I hit the wrong X and lost your post but to answere you. You sound like the electricians union I used to belong to Local 3.
But Here Engineers (US and I suspect many Canadian engineers would disagree with you) engineers do get their hands dirty. In small companies they often have just one engineer who is his own tecnician. I want my bread boards assembled in a very specific manner, just like my schematic, so I do not have to look for things. On occaision I have had tecs who can, after some training do just that. Most of the time, I can do the job a lot quicker than the tec can and where I have worked (TRW, Northrup etc) when I get put on a project, time is of the essence. The program is already behind schedual, or I would probly not have been put on it. I have no problem getting my hands burnt or dirty. I just want the job done, done in a certain way, and done fast. When I want those things I do it my self. (Although most of the time I have other engineers working as my tecs.) Some times I want a transformer wound and I need it wound properly I wind it my self or stand over the winders back and see they do it properly.
On one occaision, we had a bread board that oscillated. It should not have and we could not figure why. We worked 2 or 3 weeks trying to get the bread board to work and it would not.
I knew there was some sort of unexpected feedback occuring some wheres. I finally built a rf probe and started looking around. There was one hell of a field around a transformer that shoould not have been threre.
I had gone out and had a transformer wound by an outsside transformer house. It was wound on a cup core that had a built in 6 mil gap. I had specified a XXXXXe core which had the gap on the inside. I called the transformer company and asked what core they had used. They checked and told me they had used a XXXXXf core which also has a 6 mil gap but on the outside. I asked them why they had not used the e core. They told me they did not have one, but they had an f core with the same 6mil gap but on the outside, and that should serve my purpose and should not make any difference.
Well it didn't serve my purpose and it didn't work. We spent about 40,000 dollars of engineering time trouble shooting a bread board because they made an asssumption.
We replaced the transformer with one with a gap on the inside and the circuit worked perfectly. Same sized gap, except on the inside where it did not radiate.
We lost weeks of time.
When I want a transformer, I either wind it myself or stand over the person winding it. So much for not getting your hands dirty. . . I DO NOT FOLLOW MANY OF THESE NEWS GROUPS To answere me address mail to snipped-for-privacy@aol.com