Mechanical Devices
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008David Zimmel wrote a couple paragraphs that I think are really helpful in thinking about owning mechanical things. If you have a furnace, a car, a garage door opener, or any other mechanical device, this is really helpful:
The point of a mechanical device is to produce work from energy. (Ok that was pretty technical) In other words, machines take in potential energy (electricity or fuel) and produce something that moves (which can be quantified in terms of mechanical energy). The efficiency of a machine is based entirely on the amount of energy lost from its conversion from potential energy (electricity or fuel) to mechanical energy. The three common ways for a mechanical device to loose energy is through heat, excess motion, and sound. Any time that a mechanical device begins to demonstrate an increase in the amount of heat, excess motion, or sound, it usually means that something is not working the way it was designed. Any time that a mechanical device begins to demonstrate a decrease in the amount of heat, excess motion, or sound, it usually means a loss of potential energy (think a car running out of gas, or a cordless drill running low on juice).
The bottom line is, any time you hear, see, or feel a machine more then you did usually something is probably going wrong and you should shut the machine off.There are two things that were not explicitly said there that I want to highlight. One is that it is important to take note of how stuff runs normally so that we can catch it when something changes. The second is more from a economic standpoint. Most mechanical devices come with an array of instructions and stuff to do for maintenance. The maintenance stuff is especially important. Your car can run out of gas, but when it runs out of oil your engine is done working.
If a mechanical device is not working at all, we should always make sure it is connected to an energy source before assuming that it is broken.