Environment is one of the toughest factors to influence. Often times customer will have ultimate control over exposure of a heater to contamination, but will not take the steps necessary to achieve full life expectation of the heater. The solution could be something as simple as placing a guard or barrier to stop oil from dripping on the terminals. Or it could take place in the design of a machine, as in where the leads are anchored to eliminate shock from movement cycling.

A distributor salesman usually gets the problem after it has manifested itself as heater failure. Dalton Electric takes the approach that it is incumbent on us to accommodate an application and modify the heater to work with the givens of an application. We rely closely on you to secure a return of the damaged heater and to advise us on the environmental conditions causing the failure.
	Damage from environmental contaminants.

If the solution to the problem can be affected by a customer change in design, that is an easy and effective fix. But causing a customer to change a routine can often be the hardest, even when they realize that it is the cause of the problem.

That is when we step in with suggestions for changes to the heater.

Possible solutions could be contaminate barriers, including RTV or ceramic potting or the addition of a header or sleeving. For failure due to flexing, we can increase the size of the lead wire, add a clip support or change the terminal design. Problems outside the bore may be addressed by increasing the length of the heater with the addition of an extra cold terminal end. But, again, we rely on you to be a big part of the solution.

Friday Funnies

A thief in Paris planned an elaborate scheme to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas. When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, "Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the painting...I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh."

(And you thought I didn't have De Gaulle to print this one in the TGID Newsletter.)
Well, I figured I had nothing Toulouse.