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6 Posts tagged with the rick tag
Amy_Fluke
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The Dark Ages and the Renaissance were, for me, abstractions from long-forgotten textbooks.  Yet, here in the Church of St. Croce, tangible evidence of the Florentine rebirth of art and science is all around me.  To my right is the tomb of Michelangelo, sculptor of David.  Next to that is a memorial to Dante, author of The Divine Comedy.  Further up on the right are the tombs of Machiavelli, author of The Prince and Rossini, composer of the William Tell overture.  To my left is the tomb of Galileo, arguably the brightest light of them all.

 

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642), an astronomer, physicist and mathematician, is the father of modern science.  He expressed his natural observations mathematically, and found real-world applications for his discoveries.  Galileo did a lot of Fresh Thinking in his lifetime, none more profound than his work on the Solar System.

 

Galileo advanced a notion of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus that the earth orbits around the sun.  Based only on his observations of the heavens, Galileo promoted this concept of heliocentrism for twenty years, leading to his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632.  This contradicted the geocentrist doctrine of the Catholic Church.  A Papal inquisition of 1633 forced Galileo to denounce his concept and placed him under house arrest for life.  Banished to an obscure location in the back of the church in 1642, Galileo’s remains were relocated in 1737 to the present place of honor near the front entrance.  Galileo paid a price for his Fresh Thinking, but in the end, we all benefited from his intellectual integrity.

 

Today, Fluke is doing some Fresh Thinking around the maintenance of rotating machinery.  Conventional wisdom calls for long-term observation by specially-trained technicians with expensive vibration analysis instrumentation to troubleshoot rotating machinery.  The Fluke 810 Vibration Tester is designed for maintenance techs that need to quickly ascertain mechanical equipment condition, to understand the root cause of any problem, and to take cost-effective corrective action right now.  Using proprietary algorithms an Onboard Info feature and a powerful user interface, the new Fluke 810 helps you quickly identify root cause (e.g., bad bearing, misalignment, unbalance or looseness), to determine its location, and to determine how severe the problem is, all without reliance on prior machine history.

 

To see how the Fluke 810 can help you eliminate guesswork, maximize uptime, control maintenance costs, and minimize spares inventories, download the 810 Application Note: http://support.fluke.com/find-sales/Download/Asset/3672666_6126_ENG_A_W.PDF

 

Bio: Rick Pirret recently retired from Fluke following 30 years in product design and marketing. Previously, he was with Bell Labs for 10 years in product and facility design. Rick studied mechanical engineering at Cornell and Stanford, and completed an MBA at Seattle University. Over the years, hobbies have included scuba diving, white water canoeing, flying, motorcycling, and bicycling. More recently, Rick likes to be outdoors in the Cascades Mountains or on-track in a BMW.

708 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: fluke;, vibration, tester, 810, pirret, rick, testers
Amy_Fluke
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Atop a luscious, 500 meter hilltop in Tuscany lies the fortified village of Montalcino.  Once a stopover on the main path from Florence to Rome, today it is home to one of the world’s great wines, Brunello de Montalcino.  Yes, the soil and climate are perfect for growing Vitis Vinifera.  Yes, the old Sangiovese vines are well established.  But the big difference is expertise.  After centuries of winemaking, and nearly 200 years focusing on Brunello, these artisans have forgotten more about fine wine than most countries will ever know.  They produce a rich, dark, leathery red wine with a complex aftertaste that will last until your next birthday.  These wines are best sampled using a modern-day tourist contrivance, the Brunello Bus.

 

Atop a 600 foot plateau in Everett, Washington sits the Fluke Corporation.  It, too, straddles a major avenue of commerce, as Boeing makes 777s and 787s next door.  The glacial till left over from the last ice age does not support much besides Douglas Fir and Red Alder, and the persistent drip irrigation from the sky favors indoor activities. Here, the locals have developed a deep expertise in Digital Multimeters, DMMs.  Beginning with the MIT root stock of John Fluke, Sr. in 1948, then cultivated by grads of Stanford and the University of Washington, Fluke has developed a deep commitment to durable, real-world Test and Measurement equipment.  They conceptualize, design, test, build and service a diverse collection of DMMs for connoisseurs who appreciate and use fine test tools.

 

From the Fluke cellars, here are the latest releases of the 2009 vintage:

  • DMM de 289, TRMS Electronics Logging Multimeter; Best-in-Test award winner has all the capability of a top-end handheld DMM plus a high resolution graphical display to  support logging and TrendCapture
  • DMM de 233, Remote Display Digital Multimeter;  Ultimate crowd-pleaser, voted coolest meter…ever. Wireless communication allows the display to be up to 30 feet from the measurement point.
  • DMM de 28 II, TRMS Industrial Multimeter; IP 67 waterproof & dustproof, completely sealed for use in harsh environments. Throw it in a wine-vat and play go-fish. It’ll still work.

 

And yet, these exciting new flavors still have to beat the long-term success of this all-around leader:

    • DMM de 87-V, Industrial Multimeter; The ultimate “real-man’s” meter.

     

  • To sample one of these vintages, see your Fluke distributor today.

    • 397 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: digital, dmm, multimeter, 233, pirret, rick, multimeters, 289, 87-v
    Amy_Fluke
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    Web applications, or "Apps", are all the rage. Running on a smart phone, they represent an intersection of the internet and a handheld touch panel. They provide a combination of fun and functionality - many of most popular Apps are games. They are fast and easy to use, contain a lot of intelligence around a specific task, and deliver fast answers. For example, the Carbon Footprint Calculator asks you to enter miles driven, airline trips taken and electrical / natural gas consumption, then quickly shows how many trees are required to offset your presence on the planet.

     

    It turns out that Fluke has been packaging Apps for years in the form of specialty Digital Multimeters. They are fast and easy to use, and contain a ton of intelligence around Ohm’s Law, E= I x R. The smarts reside in firmware rather than software, and the platform is a rugged handheld DMM versus a phone. However, the outcome is the same - fast answers.

    Here are four applications matched with a task-specific DMM to deliver the power of a modern App:

    1. For Predictive Maintenance, the 289 Industrial Logging Multimeter offers 0.025% basic DC accuracy, 100 kHz bandwidth and graphical display to support sophisticated logging and Trend Capture.
    2. For HVAC repair, the 116 HVAC DMM measures temperature and micro amps, plus offers selectable low input impedance often required with HVAC system components.
    3. For Process Calibration, the 789 ProcessMeter sources and measures 4 to 20 mA control signals, while simultaneously reading in mA and % of span. The meter provides Loop Power, manually or automatically steps in 25% of span, and includes a 250 ohm HART resistor.
    4. For automotive troubleshooting, the 88 Series V Automotive Meter offers millisecond pulse width measurements for fuel injectors, inductive pickup for RPM readings and 20 A current measurement for modern automotive applications.

     

    Audition one of these Fluke Apps today to see the power and speed they can bring to your daily workload.

     

    Bio: Rick Pirret recently retired from Fluke following 30 years in product design and marketing. Previously, he was with Bell Labs for 10 years in product and facility design. Rick studied mechanical engineering at Cornell and Stanford, and completed an MBA at Seattle University. Over the years, hobbies have included scuba diving, white water canoeing, flying, motorcycling, and bicycling. More recently, Rick likes to be outdoors in the Cascades Mountains or on-track in a BMW.

     

    580 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: digital, dmm, meter, pirret, rick, multimeters
    Amy_Fluke
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    The environmental test team at Fluke tries to break new products during development.  Here, from this fun-loving, happy-go-luck crew, are their top-ten torture chamber favorites:

     

    10.  Let’s drop the packaged product, on all faces and corners - 24 drops - from 1 meter onto a hardwood floor.
    9.  What the heck, let’s do it to the unpackaged unit, too - 8 drops - at storage temperature extremes of -400C to +600C!
    8.  Why not subject the unit to vibration, up to 30 G’s, for 30 minutes on three perpendicular axes?
    7.  Bombard the unit with electromagnetic fields and radio frequency emissions per IEC 61326-1 to see if we can get the readings to change!
    6.  Let’s flex the outboard end of the test leads at least 10,000 times to 90 degrees, even though the standard only calls for a flex to 45 degrees.
    5.  While we’re at it, let’s flex the inboard end of the leads, and test the terminals, for 10,000 cycles, too!
    4.  Let’s run the product at temperatures down to -40oC and up to 60oC and try to get the readings to go out of spec.  Add humidity, up to 92% at up to 40oC, and run the tests again!
    3.  Dude, let’s apply peak transients of 12 to 18 kV on the input circuits!
    2.  Let’s wrap the whole unit in foil and subject it to electrostatic discharge of at least 20 kV.
    1.  And finally, let’s push 30 kVA into the front end, while switching through the measurement functions, to make sure any failures are contained within the instrument case.

    When the test team can no longer get a unit to fail, it can be released to production.  Why go to all this trouble?  So that when you take your Fluke meter into the hazards and hassles of the real world, the last thing you need to worry about is whether your meter still works.

     

     

    Bio: Rick Pirret recently retired from Fluke following 30 years in product design and marketing. Previously, he was with Bell Labs for 10 years in product and facility design. Rick studied mechanical engineering at Cornell and Stanford, and completed an MBA at Seattle University. Over the years, hobbies have included scuba diving, white water canoeing, flying, motorcycling, and bicycling. More recently, Rick likes to be outdoors in the Cascades Mountains or on-track in a BMW

     

    507 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: digital, dmm, multimeter, pirret, rick
    Amy_Fluke
    0

    What is great industrial design?  You know it when you see it – art and science, function and feel, color and texture blended in a magical way.  The “celebrity” designers often got it right; Henry Dreyfuss in the 1965 Trimline phone, Raymond Loewy in the Air Force One graphics and Harley Earl in the 1953 Corvette.

     

    Fluke has a long history of meticulous industrial design. Del King started it, George McCain carried it forward, and Chris Lagerberg leads the team now. They have given Fluke handhelds a clean, functional look, with a brand image you can spot across the room. Instruments fit the hand right and feel solid.  Rotary knobs have a lush, silky feel. Pushbuttons give crisp, tactile feedback. Displays are sharp and readable in a broad range of light conditions. Control layouts are intuitive. Users around the world can pick up a unit and make it work – with gloves on.

     

    Throughout the design process, the goal is to include as many pleasant surprises, or "delight factors" as possible. In its Olympic campaign, BMW claimed "we don't just make cars. We make joy". Fluke shares that spirit, and it’s it is part of the difference you enjoy when you select a Fluke product.

    Bio: Rick Pirret recently retired from Fluke following 30 years in product design and marketing. Previously, he was with Bell Labs for 10 years in product and facility design. Rick studied mechanical engineering at Cornell and Stanford, and completed an MBA at Seattle University. Over the years, hobbies have included scuba diving, white water canoeing, flying, motorcycling, and bicycling. More recently, Rick likes to be outdoors in the Cascades Mountains or on-track in a BMW

    390 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: fluke, pirret, rick
    Amy_Fluke
    0

    John Fluke said "the customer should always get more than they thought they paid for". One of those extras is diligence, or in dictionary-speak, "persevering application". Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the care that goes into a new Fluke product.

     

    Diligence in product definition begins with the "voice of the customer", or VOC. Fluke engineers research not only WHAT users do, but HOW they do it. They try to understand not just the measurement functions and ranges that a task requires, but also the work methods or processes that real people actually use. What should the user interface be? How could that user interface help the customer work faster or work smarter? What would delight this customer? Several iterations of VOC research and planning are necessary to ensure that new products meet customer expectations. Finally, beta testing confirms that the product definition matches original intent.

     

    Diligence in design applies both art and science to resolve the tug-of-war between the constraints on a new instrument. The circuit design needs to deliver the specified measurement performance, but it must also protect against misconnected inputs and inputs above stated limits. The circuit must perform over a wide range of temperature, humidity, and altitude, while being subjected to electromagnetic interference and electrostatic discharge. Now add the constraints that the new meter is expected to be compact, handheld, easy to use, and rugged, and the problem becomes very difficult to solve.  Each iteration of a design is tested for durability, safety, and measurement performance. Refinement continues until each test is passed with a substantial margin. Only then is a new design released to production.

     

    Diligence in metrology has two aspects. First, a Fluke spec includes allowance for drift due to time, temperature, and humidity.  You can be confident that your meter still performs within spec when it returns for its scheduled calibration. Second, each Fluke meter is adjusted and verified, traceable to recognized international standards, by a branch of the Fluke standards lab that resides within the production cell.

    What does all this diligence mean to you? Care in definition, design, and metrology means you can count on your tools to safely deliver a professional result, and that your investment will continue to perform well over a long and useful life.



    Bio: Rick Pirret recently retired from Fluke following 30 years in product design and marketing. Previously, he was with Bell Labs for 10 years in product and facility design. Rick studied mechanical engineering at Cornell and Stanford, and completed an MBA at Seattle University. Over the years, hobbies have included scuba diving, white water canoeing, flying, motorcycling, and bicycling. More recently, Rick likes to be outdoors in the Cascades Mountains or on-track in a BMW.

    Blog One: Diligence; by Rick Pirret
    403 Views 0 Comments Permalink Tags: fluke, pirret, rick


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