You figured out what?

This weekend was pretty nice. I was called up to go on a recruiting trip to University of Texas at El Paso or UTEP as the NCAA calls it. What was great about the trip was that we were supposed to go with the Plant Manager, Tim. He almost made the plane but because he had decided to go in to the plant to finish up some stuff he eventually missed his flight! Poor guy spent the rest of the day trying to make connecting flights. But that left the presentation up to me and a friend at work named George. We winged it and found a good presentation that allowed us to give a good spiel and got the students excited about internships. The ones that showed up for the interviews the next day were very bright and eager. I was impressed. It made a nice close to a short week. The trip started on Thursday and I flew back on Friday just in time to stay away from the plant.

The entire time though I had a problem that I couldn't figure out. In the Petroleum industry there is a governing body for standards. Much like ISO and TS govern standards of the automotive world, the Petroleum industry is governed by the American Petroleum Institute or API. Just like ISO and TS you get a new revision of the rules every few years and next year dictates a few things in concern to my lab. I have to get a hardness tester with a digital readout otherwise I can't pass any pipes! Add on top of that, there is a requirement that any product I test must have adequate support. No more than 40% of the test piece can be unsupported while testing. Well this causes me some headaches because the largest size we process is 10 and 3/4 inch pipes. I had to figure out if I bought a certain support plate, would I meet this requirement?

Well that pretty much explains what that whole thing on my Facebook was about. I spent the whole weekend trying to figure out how much overhanging area of a ring 1/2 inch thick I would have if I put its edge on the exact middle of a 16 inch circular plate.

I had to dig through lots of geometry. No I don't have a book on that. High Schools don't let you keep their text-books. :-( I did a lot of searching online and a lot of trial and error using old stuff like "Law of Cosines" and "Law of Sines". I remembered sadly that my old Geometry teacher Mrs. Maxim taught that stuff to me but I barely paid attention :)

I figured it out though! Go me! Sadly figuring it out didn't get me off the hook. It turns out that a 16" diameter plate is still not large enough. API requires less than 40% overhang and according to my calculations I'll have 46%. :( So I'll have to call the vendor tomorrow and search for options. I hope he likes my assessment of his newest product :) I hate to shit in the guys cereal, but it was the API that screwed them unfortunately. I bet they made that machine thinking "16 inches should be big enough. Who the hell would want to make something that big?!"