Monday, January 13, 2014

Metric Misery

I deal with a lot of Standard bolt measurements every day and I've come to the conclusion that SAE is not fundamentally worse or better than Metric. The main problem came along when some engineer decided to reduce fractions like 1/4...which is really 2/8...or 4/16...or 8/32. BUT FOR SOME STRANGE REASON THE SAME ENGINEER Used a different denominator for different sizes such as 3/8. So you go from 1/4 to 3/8. Why didn't they leave both as a denominator of 8? Then it would be 2/8 and then 3/8. Then 4/8...which is 1/2. So, my conclusion, when I open my own tool manufacture company in Mexico...is to go sequentially with only 32 as the denominator.
So it will be 8/32...10/32....12/32...14/32..16/32...18/32....20/32.....22/32...24/32...26/32...28/32...30/32...1 inch.
See? sequential increase by 2.

None of this insane 5/16, 3/8, 3/4 nonsense.


Metric works because it is sequential...and standard fractions have different denominators...so a 3/8 actually bigger than a 5/16...3 being bigger than 5 because the division of 8 is smaller than the division of 16. Does that make sense?

I only bring this up because the brake pedal of my van hit the floor today at high speed and put some more grey hairs on my aging face...and I'm trying to figure out the size of my brake line...1/4 or 3/8..because the Mexican beach salt finally caught up with the 45 year old stainless.

Accident Analysis II

"The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was the flightcrew’s failure to use the taxi checklist to ensure that the flaps and slats were extended for takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the absence of electrical power to the airplane takeoff warning system which thus did not warn the flightcrew that the airplane was not configured properly for takeoff. The reason for the absence of electrical power could not be determined."

Keeping with my plane crash theme, some people watch true crime stories and murder mystery reenactments but I like to read Aircraft Accident Reports.


I think the reason I like to read these documents is because they are written for the layman with footnotes to define terms I might not understand like "Heading Bug" but the incidents/accidents are outside of my career path. However; the principles that are under the microscope are completely human and apply to any field, including oil field electrician. Reading one of these reports would benefit everyone.

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.