General electronics is all much of a muchness

Papabravo said:

This is wrong. Economics requires that companies that cannot innovate and diversify must inevitably fade away. What is the point of keeping a collection of weak sisters afloat dragging everybody else down. Glad you're not a minister.

Click to expand...

No, not really. There are companies making manhole covers today, the same way they've been making them for the past 70-years. The same names appear in manhole covers all across the USA. There are dozens of other companies that can be named making old-school products and operating just fine with no R&D department. In these cash-cow businesses, lack of research and diversification are keeping them as the lowest cost manufacturer and the most competitively priced option.

Many Chinese companies offer lower prices and faster service by offering old-school technology with no research. The good example in this site is JLCPCB - no R&D department, just old-school PCB manufacturing. Their web interface was purchased from the same vendor as websites for a dozen other PCB producers. Nothing new, nothing extraordinary. No innovation required.

Thanks, another good laugh...in 2016 , i was called in to reverse engineer "the best 3kW EV charger in Europe".....at the start, i was told, "this thing is a golden secret, a superb charger......they doubt ill be able to reverse engineer it but would give me a go, and if i hadnt done it in a week, i'd be sacked because id never likely do it".....

............Reverse engineered within a few hours.....most of that unscrewing the shedloads of screws etc etc disassembly.
It was nothing more than a dual PFC , each on for alternate 10ms intervals.....this fed into a standard half bridge LLC.
In and around full load, the LLC was at a fixed frequency of 100khz...the upper resonant......the PFC output was varied in voltage to suit whatever level the battery was at.......can you imagine, they hadnt even bothered to properly interleave the PFCs.......so each boost inductor had to carry the max peak! (since each was on "alone" for 10ms).
Bog standard!!!...no need to copy that...."best EV charger in Europe".....yeah right!!

ZipZapOuch said:

No, not really. There are companies making manhole covers today, the same way they've been making them for the past 70-years. The same names appear in manhole covers all across the USA. There are dozens of other companies that can be named making old-school products and operating just fine with no R&D department. In these cash-cow businesses, lack of research and diversification are keeping them as the lowest cost manufacturer and the most competitively priced option.

Click to expand...

As part of our business is supplying manhole covers, I can assure you that (in the UK at least) they aren't making manholes the same today as they always have

Most now are composite, rather than metal - and are VERY clearly marked as such, and with 'NO SCRAP VALUE' on them, to try and prevent theft.

In the US, they are still iron and nobody is creative enough, mean enough or stupid enough. Recycling centers are only allowed to accept manhole covers from government agencies so they naturally have. No scrap value.

As we've seen from the titanic Titan disaster, composit materials are not known for their compressive strength so, communities in the UK better start saving up and be ready to start paying for bent rims and small children recoveries as the composite manhole covers eventually fail after 200,000 trucks drive over them.

ZipZapOuch said:

In the US, they are still iron and nobody is creative enough, mean enough or stupid enough. Recycling centers are only allowed to accept manhole covers from government agencies so they naturally have. No scrap value.

Click to expand...

Considering what goes on in the USA I doubt there's not numerous scrap yards who will accept pretty well anything, regardless of source. Legislation is in place here as well, but it doesn't stop the various 'dodgy' scrap yards from accepting what they like - and certainly from USA TV shows some American scrap yards don't seem any more honest than some UK ones

ZipZapOuch said:

As we've seen from the titanic Titan disaster, composit materials are not known for their compressive strength so, communities in the UK better start saving up and be ready to start paying for bent rims and small children recoveries as the composite manhole covers eventually fail after 200,000 trucks drive over them.

Click to expand...

The Titan failure was supposedly due to cycling a cylinder of the material between normal air pressure and absolutely massive pressure - it's the cycling which is the issue. They aren't hollow, or made of carbon fibre either, and have been in use for a good many years.

If you're that worried, don't ever fly then - as aeroplanes are mostly composites

Titan failure seems to be flex of end cap joint, hence breaking the glue mating
surface, due to no intermediate bulkhead support in the span of the sub. To
prevent distortion leading to a torque effect radially thru mating surface, ID to OD
edge at the seal surface. Unlike a Nuc, for example, that have several intermediate
bulkheads.

Seems this would have shown up on finite element analysis of the structure had
they done one.


Regards, Dana.

Nigel Goodwin said:

Considering what goes on in the USA I doubt there's not numerous scrap yards who will accept pretty well anything, regardless of source. Legislation is in place here as well, but it doesn't stop the various 'dodgy' scrap yards from accepting what they like - and certainly from USA TV shows some American scrap yards don't seem any more honest than some UK ones



The Titan failure was supposedly due to cycling a cylinder of the material between normal air pressure and absolutely massive pressure - it's the cycling which is the issue. They aren't hollow, or made of carbon fibre either, and have been in use for a good many years.

If you're that worried, don't ever fly then - as aeroplanes are mostly composites

Click to expand...

Comparing a submarine hull to an airplane fuselage and a cute "don't ever fly" quip is a common theme for the grossly uninformed when talking about the titan. A submarine hull is under COMPRESSION - many atmospheres of compressive force. An airplane hull is under tension - one atmosphere of tension (some more under turbulence).

Composite materials are DESIGNED and SUITABLE for TENSION. Failure was inevitable. Catastrophically and instantaneously is the only way for a submarine hull to fail. Oh, so different when talking about airplane fuselages and more.

Nigel Goodwin said:

Considering what goes on in the USA I doubt there's not numerous scrap yards who will accept pretty well anything, regardless of source

Click to expand...

Consider as you wish, but theft of manhole covers is pretty clearly covered by the local media and causes roads to be closed as absence of a cover makes for dangerous driving and walking. I could probably list five such media reports in my lifetime. Couple that with a complete lack of composite manhole covers as a commercial product in the US - my conclusion, manhole theft is not much of a problem here.