# Sun-Planet Engine



## vederstein (Jan 12, 2020)

Around 1770 or so when Watt was attempting to modify his pumping steam engine for rotary motion, the jerk (and he was an uber a-hole if you read some history...) couldn't get around an existing patent on the slider crank.  So instead of paying royalties, he invented the sun and planet gearset to translate reciprocating motion into rotary motion.

After the slider crank patent expired, the sun and planet mechanism for this purpose died as well.  I always thought it looked kind of neat.

So after my last failure, it's time to try another failure.  I'm starting a design of a small steam engine with a sun and planet gearset.

Here's my first inital concept.  It needs a lot more design, but it shows where I'm going...

Comments?

...Ved.





 https://youtu.be/gNo8Duqkf_k


----------



## Cogsy (Jan 12, 2020)

It does look like an interesting design, I'll be following along. Also interesting to hear Watt wasn't a nice guy (I'll go read up when I get the chance). I know of another big figure from engine history who is still revered today but was a truly terrible person as well (I dare not speak his name lest I be lynched by the American members).


----------



## kiwi2 (Jan 12, 2020)

Hi,
       I've seen that arrangement on a pump at a local vintage machinery show. The pump looked to be from the early 1900s so the concept survived commercially for at least that long. It was certainly fascinating to watch it work and I thought about trying to copy it into a model only I assumed you'd need a shaper to cut the internal gear. I'll follow your progress with interest.
Regards,
Alan


----------



## vederstein (Jan 13, 2020)

Kiwi:

It's actually two external spur gears.  They are held in position via a "tie bar" behind the gears.  The gear attached to the connecting rod is fixed relative to the rod.  What happens is the flywheel rotates twice for every cylinder stroke when the gears are the same size.

I have a set of MOD 0.8 cutters, so that's my limitation when it comes to making gears.

Here's a video from a Watt-Boulton engine from 1785...


----------



## awake (Jan 13, 2020)

Cogsy said:


> It does look like an interesting design, I'll be following along. Also interesting to hear Watt wasn't a nice guy (I'll go read up when I get the chance). I know of another big figure from engine history who is still revered today but was a truly terrible person as well (I dare not speak his name lest I be lynched by the American members).



Edison? Seems like I've heard something  about him, but may be getting mixed up with someone else ...


----------



## Peter Twissell (Jan 13, 2020)

The sun and planet drive has the advantage that the flywheel runs at twice the engine speed, so in theory could be lighter than for an equivalent crank engine.

On the subject of historical figures who may not have been quite the heroes we thought they were - the competitive environment of the indutrial revolution favoured those who were ruthless in their efforts to triumph over anyone who threatened their dominance. It is more surprising that any memorable individuals were anything other than psychopaths!
The Wright Brothers are an exception, although their claim to have made the first man carrying, powered, controlled, sustained flight was helped by interpretation of "powered, controlled and sustained".


----------



## josodl1953 (Jan 13, 2020)

Not to mention the endless law-suits  that Otto conducted  against anyone that built an engine with only a vague resemblance to the four-stroke engine he designed.

Jos


----------



## mirek111 (Jan 13, 2020)

I'll watch.


----------



## kiwi2 (Jan 14, 2020)

Hi,
    Sorry about my earlier post about seeing this arrangement at a vintage machinery show - I didn't fully understand the concept put forward by Ved. What I saw was a gear going around the inside of an elliptical gear.
Regards,
Alan


----------



## Cogsy (Jan 14, 2020)

awake said:


> Edison? Seems like I've heard something  about him, but may be getting mixed up with someone else ...


I hear Edison was a bit on the shady side but the guy I was talking about may have even inspired Hitler (at least he was mentioned favourably in Hitlers' book, received Germany's highest honour for a foreigner just before WW2 and Hitler kept a picture of him in his office...)


----------



## davidyat (Jan 14, 2020)

*Ved,
   I was wondering what my next engine would be? I too, have some involute gear cutters to learn how to cut gears. This is just at the right time. I was surprised at how fast the Camgine came together. I think I finished it in a month and a half. I will be looking for the plans when they are ready.
Grasshopper*


----------



## a41capt (Jan 14, 2020)

Cogsy said:


> I hear Edison was a bit on the shady side but the guy I was talking about may have even inspired Hitler (at least he was mentioned favourably in Hitlers' book, received Germany's highest honour for a foreigner just before WW2 and Hitler kept a picture of him in his office...)



Yep, Ole Henry did a lot of good, but having read his book, having read about the history of his son’s treatment, and having made several trips to his museum, I can honestly say he was a smart guy and an anti-Semitic A-hole...

Still,, he did set the industrial world on its ear and put the world on wheels with his inventions...

Would I have sat down and had a beer with him?  Probably not my kind of guy!

John W


----------



## goldstar31 (Jan 14, 2020)

Hi John!

I was thinking of Thomas Edison who linked up with Joseph Swan- and lit the World up!

We, that is the 'Geordies' on Tyneside had literally loads of  inventors and industrialists. 
I think that the best 'funny' were the Liddell family who owned coal mines, lead industries, designed stately homes, railway stations. and translated Ancient Greek in the Lexicon. They also had 'Alice in Wonderland' but I digress. They did have a castle . They were quite greedy and mined under the castle !
 They nearly made real aristocracy when 'Alice in Wonderland' but she beat the living daylights out of one of one of Queen Victoria's sons. End of Royal Marriages but Alice Pleasance Hargreaves( nee Liddell) made it in Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass.
I've got a couple of nice photos of the castle of Ravensworth in my hallway- before it sort of fell down!
My connection? Well, I met a little girl with auburn pigtails wearing a blue gingham dress as part of a concert in Newcastle.


As all good stories should end, her daughter and her daughter are coming up to see me. After all- they carry the Liddell gene-- as well as mine!

S&F


Norman


----------



## oldCB (Jan 14, 2020)

Peter Twissell said:


> The sun and planet drive has the advantage that the flywheel runs at twice the engine speed, so in theory could be lighter than for an equivalent crank engine.
> 
> On the subject of historical figures who may not have been quite the heroes we thought they were - the competitive environment of the indutrial revolution favoured those who were ruthless in their efforts to triumph over anyone who threatened their dominance. It is more surprising that any memorable individuals were anything other than psychopaths!
> The Wright Brothers are an exception, although their claim to have made the first man carrying, powered, controlled, sustained flight was helped by interpretation of "powered, controlled and sustained".




Hear! Hear!


----------



## vederstein (Jan 14, 2020)

Ok,  Assholes from the 1st and 2nd industrial revolutions:

James Watt
George Henry Corliss
Henry Ford
Thomas Edison
Cornelius Vanderbilt
John Rockefeller
(hell, just about all the robber barons)
Charles Babbage
Joseph Clement

The list of "nice guys" is relatively short:

Richard Trevithick
Glenn Curtiss
Robert Stephenson
Nicola Telsa

(Just my opinions and from the history I've read).

...Ved


----------



## goldstar31 (Jan 14, 2020)

Ah Robert Stephenson and the Royal Border Counties railway bridge- which doesn't separate England and Scotland but goes into Berwick on Tweed which, incidentally is still at war with Germany.


----------



## Peter Twissell (Jan 15, 2020)

Perhaps it's time for a separate thread if discussion of the merits of historical engineers is to continue.
I look forward to watching the development of the sun and planet engine.


----------



## vederstein (Jan 19, 2020)

Well, I spent a few hours today on the design.  I'm not really liking how it's turning out.

This issue is the eccentric cam.  Because of the Sun-Planet setup, the eccentric cam for the engine valving needs geared down by half.  This resulted in some alignment issues that I just didn't like.

Here's a picture and video of where I am currently.

...Ved.






https://youtu.be/e-DPSOz852Q


----------



## Peter Twissell (Jan 19, 2020)

Why drive the valve gear from the shaft (necessitating a 2:1 reduction)?
If the valve cam is attached to the 'crank' (which for copyright purposes is not a crank!) it will run at the required speed.


----------



## TSutrina (Jan 20, 2020)

The approach would be interesting for a four stroke engine since the valve cam could be on the output shaft and each rotation of the shaft is a powered.   What needs to be determined is the weight and size effect.


----------



## vederstein (Jan 20, 2020)

I thought about it and for the system to work, the sun and planet gears must be a 1: 1 ratio.   Anything else will bind.  If there was a ring gear, then different gear ratios are possible.  The ring gear would constrain the planet and then the connecting rod wouldn't need to be "fixed" relative to the planet.

I wanted the sun-planet gearing to be on the side of the engine, prominently displayed.  The gearing in the middle is where I'm not thrilled where it's going.  I'm not done, it just needs for design work.

...Ved.


----------



## Peter Twissell (Jan 21, 2020)

Hi Verdestein,
I probably didn't explain my suggestion clearly.
First, whatever the ratio of the sun and planet gears, the crank rotataes once for each complete cycle of the piston. My suggestion is to fix the cam directly to the crank.
Second, I think you can have any ratio you like between the sun and planet gears. A large planet gear and a small sun gear will give you more shaft and flywheel speed. There should be only one rotational constraint between the crank and the shaft, so there is no reason why the system should bind.


----------



## vederstein (Jan 21, 2020)

Peter Twissell said:


> There should be only one rotational constraint between the crank and the shaft, so there is no reason why the system should bind.



True.  But what I think you're missing Peter is that in Watt's design the big end of the connecting rod doesn't rotate relative to the planet gear.  Re-watch the video of the 1785 engine.  Notice that the planet gear doesn't rotate on its axis.  It rotates around the sun, but relative to the con-rod, it doesn't rotate.  If the two gears were different sizes this "fixed" relationship fails and a constraint would need removed.

Removing the constraint between the con-rod and the planet would then allow the system to freewheel and depending on the internal forces may or may not transfer the torque to the flywheel or it just may go to top or bottom dead center and get stuck.  The addition of a ring gear on the outside would eliminate the freewheeling and still allow for the planet to rotate on its axis relative to the con-rod, but I don't have the tooling (or any desire) to make a ring gear.

I built this a few years ago, so I have some insight on actually working with sun-planet gearing systems.



It's been some years since I got my mechanical engineering degree, but I _did_ specialize in kinematics when I was there.  I believe your half way there. I just think there's one part you're missing that would prevent the system from working.  (Or perhaps vise-versa and there's something I over analyzing.)

...Ved


----------



## Peter Twissell (Jan 21, 2020)

To take your example: If the planet gear is freed from the connecting rod, the shaft and flywheel can spin freely while the rod stays fixed and the planet gear spins on its axis. This remains true for any ratio between the sun and planet gearss. If the planet gear is constrained to anything (whether it be the rod or a ring gear) then it will drive the sun gear.
I never completed a degree, but I'm not concerned with who is qualified or who is right. If any of us arrives at the correct answer, we all benefit from the knowledge.


----------



## vederstein (Jan 25, 2020)

After some consideration, I thought that inverting the engine would make it more visually appealing.

After also making the engine single acting (no crosshead) it looks much better.  So at this point it's not a design to be junked (yet).


----------



## johnmcc69 (Jan 25, 2020)

Looks good Ved! It looks much better this way. Do you think you still need to support the outboard shaft of the flywheel though?
 How big/small is this going to be?

 John


----------



## Peter Twissell (Jan 25, 2020)

Looks good that way up.
Presumably, with the planet gears fixed to the connecting rod and the rod motion, the motion of the piston will be somewhat non sinusoidal at constant flywheel speed. This might give an advantage in changing motion ratio, smoothing the output torque.


----------



## davidyat (Jan 25, 2020)

*Ved,
   Just let me know when the plans are ready. I need a new project after I finished with the Camgine.
Grasshopper*


----------



## vederstein (Jan 26, 2020)

johnmcc69 said:


> Do you think you still need to support the outboard shaft of the flywheel though?
> How big/small is this going to be?



John,

I already thought about the flywheel.  The flywheel (about 5" diameter) is huge for this engine.  The reasoning for such a large flywheel is explained below about having enough energy to exhaust the gasses.  The crankshaft is only 1/4" diameter.  I could have gone bigger if I had a different set of gear cutters, but the only set I have is MOD 0.8 which is a 0.8mm gear pitch.  You cannot see it from the picture/video, but there is an outboard ball bearing to support the flywheel.  Also on the cam end, there are two ball bearings pressed into the same housing.  That's why the bearing housing are thicker than they really need to be.

Currently the engine has a 1-1/8" bore and a 24mm stroke, making it a bit over square.  The stroke is more or less set (again due to the gear cutters I have).  The bore is still under consideration.  I think if I make the bore  under square, the relative longer stroke will give more "time" (percent volume vs percent of stroke) per stroke to let the gasses out.

On my last single acting engine, (https://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/attachments/dsc01970-jpg.95019/) I made the inlet/exhaust porting too small.  The engine would run, but much of the energy put into the engine was wasted getting the exhaust out.  I don't want to make that mistake here.

Bore to stroke is a balancing act though.  If I make the bore much smaller, the connecting rod will interfere with the frame and/or cylinder bore.

It's all part of design.

...Ved.


----------



## vederstein (Jan 26, 2020)

davidyat said:


> Just let me know when the plans are ready. I need a new project after I finished with the Camgine.



David,

As always, I highly suggest one waits until I actually build the first one.  I have a book of Rudy Kouhoupt designed engine plans I can loan you if you're looking for a proven design.  This way you can have a project and can wait the three to six months it will take me to build this engine.  There's always changes I make on the fly and ideas that looked good on a computer screen suck in actuality.

The single piston on the Camgine! is an example.  After I actually built it, I realized no matter how careful I was, there was no way I wasn't going to have the thing bind up.  Hence I came up with the three piece piston.  Also the plate on the back of the spherical bearing was added that wasn't in the original design.

I expect some issues with this design here.

If you really want the first issue of the design,  I can send you the files outside of this forum (email or in person).  Since we only live six miles apart, we can discover the design problems together!  The choice is yours.

As usual with my designs, I'll post them here to the forum after I build the prototype for no charge.

BTW: (I think it's going to be named Contessa in tribute to my mother in law, Connie)

...Ved


----------



## vederstein (Jan 26, 2020)

I think I got the design more or less figured out.  The cylinder turned into a casting, but that's ok with me.

The spool valving on Camgine! worked well, so I'm using a modified version of it here.

Next up is drawing set and bill of materials creation.  But I'll do that another day.

...Ved.


----------



## vederstein (Mar 29, 2020)

I've been quiet on this project for a while.  I've been working on it, but I'm not doing to build thread.  (Not worth the considerable effort).

I have made progress though:

...Ved.


----------



## davidyat (Mar 29, 2020)

Ved,
   I guess I'll just wait til you say it's a go. We'll swap out castings when I'm ready to start.
Grasshopper


----------



## vederstein (Apr 5, 2020)

Prior to starting the valve gear, I was analyzing the valve action and realized a simple eccentric cam wouldn't work.  If it would it would work quite poorly.

This is because the pressure and exhaust ports would be open to the piston equal amounts on the stroke.  The only way to make the system work would be to have the pressure and exhaust ports both open at the same time during a portion of the piston stroke which would be very wasteful.

I opened up my design from Camgine! and realized that the shape of the roller cam was essential.  So I revised my simple eccentric to a vee shaped cam.  This works out much better on the valve timing.  I hope that the cam isn't too severe though.

Video is below...









						YouTube
					

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.




					www.youtube.com
				



pPFGxwVAd4Q


----------



## vederstein (Apr 18, 2020)

I still have to paint the engine, but I have a running engine.  After it's painted, I'll post about it in the Showing Off section.  But for now, in the next few posts, I submit the finished design files, drawings, etc....


----------



## vederstein (Apr 18, 2020)

PDF Drawing Set for the Sun-Planet Engine


----------



## vederstein (Apr 18, 2020)

More PDF Design Files  (I can only attach 10 files per post)...


----------



## vederstein (Apr 18, 2020)

Here's the STL Files for the cylinder casting mold.  Also attached is the 3D CAD model of the entire engine.

Enjoy...

Ved.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 17, 2020)

vederstein said:


> Around 1770 or so when Watt was attempting to modify his pumping steam engine for rotary motion, the jerk (and he was an uber a-hole if you read some history...) couldn't get around an existing patent on the slider crank.  So instead of paying royalties, he invented the sun and planet gearset to translate reciprocating motion into rotary motion.
> 
> After the slider crank patent expired, the sun and planet mechanism for this purpose died as well.  I always thought it looked kind of neat.
> 
> ...



HA ha haww!  I laft out loud about your comment on Watt.  Yes, I found out he was a thief like the scumbag edison.  He took the inventions of his workers and called them his own.  There are so many scumbags that do that, we all need to be very careful of those kinds of peeps.  I tell my son to never give his ideas away to anyone who might take them.  It's better to let good ideas die than allow scumbags to steal them.  There are THOUSANDS of good people's inventions stolen by such people.  I've workt for companies where the managers demanded that I give them some idea but when I ask what do I get out of it?  (It IS MY work after all and I'm not being paid as an engineer, and I didn't do the thimking on company time), they angrily stalked away.  Of course, they always get the bonus and credit for whatever.  So to hell with them, I get the credit and the bonus or I won't give up MY ideas.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 17, 2020)

vederstein said:


> True.  But what I think you're missing Peter is that in Watt's design the big end of the connecting rod doesn't rotate relative to the planet gear.  Re-watch the video of the 1785 engine.  Notice that the planet gear doesn't rotate on its axis.  It rotates around the sun, but relative to the con-rod, it doesn't rotate.  If the two gears were different sizes this "fixed" relationship fails and a constraint would need removed.
> 
> Removing the constraint between the con-rod and the planet would then allow the system to freewheel and depending on the internal forces may or may not transfer the torque to the flywheel or it just may go to top or bottom dead center and get stuck.  The addition of a ring gear on the outside would eliminate the freewheeling and still allow for the planet to rotate on its axis relative to the con-rod, but I don't have the tooling (or any desire) to make a ring gear.
> 
> ...



Is your bubble machine a piece of art or does it actually do something?  Either way it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!  Thanx for showing it.  I'd like to build one, do you have plans?  I love that you are running it with a steam engine!


----------



## vederstein (May 17, 2020)

Richard Hed said:


> Is your bubble machine a piece of art or does it actually do something?



It actually blew bubbles, but very badly.  I did it for the 2017 Maker Faire Season.  It was more of a piece of art than anything else.  I was feeling that the Maker Faires were getting too STEM (read kid) orientated, and I wanted to bring back a bit of whimsy and uselessness to the faires.

The design files are long since gone.  I sold the CNC router I built which I used to make the Bubble Machine.  So there was no reason to keep the design.  After its last Maker Faire, I gave the Bubble Machine away.  It's a memory (and a couple of videos) now.

Here a video of the thing when it was finished running off my PMR 5CI with live steam.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 17, 2020)

vederstein said:


> It actually blew bubbles, but very badly.  I did it for the 2017 Maker Faire Season.  It was more of a piece of art than anything else.  I was feeling that the Maker Faires were getting too STEM (read kid) orientated, and I wanted to bring back a bit of whimsy and uselessness to the faires.
> 
> The design files are long since gone.  I sold the CNC router I built which I used to make the Bubble Machine.  So there was no reason to keep the design.  After its last Maker Faire, I gave the Bubble Machine away.  It's a memory (and a couple of videos) now.
> 
> Here a video of the thing when it was finished running off my PMR 5CI with live steam.



Ho, ho, it's fab.  Yeah STEM is a good thing but in reality, our education system doesn't have a CLUE about how or what to teach.  Read John Taylor Gatto and he will tell you what the ed. system is for.


----------



## William May (May 18, 2020)

Richard Hed said:


> HA ha haww!  I laft out loud about your comment on Watt.  Yes, I found out he was a thief like the scumbag edison.  He took the inventions of his workers and called them his own.  There are so many scumbags that do that, we all need to be very careful of those kinds of peeps.  I tell my son to never give his ideas away to anyone who might take them.  It's better to let good ideas die than allow scumbags to steal them.  There are THOUSANDS of good people's inventions stolen by such people.  I've workt for companies where the managers demanded that I give them some idea but when I ask what do I get out of it?  (It IS MY work after all and I'm not being paid as an engineer, and I didn't do the thimking on company time), they angrily stalked away.  Of course, they always get the bonus and credit for whatever.  So to hell with them, I get the credit and the bonus or I won't give up MY ideas.


Yes, I worked for a company that made me sign an agreement that whatever Ideas I had while I worked for them, belonged to them. 
HA! HA! I had a LOT of good ideas, but I never revealed them when I worked for the company.  Now I am free and can do what I want.  If I HAD had an idea that was potentially great while I worked for them, it would have been my WIFE who got the patent after she "thought it up" 
I learned not to have any more loyalty to a company than they have for you, which is NONE.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 18, 2020)

William May said:


> Yes, I worked for a company that made me sign an agreement that whatever Ideas I had while I worked for them, belonged to them.
> HA! HA! I had a LOT of good ideas, but I never revealed them when I worked for the company.  Now I am free and can do what I want.  If I HAD had an idea that was potentially great while I worked for them, it would have been my WIFE who got the patent after she "thought it up"
> I learned not to have any more loyalty to a company than they have for you, which is NONE.


Yes, I workt for an military-industrial company and the agreement I had to sign read as if I had a dream or idea at 2:00 AM, I had to get up, write it down immediately and call the company with the idea.  I knew that I would get NOTHING for any ideas.  I mentioned it to a friend of mine who was an engineer at the same company, I asked him what I got out of it for giving an idea.  His answer was "Your job".  I lost a lot of respect for him over that, as he was getting about 50thou at that time and I was earning about half that as a machinist.  My belief is if I have to give engineering ideas, then I get engineering pay plus the bonus for it plus the credit for it.  Lucky so far they haven't got machines to read our minds 'cause I had LOTS of ideas, still do, some of them naughty.  LOL

Thing is, some times, a person who gives all their ideas to a company witll get a raise , bonus recognition and so forth, but only after too many years, yet at other times the company will keep you where you are because you do THAT job so well.  Any person worth their salt, of course, will learn everything they can from a company like that and then move on to the next place,  They can go to hell for keeping good people down.  Corporate psychopathy.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 18, 2020)

Cogsy said:


> It does look like an interesting design, I'll be following along. Also interesting to hear Watt wasn't a nice guy (I'll go read up when I get the chance). I know of another big figure from engine history who is still revered today but was a truly terrible person as well (I dare not speak his name lest I be lynched by the American members).


I'll say it for you:  Ford, but remember he was a goo buddy of edison who was also a corporate psychopath.


----------



## William May (May 18, 2020)

Richard Hed said:


> Yes, I workt for an military-industrial company and the agreement I had to sign read as if I had a dream or idea at 2:00 AM, I had to get up, write it down immediately and call the company with the idea.  I knew that I would get NOTHING for any ideas.  I mentioned it to a friend of mine who was an engineer at the same company, I asked him what I got out of it for giving an idea.  His answer was "Your job".  I lost a lot of respect for him over that, as he was getting about 50thou at that time and I was earning about half that as a machinist.  My belief is if I have to give engineering ideas, then I get engineering pay plus the bonus for it plus the credit for it.  Lucky so far they haven't got machines to read our minds 'cause I had LOTS of ideas, still do, some of them naughty.  LOL
> 
> Thing is, some times, a person who gives all their ideas to a company witll get a raise , bonus recognition and so forth, but only after too many years, yet at other times the company will keep you where you are because you do THAT job so well.  Any person worth their salt, of course, will learn everything they can from a company like that and then move on to the next place,  They can go to hell for keeping good people down.  Corporate psychopathy.


Couldn't agree more!


----------



## Richard Hed (May 18, 2020)

a41capt said:


> Yep, Ole Henry did a lot of good, but having read his book, having read about the history of his son’s treatment, and having made several trips to his museum, I can honestly say he was a smart guy and an anti-Semitic A-hole...
> 
> Still,, he did set the industrial world on its ear and put the world on wheels with his inventions...
> 
> ...


Oddly enough old henry did not start out that way, he developed his psychopathy after many years.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 18, 2020)

vederstein said:


> Well, I spent a few hours today on the design.  I'm not really liking how it's turning out.
> 
> This issue is the eccentric cam.  Because of the Sun-Planet setup, the eccentric cam for the engine valving needs geared down by half.  This resulted in some alignment issues that I just didn't like.
> 
> ...



This really weird mechanism--I hope I can get some castings for it.  I thimk I would enjoy seeing this work.  So old Watt did this to get around someone elses patents?  Doesn't surprise me.  Do you know how he got the parliament to pass special patent laws for him?  It was obscene--sort of like how the corporations do today in America


----------



## Richard Hed (May 18, 2020)

vederstein said:


> Ok,  Assholes from the 1st and 2nd industrial revolutions:
> 
> James Watt
> George Henry Corliss
> ...


I believe Boulton (sp?) who workt for Watt was also a good guy--Watt really gave him a B*tt* job.


----------



## William May (May 18, 2020)

Richard Hed said:


> Oddly enough old henry did not start out that way, he developed his psychopathy after many years.


That's true. If you read his book "My Life and Work" that is the REAL Henry Ford. His behavior after that, towards his son especially showed his mental illness developing.  I don't think he was a very likeable person.  I have a lot more affection for Edsel Ford.  EDSEL, I would have loved to have had dinner with.


----------



## davidyat (May 19, 2020)

*About 30 years ago, Ross Perot was worth about 3 Billion dollars. He was asked how he did it. "I just hire people smarter than me, leave them alone to create and just manage them". You don't have to be a jerk to be successful.
Watched, SpaceX, Journey to Mars. Elon Musk's employees at this space firm had no suits that I could see. T-Shirts, Jeans and Tennis Shoes of all kinds, nobody looked the same and all kinds of hair doos. And these employees actually looked enthused about their jobs.
I don't know who said this, "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way". Good advice.
Grasshopper*


----------



## L98fiero (May 19, 2020)

Richard Hed said:


> Thing is, some times, a person who gives all their ideas to a company witll get a raise , bonus recognition and so forth, but only after too many years, yet at other times the company will keep you where you are because you do THAT job so well.  Any person worth their salt, of course, will learn everything they can from a company like that and then move on to the next place,  They can go to hell for keeping good people down.  Corporate psychopathy.


You know, there's nothing wrong with keeping an employee in the job they are good at, give them a raise, the bonus and the recognition but why make a machinist into something they aren't good at? There's the Peter Principle that says each person will rise to their level of incompetence and I've seen it quite often.
I'm not saying you aren't or wouldn't have been a good engineer but you were a good machinist _and _you saw things that could have been good ideas that the company could have made good use of while doing your job. If they had made you an engineer who's to say you would have been good at that and if you weren't, the company has then lost a good machinist and how do they send you back to be a machinist? What would have been wrong with being a $50k machinist?
One company I worked at had a plan where you would get 10% of the savings or profits for a year for any idea you came up with, the plan could have been more generous but the idea is there at least. In 1972 that made a heavy duty maintenance mechanic $25,000 and it made others look for ideas. Then again, 30 years later I proposed the same idea to a Tier 1 auto parts manufacturer who blew the idea off, imagine giving 10% of the money to an employee, they wanted _all_ the money!


----------



## Richard Hed (May 19, 2020)

L98fiero said:


> You know, there's nothing wrong with keeping an employee in the job they are good at, give them a raise, the bonus and the recognition but why make a machinist into something they aren't good at? There's the Peter Principle that says each person will rise to their level of incompetence and I've seen it quite often.
> I'm not saying you aren't or wouldn't have been a good engineer but you were a good machinist _and _you saw things that could have been good ideas that the company could have made good use of while doing your job. If they had made you an engineer who's to say you would have been good at that and if you weren't, the company has then lost a good machinist and how do they send you back to be a machinist? What would have been wrong with being a $50k machinist?
> One company I worked at had a plan where you would get 10% of the savings or profits for a year for any idea you came up with, the plan could have been more generous but the idea is there at least. In 1972 that made a heavy duty maintenance mechanic $25,000 and it made others look for ideas. Then again, 30 years later I proposed the same idea to a Tier 1 auto parts manufacturer who blew the idea off, imagine giving 10% of the money to an employee, they wanted _all_ the money!


I would not have made a good engineer, as I did not have the formal training, that is not the point.  The point is, the company wanted free engineering work from every employee in the company.  Had they done the 10% thing, the employees would have been trampling each other to get their ideas in.  The company DID offer a 25$ savings certificate which matured into 50$ in 10 years or so, So one of my friends offered a way to save 10K$ per MONTH--he was awarded with the 25$ savings certificate.  He was so angry he almost quit, he told me he would never give the company another idea--ever!  Believe it or don't, that is one of the two good companies I ever workt for.

What you are saying about the peter principle happens all the time, however, what companies generally look for in an advancement (particularly the bad companies) is loyalty over competence.  I've seen this MANY times.  Some where the person advanced is so incredibly incompetent it's barely believable.  However, I have also seen where a person is VERY good at ANYTHING they do but he/she is kept where they are because they do some job very well--in at least one case, I saw a person kept down because a manager psychopath did everything he could to keep competition for any raises, advancement, etc. that HE was in line of, down.  Actually, I've seen that at least twice, the second example was an executive manager who was a sex addict--you can imagine the antics involved.

A great deal of the problem is what you say:  the companies generally do NOT give the great employees a raise, bonus, etc.


----------



## L98fiero (May 19, 2020)

Richard Hed said:


> A great deal of the problem is what you say:  the companies generally do NOT give the great employees a raise, bonus, etc.


Yes, I worked at a company loaded with engineers, an electrical tech they hired programmed their IBM360 or 370 to design the complete electrical system of rocket payloads we were doing at the time, when he asked to be paid the same as the EEs they refused, he quit on the spot and went to work for their competitors. Karma!


----------



## Richard Hed (May 19, 2020)

L98fiero said:


> Yes, I worked at a company loaded with engineers, an electrical tech they hired programmed their IBM360 or 370 to design the complete electrical system of rocket payloads we were doing at the time, when he asked to be paid the same as the EEs they refused, he quit on the spot and went to work for their competitors. Karma!


hA Ha!  Serves them right.  the engineers certainly could not do what the tech did.  He should have gotten double the pay for engineers.


----------



## William May (May 19, 2020)

I have learned "Never stay where they don't appreciate you" 
It will really reduce the misery in your life.


----------



## wthomas (May 19, 2020)

Hi All:
     I can say from experience that GM is no better then the others.   It has a lot to do
with the supervisors.  I was told it was my job as a machinist but the other machinist
was paid the 10% saving $10,000 check for scrap parts and I processed over 3,000 parts with
special tooling I developed.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 19, 2020)

wthomas said:


> Hi All:
> I can say from experience that GM is no better then the others.   It has a lot to do
> with the supervisors.  I was told it was my job as a machinist but the other machinist
> was paid the 10% saving $10,000 check for scrap parts and I processed over 3,000 parts with
> special tooling I developed.


It's always the managers.  It is claimed by efficiency experts or psychologists or somebody of that sort, that 85% of the mistakes are made by management.  they interfere with the worker bees and make the work harder and slower, they rip off the extra that clever bees make and make work in general, hell.  Do you remember what GM did in 1995?  The ceo spend 45BILLION on robotting the place and it failed.  45BILL!  of the stock holders $$.  He wanted to robotize the place in a year or two, putting 100,000 people out of a job.  Well the Japanese robot makers made a bundle and as a result, only 11 years later, they were going under.  (I thimk that their going under was 'planned')


----------



## Richard Hed (May 19, 2020)

William May said:


> I have learned "Never stay where they don't appreciate you"
> It will really reduce the misery in your life.


There are very few that actually DO appreciate you but the place I was talking about that I worked as a machinist for 6 years, my immediate boss, and HIS boss, both appreciated us workers.  It was actually a good place to work, and our place was in a small town in Central Washington where the corporate headquarters was somewher else.  It was the corporates that didn't thimk their employees were worth a  . . . well I can't thimk of a 'nicey' word that is allowed here.


----------



## wthomas (May 19, 2020)

Hi Richard:
     Sure GM's going under was planned,  they even paid the guy $2,000,000.00 when he retired.  He grabbed the salary peoples retirements because of all
the stock going broke.  Did you see how it went up and down as the company was going broke so those that new about it could get rich.


----------



## Richard Hed (May 19, 2020)

wthomas said:


> Hi Richard:
> Sure GM's going under was planned,  they even paid the guy $2,000,000.00 when he retired.  He grabbed the salary peoples retirements because of all
> the stock going broke.  Did you see how it went up and down as the company was going broke so those that new about it could get rich.


aND then george shrub bailed themout for 25Bill, which no-one knew where the $$ went.  Remember that?  Total of 800Billion GONE--no-one knows where.


----------

