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Re: Hole Diameter for running cable



"Robert L Bass" <robertbass1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

<stuff snipped>

> > IIRC they used to weld a thick steel reinforcing strip along both edges
of
> > the WWII Liberty ships on the extremely cold North Sea run once they
> > discovered the steel became brittle enough in the cold to crack and
ships
> > snapped in half and sank nearly instantly.  Can't seem to find the story
> > right now on Google, though. )-:
>
> That's a very different problem -- a very significant one if you happen to
be abouard
> that ship (:^)) -- which doesn't relate to your issue.

Both my house and the Liberty ships were built at the same time during the
same material shortages.  I'll bet the Liberty shipyards got the better
timber.  But my point was that engineers design things mostly to operate
within expected environments.  What might be sufficient for most uses:

1) Everything except rough seas in extreme artic cold for the ships, and

2) Everything but an extreme snow load for my house

Now I'm pretty sure my basement's not filled with 40' waves at 40 below zero
(although it does smell a little like cod after a ten-year flood) but the
analogy still holds, at least IMHO.

Overengineering is why I *used* to like Compaq PC's so much.  They used
connectors rated for 10's of thousands of insertions instead of just
thousands, at least in the early PCs, and that gave them an "edge" in
reliability that other machines of the era could not match.  There was a
price premium, but it was worth it.

--
Bobby G.





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