies are the only ones left that can

burn out cnc parts, then turn around and do a one off on a Bridgeport or a 

manual lathe.  Suddenly when operators are scarce, those obsolete machines

are valuable.

Didn't realize that's my first post.

My dog's name is Dillon Buck.  So..glad to meet you all.

Been lurking for months, joined a bit ago.

 

Have read the forge and burner threads, multiple times.

Still haven't jumped in.  I need to, I have a couple knives ready 

to heat treat.  And wasn't happy with using the oxy/acetylene for that.

 

[Frosty]

It's a flaw in some of the modern systems. The assumption an IT can anticipate the inherent variables in a system is a bad one. CNC systems only work well if nothing goes wrong or unforeseen variables arise. An experienced human can recognize and compensate or correct for random happenstance or stop the process. 

The guys designing the systems are expert programmers rather than machinists or whatever.

A good example is what's happening to Boeing and the 737 Max debacle. Aircraft have been becoming more and more automated over the years which is good and bad. Starting with autopilots evolving into auto navigation systems. The pilots are slowly losing the ability to navigate manually. The 373 wrecks killing a few hundred folks were caused by a safety system intended to take the humans out of the stall recovery loop and unfortunately it was a seriously flawed system and there was no way to shut it off covered by Boeing approved training.

It's looking like there may have been criminal negligence at or near the top but even without it. It was a system designed by people who didn't fly jets but had a pretty system to sell folk who weren't pilots or could out vote them. 

It happened with the Challenger explosion, the decision to launch was made by politicians and corporate CEOs, NOT the people who knew how it worked or the risks of launching at low temps.  Nope, it was launched because politicos and admin didn't want to look bad over how much a scrubbed launch costs AND they'd foolishly promised a launch. 

Right now I have the latest Space X manned Dragon launch prep on the Tube. Leave important things to the Gov and we've been begging and subsidizing the Russian space program. Allow privatization and in a few years we're launching Americans, in a REUSABLE, American spacecraft from American soil. The launch Wednesday was scrubbed by weather, who made the decision: Elon Musk, Corporate, Investors, a board, etc.? Nope the engineers and scientists best qualified.

Can you imagine what we'd be driving to the store or flying(?) in if the gov. developed those industries?  WWII jeeps and surplus bombers? 

End rant, I'm back to the launch. Be safe.

 Frosty The Lucky.

 

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

That was a great launch, not quite as spectacular as the Saturn 5 or space shuttle launches though.

[Frosty]

Not as spectacular as the Gemini launches either. I should hope not, 50-60 years should have seen improved engines. I loved the way the ship left the pad almost as soon as the engines lit. 

I'm watching the docking and entrance of the space station. It took two hours after the Dragon docked to open the hatch. I had no idea how much there was to do to open the door. No quick potty stops in a spaceship eh? Right now they're tracking down a missed valve or switch, the men on ISS are waiting patiently though the Russian looks about to drift off for a nap. 

I'm loving watching live. 

 Frosty The Lucky.

[Chris Williams]

On 5/30/2020 at 1:25 PM, Frosty said:

WWII jeeps

I like the WWII jeeps.  Wouldn't mind an alternator from one of the bombers, either. Not that I would consider your hypothetical world an improvement. 

Now we just have to bring them home safe. I don't want any spectacle, really. I want everything to be ho-hum boring, business-as-usual. Get them up, then get them down. Do it again. Leave the flying cheeses and Teslas to SpaceX. 

[ThomasPowers]

I remember a lot of issues with computerized systems back in the  Airbus days, 1990's; I had a CIS professor who refused to ride on one which pretty much said it all to me. (A couple of them pretty much flew themselves into the ground; not even a cumulo-granite event.)

I remember a poem about steel making from the 1920's about "the man at the fire" being a better monitor than all the fancy equipment that was starting to be used.

[Mikey98118]

Micro-drills versus rotary tools

Micro-drills trade lower RPM than rotary tools for higher torque; this tool is just right for power grinding and sanding on small parts for burners; it can be slid along inside a split pipe or steel angle, taking the place of a drill press for making accurately centered holes in a burner’s end cap, if you don’t have access to a drill press; in that case, its speed can be reduced even further with a fan speed controller:  The tool’s low price seems almost too good to be true; it isn’t though;  I bought one last year; its body is a 1.585” diameter aluminum cylinder, that is 3-3/4” long; its speed is 20,000 RPM; the highest recommended speed for a 2” diameter cut off disc. A rotary tool’s 32,000 RPM limits them to 1-1/2” diameter discs, While a micro-drill's RPM range and separate speed controller make it about right for most micro drill bits, this doesn’t hold true with rotary tools. Its price is $27;cheap for two essential tools in one. Some rotary tools will have a little more power, but it is still a good trade-off.

[Mikey98118]

Miniature adjustable three-jaw chucks versus collets on rotary tools

Mostly, which  one is the best choice on a rotary tool depends on its quality. A keyed chuck needs to be pretty high quality to successfully spin an accessory, or drill bit, at high speed. So, what about the key-less chucks (three jaw hand tightened) for rotary tools sold on line and through jewelers supply stores? I bought three of these cheap imports, before giving up; they all froze, and broke during their first attempted use. However, Foredom makes an American manufactured model, which works; but not as smoothly as a collet. Why not? It is machined to about .0001"  (one thousandths of an inch) tolerance, and and extends well beyond the the motor shaft. Smooth performance in this instance would probably require .0002" (two ten-thousandths of an inch). Such quality would price them out of the market.

[Mikey98118]

#304 versus #316 stainless steel

The two most commonly available stainless-steel alloys are #304 and #316. Often you can take your pick between the two in a desired shape and sized part; when you have the choice, #304 parts usually come with polished surfaces, and are a little easier to drill and tap. #316 usually comes with a dull finish and is harder to drill and tap then the #304 alloy, but #16 stainless has 2% Molybdenum in it, and #304 doesn’t: that addition makes the alloy a little harder to work with, but greatly increases its resistant to high heat oxidation. The one part in a burner that benefits from molybdenum is the flame retention nozzle.