Equipment Verification (to IEC Standards)
One of the requirements to ensuring that everything works is to have equipment selected, manufactured and verified [tested] to IEC standards. Not all equipment...
Variable Frequency Drive
Variable frequency drives are widely used to control the speed of ac motors. This note looks at the mechanisms which enable drive units to control the...
Bows and Arrows
It starts with me reading one of the Horrible History books with my son (Groovy Greeks). Arrows were mentioned which lead to the discussion of the bodkin...
What does N+1 mean?
The term 'N+1' relates to redundancy and simply means that if you required 'N' items of equipment for something to work, you would have one additional...
New Mail Chimp
We've been sending out Newsletters on a regular basis for a few weeks now. To do this we have been using Google's Feedburner service. While Feedburner...
Lead us, Warleader
Delum, who had watched all in silence, his face empty of expression, now spoke in turn. ' "Lead us, Warleader, into glory."'
Reading is something I do...
Cable Insulation Properties
Cable insulation is used to provide electrical separation between conductors of a cable. During the historical development of cables, numerous types...
Magicians of Engineering
The other day I was reading 'Night of the New Magicians' by Mary Pope Osborn with my son. The story is about a young boy and girl who travel back in time...
Closed Doors
"I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong...
Why a Sine Wave?
I received this question by email a few weeks. First thoughts was that it is a product of the mathematics of rotating a straight conductor in a magnetic...