crock of .... moment welding

My point if anything I guess is that the only person that you know (mostly) how they will perform without prodding is you. If you want real safe engineering standards to work from quit bitching about it and ask for them. Demand them. Express anguish and rending of cloth for fear of harming a school bus full of children who all plummet to their death when the bridge you built collapses dumping them all into the raging rapids and rocks below.

Or to steal the words of man I know. There are only two reasons most things happen. You caused it to happen or you allowed it to happen.

Or to steal the words of man I know. There are only two reasons most things happen. You caused it to happen or you allowed it to happen.

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I consider choices to have three classes of options which I symbolize as

+, - and 0.

Plus is to vote for, minus is to vote against, and 0 is to vote 'present'. The value is to remember to look for the third when I see only two. This model helps separate the battles I might win or draw from those I'd certainly lose and may suffer the consequences.

Sometimes even being 'present' meant quietly looking for another job, as after a predatory corporate acquisition. At one place it was called the "Borg Reorg" when we were being assimilated.

Several pairs of competing companies arose from resignations after internal disagreement, for example Wright and Pratt & Whitney aero engines, and Champion and AC (Albert Champion) spark plugs.

If only you could see me in action :-)

When welding for an hourly wage I do have to conceal all opinions though. Have I got this right? - my point is where I go onwards? Taking it that gather my knowledge at this juncture and go on up a new fork.

As odd as it may sound my opinions are mostly idealistic up to this juncture. Now you need to decide what's best for you, your family, and those around you. Not just today, but tomorrow, next week, next year, and the next decade.

Maybe you should consider becoming an engineer, a safety inspector, or (I do apologize for saying this) a politician.

Maybe (if you can shoulder the burden, and it is a heavy burden) start your own company and excel by hiring top flight engineers and other talent, bidding every job, and sending every poorly planned job back with a list of deficiencies to be corrected before finalizing the bid.

Or keep your mouth shut, feed your family, send your younguns to school, and hope you don't have to someday shoulder the guilt on your conscience when a deficiency you knew about goes badly.

I was a contractor for 23 years, and employed in contracting trades for around 30. In my own company if something didn't make sense I sent it back for correction, but I knew plenty of contractors who looked for deficiencies from a purely mercenary point view. They would bid marginally low to get the job, and say nothing. Then they price gouged on change orders to bring the job up to minimum standards when the specs were not correct. They hated to see me bid against them. I didn't play stupid games. If the spec was dangerous or didn't meet code I sent it back with a list of known deficiencies and refused to bid until it was good. I also made a point of noting I was not the engineer or designer and there very well good be issues I did not have the knowledge to know about.

If this is something that really bothers you then you need to put yourself in a place to change it.

And if you are just having a midlife crisis go buy your self a sports car and get back to work.

I believe an onlooker would see good observations in what you comment. I recognise a lot which says what needs to be said.

Bob La Londe snipped-for-privacy@none.com writes: ... I believe an onlooker would see good observations in what you comment. I recognise a lot which says what needs to be said.

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I read Bob's advice on business management too. I just don't know (or care) enough to be good at it myself.

If I understand myself and my situation correctly...

When everything goes wrong, you "just" work. Whatever gives you structure. You let the path take you where it does, and like as not you will heal. Of those I know, some have not made it along the path... I have done that for a lot of years now - working and going day-by-day.

Then...

I come to this vantage-point. I suspect this is the same for many. Out of the pressing-on comes a bigger understanding and everything falls into place.

That being so - it's my juncture.

So - "midlife crisis" - ??? Quite the opposite?

It sounds like one of my other platitudes there.

When things look tough, you are overwhelmed, you don't know what to do first. When All seems hopeless. All you can do it step in and keep swinging. Back into a corner by thugs who intend your demise when you have no path to retreat. When jobs are piling up one after another. When you have a ditch to dig or a pile of manure to move. Step in and keep swinging. You may still die without accomplishing your goal, but it will not be quite as bad for the man or child behind you.

That was exactly a thought which has been my continuous companion. Seemed better to either reach a goal or die trying. Either would make a life lived.

I won't pretend full understanding of what you mean, but yes identically the same language. I am not sure I ever spoke that thought to anyone.

If there is a midlife crisis, it's that I made a "final lunge" with a scientific / engineering idea - then came to the feeling that everyone who is in a research job is doing very nicely thank-you and they don't want my disruption and "craziness". The pandemic disruption tipped me down this path, taking away a safe-haven turn and sending me into more endeavour.

I also recognised I have encountered others before who later on in life still press for some big idea. Seeking some meaning in life?

The idea is that welds done in conditions welders would choose can have a cyclic load fatigue endurance about the same as the steels they are joining (current orthodoxy, incorporated in Standards (Codes), is that welds have a much lower fatigue endurance than the steels being joined). I found that accidentally just over 10 years ago, when I threw a weld as I would make in a "scummy" steel fabrication shop into a fatigue testing machine. I was tormented by not having the chance to see how much the result could be repeated - as my time there was over.

Other big problem though - to scale up the result, if confirmed, to something like a bridge, you'd have to be able to test full-sized representations of welded structure. Hundreds to thousands of tonnes-force. Fatigue test - not static. Not doable. "Show-stopper".

Then - with the pandemic, working in an engineering place doing steel fabrications... The customer demands a "stop" as they evaluate design changes. I use the facilities and materials to try some test ideas. I realise a static test for fillet weld strength can be scaled-up to any size with no obvious maximum limit - and that test could become a fatigue test with the suitable drive / hydraulics.

So the fatigue resistant welds idea can go "live".

I come up with a plan, with stages, finding the way ahead in steps. Starting with "first confirmation" which can be done on a servo-hydraulic fatigue testing machine any university or fatigue testing facility has. Principle confirmed - resonant fatigue testing in specialist fatigue testing facility, getting out the the 10's and

100's of millions of cycles. Confirmed again at that stage - test using custom methods on full-sized representations of welded joints in bridges, etc.

I ventured forth with a confident drive I have never had before - okay as a young man who had found his feet before everythign "blew-up". Returning to me now.

One poor sod - a Professor at a University here in the UK - returning several months later I asked with a follow up email about how the workload was, attaching an image of model representing a cart with square wheels and everyone heaving away, with speech-bubbles saying "We haven't got time for that" to a figure holding round wheels. Oddly enough, that didn't elicit a reply... :-)

I got some way, talking with a steel company considered one of the few most advanced in the World. I also found a Non-Destructive Testing equipment company who changed their answer from "No" to "Yes" as they explored in their minds what such equipment would need to do. The "yes" being that they were sure they could make an equipment which could scan the welds and alert if it did not have the fatigue-resistant weld characteristic.

But I realised - people, certainly here, go into streams largely dependent on social background, and get remunerated accordingly. So I was being this madman in the wilderness intruding in their comfortable world and scaring them.

I worked in the US - back in 2001 - not the most fortuituous time - and found people much more outward-looking and entrepreneurial. Context reality - there is space and resources in North America which we don't have. So there is space for visionaries to "spread their wings". ?? (eg. Elon Musk now; Steve Jobs before; etc.) We in Europe need to work harder to compensate for being shoulder-to-shoulder - and that doesn't seem as true as it should be.

So anyway, as far as I can recognise, that is my midlife crisis - but equally it could be said to have been a good way to throw myself into something which enabled me to come out the other side of the pandemic crisis riding high and upright, closer to being as wise as I should be.

So - there you have it. Bob - my "mid-life crisis" as much as I recognise it.

I do hope you realize I was as much being a smart ass as asking you to delve into self analysis.

I worked in the US - back in 2001 - not the most fortuituous time - and found people much more outward-looking and entrepreneurial. Context reality - there is space and resources in North America which we don't have. So there is space for visionaries to "spread their wings". ?? (eg. Elon Musk now; Steve Jobs before; etc.) We in Europe need to work harder to compensate for being shoulder-to-shoulder - and that doesn't seem as true as it should be.

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Alastair Cooke discussed the difference in an article I may have posted here before.

Those US visionaries tend to set up shop near more crowded urban areas like Boston MA where they can find a critical mass of talent. As you move out into the more pleasant rural areas (where I'm from) finding enough first-rate engineering staff becomes difficult, and the ones you do find may not fit well into corporate structures. I've known several inventors whose projects I chose not to build.

I'm interested in discovering the conditions that have favored or discouraged innovation. Your Industrial Revolution arose chiefly from Maudslay and his apprentices and faded out as they retired.

Long ago I saw advice that the only reward to expect for success in technical fields is that they let you stay in the game.

LOL :-)

I ask myself about our "industrial revolution". You wouldn't much know it had happened here now, meeting the majority demographic.

Record show that that the great innovators like Brunel had to put significant energy to fending off "the numpties". So the "numpty" characteristic was always there. It's just that that's all you see now.

It's all a question I still think about.

I ask myself about our "industrial revolution". You wouldn't much know it had happened here now, meeting the majority demographic.

Record show that that the great innovators like Brunel had to put significant energy to fending off "the numpties". So the "numpty" characteristic was always there. It's just that that's all you see now.

It's all a question I still think about.

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What is a numpty?

"Meanwhile, the most popular word among English males who voted was "antidisestablishmentarianism". Really. What a total and utter bunch of numpties."

Well, you did choose "Boaty McBoatface".

If asked I would say "Versuchsunterwasserflugzeugtraeger", a collective effort I contributed (nothing useful) to.

Forget about taking the bull by the horns, use a shovel!

There comes a time in a man's life when he som,etimes has to decide "If I'm going to work for an idiot for the rest of my life, it's going to be one I respect" That time for me came in August 1993