Your editorial (DN 01.21.02) urging the engineers to cut the cost of the new electric dentist drill is deplorable. You danced around the real issues and ultimately sided with the rest of society. In a word—greed, not cost, is the real reason new technology that benefits the medical industry is not readily adopted. To claim that dentists "can't afford" a $2,500 dentist drill that would benefit both them and their patients is laughable. Perhaps if he would forgo the leather seat option on his turbocharged airplane that he flies to his weekend ranch to ride his thoroughbred horses the "poor dentist" would be lauded for his sacrifice to humanity by paying $2,000 more for a better dentist drill.
My personal motto as an engineer is "function first!" The marketplace is hard on high cost products, but brutally unforgiving on a device made so cheap up front that it fails to meet the functional requirements. You have done the engineering community a grave disservice by singing society's mantra of "make it cheaper." At one time our society placed real value on ingenuity and invention and didn't focus so much on cost. There is a real cost associated with developing new technology.
Most new technologies start out pricey to offset development costs but wider acceptance of that technology generally brings the price down. Do you really want your next dentist drill designed by a cost accountant? If you want to promote new technology I suggest that you laud the engineers for their success and urge the dentists to consider the value not the cost of the new technology. As for me, I'm putting my money where my mouth is and siding with the engineers. Good job guys, keep up the good work! Some of us still recognize the value in it.
Frank Smith, Design News reader
Field's response: You take issue with the fact that I challenged engineers to look for ways to reduce the cost of a new dental drill currently on the market. Just imagine the consequences if engineers in the computer industry agreed with your point of view! An engineer I know paid $5,000 in 1980 for his first computer, an IBM PC with a 6 MHz 8088 processor, 320 Kbytes of RAM, two 5½-inch floppy disks, a Hercules graphics card, keyboard, and monitor. Using the Consumer Price Index to calculate what a dollar in 1980 would be worth today, that same PC would now cost $10,952.67! On the other hand, for $599 today he (or anyone else, for that matter) can buy a Dell Economy Desktop PC with a 1GHz Celeron processor, 120 Mbytes of RAM, a 20 Gbyte hard drive, integrated Intel 3D AGP graphics, CD ROM, sound, speakers, Ethernet card, an operating system, and a 15-inch monitor.
I just read your dissertation on skidding (The case of the telltale trail, DN 12.17.01). I have one comment:
You picked an excessively conservative coefficient of friction of 0.75 for your example. Skidding that leaves a mark on the pavement involves a mechanism of tire melting and ablation. Drag racers employ this mechanism to achieve a coefficient of friction greater than 1.0, resulting in vehicle accelerations greater than 1 G. I expect the deceleration in your skidding example exceeded 1 G and the coefficient of friction was much higher than the 0.75 you assumed.
James C. McLane III, P.E., Houston Texas
Zirkle's response: It is true that coefficients of friction over 1.0 can be obtained in very special situations. "Slicks" used on drag racers help them achieve a higher coefficient of friction. In normal traffic situations with a highway tread on the tires on portland cement roads, the coefficient of friction can vary from 0.50 to 1.2 depending on how much travel the road has had, weather conditions, etc. On dry, traveled portland cement, at speeds over 30 mph, the coefficient of friction normally ranges from 0.6 to 0.75.
In your recent article in Design News you talk about the speed someone is going and how you can tell how fast they were going by the marks left. What effects on skid marks and calculations of speed do the new antilock brakes have?
Dan Smith, Design News reader
Zirkle's response: The purpose of antilock brakes is to keep the tires from skidding in order to maximize the braking action without losing directional control of the vehicle. Thus, if the antilock brakes are working properly, there would be no skidmarks. Speed would have to be determined from some other method. I will talk about some other methods in later articles.
I totally agree with Mr. Don Hotchkiss's letter (DN 01.907.02) about being an engineer. When people ask why I seem to always look forward to going to work I've given them a similar response, which is "Where else do you get to play all day with someone else's toys and get paid for it?" I've worked for both aerospace and automotive companies and, while I might be annoyed by a company's poor management or archaic work rules, it has always been offset by the satisfaction of "thinking outside the box" and finding solutions to a wide range of problems. On several occasions, I've gone to work for a new company that paid less [initially], but had either "better toys" or more interesting projects.
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