How To Make Springs

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yogi
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How To Make Springs

Post by yogi »

I never gave it much thought before, but now I know how they make springs.

HOW TO: https://i.imgur.com/skppmt7.mp4
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Kellemora
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Re: How To Make Springs

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You can actually make your own small springs fairly easily.
But not much larger than perhaps 3/8 inch diameter.

When I was driving OTR, I delivered once to a plant that made large coil springs like used on cars and trucks.
Now those are made from glowing hot steel, and after forming, when they get down to a specific temperature, they are lowered into a bath of oil to temper them.
It was a neat operation to watch.

Being in the flower business, we always made small coils of wire for decorative purposes, but not as springs per se.
But I found if I put the little florist wire springs after they were wound in an oven at around 400 degrees for an hour, then they came out to be real springs. Even better if you dropped them in a pan of cooking oil.
Trouble is, if you do that while they are too hot, they become brittle and break easily.
The only few times I bothered to make springs was because I needed them for a project I was building several of.
For the project I bought bare (not painted green) florist wire, wound them on a metal shaft the length I needed plus four turns extra. Placed them all on a cookie sheet and cooked them for 1-1/2 hours at 400 degrees, then let them sit on the cookie sheet for around 5 minutes before dumping them one at a time in a bit of corn oil. I was surprised, they all came out perfect for what I needed them for.

We used to get a lot of things made at Rogers Wire Works down on LaSalle street. Mostly they just made wire items that were spot welded together. But they also had a machine that made like 3/4 inch diameter springs, but I never saw them making springs with it. Although they did have a storage box filled with springs of different lengths for sale.

On a similar topic: Dad got a cease and desist letter once from an attorney, claiming the item we made for our spray handles, his client had a patent on them. My dad sent the attorney a letter back saying ours predates there's probably by 50 years or more, so their patent is worthless. He never heard from them again after that, hi hi.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I knew springs had to be tempered, but exactly how they were mass produced never got any thought from me. The video here is interesting to me not only because I now know how those kind of springs are manufactured but also because it shows the machinery needed to accomplish the task. The genius is not in the springs themselves. It's the master mechanical engineer who came up with the process and tooling that deserves a lot of respect. Perhaps if you do that kind of thing for a living, it's not big deal. We had a model shop at Motorola that did similar things. We gave them a concept and they came back with a working version of it. In any case, I know you are highly skilled in mechanics, and I thought you might enjoy the video. `Little did I realize that you have "been there, done that" in the floral business. LOL

The only other thing I might like to see is how they make those springs for the wheels of railroad cars. It's got to be amazing.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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Just look up big coil springs manufacturing, and you should find a video easily enough.
Those big springs are made while the steel rod is glowing orange, wrapped around a drum, then removed, and they wait for the temperature to drop to some fixed temperature, then they get dropped in the oil bath to temper them.

What surprises me most about trains are the tracks themselves.
Other than buckles from heat expansion, they hold up really well, for many years.
And how they are put down, well that bed they put down first is not really all that stable, at least the way it looks to me.
And when you consider the weight, wow is all I can say.

I've seen places on train tracks where the engines wheels slipped a tad causing a divot in the top of the rail that only gets beat down worse if they don't replace it right away.

You know the super long springs used to hang something from the ceiling that just bounces up and down all the time. Like a plastic figurine or whatever.
Those long springs are actually really easy to make, and can be made from #22 Paddle wire wrapped around a wooden dowel.
From there you just coil them up on a cookie sheet and bake them at like 400 degrees for an hour, take the cookie sheet out, and spray water over them. They are not perfect, but will work for the usage intended.

My aunt Patty used to buy the small diameter Slinky's to use for her small bird feeders, said the squirrels won't bother them hung that way. She also had them all super high as well. She used a broom handle with a hook on the end to pull them down to fill them. Once full, they were down about eye level, but as the birds emptied them they rose up higher and higher.
She said she had to watch close when buying them, because some or so cheaply made they won't work at all for what she uses them for.

Here is a video of the machine for making coil springs, the whole operation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TenYpy6A26w
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Re: How To Make Springs

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Each boxcar of a freight train has 8 wheels. Thus whatever load is placed into the boxcar is divided by 8 where it comes into contact with the steel tracks. That seems like no problem while the cars are moving. A standing boxcar fully loaded is still unlikely to be a challenge but that steel is tough stuff. The compressive strength has to be enormous. A locomotive engine, however, has to to weigh a lot more than any boxcar. I guess that's why some have more wheels than others. The mystery of the ages is how does that engine manage to start rolling from a standing start. It's all sitting on point contacts but the weight of the entire freight train is mind boggling. Why does it start moving at all? Ever? The engine wheels don't slip generally, but when they do I suppose that is what creates the divots you speak of.

About ten years ago they revamped the railroad tracks between Chicago and St Louis to accommodate the high speed trains expected to be put into service. We would keep track of their progress each trip we made to Chicago and back along I-55. The bedding was all new rock piled up probably around 36 inches in height from the old bed. I believe in those cases they weld the joints of the rails so that the entire track length is smooth. Doing that seems like an exercise in futility because those steel rails need some space to expand and contract during winter and summer seasons. I have no idea how they account for thermal expansion. I also don't know if that high speed service was ever put into place. It seems like it would be a good idea in these days of $6/gal of gasoline for automobiles.

Thank you for looking up the video for coil springs. It's pretty much what you described already. The only real surprise in the video is the cleanliness of the shop. I can't believe such heavy duty manufacturing could be so clean. :grin:
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Re: How To Make Springs

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The old steam locomotives had 4 separate steam driver boxes and they are designed to be offset to each other. So they work like an 8 cylinder motor so to speak, no two pistons are at the same point, or not supposed to be. But if they do slip wheels a tad, they could then not be in opposing synchronization. That wouldn't matter because the pistons are powered in both directions. The odds of all driver wheels being at Middle Dead Center on their shafts is super rare.
Now Diesel trains use electric motors on each drive wheel, I think.

To make up for expansion of those long rails, they do have diagonally sliced rails every so often. Even with those, they still have track buckling from time to time. Also, the tracks are never perfectly straight for very long, they always have small curves in them, and the outsides of those curves can slide out 4 to 6 inches and you would never know it, but then they are made to be able to do that.
Our greenhouses were 100 feet long each one, and those steam pipes under the benches could move a good 4 to 6 inches from cold to steam filled, so there were special pipes that swiveled at each end of the run. Instead of being sealed like you would a normal pipe, they were greased on the screw fittings so they could move back and forth like unwinding them or tightening them up. And ironically, even being loose fitted like that, they never lost steam around the pipe joints.

Trains actually get much worse fuel mileage than tractor-trailers do, but then too, they are pulling a hundred cars loaded with freight, hi hi.
Since my first wife's father worked for the railroad, I once asked him why they used two or more engines to pull a string of cars instead of just making the line of cars shorter, like instead two engines pulling one long string, why not divide it in half and let one engine pull each. He said it had to do with the hills and grades they have to pull up and over. If they were pulling a shorter string of cars, all of them would be on the grade, and a single engine couldn't pull them. But using two engines and twice as many cars, most of those cars at the end would not be to the grade yet, and once the engines are over the grade, they can keep sailing at their preset speed. In other words, using two engines with along line of cars they can run much faster that if they were divided up into two trains of cars. Made sense to me.
I never did understand how they keep from pulling the middle cars off the track on a long line going around a bend. And for some hills they had a pusher train in the back helping them up the hills. Seems like that would push them off the track also. But I guess they know exactly how to balance the loading of the cars to prevent that.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I think diesel locomotives are measured in gallons of fuel per mile instead of the traditional miles per gallon. LOL Your wife's father had the inside scoop from a mechanical point of view. I never thought of it in quite those terms but as you say it all makes sense. It also is cheaper to pull 100 cars over any distance than it is to pull 50 over the same distance. That's due to the inefficiency of those diesel engines. I don't think they get better mileage with fewer cars in the train unless it comes down to single digits. Then maybe the engines are more efficient with a lighter load. It takes more effort to start 100 cars rolling than it does for 50, but after that the hp required to keep it all rolling is about the same. Thus the cost advantage for pulling more freight.

I'm totally impressed to learn that the steam pipes in your greenhouses expanded 6 inches between hot and cold. That's a lot even for 100 feet of pipes. I also can see how grease would be a great sealer if there was enough of it. Eventually I would imagine the steam would wear away the lubricant, but that's would be easy enough to replace. It's all a brilliant solution in any case.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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You have to remember, our greenhouses were built in like 1910 and 1920. Not much in the way of technology back then.
Today they use finned pipes with a shroud to protect them from water drips which eats away the fins.
Or Natural Gas overhead furnaces that keep the air rolling in a vertical circle.
For some crops they use heated beds, this is usually done with electric blanket style heaters or heat tapes.

Most of the steam pipes under our benches were over 2 inches in diameter, and locked down in the very center too keep them from drifting one direction or another. You are right about 6 inches being a lot for 100 feet, but then too, how far they stretched had to do with how hot we were running the system.
Without getting into the complexities, even our oldest boilers had the part that boiled the water, and the upper part that reheated the steam to a hotter temperature. I know the old boilers ran at a lower pressure than the new boilers, but regardless of what the pressure in the boilers themselves were, the pipes under the concrete benches in the greenhouses was always maintained at around 5 to 7 psi.

In a lot of steam systems, the same pipes feeding the hot steam, are also used for the return condensate to the boiler. In those systems, the entire system is under the same pressure, about 30 psi. So the pipes always have to be going uphill from the boiler. You can get vapor locks and water locks in that type of system too.

A hot water system is a continuous loop, which is why the radiators for hot water systems cannot be turned all the way off. The shut-off valve has a 1/4 inch hole in it so the water can always flow through it, but at a reduced rate so you don't get as much waste heat to areas you don't really want to heat up by much.

The steam system we had, was in a way like a continuous loop, because we had separate return lines for the condensate and it did not go directly back to the boiler because the boiler was at a high pressure, and the pipes at a lower pressure.
So, sorta like the water tank on a locomotive's coal car, we had to use pumps to return the water from a holding tank into the boilers. And there is a second holding tank to heat the water back up a bit before it goes back into the boiler, just like a steam locomotive in a way. You don't want to put cold water into the locomotive, hi hi.

You are probably wondering how we can have a boiler at a high pressure, and the system piping at a low pressure, since they are all connected together as a single unit.
Think of your garden hose and how much water comes out when the water is turned on full blast.
Now, add a Y-connector to the hose, and you only get half as much water from each hose.
Now add a twelve gang header to that hose and divide the water up to 12 different hoses.
Now you only get a small trickle of water from each hose, hi hi.
A lot of that has to do with resistance in the hoses themselves, so the flow is cut down.
But in the case of our steam system, there is a weight at the beginning of each pipe that takes 6 psi to open, and another like kind weight at the far end of the pipe that takes 5 psi to open, for the steam to go back through the return pipe system for the condensate. It's not really as complicated as it sounds in writing, hi hi.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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Bernoulli's principle may say things I don't understand or long forgot. However, I believe that the essence is that the fluid pressure in a closed system is equal in all parts. That's why the brakes on your car work, for example. You are correct to assume I would wonder how the steam system could maintain two different pressure levels. Fluid flow, or steam, will vary when you split it up because there is only a certain amount of fluid to go around. Pressure, however, should be equal in all parts of the system regardless of flow. You know how the water tower downtown is 60-80 psi in that main feed pipe and my 1/2" sink pipe also has the same pressure (or pretty close). Steam in my mind works the same. If you heat up a tank to 30 psi it will not matter how many arms and legs of piping you attach to it. It will all be the same 30 psi.

I can imagine a system where there are traps (for lack of a better term) that will vary the pressure. Thus the 12 legged system you describe for water will have the 30 psi input but each of those legs would have a (trap) holding tank that reduces the pressure in that given leg. It wouldn't take much more than a water shutoff valve to regulate the pressure to where you would want it. On the return side to the boiler there would be another trap, or holding tank, that feeds the low pressure fluid into the high pressure boiler. This part is where my mind is lacking imagination in that I know there would be back pressure, and a way to keep the high pressure fluid from flowing back into the low pressure holding tank would be necessary.

Obviously I'm reaching out of the box here with my explanation. That's the main reason I never became a plumber.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I know what you are saying about he pressure supposed to be equal throughout the system.
Without the check valves in place, that would be the case.

Look at the supply water coming into your house. In St. Louis County, the primary main line water pressure is around 120 psi, but the street mains in front of your house are usually only around 80 psi. In your basement is a pressure reducing valve that brings the water pressure down to around 30 to 50 psi for the piping inside your house.
Don't need that here because the street mains are at 45 psi.

My O2 tanks are at 2,000 psi when I start on a fresh one. A regulator cuts that down to the lpm I select, 2, 3, or 4 psi. But then we are not talking about a closed system either. They control the flow, which doesn't really affect the pressure. I'm sure if I blocked the hose, the pressure would build until the hose pops, hi hi.

On our greenhouse pipes, we could use non-reinforced red rubber hoses as the return to the return pipe, and even just slipped on they wouldn't blow off, IF there was a regulator on the end of the pipe that maintained 5 psi inside the pipe itself.
It's been probably 40 years since I had anything to do with the steam heating plants at the florist and greenhouses, so I may have forgotten a lot also.
I think steam radiators in a house are low pressure systems, probably around 4 to 6 psi is all. And they too have a safety valve on each radiator that opens if the pressure is over 6 psi if I recall. Or if they go bad, they start whistling and blowing out steam, hi hi.
Now the heating system in the big house I lived in was hot water at around 30 psi. We had bleed valves on the tip end of each radiator to let air out. Air seemed to build up pretty fast in those darn old hot water radiators.
In fact, leaving the air in some of them in rooms we didn't want to heat much worked well. The water still has to flow through them though, that's how they are designed. But steam heat is different. In fact, you can tell if a house is steam heat or hot water just by looking at the radiators pipes. One pipe steam, two pipes one at each end, hot water.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I forgot to respond to the last part. The water tanks. We had one water tank that was connected to the city water supply, and one tank that was the return of condensate from the system. Which means it was already fairly warm water.
There is a high pressure pump to pump water from either tank into the boiler, and you can divert the water before it goes into the boiler through a pre-heater to make the water hot when it goes into the boiler. About the same set-up as a locomotive.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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The first apartment we lived in must have had steam heat. The humidity was high and the windows frosted over in the winter. I seem to recall a bell shaped gizmo on a radiator that would juggle and let out steam. I don't recall if that jiggle bell was in the apartment or on some other radiator I saw. Many homes were heated with radiators back when I was a kid. Not ours, by the way. We had an oil burning stove to keep us warm. Now that I think back it's amazing that we didn't all die from the fumes. Supposedly they all went up the chimney but there was an aroma distinctly like fuel oil most of the time.

My inlaws who lived in Iowa where the winters are ten times worse than anywhere else in the midwest had radiant heat from water pipes. My wife's dad showed me the boiler and the piping underlying the system but I never lived in a house with radiant heat. We visited them in the winter a time or two and I was amazed and how warm the house was. I'm pretty sure that system was under pressure too, but I never reached a full understanding of how or why it all worked. It's all black magic as far as I can tell.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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Yep, those were steam radiators with the bell shaped gizmo at the the top.

The house I lived in from birth to 2 years old had only a wood burning pot belly stove in it, but dad usually burned bituminous coal since it put out more heat. Naturally I don't remember it, but saw plenty of pictures of that tar paper shack, hi hi.

The house we moved into from age 2 to 18 had an oil furnace, which the burner was converted to natural gas when I was around 15. Still the same old furnace though, just no more oil smell in the house.

After that, all the houses, except this one were heated with natural gas furnaces.
My house here has a heat pump.

There are a few ways radiant heat is accomplished. Since you said it was hot water pipes, I suspect then were embedded in the flooring. Either that or they had finned pipes inside of baseboard heaters. Radiant heat is better than forced air from ductwork, because the draft from them does cause a minor windchill affect on the body.

I notice that windchill now more than ever with my bad heart and low O2. I'm always complaining about feeling the blast of cold air on my back when I sit on the edge of the bed while getting ready for bed at night. Also in the living room on the couch, that cold air comes up and just loves to seek me out for an attack on my personage, hi hi.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I'm pretty sure the radiant heat in my inlaws house was piping under the flooring. That's one reason why I was so impressed that it worked. I know hot pipes will radiate heat, but it seems unlikely that there could be enough radiation to keep an entire house warm when the temps go below zero. That's an 80 degrees differential at least. It's all very impressive to my mind.

About the time I had surgery to remove prostate cancer I was put on blood thinners. That had nothing to do with the surgery but the timing is what I recall most. After that period the air conditioning in the house became very uncomfortable. My wife would be sitting there sweating and I"m next to her with a light sweater on. My body's reaction to cold air became super sensitive and I think it is due to the blood supply being thinner than it used to be. It really doesn't make sense to me but I can't think of anything else that has changed to bring about the sensitivity to cold.

Odd as it seems, I do very well outside in the cold weather. Perhaps that has something to do with the onesie I wear. LOL I have an insulated body suit that allows me to go out in the winter weather and actually stay warm with just my street clothes underneath. My face freezes, but then I'm from Chicago and am quite used to that. This old body ain't what it used to be. That is for certain.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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Heated floors really are the best because heat rises to fill the room. Your tootsies stay nice and warm too.

Same here, blood thinners. I keep my office around 76 to 78 degrees, so freeze my ketuckus off when I go down to the house, which is now set at 73, we compromised on the house temp, hi hi.
I have a small electric blanket I wrap around my shoulders and back when I'm in the living room.
I have a heated mattress pad, and a small heating pad down at my feet, but over my feet.
I do this by putting the top sheet on first, then the heating pad over that, draped over the end of the bed, and a top sheet over that, which is only on my side of the bed.
I'm super thin, only 145 pounds with my clothes and boots on, while Debi is a little bit bigger, so she is always hot, temp wise, hi hi.

A 1 degree shift in temperature can make me shiver and my nose start running like a broken faucet.

I don't do cold very well either, not even with thermal underwear and insulated coat.

Olde Age is the Pits Yogi, hi hi.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I've heard that old age is the pits most of my life. Now I'm there myself and am not so sure. In many respects this is the best time of my life. I'm comfortable and all my needs are satisfied without having to work for a living. I can do whatever I care to do and in fact my old age gives me some leeway that being younger does not. I can be cranky and off color and not get reprimanded for it. LOL The downside, of course, is the illnesses us old guy acquire. I guess it's true that the older you get the higher is your risk of collecting insurance benefits. The human body just isn't build to last forever, and I knew that from very early on. What is a bit of a PITA is that it takes a long time for that body to deteriorate and succumb to the inevitable. Getting through all that has a lot to do with attitude, but you can only think positively for so long. We all have an endurance limit. Be that all as it may, I'm also fairly certain the body is more resilient than we give it credit for being. You and I suffer the effects of cold air not because our bodies can't handle it, but because we are taking in chemicals that change the body chemistry. We can mitigate all our diseases to some degree, but we can't eliminate them, and I have a feeling those drugs we take are just making matters worse.

I can give you the information about the body suit I have for cold weather. I have no doubt that it would reduce or eliminate your need for extra heat on a cold winter's day. The suit is actually light weight and designed for people who work inside coolers for a living. It's pretty flexible too but admittedly a bit bulky. Then again, it is insulated quite well. Unfortunately you would end up looking like the Michelin tire guy wearing that suit around the house. I'm not sure how it would go over in Tennessee society either. I get some odd looks from folks here when I put it on to shovel snow.

FWIW: these are the people who make it: https://www.refrigiwear.com/mens-apparel
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Re: How To Make Springs

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The doctors had my brother on some medication ever since he was around 12 years old. Supposedly had something to do with his thyroid or something, I don't remember what for sure, but he was to take it religiously, and always did.
He went on a trip once, overseas probably, and forgot his medicine pouch. So he went like 20 days with no medications. Then when he got home, it just so happened he had a physical due. All of his tests came back just fine. He has not taken a single prescription since then. Which is now going on close to 35 or 40 years, hi hi. He still parties like an animal too, hi hi.

I have some down filled coats, but they are too heavy for daily wear. I have some thin jackets made of rip-stop nylon that I wear daily. Have the blue one on right now in fact, looking at my 78 degree thermometer to my right hand, hi hi. But if I take it off, the draft in here from the AC will make me chill.
No wonder it is so hot in here. I just glance up at the AC and it was still on 68, I usually turn it down to 66 at 80 degrees outside, and 64 at 90 outside. It is 90 right now, but I'm going to leave it on 64 and see if the compressor shuts down or not.
Do you know little plastic windmills collect cobwebs, just like the corners of the room, hi hi.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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I probably told you the story about my mom and the time they pronounced her terminal. She was in ICU and hooked up to more test equipment than I ever saw in all of Motorola when I was an electronics technician. Since she was terminal and said to have only a few hours to live they took off all the tubes and stopped all the medications. Mom was very conscious and alert and feeling really great that they were not using her like a guinea pig anymore. That few hours of life that was left turned out to be nearly three years after she was discharged from the hospital. She had to take some maintenance drugs and use a nebulizer but mom was very happy with all that. The heroic treatments they were giving mom in ICU were wasted because she didn't need any of it. They just went by the numbers on the equipment and drew conclusions from that. Mom had other ideas.

There is a lot of misdiagnosis and wrong medications being prescribed. Doctors are only human after all, and in a way that's disappointing. I would expect more from people who have control over my living or dying. The reality is half the doctors who graduate from med school are in the lower half of their class. And even the one at the very bottom gets to be called Doctor.
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Re: How To Make Springs

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Well, it is a known fact that 2 years out of college, most doctors could not pass the tests again, because they forget most of what they had to learn. It's a good thing they have to work a few years as interns before they get their shingle.
I was still going to our family doctor who was actually a pediatrician, but for us kept up with family practice as well.
He is the one who came to my apartment when I had the Hong Kong Flu and didn't want me moved to a hospital.
But shortly after that he told me I need to find a new doctor. Well he found a really great and older doctor for me. And I don't know what kind of deal my doc made with him, but always saw me on his day off, but was in the office to do paperwork and the like. He took care of me up until the time I moved south, and he retired almost right after that, within months.

I think it is wonderful your mom got a new lease on life and managed to get out of the hospital.
They did the same thing with my late wife, and the day she was supposed to come home, while I was sitting there waiting for the nurse to come with the wheelchair to take her out, she had a sudden downturn, and died only moments later.
But like you said, once they disconnected all that equipment, she was feeling a whole lot better.
She was a lot worse off than most folks realized, because she always stayed cheerful.
I now know from my condition, and the fact she was on liquid oxygen 24/7 cranked up to around 6 lpm during the day, and 4 lpm at night. She could not breathe on an oxygen concentrator, she could on the metal tanks, but even the super big green ones only lasted a few hours each, which is why she got put on liquid oxygen. That is not an option down here. Neither of the O2 suppliers even have liquid oxygen capabilities. But they do have a double purification machine which is like the output of an oxygen concentrator as the input to another oxygen concentrator which supposedly makes it more pure, but it is a special type of oxygen concentrator also.

Debi's son is a Lawyer, and he'll be the first to tell you, they teach nothing in law school about being a lawyer. You have to learn it all on your own by working for firms after you pass the bar to find out how things are done in the real world. Which he did for a few years until he landed a government job as a lawyer.
Every time we asked him for help about something, he told us he knows nothing about that field of law, nor did he know anyone to send us to.
That was a far cry different than my late wife's cousin who had been practicing law for like 20 years. He knew quite a bit of things, and if he didn't know, he knew another lawyer that did and would get an appointment for us, and at a price we could afford. Debi's son just wants to do the one thing he learned he was good at, and is easy for him to do as well.

I guess that is why there are so many different kinds of lawyers, and why doctors branch off into so many specialties.

What I don't like about the medical field as a whole, is the insurance companies are practicing medicine by allowing or not allowing the drugs the doctor wants to prescribe. Like the drug my heart doctor wanted me on, the insurance company made me use a different drug. After that was the reason for my second heart attack, they finally agreed to cover the one he wanted me on in the first place, but at a higher co-pay amount of course. And since my second heart attack, that drug has moved from Tier 2 all the way up to Tier 4 making it almost unaffordable for me. It's one my brother is helping me pay for.
And with it, my heart is doing as well as it could be doing.

FWIW: A damaged heart can be made stronger via exercise, and also it can build new blood vessel routes over time, but not in the area of the heart that died unfortunately. That part of the heart gets a thicker skin on it, and the old dead muscle tissue dissolves away slowly over time. And as I said, the exercise helps the other remaining muscles in the heart get stronger. It also keeps one from getting an enlarged heart. The heart knows it is not working right, so grows to meet the demand, which is actually a very bad thing for it to do. So you want to prevent the heart from growing larger, by exercising to make the muscles stronger to prevent that. And this is why I exercise three days a week.
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yogi
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Re: How To Make Springs

Post by yogi »

My comments could get nauseatingly lengthy in regard to the medical, legal, and insurance professions. We talked about it all previously and adamant as we were in our writing, none of those professions changed one bit. The distressing part of it all is that it doesn't have to be the way it is.

All professionals are running a business and as good capitalistic practitioners they are in business to maximize their profits. You would think that people like doctors and lawyers would be more compassionate given the kind of situations they deal with. Some in fact are very considerate of their client's needs as you have pointed out a few times. But, alas, no doctor nor any lawyer does business on an island. They must interact with a ton of other businesses just to provide the service you need. In the case of doctors they are being pushed around and dominated by the insurance companies. That is necessary because nobody can really afford to pay for that medical service other than insurance companies.

Insurance companies are not all evil as we suspect. They need to exist so that we can get some benefit as opposed to no benefit. Thus they too have to maximize their bottom line by adjusting the reimbursements they hand out. Their resources are limited and they are legally bound to keep a certain reserve on hand just in case. There are mortality tables and risk factors and actuaries all trying to come to a reasonable way of doing business. But, no matter how humanitarian they might be, they must make a profit in order to stay in business. So what you see with tiers of medicine and limits to coverage is based on statistics. They must guess what claims they will see in the near future and adjust their payouts accordingly. Sadly, the doctors are more or less bound to the insurance company's choices if they want to get reimbursed. Doctors do not have to follow insurance guidelines, and could use their own judgment. They either have to apply for a variance, which most doctors won't bother to do, or prescribe the next best (cost effective) remedy. And THAT is the problem. Cost is being put ahead of patient care.

I'm not saying all those professionals are metaphysically perfect and victims of the system. Some are indeed greedy bastards. For the most part they are all driven by the need to make a profit as opposed the a need to server their clients/patients best interests. Changing that would involve changing how people think, and I don't see that happening any time soon.

It's not only lawyers and doctors who quickly forget what they knew to get their licenses. Everybody only retains about 10% of what they learn. Some folks retain it longer, but for the most part that 10% is what your career is based on. The idea behind a higher education isn't the trivial knowledge in all those text books you must read. Details are often helpful, but the point of going through the grinder is to learn how to solve problems. A brain surgeon must go through the basic med school routine so that he has an idea how to deal with bigger problems. Lawyers have an impossible job. There are more laws that there are diseases a doctor has to deal with. No lawyer alive can deal with all the various types of legal matters that exist. It's almost a requirement to become a specialist.
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