CENTER FOR PAPERWORK |
| DIRECTOR Shaniqua Yamaguchi |
ABOUT
Comment: I do not know what bill it is.
Question (Mr. McFarlan): If you people know something about it and could enlighten us, please do so.
Answer: My last information was that bill was not coming out of committee.
Comment (Mr. McFarlan): I think we ought to know what it is and get some background on it. It is conceivable that if it dies in committee now, it may show up in the near future.
Comment: A comment on speciality systems. We are involved primarily in special systems as a supplier, not only instrumentation, but material handling equipment. Oftentimes, we will develop the proposal stages in very complicated highly engineered special systems, and we will go to, in our case, steel companies with all of this work. They will take the information, go out for bids on it, and give it to the low bidder.
This is the name of the game, and we know it. There is really not much we do about it. If Carpenter and Magnaflux could enter into working relationships for example, we are not spending a lot of money for nothing; more could be accomplished.
Comment: I think the bulk of us could do withvery simple instrumentation. Now that we are developing complex dual systems, I am all for them. But, let us put some software in them so that a high school grad today can be trained to run it. I am not saying that is always necessary, but it should be true for the majority of tests.
Comment: I agree with an earlier comment about the willingness to invest large amounts of money to get something that will do the job. Unfortunately, too many people rely on market analysis relative to what the worth is of developing a new type of equipment for a new type of application. At the start when one or two people have an idea to go some place, the market does not look very big. I am sure Foerster did not know what his total market was, other than the fact he knew there were different applications. The problem is we sometimes defeat ourselves by market analysis. Once new equipment becomes available, it is amazing how much the market grows and becomes greater than people first visualized.
Question (Mr. Weismantel): There is a great need in microprocessors; is Magnaflux pursuing this area?
Answer: Yes. In the computer area I can tell you as of Monday of last week, we committed ourselves to an engineering program to get into computerized NOT. Yes, we are in it. We have recognized the possibilities for some time, but the opportunity was not right, the timing was not right until now. Now, we think it is right. Look at the trade shows and see what is happening, the ASNT show in Detroit. It is quite obvious what is happening. Computerized systems were there. That kind of acitivity spurs us on and motivates people to act.
Question (Mr. Berger): I find the economics discussion interesting, certainly a driving factor; but I would like to get to some other aspects of the instrumentation problem. Our problem is measuring certain characteristics of the instrumentation. We had a meeting on ultrasonics here a few weeks ago, as you know, and one of the points made was that there would be no attempt by anybody to standardize how everybody's pulser should work, but there should be agreement on how to measure those pulses in terms of rise time, shape, whatever. Are there similar problems in regard to eddy current instrumentation?
Answer (Mr. Hentschel): First, one would have to clean up the terminology. Everybody uses terminology that is diverse.
Question (Mr. Berger): You are saying terminology is now in such a bad state that we cannot agree?
Answer (Mr. Hentschel): Yes. The terminology has to be agreed upon.
Comment (Dr. McMaster): May I comment on that? Twenty years ago when we brought out the first edition of the handbook, we were voted down by two-thirds of every group and they said the terminology was obscure, too theoretical, and too impractical to ever make it in the field. It is better to make the word probe coil standard. The handbook terminology should not be frozen but, should in a paragraph say, probe coil, and then give seven other different ways to describe the same thing by inference. Then, regardless of what literature a person reads ten years in the future, there is a chance he will be able to recognize the words. I detest frozen words of the type you need to have in specifications.
Comment (Mr. Brown): I hate to disagree, but there are some words like sensitivity, resolution, phase angle, that are things to be measured with numbers; and they should have generally agreed-upon definitions. We are way behind in this field. And, when we get them, it will be interesting to see what they describe.
Comment (Mr. Richardson): I would like to comment. I believe the only thing you can describe is the linearity of the response of the instrument. You can do that with signal injection.