Founder's Musings: "All About Measurement"
So, what exactly is measurement or testing?
To put it in more technical terms, it's about quantifying and evaluating various physical phenomena. Today, simply saying "It's cold" isn't a measurement. You have to convert it into a number, like "It's 15 degrees, so it's cold," to make it a measurement.
However, while measuring instruments easily display values as numbers, it is difficult to determine whether those numbers truly represent the data we need. Let's start by considering a popular example: temperature measurement. Even within the same room, the temperature varies depending on the measurement location. Therefore, even in a calm laboratory, it becomes difficult to determine what temperature should be considered the room temperature.
Furthermore, when conducting engine experiments in this environment, the engine generates heat and consumes a large amount of air, causing outside air of different temperatures to intrude. This affects engine performance, and the intake air temperature changes randomly, making temperature measurement impossible, ultimately resulting in a situation where engine analysis becomes impossible.
When Professor Shuhei Izumi, who had moved from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to Nagasaki University, established the Thermal Fluid Research Laboratory at the university, he set up a massive laboratory where the cooling water, fuel oil, and intake air temperature were all controlled to within 0.5°C, and the intake pressure to within 5 mm of the water column. At first, I wondered why such equipment was necessary, but to accurately understand the actual state of combustion and engine performance, it is necessary to thoroughly control the initial conditions and supply them from a huge air chamber, fuel oil tank, and cooling water tank. At that time, he also ordered our company to provide engine and dynamometer experimental equipment centered around a digital torque meter, as well as an acoustic intensity meter and acoustic analysis equipment.
Professor Izumi developed a combustion analysis device that can accurately draw pressure charts, which can be considered the origin of combustion analysis, by forcibly controlling these temperatures, thereby contributing to an understanding of the actual state of combustion. In addition, he made it possible to simultaneously measure and analyze vibration and noise at 8 points online, enabling the analysis of changes in fuel quality, intake air temperature, and coolant temperature without using an anechoic chamber, a world first.
By the way, our Utsunomiya factory has a temperature-controlled factory for precision machining. This happened quite a while ago, but we suffered from what's called "Monday sickness," where we produced a lot of defective products on Mondays and Tuesdays. When we investigated the cause, it seemed that the temperature controller in the temperature-controlled room had been turned off on Saturday and Sunday. This is the problem. The air temperature inside the temperature-controlled room will probably stabilize after a few tens of minutes. However, the temperature of the workpieces and machine tools inside the factory will take at least several days to stabilize. Precision machining cannot be done with an unstable temperature. That's what manifested as defective products. No matter how much we try to save electricity, we can't turn off the power to the temperature control.
I've had a bitter experience myself. I needed the torsion bar diagram and the actual shear modulus temperature function for the torsion bar material used in torque meters, and I was measuring it in a constant temperature room. However, it just wouldn't follow the expected straight line. The conclusion was that I couldn't wait long enough for the material's temperature to stabilize. In other words, I had to take about a full day to measure a single point before it started to follow the curve.
Therefore, if a torque meter requires such precision that the temperature coefficient of the material becomes a problem, the only option is to choose a material whose shear modulus does not change with temperature. This is because it is impossible to keep the temperature of the torsion bar constant. Even in temperature-controlled environments, it's like this. This illustrates how difficult it is to estimate the temperature of materials in a normal room.
As you can see from the above examples of temperature measurement, even with improved thermometer accuracy, it is still difficult to determine the actual temperature.
I consider myself more of a craftsman than an engineer. Not all of my knowledge as a craftsman comes from reading books or being taught by seniors. Most of it is acquired by observing others, learning from them, gaining experience, and thoroughly thinking things through.
Recently, television programs have frequently featured stories about families with a history of being designated Living National Treasures or recipients of awards for outstanding technical achievements. These stories inevitably include anecdotes about their fathers, who were also their mentors. The stories often revolve around how their fathers never taught them anything, or how, when they brought their work to them for critique, their fathers silently trampled on it. Ultimately, the sons learned by observing their fathers, observing their methods, and adding their own ingenuity and creativity. However, it wasn't through rote instruction; this self-directed learning and ingenuity is what generates their next original creations, pioneers new technologies, and becomes the driving force to surpass their fathers and mentors.
On the other hand, my father, having learned and perfected the art by stealing, found it difficult to develop it into a systematic theory on his own, so perhaps, in truth, he couldn't teach it to others.
I started with electron tube counters after the war and supplied what we now call digital instruments to the machinery industry. At that time, Nissan presented me with a paper from the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers by Professor Daito, who was then a professor at Osaka City University, and asked me to commercialize this combustion analyzer. After reading that excellent paper, I immediately went to Osaka to get permission to manufacture it. That was my first meeting with Professor Daito. At that time, I also explained the contents of Ono Sokki 's products, and in particular the torque meter that I had just started researching, and mentioned that I was having trouble theoretically justifying it because the main factors kept appearing in the numerator and denominator and then canceling each other out.
Then, after some time had passed, he suddenly came to Ono Sokki in Tokyo and proposed that he finish writing a paper on torque meters and present it at the SAE General Assembly in Detroit. I was surprised, but together with the professor, we stayed at Ono Sokki resort in Utsunomiya for several days, and finally we were able to complete the theoretical framework and the paper.
I remember being simply amazed, thinking, "So this is how theory is constructed."
Afterwards, Professor Daito and I received notification from the SAE that our paper had been accepted, and at the end of 1964, with the maximum amount of money we could take out of the country at the time (500 dollars), we embarked on a two-month trip around Europe and America. Even though the exchange rate was 360 yen to the dollar, traveling for two months on 500 dollars was a perfect example of a budget trip where we couldn't afford to eat or drink anything with our own money, but we were able to successfully publish our paper.
This torque meter has developed into my life's work, and I have received a degree from Kyoto University, the Purple Ribbon Medal, and numerous other awards. This is entirely thanks to my professor, who also guided me from being a craftsman to a skilled engineer.