Is anyone else slow at work? This is BRUTAL! (Chemical/Pharma process industry)

Me / US MFG ^ | May 19/2023 | ME/US MFG

[mikelets456]

I used the link above but I mostly want to see if others are slow at work. We sell processing equipment to the food, pharma and plastic industries. We're dead---slower than 2016 and it's getting worse. Our shop is going to 4 day work weeks with no overtime allowed and most likely we will have layoffs in the office. I have been here for 35 years and have never seen it this slow. Heck, this company started during the great depression---if this keeps up it will be closed in a matter of 6 months. Our competitors and customers are saying the say thing....inventory is growing and no one is buying. I believe we're being lied to about the economy because this has become a grave concern.

[joe fonebone]

jimmah cahtah, part 2.
I said this earlier this year...
If you have a job, cling to it like your life depends on it...
Because right now, it does

[Vermont Lt]

I am sorry to hear how bad things are at your plant.

We are entering a “real” recession (although we’ve been in an economic recession for a while.)

We really haven’t been in a good ole high unemployment, contraction type of recession for almost 25 years.

This is what happens when the government sticks their noses into the economic cycles. The natural death and life of the cycle has been artificially held off since 2008. Now, when it happens the government is not going to have its normal “tools” to make it easier to survive.

Companies will fail. Housing will collapse. Taxes will go up.

In a year or so it will start coming back.

[GingisK]

Depends on what you want to buy. Many are not available. I’ve had to redesign a number of devices in order to use the micro-controllers they deign to sell.

[DiogenesLamp]

I’ve had to redesign a number of devices in order to use the micro-controllers they deign to sell.

What sort of devices do you design, if I might ask?

[GingisK]

I design microprocessor based sensor and control systems. These include high precision sensors for a medical equipment manufacturer and precision calibration equipment for another. These sensors measure linear distance, angles, and pressure. I provide another client with landfill pump controller systems which radio collected data to a processing center. For another I have made a controller that keeps chemicals balanced in the cooling towers of large air cooling systems.

I'm retired; however, these clients keep coming back to me because I deliver reliable working systems in a much shorter time than young people. Young ones talk, text, and cruise the net too much. They do this at a high salary.

[bk1000]

I’m retired now, but was in the electronics industry. Things were always slow this time of year. Between graduations, vacations and such, things would almost grind to a halt. That was in normal times. These aren’t really normal times though.

[DiogenesLamp]

Cool. And what is your preferred processor?

[GingisK]

I used a lot of Atmel uPs before the semiconductor bust: Atmega128, Atmega32, Atmega32pb, Atxmega128A3. So, I was partial to the AVRs. I use PICs in several designs.

I am shifting to ARMs for everything: STM32L478 and SAM4Sxxx. I'm currently working two SAML11E18 and SAML21E16 designs. These are nice processors, though a bit more difficult to configure that the AVRs. The 32-bit architectures are pleasant; but, the development tools are clunky and bloated.

My drop-dead favorite is obsolete: Motorola 68000, 68020, 68040. It was like a superset of the DEC PDP-11. The ARMs do well in their stead.

I have a very long list of uPs for projects, starting with the Intel 4004, 8008, 4040, 8080, 8085, and the Zilog Z80. I even had to write cross-assemblers for some of that old stuff.

I'm older than silicon, and feel tired.

[logi_cal869]

We’re not, but got some interesting scuttlebutt from the FedEx freight driver this morning:

They’ve never been so slow, workers/drivers have been furloughed and FE is closing a distribution hub to be “more efficient”.

It doesn’t bode well.

[DiogenesLamp]

I started out with the 8080A, went to the CDP 1802, then the 6800 and it's various derivatives, did a little with the 6502 and Z80, and lately have been working with mostly PIC chips.

I believe Microchip bought Atmega.

You skill in the art clearly exceeds my own. I am unfamiliar with several of the processors you mentioned. I build a lot of radio remote stuff and various small control stuff like time clocks.

[BRL]

I am in avionics supply. Our business seems pretty strong at the moment, but we have a backlog because of parts shortages. I think covid has broken the white collar portion of our business. The factory is still producing. Time will tell.

[BRL]

I am in avionics supply. Our business seems pretty strong at the moment, but we have a backlog because of parts shortages. I think covid has broken the white collar portion of our business. The factory is still producing. Time will tell.

[GingisK]

We could have fun as neighbors.

Microchip did purchase Atmel. I'm sure that is why so many of the AVRs are no longer available. The idea was to kill the competition.

PICs are an interesting breed. Its a pug-ugly instruction set; however, it seems to be shockingly efficient. Programs are always very small when compared to the same application on another processor. They are also very rugged and dirt cheap.

[DiogenesLamp]

We could have fun as neighbors.

I expect that is true. :)

PICs are an interesting breed. Its a pug-ugly instruction set; however, it seems to be shockingly efficient. Programs are always very small when compared to the same application on another processor. They are also very rugged and dirt cheap.

I *HATE* PIC's instruction set and weird architecture, but you are right, they are very cheap, they work well, and that's why I use them in a lot of the stuff I make.

I have long preferred assembly, but in the last couple of years i've started writing in C++. I've been using the DSPPIC33fj128. It's instruction set is too massive and it's architecture too full of peculiarities to bother trying to do it in assembly.

I like C well enough, and i've gotten them to work pretty well doing various things.

One of the things I had worked on and gotten working decently is sending audio long distance (several miles) through the 900 mhz ISM band, using the RFM69HCW transciever module. The intent was to use it as a voting receiver system for a Fire Department with multiple stations acting as remote receiver sites.

All the audio was to be routed to a central controller that decided which received audio signal would be sent out through the repeater.

The whole things was relatively cheap compared to what you could buy commercially, and with no reoccurring phone line costs, which is the normal way to implement a voting receiver system, or at least it used to be. I'm not sure what people are doing now.

My main work has been in radio communications.

[GingisK]

I have a radio project that I had to put on hold. Now it has to wake up, since the client is getting anxious. I have the boards already made but not populated. It uses an ATSAML11E16 and a Microchip RN2903, LoRaWAN in the 915MHz band. It must ship for the 868MHz band, there being a pin compatible device. This project started off using a Seeed Studio radio; however, that had availability issues as well as being cantankerous.

I'm not fond of radio projects.

The Seeed-based project hit the skids when I tried to take the application software inside the radio. That turned out to be hell on earth. Long term plans are to move the application into a Microchip radio. They give better support than Seeed, so the idea seems feasible.

I used assembly for over fifteen years following graduation in 1972. I've used it on many different processors and architectures. I usually use C, but always use assembly whenever that is best. I fashioned a Arduino-like pin I/O library to be used on a PIC using assembler. Sometimes it is useful to refer to pins using a simple integer rather than the instructions, particularly for table-driven C applications.

[minnesota_bound]

#8 Do you sell fentanyl in bulk? I am looking to do a ‘side hustle’ to make some extra money and promote it on my youtube channel....

[DiogenesLamp]

Microchip has radios? Tell me more. :)

[DiogenesLamp]

I looked up the chip you mentioned. It's $19.10 on Mouser.

I think I was getting the RFM69HCW for around $8.00 or so.

Is it easy to use? There was a lot of overhead to learning how to use the RFM69HCW.

[CFW]

The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index in the US increased to -10.4 in May of 2023 from a nearly three-year low of -31.3 in April, and better than market forecasts of -19.8. General manufacturing activity in Philadelphia continued to decline overall but at at the slowest pace in four months. New orders (-8.9 vs -22.7) and shipments (-4.7 vs -7.3) rose from last month but remained negative while employment declined (-8.6 vs -0.2). The price indexes remained below long-run averages, with the prices received index declining further (-7 vs -3.3) although prices paid increased slightly more (10.9 vs 8.2). The survey’s future indexes continued to reflect muted expectations for growth (-10.3 vs -1.5), with almost 37% of the firms expecting a decrease in activity over the next six months. source: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

and

The NY Empire State Manufacturing Index unexpectedly sank to -31.8 in May of 2023 from 10.8 in April, compared to forecasts of -3.75. It is the lowest reading in four months, pointing to a sharp drop in manufacturing business activity in the New York State, after a big rebound in April. New orders (-28 vs 25.1) and shipments (-16.4 vs 23.9) plunged after rising significantly last month. Also, delivery times shortened somewhat (-5.7 vs 0), inventories contracted (-12.3 vs 8.2) and both employment (-3.3 vs -8) and hours worked (-3.5 vs -6.4) edged lower for a fourth consecutive month. At the same time, prices increased slightly (34.9 vs 33) and capital spending plans turned sluggish (0.9, the lowest in three years). Meanwhile, the six-month business conditions index increased only marginally to 9.8 from 6.6, in a sign businesses continued to expect little improvement in conditions over the next six months. source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

[GingisK]

The Microchip LoRaWAN radio is easy to use. It takes ascii text commands through a serial port for configuration. It broadcasts to a LoRaWAN gateway, which will forward messages to the server. I have a Laird gateway and configured it to forward to "The Things Network" through my local WIFI router. Messages did appear at the server in California. I'm in Georgia.

I drove the radio around my neighborhood. It can reach 1/2 mile across easy terrain. Its really hilly and tree laden around here. In some places the gateway could not be reached.

LoRaWAN is a fairly big deal. It is not like using a pair of radios for telemetry. Routing and data content are each encrypted with their own 128-bit keys.