Test of Time

Posted by stephens on Sep 3, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Events, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

While thumbing through the GM Die Standards last night, two things were lost upon me until that moment. One is that I am the last surviving industry active person to have written a die standards book for an OEM. From scratch. I guess that is kind of like being the oldest person alive in a morbid way. The second is the organization of the book is still relevant...

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Free George Keremedjiev

Posted by stephens on Sep 2, 2010 in Events, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

“Hey Tim. Do you know George Kere …”, my boss begins to ask me. “Keremedjiev? Hell yes I know him! He is a rock star! Why do you ask?”, I respond. “He is here in the conference room.” I go find George and got a warm greeting. Not because he is doing business with my employer. He gave me a warm greeting because we have a...

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WaterBored

Posted by stephens on Sep 1, 2010 in Demos, Events, Rants, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

Given a choice between sitting through an unorganized technical presentation with awful PowerPoint slides and torture by waterboarding, I will take waterboarding. Why? Because I know waterboarding lasts 40 seconds not 40 minutes. Plus, the psychological damage with waterboarding is only temporary. Shitty slide presentations are burned into my brain forever. I...

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Days of Our Lives

Posted by stephens on Aug 31, 2010 in Automated Transactions, Engineering Decisions, Equations | 0 comments

My day is like a soap opera: one big meaningless drama that never seems to end. Let’s take one trivial example. I am tasked with creating an automated calculation in Excel that computes the number of days waiting for a job to get reviewed. The existing table had the start and end dates that are manually typed by the user. Simple enough. Like I always say,...

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Move Along

Posted by stephens on Aug 30, 2010 in Events, Rants | 3 comments

I think Christopher McCandless had the right idea. If I could turn back the hands of time, I would have chosen that path instead of the one that I did. I won’t be blogging on dies and stamping for a while – if ever again. I have said all I have to say for the time being. And all I say is met with skepticism or criticism – so I will save us all...

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Little Things Matter

Posted by stephens on Aug 24, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Tips & Techniques | 0 comments

“Are you serious?” was my response to Bob Martin at Bud Martin’s Hardware store last night at 8:33 PM. The store closed just minutes before I arrived, and I needed a bolt. After a day in the cutthroat trenches of the die world, I found that the little things matter. Funny how things turn out. See, we just moved to a new community in a small...

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Friends

Posted by stephens on Aug 19, 2010 in Rants, Tips & Techniques | 5 comments

I am getting old. The world is changing around me and I can’t stop it. Back in my day, being friends with someone meant you could go to lunch together. Share a good meal. Share a few laughs. Escape from the hell of your day for an hour. These days, I dine alone. Why? Because the people who I thought were my friends go greeting card shopping for lunch. What...

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Moved

Posted by stephens on Aug 17, 2010 in About, Rants | 0 comments

With any luck, I can get on a regular blog schedule again. I have been in the professional moving business lately. In the past 7 months, I have moved 7 times. I am not talking about moving from the couch to the kitchen table. I am talking about household moves. Seven. Five of these came in the past 10 weeks. Most recently, last week. And that was the last one. I...

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Have You Tried …

Posted by stephens on Aug 6, 2010 in Events, Rants, Tips & Techniques | 7 comments

“Have you tried a different process?” “Yes”, I say. “How about different form steels?” “Yes.” “How about different materials?” “Yes.” “Well, try different materials until you find one that works,” the engineer says to me. Now, nevermind that the forming condition is impossible to...

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Motor City Squares

Posted by stephens on Aug 2, 2010 in Engineering Decisions, Rants, Tips & Techniques | 4 comments

My view of dies is their architecture should be driven by both the production volume and material strength of the stampings. Unfortunately, this is fuzzy in practice. Many die standards and quoting systems do not take both into account. The illustration below captures how I believe dies should be built based on the combination of production life and material...

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