If you wanted to buy a new one from a lab equipment supplier (I assume they normally come without dessicant included), would you object to seeing it described as a dessicator on the invoice?

A.

If something like this drives you nuts ... it must be a short drive.

A milk jug without milk is still a milk jug.
A soda can without soda is still a soda can.
A vacuum cleaner without power (or a filter) is still a vacuum cleaner.
A car without gasoline is still a car.

If you bought a straight vacuum chamber and put desiccant into it, would you call it a desiccator?

How about a compromise; call it a Vacuum Dessicator

If I bought a vacuum chamber and put desiccant in it, yes, I would call it a desiccator.

Vessel + desiccant material = desiccator

Desiccator - desiccant = vessel (in this case a vessel capable of withstanding a vacuum, I call it a vacuum chamber)

~K

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~Confucius  

I think probably we shouldn't be concerned with "rules" about terminology, but who is going to be using the terminology and which benefits them most.

I would think as a general approach to make the operation easier to understand, things should have descriptive names like vacuum chamber which describes the function, rather than dessicator which provides no clue what the device is supposed to do.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

I gotta side with continuing to call it a desiccator, but I've been warped mentally by practicing engineering in the Deep South of the US for too long...  It's an actual, observable trend down here to never change anything's name, no matter the circumstances.

Example:  There's a room in the building that everyone calls "Betty Simpson's office."  I was told one day to go check out a noise that was coming from the reciprocating chiller behind Betty Simpson's office.  I thought I'd start by looking up Betty Simpson in the employee directory, find out in which department she worked, and head that direction.  No luck.  Nobody in the company named Simpson, nor Betty.  I had to go back to the shop and ask one of the mechanics.

It turns out that Betty Simpson died in 1919.  When the building first opened, it was her office.  It still is, although probably 30 different people have occupied it since.

To all these folks around here, even inanimate objects are treated as christened, not merely named.

That's partly why they call me

Goober Dave

 

Quote:

A milk jug without milk is still a milk jug.

What would it be if it were subsequently filled with bourbon?

Quote:

A vacuum cleaner without power (or a filter) is still a vacuum cleaner.

How do you clean a vacuum anyway?  I mean, a vacuum is nothing.  Isn't nothing intrinsically clean?

 

MintJulep,

I don't know what a milk jug filled with bourbon becomes, but a Mason jar filled with scotch becomes DIVINE!

Good on ya,

Goober Dave

When your nearest and dearest uses a screwdriver as a chisel, do you subsequently refer to it as a chisel?

When your nearest and dearest uses your woodchisels to prise the tiles of the bathroom wall, do you subsequently refer to them as crowbars?


 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

No, but a new name may be used for the nearest and dearest.

But sote voce.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

Quote:

When your nearest and dearest uses a screwdriver as a chisel, do you subsequently refer to it as a chisel?

It is amusing.  But imo, not very much analogous.  The screwdriver has not been dedicated for permanent use as a chisel.  But the dessicant has been dedicated for permanent use as a vacuum chamber.

I am guessing this is one of many pieces of equipment that must be used in a complex lab enviroment.  It is similar to a complex system that you may see at a power plant.  At an old plant where I worked we had some positive displacement pumps that were originally designed as ketchup pumps.  We called them "charging pumps", not "ketchup pumps".  Charging pumps is a user-friendly term that describes the function of the equipment.  Calling them ketchup pumps would be carrying around useless historical baggage that does not help in the current understanding and operation of the system.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

This is all about Aristotelian and Non-Aristotelian thought. I guess Engineers tend to be more Aristotelian than others, seeing an objects function not so much defined by what it is used for or intended to be used for but what it is designed to be used for.

Aristotelian thinking has a chair as always a chair, a screwdriver is always a screwdriver.

Non-Aristolean perceptions see a chair as whatever it is needed to be at the time. Something to stand on to get a book of a high shelf. Why go get a ladder when there is a chair available? When the ice age sets in and you need fuel, it isn't a chair any more it is fuel.

A desiccator without desiccant isn't a desiccator, its a vacuum chamber. Its function defines what it is, transient or not. Unless you are of a particularly Aristotelian frame of mind.

Non-Aristotelian thinking could be classed as "thinking outside the box."

Having a desiccator without desiccant it cannot perform its task. But faced with a task that requires a vacuum chamber, do you not use the desiccator? do you go through the process of raising a requisition to buy a vacuum chamber?

(See A E Van Vogt; Alfred Korzybski etc.)

Of course, I am not saying women are capable of Non-Aristolean thought, I think it is more complex than that. Not that they have an innate ability to not only perceive just any old object in a non-Aristotelian way, just those things that have some special non-significance to them and some special, almost mystical significance to their insignificant others.

It isn't just that those chisels you spent so much money on (which could have been used to buy shoes) or the fact that you spent hours honing them and then traipsing wood shavings into the house but without anything useful to show for all that time, but the fact that some things, cherished wood chisels, should be maintained purely as Aristolean objects.

A freshly honed chisel should never ever be considered as anything but for its intended use. In that lies the added dimension in feminine logic.

Given the choice between a screwdriver in the tool box and a chisel next to it he informed choice for significant others is to use the chisel. This is a concious affirmation of a Non-Aristotelian value system.

You can almost see the significant other glowing with anticipation of the coming row, which she will win hands down simply by changing the subject and dragging up something you forgot about ten years ago and confusing you with non-logic.

So, you know, who gives a stuff if a desicater is a vacuum chamber? if you can't hack this one at work don't get married or don't go home.

Unless you like losing.
You will be banging on about your best chisel being ruined or your favourite tools being destroyed and all of a sudden its your fault because significant other got fed up with waiting for you to do a job you didn't even know needed doing (and hey, it doesn't) and you could swear blind you have never been asked to do... except... that is a losing strategy. Actually, its all a losing strategy. It is especially a losing strategy if you start trying to lay down laws about not touching your tools or asking you if significant other wants something done.
 

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

I go back one last time to the analogy with a complex system in an industrial plant.

We have people that will operate it, people that will maintain it, and people that will modify it.

If you operate the equipment, you would like simple descriptive terminology that tells you what it does, and you'd prefer to call it a vacuum chamber.

If you maintain and modify/engineer this system, you need to know details about the construction of that chamber and you might prefer to call it a dessicator if that reminds you of the construction.

So who do we satisfy....  The operator or the engineers/maintenance folks?

At my place of work, it is a no-brainer.   Nomenclature is provided to suit the operators.  They spend the most time with the equipment.  They also work on a lot of other eqipment and don't have time sorting through terminology that is more complicated than needs to be.

What about the engineer or maintainer that needs a replacement part?  Well, he doens't interact frequently with the equipment.  And when he does interact with the equipment, he has enough time to dig into far more details of the object than its name  in order to figure out how to get a replacement part or analyse the capability of the part or whatever.

So there you go.  

But then again, I haven't studied Aristotle.  And the last time I won an argument with my wife.... was before she was my wife.
 

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

CEKate,
I don't know which type you have, but the images linked below, IMO, show very distinct differences.

Desiccator images;
http://images.google.ca/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&q=dessicator&btnG=Search+Images

Vacuum Desiccator images;
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=vacum+dessicator&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

Vacuum Chamber images;
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&safe=off&q=vacuum%20chamber&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

In my opinion;
A Desiccator without desiccant becomes a Desiccator Chamber.
A Vacuum Dessicator without desiccant becomes a Vacuum Desiccator Chamber.
A Vacuum Chamber without a vacuum becomes ... ... full?

 

So if we have a chamber whose purpose is to provide a location for a vacuum, we're not allowed to call it a vacuum chamber unless it looks like google pictures of vacuum chambers?  But we should instead call it according to the function of the device from whose parts it was created, even though that function is completely unrelated to our use of the parts?

Time for a beer

 

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

Quote:

Results 1 - 20 of about 3,380 for dessicator

Quote:

Results 1 - 18 of about 188,000 for vacuum chamber

It will take a wee bit of time to do those 635440000 comparisons.  Better make that a six-pack.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

No disrespect intended for Corey or anyone else whose opinion differs from mine.  I was just trying to poke a little fun.

It is amazing how intelligent people can come to completely different conclusions on a simple question such as this.  

 

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

electricpete, Did you have a rough week?

Which post stated that you're not allowed?

And if you read my last post you should notice that I used the term "in my opinion". The OP asked for opinions; I have given mine and you have given yours.

Well, I rather assumed that nobody would regard my contribution was a serious one.

 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

I didn't know you joked, Greg.  

I think you should call the thing a "shiny gas sucker" instead of either of your proposed names.  ...or maybe just call it Fred.
 

Is that an Aristotelian or Non-Aristotelian name for the thing?

Lewis Carroll said it best:

Alice was walking beside the White Knight in Looking Glass Land.
"You are sad." the Knight said in an anxious tone: "let me sing you a song to comfort you."

"Is it very long?" Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.

"It's long." said the Knight, "but it's very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it - either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -"

"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.

"Or else it doesn't, you know. The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes.'"

"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested.

"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is 'The Aged, Aged Man.'"

"Then I ought to have said 'That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself.

"No you oughtn't: that's another thing. The song is called 'Ways and Means' but that's only what it's called, you know!"

"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is 'A-sitting On a Gate': and the tune's my own invention."



 

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

Quote:

This is all about Aristotelian and Non-Aristotelian thought. I guess Engineers tend to be more Aristotelian than others, seeing an objects function not so much defined by what it is used for or intended to be used for but what it is designed to be used for.

Aristotelian thinking has a chair as always a chair, a screwdriver is always a screwdriver.

jmw,

   I just bought a brand new Hewlett Packard ink jet printer.  I installed it and connected to my computer, then I took the box and sat it in my hallway.  My cat has a new thing to play in.  

   Is it a Hewlett Packard printer box, or a Hewlett Packard cat toy?  

   Now if I could just get him to stop running across my turntable.

   An engineer I worked with a long time ago, told me how he spent a good part of a day wandering around a plant looking for a resin de-waterer.  Eventually, he found out that it was called the "bird bath".  

                       JHG
    

JMW:

Your life sounds like mine.  My favourite (had it since I was 11) is not a paint stirer.

Etc (many other examples if required).

- Steve

Ok, so based on the above: I am a woman capable of Non-Aristotlean thought, an Engineer who prefers to use the name of the device that the operators would use given the choice, one who would never use a wood chisel as a crowbar or a paint stirrer, and is soon to be married.

  

~K

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~Confucius  

CorBlimeyLimey- our "desiccator" looks exactly like the first images in the desiccator and vacuum desiccator pages, except that our desiccator does not have a rack for samples to sit on (with desiccant material beneath).

The shape of the chamber allows us to put water in the bottom half, submerge our samples, and evacuate the air above and pull air from pores in the sample.  Most of the shown vacuum chambers would require an additional container for the water and sample...

~K

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~Confucius  

Please accept my sincere congratulations on all counts.

Have you asked the chamber what it would like to be called?

Maybe it prefers being called Fred.

Talking to the chamber has no effect, not in speeding up the saturation of the sample inside it or in replies as to what it would like to be called...

Even if it did request a certain name, I think going through our document revision approval process would prove quite interesting.   

~K

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~Confucius  

Quote:

The shape of the chamber allows us to put water in the bottom half

Why would anyone put water INTO a desiccator?

Exactly!!!!

We don't use it as a desiccator...  we use it as a vacuum chamber to saturate samples.

This is the whole purpose of this thread...

 

~K

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~Confucius  

Call it an anti-dessicator.

CEKate,

   My thoughts on this are that I do not like to change names of stuff.  If someone prepared drawings and built this thing, it should be called whatever it was called on the drawings.  Pulling out drawings and renaming everything is bad practise.  Making up new names for stuff as you go is bad practise, especially when your co-workers make up there own names for everything, as they go.

                           JHG

Clearly you need a catchy acronym.

Something like:

CAROL = Chamber, air removal over liquid.

or

VICAR PISS = Vacuum In Chamber, Air Removal, Porosity In Sample Saturated

The real questing now becomes, If you clean out the machine with a rag, does the rag become a dessicator cleaner or a vacuum cleaner?

Perhaps you should re-name your saturation chamber, Montague - aka "the vacuum dessicater chamber"

Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

See the following wikipedia site for a dissertation on proper naming procedure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name

 

I think that the name should reflect the primary function of the device. If my wife used the drill to stir paint, it would still be a drill, as that would be the primary purpose. However, if she dropped the drill in a bucket of paint (I'm assuming 5 gallon bucket here), rendering it inoperative as a drill, and it became a doorstop, I would call it a doorstop. However, this still leaves ambiguity. For example, to me the wife's shoe collection may be cat hiding place. To her, they are still shoes.

- MechEng2005

Shoes are things you put on your feet. I think "art collection" comes closest but I hesitate to suggest I understand about shoes.
Of course, if your wife wears the shoes she buys then they are shoes.

By the way, what is a vacuum? I think these are all reduced pressure chambers. And that applies also to that thing that the wife pushes under your feet just a a critical point in your watching something sporty on TV - a reduced pressure cleaner is what it is. Vacuum cleaner is the usual over active marketing peoples name for it.  

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

If a shoe is left in a forest with no-one around, is it still a shoe?

Yes, but it has no soul!

CEKate: (I am)..."one who would never use a wood chisel as a crowbar or a paint stirrer, and is soon to be married."

Given a, thus b.  

Methinks your fiance' has chosen well :)

 

Thanks, btrueblood, I think so, too.

My dad is a stockmaker (think firearms, not finances) and woodworker, and I was raised in the "use the right tool for the job" mindset.  Chisels (being valuable and sharp) were one of the tools I was taught to use early- before I could do damage to myself or the tool.

~K

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading,
or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
~Confucius  

Recipe for good terminology karma:

- Take several containers of good beer (these may be tins, bottles, flaggons, pipkins, etc.) and get them chilled.
By chilled, just understand that their energy levels be reduced to the point where a common indication of temperature (celsius, centigrade, farenheit, kelvin, etc.) is such that you would be happy to drink it. Chilled is what the beer is and what you will be after you've had enough of it.

- Take a chair, recliner, sun bed, hammock, garden swing, etc. to a good place

- Set the seating appliance up to take advantage of shade. This may be under a tree, large shrub, umbrella, parasol, awning, beside a wall, etc.

- Lift, carry, transport, move or otherwise cause chilled beer to get to the mouth and drink, sip, imbibe, guzzle, quaff until such a time as the absolute, finite, unique names of things cease to have any particular importance.

Bill

Just as you are about to pull the tab on the first can or even as you do so, significant other will demand your instant attention to something that needs fixing right this instant.
While you are doing it, you can think of all those tinnies sweating away in the sun. When they are adjudged to be about blood warm you will be released from your toils.

Nice dream though.

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

I am reminded of the scene in Kelly's Heroes where Donald Sutherland is asked by Clint Eastwood what he thinks he is doing (it's the bit where DS and his tank crew are lounging about, doing nothing).

DS says something like: ' catching a few rays, drinking a little wine, eating some cheese.....'

If only.

Bill

Skimmed through the posts so sorry if I'm repeating anything someone else said but:

Based on the view point of my first boss when it came to all things 'vacuum'...

It's definitely not a vacuum chamber, a lower than atmospheric pressure chamber or similar perhaps, but a vacuum chamber no.

On this alone given the 2 choices in the OP, I'd have to lean toward desiccator.
 

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

My vote would be for "saturation chamber" as that describes its purpose.

Patricia Lougheed

Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.

I agree with Patricia.  Regardless of the original name, it has been re-purposed and I feel that the name should reflect the current function.

Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare. - Robert Hunter
 

More importantly one has to pick his/her own battles. Is naming  an object worth creating some adverseries out of, which could affect your career?? Especially, if they are your superiors.

When you are in charge of naming something, you decide. If it is a team effort disucuss it once and go with the majority or the Owner!

A woman named Rose does not have to be a rose!!!

 

I vote for: The vacuum chamber formerly known as Desiccator.

Or you could just use a symbol when writing it... Maybe "&" does the trick.
 

V

ctopher's comments are in my vein of thought.  It seems that it is a vacuum chamber modified as to be a desiccator, and then remodified to be a vac chamber again.  If you order it again, you will be ordering another vacuum chamber, right?  

Second point is that using an improper term in work instructions can be confusing.   

Matt Lorono
CAD Engineer/ECN Analyst
Silicon Valley, CA
Lorono's SolidWorks Resources
Co-moderator of Solidworks Yahoo! Group
and Mechnical.Engineering Yahoo! Group

Why not try a marketing approach - the name has to be memorable, must roll off the tongue, should sound powerful, and preferably, should imply some sort of high-tech "gee-whizzery" such as possible connection to the internet (without actually making any claims you can't substantiate).

Perhaps something like the "iDesiccator 2010"?

(Oh, yes, don't forget that "convergence" is all the rage. You should probably redesign it to incorporate a crappy 2 mega-pixel fixed-focus camera, a too-small video display that you can't see in direct daylight, and an MP3 player.)

vc66 and JulianHardy --- the logo is important, of course, I think this is a good starting point: (see attachment)

And it could be called "The Instrument Formaly Known As Desicator"
 

Bill

• http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=ee50aa6a-78ab-4911-8700-f8