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The wife's car needed cleaning so, being a lazy idle git on a warm dog-dangling day, I took it to one of those ARC chain carwashes. You know, the ones where they charge you between £3 and £6 for different scales of wash which I'm convinced are all the same except for the colour of goo that is sprayed on your car at the start
These things work by dragging your car (with you in it) through the wash by a conveyor chain into which you position one of your wheels. As I went through I wondered "how the heck does this thing work" ? There are several vehicles passing through at once, yet it knows what program each is on, and even seems to pause the conveyor at certain points to make sure those brushes really scrub the paintwork off properly. If its all done mechanically then it must be bloomin clever, but I suppose there some electronic gizmos hidden away somewhere.

Which got me thinking...isn't electronic engineering BORING?

Doing stuff mechanically is really clever, the pin setting machine on a 10-pin bowling alley uses a wickedly fiendish cam and follower device to position the arm which drops the pins into place in just the right position.
The Victorians didn't have electronics yet look at the stuff they managed to achieve, London even had its own ring-main water powered hydraulic system. Now thats cool!

Older hydromechanical aircraft engine fuel control units were masterpieces of ingenuity. Springs, cams, bellows and servo pressures all controlled by precision crafted spill valves permit the device to cater for changes in aircraft speed, altitude, engine RPM, bleed air demand and more besides. They could even accomodate inputs which contradicted each other and still deliver the fuel to the engine in the right quantity. Setting these puppies up required a skilled technician making fine corrections to any one of up to 7 adjusters during an engine run lastuing up to two hours.

Modern systems are basically a tap connected to a computer which is clinically efficient, can handle inputs the hydromechanical devices can't and reduce the maintenace costs and time. But they are sooooo boring, a skilled thecnician becomes a black box swapper

So which are you prefer, mechanical or electrical/electronic and why?

You've just missed out on the beauty, innovation and creativity that goes inside the electronic 'black box'. I should know. I've spent most of my professional life putting it there!

In terms of intricacy and subtlty the electronics is miles ahead of mechanical methods and solutions.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
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Horses for courses, I think. An electronic knitting machine (I mean one where the needles all move electronically rather than mechanically via cams on the carriage) would I think be much more complex - but I'm open to correction.

As for the car wash - it must be a mixture of both, with emphasis on electronicxs and power actuators. ever seen inside a modern photocopier compared to a cyclostyle duplicator of the sixties?

"Carburretor" - "A scientifically designed, precision engineered device that guarrantees to deliver the wrong mixture at all engine speeds and loadings.."

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"Politicians are the same the world over... We build bridges where there aren't any rivers." - Nikita Kruschev

I'm not doubting the intricacy and subtlty that electronics brings to the party, but beauty? Nah - well perhaps in the eye of the beholder
Mechanical solutions are crafted and have an elegance that is almost art!
Get it wrong, and you've got to start making another cam mechanism all from scratch, not just rubbing out a flip-flop diode on the diagram and replacing it with a flop-flip diode (or whatever).
People today flock to museums to look at the works of Victorian and Edwardian engineers - the sheer majesty of their work is awesome IMHO.
I can't see folks of 2106 going to a museum to look at a collection of black boxes with a plug connector on it.
"Ooh look Harold, this ones got a 23 pin configuration not a 22"

Of course, I'm just having fun




A mechanical typewriter versus and elctronic one...the former is much more intricate.

But, YOU can set it up to deliver whatever wrong mixture you like

Without the need for a laptop PC and some hooky software.

Sure. But just because you can't see the beauty doesn't mean it isn't there.

Anyone can appreciate simple mechanism. It's perhaps rather sad that the electronics requires a rather specialised education to appreciate.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I’m an electronics guy well it’s so easy to make corrections when things go wrong… and when things go terminally wrong, the resulting boom is usually less dangerous

I can’t disagree with your sentiments Riggy; the words ‘electric vehicle' and ‘fun’ don’t usually appear together in the same sentence

Ahh, the beauty is in the design (made from a toolkit of standard available parts), and once you have a solution you have a utilitarian plug 'n' play module in a bland box which can be tweaked at the stroke of a pencil. Mechanical devices are one-offs; whilst the same design may be used over and over, the actual mechanism must be recrafted each time to suit the application.



Simple? Babbage's difference engine was complex in-extremis but beautiful to behold. The same can't be said of a pocket calculator.



Yes, yes it does

Mr Rigpig sir, I hope you have frequented that Dibner play ground that is the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. Not been there since I've moved south.

The victorians had the first binary system. It was a big, thick sheet of paper on 2 scrolls with holes punched in it. It was used to weave patterns into carpets. When a finger found a hole it made a stick. Dead clever that.

Mechanical stuff means noisey, unsealed cabs, big wobbly leavers, vibration and discomfort. Electrics mean I cab spend all day without pressing the clutch in a quiet, dust-free cab. Nice

As yet another electronics guy, I understand where Paul is coming from regarding the difficulty in appreciating a piece of fine electronics design. I'm fortunate to be working in a company which produces systems relying on the combined efforts of mechanical and electronic engineering, along with a healthy dollop of physics, so a quick trawl through the design files or a visit to one of the test rooms is enough to indulge my interests in engineering as a general subject. So I find it difficult to choose one as a favourite - I can see the beauty of both electronic and mechanical systems... as well as the hideousness of such systems when the designer was having an off day

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Chris

With flash memory having a life expectancy of about 50 years I bet I know which technology we will still see working in 100 years time...

Just imagine the air shows and classic car rallys in the future. Nothing running that was built after the 1970s.

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Speed camera policy Kills

But you can replace flash memory - even in the smd variation - quicker than you can lubricate a few wheels..

There are loads of issues about electronics technology becoming obsolete. but I don't think that particular fear is really justified.

For a start, they won't all go at once and in many cases it'll be possible to clone one that is still working. However plenty of modern systems have anti-read or anti-copy features which could be a serious problem.

'Media' is set to be a serious problem. CDs have a finite life, so software and music will simply vanish at some point if there's no archive copy.

And of course CD/DVD drives will be extremely rare in working condition in (say) 50 years' time.

As far as current cars not working in say 50 or 100 years is concerned, 'simple' problems with batteries and electrolytic capacitors leaking and damaging circuit boards may be the biggest problem with the electronics.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Not true. Memory chips (flash memory) have an operational life of 50 years, after that they could fail. Modern micros have on-board flash so they could completly die. There may also be a limit on read/write operations.

Modern cars have more than more than 8 flash based micros onboard.

Forget the idea of repairing electronics in the future. The current vogue in OEM electronics is to do an "all-time-buy" at the end of the production life. Basically when the spares are all used up that’s it, you are into to canibalising old vehicles. Then you are into the problem of coded modules that have to be matched using diagnostic software...assuming someone still has the correct level of diagnostics software and the programming tools.

How do I know this....because my job is selling embedded electronic systems to the OEMs....

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Speed camera policy Kills

I have indeed, full of BIG properly engineered stuff to get your hands dirty on
As is the National Railway Museum
And the Black Country Museum in Dudly. They've even got a replica Newcomen atmospheric (or vacuum) engine

And as for the grease and noise...all part of the ambiance. You've not lived until you've felt that searing pain as the bolt you are trying to loosen suddenly gives and you crack your knuckles against some adjacent sticky-out thing. Mind you, brings a tear to the old eye

Still, I suppose electronics has its place. i wouldn't be commuinicating like this without that fascinating black and silver box humming away beside me.

Once the design of on-board flash micros is complete, for large production runs they mask programme I think, eliminating flash from the critical component.

You're talking about data retention time. But ultimate data loss in these devices is highly dependent on environmental conditions, especially temperature. A quick trawl of semiconductor manufacturers' data sheets reveals some very loose and woolly statements regarding data retention time. This one, for example (intended for automotive), suggests a maximum data retention time of 20 years at 55 deg C.

However the temperature sensitivity of data retention is such that you could possibly expect 100 years data retention at 0 deg C.

The challenge for tomorrow's restorers will be to find a working module, defeat copy-protection (sometimes effectively impossible) and restore the program to the 'forgetful' module.

I tell you what, however, it might be worth firing off a couple of letters in the hope of getting someone (SMMT?) to set up a secure archive of circuits and software which would greatly facilitate future repairs. I wonder if 'Classic Car' magazine, or any 'classics' society are working on the issues?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I'm guessing that the requirement for software 'fixes' has pushed the typical application into choosing flash.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety