Scrub Puller
Senior Member
Yair . . . As most folks here will know I am a bit of a dinosaur from a bygone age and I tend to think a little different.
I am amused for example by discussions about cycle times for excavators. It seems to me that unacceptable amounts of complexity is being built into machines to pick up fractional improvements in so called "performance".
In the real world does a two second improvement to a swingers cycle time make any difference?
Most machines were developed to an acceptable level of performance a generation ago and it seems to me that it's been all down hill from there.
I spend a lot of time looking at job sites through 20x50 Nikons on a tripod and I can say for certain that lack of decent kick-arse management negates potential ten or fifteen second improvements in the time it takes to load a truck . . . I was held up on the highway a while back with a twenty ton excavator scratching down a batter and loading out a six truck string on a six hundred foot haul . . . six bloody trucks.
I see it all the time and wonder about this fixation on "performance".
It's not new. Back in the scraper days with (say) two fifty/three hundred loads a day coming off the push-cat I could never see the point in tandem pushing to pick up a few seconds here and there.
Just thought I'd throw this out there to create a bit of discussion. (he grins)
Cheers
I am amused for example by discussions about cycle times for excavators. It seems to me that unacceptable amounts of complexity is being built into machines to pick up fractional improvements in so called "performance".
In the real world does a two second improvement to a swingers cycle time make any difference?
Most machines were developed to an acceptable level of performance a generation ago and it seems to me that it's been all down hill from there.
I spend a lot of time looking at job sites through 20x50 Nikons on a tripod and I can say for certain that lack of decent kick-arse management negates potential ten or fifteen second improvements in the time it takes to load a truck . . . I was held up on the highway a while back with a twenty ton excavator scratching down a batter and loading out a six truck string on a six hundred foot haul . . . six bloody trucks.
I see it all the time and wonder about this fixation on "performance".
It's not new. Back in the scraper days with (say) two fifty/three hundred loads a day coming off the push-cat I could never see the point in tandem pushing to pick up a few seconds here and there.
Just thought I'd throw this out there to create a bit of discussion. (he grins)
Cheers