Your impression of me is dead-on, the only trick is I am an electrical engineering student, so it will take some serious linguistic gymnastics to put this on my resume.apm wrote: ↑Fri Oct 26, 2018 6:52 pm I took a look at those pictures and my recommendation stands, take the 4 screws out and make a dummy cylinder head that the pressure transducer screws into.
Sure it will look goofy but who cares, using some very tiny tubing is going to introduce a host of new variables and problems that you don't want and could create all sorts of issues.
From reading your postings my impression of you is that you are a young engineering student who has picked an interesting learning project to test your new found skills in measurement, instrumentation and programming. I think this is pretty cool, should be commended, you you will learn a lot and get to put something neat on your resume to talk to at an interview for an internship but if you are going down this path why not go the whole way and do it right?
I get called all the time by my customers when a machine isn't working correctly to come out and do all sorts of crazy measurements. My recommendation if you want to teach yourself some engineering skills is to go the whole way and think of this as a customer's machine that you are called out to investigate and have 2 options;
1. You show up at their facility with a temporary cylinder head with a pressure transducer screwed right in that you made ahead of time in your company's machine shop. You unscrew the cylinder head set up your instrumentation run the tests and prove your ideas, and show them it will work. When you are done at the end of the day you put the machine back together the way you found it go back to the office and produce a nice report showing them the performance of their machine.
2. You show up, with all sorts of tools, perform major surgery on a customer's machine, drilling a hole or two that you can not undo that physically alters their machine to install a setup that will impart a whole host of issues and uncertainty that could taint your results. Then you put your completely unproven software and DAQ system to the test only to find out that nothing is working and you are forced to walk away (or walked out of their plant) with results that are inconclusive at best.
Which path sounds better to you?
In my experience in engineering always pick the simplest, easiest, lowest risk route first that will not impart a whole host of variables beyond your control over one that looks pretty! Even if the requirements are to eventually make it look pretty and elegant and over complicate it, almost everyone will give you the option/funds to try the the quick and dirty, reversible cheap proof of concept route first!
I think you're right on, I had not considered how easy it would be just to swap the cylinder head and put the modified version on. The only remaining question is whether the pressure sensor I had in mind will hold up to steam temperatures, but for $15 I guess that's worth the gamble.