The cost of an experimental setup may be considered against two items: (1) the cost of the various pieces of equipment, and (2) the cost of the experimenter’s time. In places where research is part of the tradition, several items, like motors, gear trains, pulleys, tubes, and clamps, may be available, waiting to be poached from a previously used, now junked, setup. It is quite exhilarating to those who enjoy such work to pick up pieces here and there and to put them together to form a purposeful whole. It is indeed a desirable trait for experimenters not to dislike junk.
Though it is tempting to use such items, the time it takes the researcher to extricate, recondition, and match this junk needs to be carefully considered; it may often turn out to be a very expensive exhilaration. If such junk is not adequate or is not available, the choice is to obtain all or some of the items, new or reconditioned, as vendor items. Items less expensive but adequate for the purpose are preferable to those of the best quality demanding a premium price. The cost of items paid for is obvious and hence usually gets the required attention, whereas the cost of the researcher’s time escapes unnoticed. The time spent in putting the pieces of equipment together no doubt gives the familiarity needed in using the setup, but it is the kind of work that others, whose time is less valuable, can do. That the time spent by most researchers is not counted by punching time cards is a privilege, which, to remain so, should be used for justifiable purposes.
Quite often a researcher inherits the setup, his work being to continue, or extend with changes, the research that was being done by his predecessors; this is often the situation of graduate researchers in universities. The cost accountable to setup in such cases is almost nil. The researcher has reason to congratulate himself that he can straight away move on without having to build the bridge, namely, the setup. Like many other phases of experimental research, at the time of planning to build the experimental setup, there are likely to be many unknown factors, at least in detail. The experimenter should deliberate on all the factors known at the time. Among the many paths that suggest themselves, the one to be followed should incur the least amount of time as well as money. Research, however exciting the activity may be, still needs to be justified on the mundane grounds of weighing needs and benefits on one side and costs of all kinds on the other. Quite often, this decision is not easy, especially if the experimenter is not experienced. This is where the help and advice of experienced peers, seniors, and superiors (in the hierarchy) is indispensable because it is not a purely “research” decision but a “management” decision, tempered with research experience, that needs to be made. One of the important questions is whether to build in-house or to buy the equipment if it is available on the market.
Though each person’s experimental setup is unique, it is advisable to use as many components as possible as vendor items. As in the case of requiring a burette in a chemistry setup or a gear in an engineering setup, the vendor market offers a lot of items at relatively low cost. Even bigger units, which have several components already assembled, are available on the market at competitive prices. Awareness of the availability of manufactured items should be a part of the resourcefulness of the experimental investigator, or at least, of his advisors and seniors. In almost all cases, the manufactured items cost a lot less than the sum of the costs of the corresponding components, and the assembly is more optimal, and the performance more assured, than the corresponding built-from-scratch devices. An amateur radio operator may build his own radio for a hobby, no matter how much it costs and how long it takes. That hobbies cost a lot more time and money than we can justify on a purely materialistic basis is well known. To mix a hobby with building an experimental setup can, more often than not, be counterproductive.
Should an amateur electronics hobbyist be allowed to build a ten-point temperature recorder as a project in an industrial research and development (R&D) department? I witnessed a case in which it was allowed. Let us call the amateur Pete, and his boss at that time Jamy. Jamy was the manager of R&D with nothing to commend him to that position except his being a very inoffensive yes-man to his boss, the senior manager. When I came on the scene, Pete was very seriously fabricating something, the expected outcome of which was practically unknown to his colleagues. Jamy had great admiration for Pete’s skill, and Pete had been working on nothing but this mysterious equipment for the previous six months. Jamy promptly approved all the cash purchases—every other week, a few hundred dollars—for components for the equipment. Only after a whole three months and after pointed questions did I learn that Pete was building a temperature recorder. After more than ten months of devoted work, Pete finally declared that the setup was finished.
I was required to test-perform the temperature recorder in a real-life customer problem, in which temperatures at different points of the system were significantly related. I traveled with Pete and another technician to the customer’s place, over seven hundred miles away, driving a station wagon full of equipment, fairly bulky and heavy, with quite a few loose pieces to be assembled on the spot. We stayed in a motel and worked two weekend days in the plant, installing Pete’s equipment to have it ready to be tested on Monday when work started. Finally, when we began seeing the readings, we found the readings to be erratic, not reproducible, and totally incoherent. Needless to say, Pete, after completing the fabrication, had not done any calibration before this use.
Having previously used a twenty-four-point temperature recorder, a product manufactured by Leeds and Northrup, I could see the colossal amount of time and money wasted in the name of R&D. To say anything uncomplimentary to Pete was uncalled for, and I faced a dilemma: whether to betray Pete or to betray the company.
Fortunately, Pete left the company for “better pay” two months or so after this incident. Nobody ever touched his contrivance after that, and like many other inspired follies, it gathered dust in a corner. If the manager had been reasonably resourceful and had any experience with research, he could have purchased a ten-point temperature recorder as a manufactured item at a cost less than one tenth of that incurred by Pete, and ten months earlier. The situation here is that the manager of R&D failed to distinguish between ends and means, and Pete found and exploited the manager’s ignorance to promote his hobby at the cost of R&D resources.
Source: Srinagesh K (2005), The Principles of Experimental Research, Butterworth-Heinemann; 1st edition.
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