[TheForge] Bedtime reading

[Andrew Vida]

David E. Smucker wrote:
> Andy,  Just my point -- what used to be an "art" and the use of 
> "experience based rules of thumb" is today being handle by computer 
> models of the process. 

	Ah, I was being thick.  I completely agree, but computerization isn't 
all bad.  It does open avenues of technology that would otherwise be 
impossible to traverse.  It's not the technology per se that disturbs 
me, but rather the context in which it is used.  Were people sane on the 
whole and were we as a race not sucking every last bit of life out of 
this world, the technology would not be bothersome.  But it is being 
used as a lever to perpetuate insane ways of living.  OTOH, were we 
living in a manner more consistent with my own definitions of sanity, 
perhaps we would not covet all this high technology.  Perhaps doing 
things the "old fashioned way" would hold greater appeal on the broad 
basis.  I don't know.

 > Development of these models has been very active
> since the early 1970's and they have gotten better and better.  Many of 
> the models have been very closely held "trade secrets" for sometime by 
> various companies.  This is true of not just rolling both shape and flat 
> rolling but also close die forging.  One of the areas that remains the 
> hardest to model is the friction between the metal and rolls or dies.  
> In many cases models still depend on experience based data models for 
> the friction factors.

	Really?  I'm not in the mode to think about this right now... or maybe 
I'm just clueless.  Do you know what the difficulties are with modeling 
roll friction?  That it would be a significant problem is not 
immediuately apparent to me.  Then again, I've never really thought 
about it.