[AT] OT: the inch is somewhat metric

[Spencer Yost]

If my quick mental math is any good, that’s about 2 decent size houses running air conditioning for one month for every 24 hours worth of PTO tests on 100HP tractors.  Not sure how long they runs tests any more?  Has to still be a while to get valid fuel consumption numbers. If I’m right I’m glad they are dumping it back on the grid.   I’m sure they are getting paid at least wholesale for it too, helping to fund themselves.

Scrap hydro, coal, oil, nuclear, wind and solar. Power the grid with tractors (-;

Spencer Yost

> On May 5, 2019, at 6:30 PM, Jim Becker <mr.jebecker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Attempting to see if this thread can go so far off topic it ends up back on topic.
> 
> The locomotive test resistor bank reminds me of the old test equipment at the Nebraska test lab.  In the old days, they did a belt horsepower test. The dynamometer inside the lab used an electrical generator to put the load on a tractor.  The power out of the generator was burned off in a resistor bank mounted on the roof of the building.
> 
> The modern lab does a PTO horsepower test and the electricity generated by those dynamometers is pushed into the electric grid.
> 
> Jim Becker
> 
> -----Original Message----- From: James Peck
> Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2019 2:47 PM
> To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group
> Subject: Re: [AT] OT: the inch is somewhat metric
> 
> The railroad I trained with was using a paper punched tape “Search Machine”. A cable was wired into each of the newer locomotives and a cable with mating multipin connector was wired into the “Search Machine”. In phase 1 the “Search Machine” checked resistances of components through the wires. In phase 2 the leads to the traction motors are tied to a resistor bank and the locomotive operated at various loads up to full with the power going into the resistor bank. I have seen them glowing cherry red in the winter. Phase 2 measures voltages at various points.
> 
> If a resistance or voltage is out of its range, electricians looked at the locomotive electrical schematics and made measurement with meters. They might adjust, repair, or replace a component. The idea was to catch a problem before it came to a head with the locomotive hundreds of miles away from the shop. Moisture in the traction motors was a common problem.
> 
> The company, I think, became part of Textron. The locomotive manufacturers may have added similar features as an OEM offering.
> 
> [Jim Becker] <snip> On the subject of paper tape.  Ask almost any programmer how big a program is, he will give you an answer in bytes, kilobytes, or these days megabytes.  Ask an NC programmer about the size of a program, he will answer in feet, as in how long the paper tape would be if you punched it out.  I found that even in the ‘90s, long after paper (or mylar) tape had disappeared from the shops, that was still the way they answered. <snip>
> 
> [Stephen Offiler ] <snip>The very earliest numerical-control (NC) machines had no computer, but rather read instructions from a punched paper tape, and these were in the research stage in the 1940's and began to appear in practice in the 1950's.  It was not until the 1970's that computers and digital displays began to appear on the shop floor.   Conversion from metric to inch in the displays was not an issue.  Even if it was, the conversion could have been accomplished regardless of the definition, because even prior to the universal adoption of 1" = 25.4mm exactly, the errors were on the order of 25.39993 to 25.40005 which is well beyond the precision of the machines in those days.
> 
> 
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