LETTERS

One answer to meatball engineering [October 2004 InTech Viewpoint article, "Stem the tide of 'meatball engineering'"] you did not address, going out on your own. I was the manager of the instrumentation group for a major consulting engineering firm. Engineering is fun, managing an engineering group is work. I did next to no engineering, but managed people. My time was spent assigning people to projects, doing manpower projections, preparing personnel reviews and worrying about budgets. In the last year as a manager I could count on the fingers of one hand the times I did a calculation, prepared a sketch, wrote a spec, or reviewed a design.

It got to the point where I could no longer take the [hassle], so I quit. I went out on my own. I was the ultimate small firm-I had no employees. I did have a woman who did my CAD [computer-aided design] work as an outside contractor. This was to keep Uncle out of my pocket. I worked out of the basement, so the commute was two flights of stairs. And best of all I had fun again. If a project looked interesting, I took it; if not, I passed it by. That was over 19 years ago; I never looked back.

There was also an additional advantage, which you cannot put a price on. My daughter was one year old when I quit. I was able to spend time with my daughter during the day. When my daughter was about four or so, she started to come down to the basement and would put her arms around my neck and ask, Daddy can we go to the park? Any question about what I did?

I also had no problem taking vacation when I wanted. I just told my clients when I would return. The response from clients: where are you going and enjoy.

The question most people ask, can you make it financially? Sure you can, and Uncle even helps you. Expenses such as travel, supplies, part of the mortgage are now a tax deduction. BTW, two years ago I retired at 57.

Try doing any of this at meatball engineering.

* Howard Last, P.E., Great Neck, N.Y.

Don't switch!

I was appalled to see the wiring diagram on page 26 for the CCST question in the September 2004 issue of InTech. It is an extremely bad practice to switch the neutral on control or other systems. It could cause injury, death, explosive conditions, and worse. Plus, it is contrary to the National Electrical Code (NEC).

In case you and/or whoever drew this circuit do not know it, the neutrals of virtually all of 120 V AC circuits in the U.S. are grounded! Also the neutrals of 230/ 380AC 50 Hertz systems are grounded. If the neutral is switched in a control circuit, the circuit would be turned on when a wire fails to ground. The wire failure turning the control circuit ON could turn on a motor, a steam valve, a gas valve, a product valve, etc. I hope you get the idea.

The editorial staff should have caught something like this. Can you explain the reason for this gross error? A retraction and correction are in order.

In case you do not believe me, look in the 2002 issue of the NEC in 404.2(B).

Peter C. Eayre, PE, retired and past president of Piedmont Chapter ISA, Rock Hill, S.C.

Forests, not coal

In Karl Spindler's letter [October 2004, "Coal worth another look"], he states that "The Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming got that name because of the mountains of coal just under the surface." Maybe Mr. Spindler hasn't been to the Black Hills or just is misinformed. While there are substantial deposits of coal a hundred miles to the west in Wyoming, there are no large coal deposits in the Black Hills.

As a South Dakota native I always heard the following explanation: The mountains are covered with heavy forests of pine and spruce whose dark hue, when seen from a distance, gives the Hills their Lakota name, Paha Sapa, "hills that are black."

Reference: http://www.northern.edu/ natsource/HABITATS/Blackh1.htm.

Jim Gebhardt, Process Engineering Resources, Inc., Salt Lake City, Utah

PLC evolving

I read with disdain Jeff Brown's article "Who stole my PLC?" [July InTech, Industry View department]. His comparison between the future of the PLC [programmable logic controller] and a static pile of cheese can only come from a sales type with a narrow view of selling proprietary products. His 'the sky is falling' rhetoric is the same thing that I started hearing in 1990 and during the Y2K scare.

If Brown would remove his head from the pile of cheese, he would see that the PLC has evolved and will continue to evolve. Faster processors, more memory, expanded programming languages, and multiple communication options are among the evolutions.

The PLC has been the dominant control architecture in industrial environments because of safety and reliability. Industrial users want a dedicated controller that is not used for playing solitaire on the evening shift or lockup when MS Excel has a 'divide by zero' error. When one takes a PC and makes an industrial PC, it looks a lot like a PLC. The PC is attached to I/O in the field; it runs control logic and passes on data to the next level in the system. The huge cost savings claimed by Brown does not exist.