Desk Swag

I've been working as an engineer (E.I./E.I.T. really) for a few years now and I've picked up little promo items, samples, and random detritus on my desk.

These are samples of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE). I was evaluating different companies' offering to find the best one. UHMWPE is basically Teflon, but a lot tougher and can stand up to the rigors of a heavy-industry environment.

From left to right, there is a tricone bit, a sample of an epoxy-lined heat exchanger tube, and 2 vendor sample bolts from a lunch and learn.

The tricone bit is just a baby one off a 3" water well. The ones that they use to drill modern wells are the size of garbage can or larger, but the operating principal is the same. The drill pipe is rotated by a big motor at the top and all the bit has to do is break up the rock into small pieces that the drill mud can carry away.

The next one is a sample of a heat exchanger tube. We wanted a heat exchanger that could handle corrosive produced water, but we needed immediate delivery. Carbon steel is very easy to fabricate, but is highly susceptible to rust. We used a vendor's epoxy coating to protect the tubes for a sacrificial bundle while a bigger, titanium bundle was fabricated. The epoxy lining vendor has paint lances that go inside the tubes after the heat exchanger is fabricated and internally line the heat exchanger.

The bolts are from a lunch and learn (vendor comes in and gives a 1 hour lecture that qualifies for Professional Development Hours [PDH's]). The vendor came in and described various types of anchor bolts and gave a detailed failure analysis of the bolts for the Big Dig in Boston. Cerasoli marked those bolts for failure long before they actually gave way.