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It was a dream! To say no to stupid job function and yes to the right one and used the time between to begin studying all the math and static so I could develop myself and get in-depth insight into the theoretical part of my subject of the area. Today's bachelor degree is far behind our Academy Engineer education, as all the geotechnical item is placed on the master level today, but our knowledge about matrix calculation was not brought far enough. I have to find time to study again in between.
But it was a complete naive approach to my dream of a life as a free engineer.
It began with a deal with a local consulting engineer company who were willing to use my skills as a freelancer. I was used as a project manager for the customers who used the company as the project developer. Means; that I do exactly what I have done earlier in Monberg&Thorsen Ltd. The engagement was in life in two years without must room for studying.
It seems real to be a dream about utopia.
More or less in the panic, I buy myself the business school treating books about accounting and operating economics and enrolled in the exam as a private person.
I past of course.
Then I felt, that I have done something, but it was far far away from the math and static I need to learn.
Som extraordinaire should happen if my dream should come through and some extraordinaire really happen. I get a son and leaves the engineering profession for the next eight years and newer sort that I should go back to it!
Years later I had the opportunity to attend two semesters at the mathematical institute at Ă…rhus University. I passed the exam in mathematic alfa at 30.november 1994 and mathematic beta a year later at 8.marts 1995.
I solve my first consultant assignment the 12.maj 1997 for a manufacturer of lifting equipment. A 12 tons yoke for handling pipes at 15 m.
Hand calculations with a pocket calculator and pen and paper.The productions drawing made in AutoCAD with I have learned myself to use.
Shortly after that, a complete production program of small cranes to be documented. I had to learn Excel in a hurry and the old Danish Standard DS 467 was bought.
The whole production was without documentation and fifteen years later, was my Excel calculation still a place in their office, ready to show the labour inspector if he should arrive. This! Despite the fact, that the world had moved on and new European Standards was implemented.
The tradition for documentation was nowhere to find at that time.
It seemed to me that I was in the right place at the right time.
The need for documentation in the lifting equipment industry was easy to spot.
I discovered Mathcad 7 on win 95 short after and used it while everyone around me was fumbling with their pocket calculators.
The wind turbine industry began to move, and they demanded documentation of their suppliers of lifting equipment. In marts 1999 I was asked for bracket dimension for a tower lift to N.E.G. Micon through my small manufacturer of lifting equipment.
>>Now I just need to show them who I was and learn them, that they could trust my judgments, which was laid down in my calculation.<< I could never have been more wrong. Now it was my DNA which was at the wrong spot in the wrong time.
There was more than one manufacturer of lifting equipment who supplies the wind industry, but I soon learn, that all other doors were closed for me.
In the beginning, the need for specialised equipment and documentation was driving the order into me, as I was alone on the calculation skill and alone to be a user of Mathcad.
The leading company behind the small manufacturer sold shelf goods and populated by sellers. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would be invited to N.E.G.Micon together with a sales team and then I hoping to be asked if I could help them with critical calculation beyond the lifting industries capacity. And then in the middle of such a meeting, it comes for a day, that the sales team have tolt N.E.G.Micons engineer, that they must not ask me for anything as I was employed by them! Then I suddenly understood why I met closed doors in the hole industries.The leadership there did not learn to read me in time as they did at Monberg&Thorsen Ltd. My reaction was predictable for those who know me.
>>You are at this moment closed for access to my calculation capacity.<<
It was a blow. The have any who was able to take over at that time.Later! They withdrew as supplier and manufacturer to N.E.G. Micon, but the calculation and design were done with N.E.G Micon as a customer to me.It was not my plan as I would have liked them as customers both, but the fact was, that the hole industries tried to circle me in and in anytime during the years, they do not accept my status as a freelancer or consultant engineer.
"We trust you Andersen" was beyond there imaginations.
The end of the N.E.G.Micon era came completely unexpected.
I was given an order by requisition 359611. Calculate and draw necessary production drawings for 87-ton lifting equipment enable to lift and yaw a whole nacelle from the assembling line to the shipped at the end of the building. And further, it should be handled in the existing overhead travelling cranes.
It will be large and complicated to design as there was a limited space between the nacelle and the two travelling cranes and in that time, I was still drawn in 2D, as I struggle to find the necessary capital to buy a license to a 3D tool.
So much shear load through such a small cross section! It cost more than one cup of coffee.
My primary contact with N.E.G. Micon at that time was two engineers in the purchasing department. They realise that I have a good underlying business idea in my attempt to be accepted as a partner in the development of lifting equipment to the windmill industries, so good that they have guarded me for months by dragging my order lower and lower.
After an awkward attempt to grabbed my archive, they suddenly appeared in the local news under my design and called themselves for Liftra Aps. Afterwards, they maintained that it was their idea all the way. It was really my DNA which was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
To steal others ideas!
To have so little professional pride!
To sell your soul for publicity and money!
To prostitute yourself in a local newspaper!
In fact, it was not an idea. It was a physical reality, expression in a mathematical language, that forced it into place at last.
An unexpected recognition.
One of the most diligent sellers to tell their surroundings that they did not have to ask me anything because I employed by them, expressed recognition of my working discipline on the most surprising and unexpected way a half year later.
It was a cold, wet autumn at night 2.30 a.m. he got a phone call from one of NEG Micon site manager who has brought himself deep into Germany together with a huge mobile crane and a tower.
They stood there on a muddy and wet field with site light on, and a tower hanging from the crane and found, that the bolt wreath encased in the foundation did not fit the tower. He blam him in a strong word, as he has sold him the bolt wreath.
>>Who has made the layout, he asked him on the phone, as the site manager has the drawing<<.
>>It`s Andersen! It`s him, Andersen. Your damned consultant he replays.<< He could not like consultants.
>>If Andersen has made the layout, it is done correctly. You have moved your self into Germany with a wrong Tower he replies<<, hang the phone on and went to bed.
It was a universal moment of blind trust.
It was precisely what they have done. A site manager, a mobile crane and big- big Tower have a long- long way back home to Denmark again.
Solid Edge at larst.
After years of struggling with different 2D drawings tools, (Smarts Sketchup and AutoCAD) I finally managed to finances a license to 3D tools 2004. I chose Simens Solid Edge.
It took some time to catch the idea with program structure and expensive courses were excluded.
I learn it, and afterwards, I sketched all my calculating model in Solid Edge and loaded them into MathCad.
Solid Edge ability to control the centre of gravity was a significant advantage for me in the design of lifting equipment.
And here I used Solid Edge to make a production layout for a five-story steel staircase in a power plant in Kolding.
They took my cutting files, closed there eyes, pressed the button and cut it all in one turn.
As a final last example of how I used Solid Edge to build a calculations model. An Architect design family house without inner walls. It was understandable why the Architect wished to get rid of the responsibility for the wind stability.
He asks me to make a stability analyst of the building and secure that wind load could be transmitted to the ground.
The task opens up for new parametrically written MathCad equations as I discovered, that colleagues in the engineering companies newer distribute the horizontal wind load on the inner walls in rotational- and shear-forces equilibrium.
Where they not able to calculate the shear force centre? Admitted! It takes time on the pocket calculator, but if you duet it parametrically in Mathcad, you have only to do it once.
In the drop-down menu, I have chosen three task I have solved, that has the longest possible distance from my original geotechnical profile. Remember, I am not educated as a mechanical engineer.
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