Scout wrote:
Thom,
you just reminded me of an old Croydon boy I worked at LBH with. He was a
carpenter but when things were slow in his area, he'd be my helper with the
HVAC controls.

Cool... he already had a hammer

.... We had lots of pneumatics. We later converted the controls to
digital but left the pneumatic actuators in place (to save some cash).

Everybody did that. Saved cash plus the first & second
generation digitally controlled linear actuators sucked. The
ones they make now are pretty good but don't trust their
power ratings or their power consumption specs.

The funny thing is that a lot of people justified the switch
in order to save on LP air system & compressor maintenance.


... When
I left LBH and went to Rohm and Haas, he went to a local school district for
a job. He reported back to me that they wanted to know if he knew anything
about troubleshooting and calibrating pneumatic controls. He said, "I can
usually play with the settings enough to get them working." That was not
the answer they wanted to hear! Needless to say, he didn't get the job.

That's where better test-taking skills would have made the
difference. If he'd tossed around a lot of words like
"setpoint" and "proportional band" he'd have been all set.

Regards
Doug King