[Jukebox-list] A better understanding

[Ron Rich]

Wes,
  I's shamed of you--"stirin the pot" again. The "why" in jukebox (and almost all other manufactured things), is COST. What happens, in my humble opinion, is following things--'Marketing" dictates what it will/should do, and fit (cabinet style/size), engineers design it, and the "production people" are charged with the cost of manufacturing it--It then becomes a "game"-engineering says to do it thisaway, marketing says do it for this cost, and production says that is impossible--OK, says engineering, if you "cut this" it will be less expensive--production says, you can also save time ($$$) by doing this--marketing says "will it still work?" and everyone agrees that it will "still work"--then, if the company has a "QC" dept--all hell brakes loose--and "stuff" is put back in because, after all, if the "QC" dept engineers do not find anything to "fix", why do we need that dept??--And then again, if the engineering dept can't come up with a "re-designed" widget, why do we need
 an engineering dept.?? --Also, we don't want to make it "last forever", 'cause, we need future sales---
  ( I have heard RUMORS that the 3400 mech was much less expensive to produce as compared to the 3300. Also have heard that, other then the motors, it was made in Germany, and assembled here--don't know if true or not)
  Ron Rich

Wesley Dean <wesleydean at cox.net> wrote:
  
I have taken the liberty to stray today. 
I have always believed that to better understand the workings of any device is to delve into the motives of the designer. Start by asking yourself WHY? 
For instance why did Wurlitzer abandon a perfectly reliable mechanism to use one that was very hard for servicemen to understand. If you examine the last good mechanism on the 3300 series, you will see that the mechanism could not be placed any lower in the cabinet when the trend was to produce low profile cabinets. 
The obvious answer was to use a different mechanism. They opted to use a design that the German Wurlitzer people had been using for some years. In their efforts to correct this disaster, they made small changes each year until they gave up and stopped trying. 
The German technology was too alien for the American servicemen. Other American juke manufacturers used designs that were easily adapted to the new trend. That may be why all of them survived longer than Wurlitzer. 
One problem with most mechanical devices is inertia. Once anything is rotating and is required to stop precisely and not randomly requires some method of braking. With AC motors either a kick-out armature or some kind of stop is used. What is rarely used on AC devices are dynamic brakes, while most everybody uses on DC motors. I have often wondered about this. Now the automotive engineers are using this principle in hybrid designs. The inertia of a vehicle of this type is directed back into the energy storage devices. 
I am trying to start some controversy among you people. Wes

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