Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
(OP)
Greetings, gents!
Please allow me to introduce myself, before you laugh me out of town. I made an attempt to contact the folks that run this site & forum, about two months ago, and have not received a response. There is also no "Member Introduction" section found in most forums; and it seems the only "Off-Topic" section is invite-only.
How.
I discovered your forum during one of my sessions of self-education. I will try to be helpful when applicable, but mostly promise to not be too big of a bother. Your community, thus far, seems to share the same friendly & helpful spirit that is found at Straight Razor Place (only "affiliated" as a member there, no perks for mentioning it).
Who.
I am 31, and work at a bread factory. We produce over 10,000 loaves of bread per hour, when running "at full-tilt". So we employ a fair bit of automation. My position leaves plenty of unallocated mental capacity, in turn used for self-education & research in topics of interest, as well as pinpointing exact issues with the equipment in my assigned area. (Seems I have better problem solving skills than 2/3'rds of our maintenance crew...).
Why.
Thinking outside the box, and exercises in problem solving have become a hobby of it's own for myself. I have begun to expand my handyman skills, including designing & building tools and devices to enable me to make the tools and materials that I can actually use.
Google & Wikipedia can only get me so far, exhaustively. That is when I would beseech you kind folks at Eng-Tips. When my web-fu fails, and I can't noodle my way through a puzzling issue, I have yet to find a place with an adequate knowledge base to assist in my hair-brained theories. I can provide links to some of my works, if desired.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to some vigorous discussion in the future!
Sincerely,
Chris R.
Problem solving, thinking outside the box, and creating as a hobby.
Please allow me to introduce myself, before you laugh me out of town. I made an attempt to contact the folks that run this site & forum, about two months ago, and have not received a response. There is also no "Member Introduction" section found in most forums; and it seems the only "Off-Topic" section is invite-only.
How.
I discovered your forum during one of my sessions of self-education. I will try to be helpful when applicable, but mostly promise to not be too big of a bother. Your community, thus far, seems to share the same friendly & helpful spirit that is found at Straight Razor Place (only "affiliated" as a member there, no perks for mentioning it).
Who.
I am 31, and work at a bread factory. We produce over 10,000 loaves of bread per hour, when running "at full-tilt". So we employ a fair bit of automation. My position leaves plenty of unallocated mental capacity, in turn used for self-education & research in topics of interest, as well as pinpointing exact issues with the equipment in my assigned area. (Seems I have better problem solving skills than 2/3'rds of our maintenance crew...).
Why.
Thinking outside the box, and exercises in problem solving have become a hobby of it's own for myself. I have begun to expand my handyman skills, including designing & building tools and devices to enable me to make the tools and materials that I can actually use.
Google & Wikipedia can only get me so far, exhaustively. That is when I would beseech you kind folks at Eng-Tips. When my web-fu fails, and I can't noodle my way through a puzzling issue, I have yet to find a place with an adequate knowledge base to assist in my hair-brained theories. I can provide links to some of my works, if desired.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to some vigorous discussion in the future!
Sincerely,
Chris R.
Problem solving, thinking outside the box, and creating as a hobby.





RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
Problem solving, thinking outside the box, and creating as a hobby.
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
I'll have to pay better attention next time I'm next to the machines outside my area. I think the new weighing on the fly dough piece conveyor section, and the new mixers are both from a company in Toledo, Ohio.
Problem solving, thinking outside the box, and creating as a hobby.
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
As it would happen, we do have quite a bit of Baker Perkins equipment!
Proof Box: The controls are B.P., the box itself may be as well.
Oven: At least most of this is B.P., including the Loader/Discharge piece. The temperature & timing controls were updated some years ago to an automated system by "Banner Day".
Pan Stacker/Un-stacker: B.P. machines, including much of the adjoining sections of conveyors.
Other manufacturers of the equipment spotted around the plant include: AMF (most of the five Slicer/Baggers, at least some of the Divider), and Stewart (so far, only noticed on conveyor systems & switches/diverters).
Problem solving, thinking outside the box, and creating as a hobby.
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
My late father began his working life as a baker in the Netherlands, during the WW1/WW2 inter-regnum, in the era when every little village had a ma-and-pa craft bakery or six, him making bread, her being a pastry and cake specialist; virtually all of them would start out hand-mixing their dough, purchasing machinery only as fiscal success permitted [ avoiding debt as staunch Calvinists often do, to this day ]. Indeed it was the fact of there being six bakeries in the one little village where they lived and thus pitifully few customers, with the same sad situation prevailing throughout the country, along with Canada's welcoming attitude to post-war European immigrants, that led to my parent's decision to emigrate early in the 1950s.
His initial employment in Canada was with a fellow Dutchman who had moved to Canada some years earlier and who had been able to establish a bakery in a small town; unfortunately the business climate, geography, etc. were not highly conducive to start-up bakeries, so my father did not stay in the business. He always kept a hand in, though, and in his retirement would bake bread at home, hand-kneading the dough and, once it had firmed up enough, slamming it down on the kitchen counter between kneads in order to, I think, aerate it.
Anyway, enough of that.
Over the course of time I've gradually subscribed to numerous fora here, mostly lurking, posting responses only when I feel I might have some small contribution to make, only starting to ask questions once I felt comfortable enough to do so. May I say I have found the participants here to be a quite welcoming bunch, provided you're not a student trying to mooch the answers to your homework from others instead of doing your own research.
CR
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
I have thought of one modification that might have helped mitigate some bent/warped sandwich pans. No fault of the Un-stacker. Problem: pans with tight tolerances were spec'd too thin. Solution: replace with more sturdy pans. What was actually done: ran the thin, beat-up pans regardless! The mod I thought up was merely an attempt to pour my frustration of dealing with constant jam-ups into something productive.
This is my "bar napkin" grade first draft drawing. Basically similar in shape to a wagon wheel, minus the rim, add rubber (or similar "squishy", heat resistant material) bumpers to the ends of the spokes. These would be driven by the same mechanism that lifts the elevator forks, so as to keep timing. But... it is basically flawed from the ground up (as an add-on). Because of how the elevator forks move within the machine, these bumper wheels would be in the way when the forks complete a cycle. It would require a redesign of the Un-stacker elevator, which was beyond the "fuel" my frustration was providing lol.
@crshears: Thanks for sharing a bit of family history! Sounds like your father really enjoyed baking bread. As for what I call "punching down" the dough; it does sometimes help develop the texture for the finished product. Even if you did not punch it down, or knead it much more before baking, allowing too much rise time without a minimum amount of handling could lead to large bubbles from the yeast, which makes holes in slices of (homemade) bread.
Here at work, we mostly do it out of necessity. I think all of our initial (sponge) doughs are at least 1,000 lbs, or more. They go in gigantic metal troughs for several hours before another mixer adds the final ingredients. Anyway, the sponge doughs easily quadruple in size, usually before it's time to go in the other mixer. Using a food-contact only SS implement, we punch it down to keep it from spilling over the sides of the troughs. The spillage is both messy and wasteful.
I am certainly not a student looking for someone to do my coursework for me. My smartphone, with me most of my waking hours, is also my primary computational device. I do not have any games on it. My idle time, when my wife drags me to her friend's house or shopping, is usually spent growing my knowledge through my phone. Or when I can't think of anything interesting to look up, I browse auction listings near me by date lol.
Problem solving, thinking outside the box, and creating as a hobby.
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
Interesting post and welcome! Your story reminds me of a close friend of my father. He started out working in a cosmetic company's toolroom repairing production equipment and making molds for new products, applying large doses of common sense and self-education to improving equipment whenever possible. He then went to school nights for an engineering degree, moved into maintenance and plant management, and after ~20 years started his own business designing and manufacturing improved cosmetics production equipment and did very well for himself. Who knows? Your "engineering hobby" might lead to much more! In the meantime, dont hesitate to ask questions, its how we all learn.
RE: Engineering as a Hobby? My Introduction.
When it came to bread, he didn't suffer inadequacies gladly...
CR
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." [Proverbs 27:17, NIV]