Keen Talk . . . or Ketone Talkin'?

Sound and Vibration, Feb 2005 by Lang, George Fox

EPA be damned, acetone is marvelous stuff! Old sailors recognize it as the "right stuff" for removing the surface oil from teak prior to varnishing or gluing it. Younger ones use it to clean up that god-awful mess associated with fiberglass repair. No self-respecting mechanic, carpenter or painter would be without an ancient rusted can of the stuff for cleaning tools and machinery, and I've known very few women who didn't keep a small stash of scented acetone to remove nail polish.

However, inhaling that sweet aroma while chilling your fingers with a rag dipped in this elixir can have some bad effects on the human carcass. Long before this becomes a critical issue, you can enjoy the rush of a contact high. For me, this often manifests as the need to write a slice-of-life observation accompanied by a peculiar clarity of vision regarding its content. Of course, such mental keenness evaporates as rapidly as the liquid itself.

A cold post-Thanksgiving afternoon found me at my workbench doing some minor repairs to three small electrodynamic shakers. These units are old and trusted work compatriots. I purchased them in 1980 and since then they have helped me test literally hundreds of small structures (and associated testing electronics) without requiring even minor maintenance. But time had finally taken its toll on the rubber dust seals surrounding the drive tables. At the quarter-century point, these had simply decided to dry and crumble.

The repair was a simple one to effect. Remove four screws; lift the aluminum top cover from the body and the shaker lies open. No need to even free the dust cover from its groove on the aluminum drive table, the ravages of time had already done this! The worst part of the retrofit was cleaning the residue of adhesive (and decomposed rubber) from the top plate and drive table. Hence, the acetone . . . and thence the clarity of thought.

Replacing the seals was simply a matter of Glyptol®-bonding the new ones to the top plates and reassembling my old friends. LDS had sent me four new seals in response to my telephone conversation with their President, asking for three. These arrived rapidly with an invoice simply marked "with our compliments." I was taken with the kind and old-fashioned courteous prose of that document, the rapidity with which the needed parts arrived and the fact that an un-requested spare was provided in case I proved a 'duffer.'

But then, in the clarity of my acetone high, the reason for all of these good things became blatantly apparent; these actions reflected the nature of the guy at the top. When I spoke with Dominic Acquarulo, I asked him if this was a repair I could make. He not only affirmed it was, he immediately gave me detailed instructions on how to do it. The man in charge knew how many screws to remove and what to do next with one of the least expensive products in an extensive product line. In short, he knew the details of his offerings from hands-on experience.

Why, you might ask, is this such a big deal? The answer is simple - most of today's businesses are run by people who haven't a clue about the technical details of the expensive products they proffer or the needs of the people who buy them. The support services provided by such vendors reflect this top-tier ignorance. Companies that are run by people who truly understand their products, the application of those products and the day-to-day needs of their customers are becoming fewer and they deserve our support. If we don't give it to them, we will have only ourselves to blame for the mediocrity of remaining vendors available to us.

It has always been difficult to build and maintain a successful business. This is particularly true if the target audience for your products and services is a narrow niche. There are few markets narrower or more technically challenging than the pursuit of dynamic excellence in products and processes. The sound and vibration practitioner has long been blessed by a stream of inventive people who have focused their business energy upon a small market. It becomes increasingly difficult for them to do so.

Modern industry has become the home of the professional middle-man, a personal anathema who is sucking the lifeblood from the American economy by replacing old fashioned technical creativity, home-brewed productivity and the guts to stay-the-course with outsourcing, right-sizing and many other boardroom newspeak excuses for mortgaging the future to make this quarter's numbers. These guys (and gals) are easy to recognize. They dress well, speak eloquently (save their tendency to squawk "shifting paradigms" and hawk the newest acronyms to a nauseating degree), drive fine cars, know all of the trendy clubs and restaurants including wine lists and are ready to make a sales pitch on a second's notice. But, they lack depth and substance; they don't know which screws a customer can remove from a product of theirs without inducing expensive havoc. They don't understand the core stuff of their chartered enterprise. Their only expertise lies in morphing it into something else in pursuit of a quick dollar return.