Many years ago during my relatively short career moonlighting as an oilfield diver, I was on a salvage job off the North West coast of Western Australia. While operating in shallow water, a 2,500 ton support vessel managed to strike an abandoned oil well. The well head pierced the hull of the ship and opened it up like a sardine … Read more

One of many on-the-drawing-board dilemmas for hydraulic system designers is whether to install a more expensive ball valve in the pump inlet line, a cheaper butterfly valve, or no valve at all.

At the root of this dilemma is the negative effect of turbulence in the pump intake line. The argument for using a ball valve as an intake line … Read more

End of last year I researched and wrote a special report which explains why your boss will never give you a raise. Not in real terms (above inflation) anyway. Some of the key points contained in the report are:

–In the US, the pay of middle wage workers has only increased 6% since 1979, and has been more or less … Read more