With Rick in mind

[Brian]

Emiel, Henk, Emiel's father, Ann and I went to the Carrington Rally on Sunday. We had never been before and it was quite impressive. Lots of tractors and of course these beauties. Click on the pictures to get the video.

[oehrick]

Thanks Brian, much enjoyed as you no doubt suspected

I think the new build Fosters ought to be forced to wear fluorescent paint so folks don't confuse them with originals.

Interested to see the early Marshall tractor, is that one of Crawfords ? Likewise the Fordson & Nuffield with all those bits chopped out of them - thats a real welding and filing challenge for someone to get them both running again

Intrigued what the circuit board in your other album is for

Thanks for posting the pics / videos

Rick

[Brian]

Rick, the circuit board is one I designed for a parsnip topper height control. It was originally designed way back in the mists of time for the Standen Talisman Beet Harvester and then developed for the Kuiken, a Dutch self propelled beet harvester. It was used for many years on the Garford Beet harvesters before this latest incarnation.

This board has a slight problem as you can see and the pictures were taken for the company who uses them. Originally I designed a control system that automatically switched the unit off when it was raised but the company decided that their own electrician should build the box. He left out the automatic switch off and so, when raised out of work, the unit gets signals from the sensors that want to lower it back down. This causes the solenoid valves to operate on both circuits which is OK for a short while but causes them to overload the circuit if left on for about 5 hours!

I cured the problem by increasing track size, component values and installing a thermal cut out on the board. These units are working world wide and even in Russia.

[oehrick]

Obviously a lot more more going on under that hat than gets painted blue Brian

I know the problem well, one of our customers had a 'bright' stores controller who when the program yourself eeprom came on the market decided to not only replace a dedicated microprocessor board, but improve it, to save the company money and gain himself bonus (if I mention Witchingham you can guess the rest) Worldwide they had about 150 of these machines and the first I knew of a problem was when I was in New Zealand, made a courtesy call after a shorter than anticipated installation elsewhere and got both barrels from the plant manager as to the reliability of our 'new' processors. Having had a look I smelt a rat and played along, 'let me take one back with me and I'll see what I can do'

Had a couple of days on my return to run the processor on my test rig and soon found out what this guy had done, they controlled the product thickness against a bandsaw blade and we had always run an initial power on calibration and to eliminate mechanical backlash always overshot an increasing thickness change by a second then reversed so final position was always in one direction - both functions had been ignored.............

A couple of days after I was summoned to a high level meeting to discuss glass sharp shards of plastic conveyor flights getting into the product - used to happen every 5 years or so, so in for the beating up and as previously advised them to take it up with their supplier - their stores chap called in and shamefacedly had to admit that yes he had been buying from elsewhere on grounds of cost, hmnn big product recall cost against buying the right material instead of cheap and nasty acetal not such a saving.

Then asked how their giveway (the excess over nett weight needed to cover the underweights) and reject rates were, adverse murmering and shared looks told the tale so chucked the rogue processor onto the table - our friend turns white and asks where I got it - at which point the manufacturing director decides its time for he and I to have a little chat as 'it seems you have a better handle on some of our process problems than we do' It was the one and only time I had lunch in the boardroom and we came to a deal over spares & consumables where they had a special discount rate as long as we had all the spares. Why is it they won't believe you until you have to dig them out of the s#%t ??