3 ms·

As an owner of one of those high-priced John Deere grain harvesters, who has spent plenty of time repairing it, I'm left wondering what advanced math is used? C

As an owner of one of those high-priced John Deere grain harvesters, who has spent plenty of time repairing it, I'm left wondering what advanced math is used? Certainly some of the control systems will contain software that uses advanced math, but I cannot imagine the tech coming out and fixing a bug in that software like that out in the field. In that case, in my experience, it's usually more of a "The computer's broken. Let's replace it completely."

deleted 10y ago
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coconut_crab 10y ago
For some of the CNC systems I have had experience with, repairing means figuring out which parts are broken and need to be replaced, sometimes it's just trial and error.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  A lot of things can be broken but there are a lot of software and hardware patching that tech do. During my military service we had a plotter that was used to print aerial and spatial photography it went haywire one day and the HP tech said the alignment heads were screwed. While he did order a new part he also downloaded the firmware from the device, opened it in a hex editor and manually patched some values to give us some print capability back. So instead of the print heads not wanting to go beyond half the width of the role it was limited to about 80-85% of the width with more or less even edges. So even when you need to fix what is effectively macro-machinery there are a lot of things that you need to do and being able to understand EE and programming concepts is a must. The tech wasn't an engineer (BSc./MSc), but most likely had the equivalent of a 2 year engineering degree / programme. I don't think there are a lot of low and even medium skilled jobs today especially not in anything that relates to manufacturing, repairs and similar fields that one can do without quite a bit of knowledge. That said even in in the "educated" community information and knowledge has degraded, people don't know how to fix basic things, don't know how to solve problems other than "just google it", I can count on one hand the amount of people I know that can install a dimmer properly without connecting hot to ground.
jonknee 10y ago
Indeed. It sounds like you'd need the advanced skills to come up with the various diagnostic tests (similar to cars), but at the end of the day they're going to plug it in and say such and such a sensor needs replaced. No math needed. Maybe some very moderate computer skills.

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coconut_crab 10y ago

For some of the CNC systems I have had experience with, repairing means figuring out which parts are broken and need to be replaced, sometimes it's just trial and error.

dogma1138 10y ago
A lot of things can be broken but there are a lot of software and hardware patching that tech do. During my military service we had a plotter that was used to print aerial and spatial photography it went haywire one day and the HP tech said the alignment heads were screwed. While he did order a new part he also downloaded the firmware from the device, opened it in a hex editor and manually patched some values to give us some print capability back. So instead of the print heads not wanting to go beyond half the width of the role it was limited to about 80-85% of the width with more or less even edges. So even when you need to fix what is effectively macro-machinery there are a lot of things that you need to do and being able to understand EE and programming concepts is a must. The tech wasn't an engineer (BSc./MSc), but most likely had the equivalent of a 2 year engineering degree / programme. I don't think there are a lot of low and even medium skilled jobs today especially not in anything that relates to manufacturing, repairs and similar fields that one can do without quite a bit of knowledge. That said even in in the "educated" community information and knowledge has degraded, people don't know how to fix basic things, don't know how to solve problems other than "just google it", I can count on one hand the amount of people I know that can install a dimmer properly without connecting hot to ground.

jonknee 10y ago

Indeed. It sounds like you'd need the advanced skills to come up with the various diagnostic tests (similar to cars), but at the end of the day they're going to plug it in and say such and such a sensor needs replaced. No math needed. Maybe some very moderate computer skills.