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By Design News Staff -- Design News, April 26, 2004
YELLOW NOT SO MELLOW
I read your article about auto paint color popularity, in which silver is proclaimed the hands-down winner (DN 02.03.04, "Silver Still Rules the Road—But For How Long?" The final sentence in the chart caption i interesting; "Yellow has even emerged as a top-10 color in the sport-compact segment." I personally have always loved yellow cars, which stems from this little anecdote: Growing up in East Texas, we had a service station in our area whose owners were drag racers, so naturally, we high-schoolers tended to hang out down there a lot. They fielded two cars, both sporting a prominent logo of a paint & body shop. Both cars were an intense yellow color. When asked what made them decide to paint the cars that yellow, they replied that there were two reasons: 1.) The paint jobs were free, if they agreed to display the paint shop's logo, and 2.) The paint shop guys told them that yellow is the fastest color!
Dave Hughes Houston, TX
DATA SHEET DILEMMA
I would like to compliment you on your excellent article on engineering thermoplastics (DN 02.03.04, "The Misunderstood Material." The article summed up the pitfalls of plastic data sheets very well. Most engineers in industry, and especially those coming out of college, have a sense for metal properties and how to use their data sheets—but that is not the case with plastics. For the majority of common applications, steel and aluminum behavior are not affected by time, temperature and rate of loading the way thermoplastics are. I believe your article should be a must read for purchasing agents and molders as well as the engineers who select resins or must find alternate resins to those currently in use. I have already forwarded your article to our other design engineers, purchasing department and molding engineer. Now if we could only get the resin suppliers to provide useful information . . . .
Willard J. Sickles, P.E. Wilkes-Barre, PA
JUST GIMME A NUMBER
Man, I have to say that you where preaching to the choir with your data sheet article. It is true that data sheets are not necessarily bad tools, but all too frequently they are misused. Too often, I have seen testing budgets cut because the materials data is "readily available. The end user seems to forget that with these materials, the reported values where obtained from some "golden" batch of material developed in the lab. On top of that, as you indicated, the material is evaluated over limited conditions. Another problem with polymers, being nonlinear, is that they have a varying TCE over a temperature range. Typically I have seen these results reported over a broad temperature range. I've also had requests for numbers for a sample size of ONE. The topped: A customer once requested mean and standard deviation values for a sample size of one! .I enjoyed the article, and will be keeping it within my reach until I retire.
Wade Understiller Chesterfield, MO
MISSION TO MARS
Your editorial on Mars (DN 02.03.04), was dead center. Engineering along with Manufacturing in this country needs a big shot in the arm. The Mars Mission could be the economic fuel for many years to come. Hopefully that part of the reasoning will be made clear sooner than later. Thanks from an aging Baby Boom Engineer,
Stephen Johnson Naperville, IL
THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR
The decline in engineering enrollment isn't a matter of lack of inspiration (DN Myview 02.03.03), it's a matter of the almighty dollar. Engineering as a profession is not as respected as it was during the past 30 years. Engineering is considered a commodity that is no different then invoice processing or electricity. As a former manufacturing engineer, I saw how companies abuse young engineers for maximum throughput for what I would consider minimum wages—hoping to burn them out in a year or two. This is standard practice in most western corporations. Why? Because the business managers running the companies know they can always get more engineers through the H1 visa program or other fresh graduates. All the time I was going through my engineering program, I would see the business majors going to school on grants from businesses. They would be routinely landing entry-level management positions in the 30 to 40K range while engineering students who were going through hellish classes were starting out at 30K and struggling to pay off their student loans. Who do you think is paying for those students from China, India, Japan, and Russia to get their engineering degrees? Certainly not the students, most likely they are government sponsored or funded educations. Engineers are not given any credit as creative thinkers, problem solvers, or artists in our society. Nor are they considered heroes or role models. Base pay for professional athletes is about 250K per year. Base salary for a Chemical engineer with a BS is 34K. The average UAW auto worker makes 52K per year. So why, again, does pay to become and engineer?
Anthony J. Kiszka Jackson, MI
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