If you are a customer looking for
(previously-arranged) manuals or graphics to download, click on the
"Customer's Pages" link. Note that you will need a password to
access your page.
Since 1983, I've been preparing Operation and Maintenance
manuals for custom machinery manufacturers in the Twin Cities area. This
site has descriptions of the various services I have performed.
The machines have had interesting variations in product
transport: flat conveyors, cleated conveyors (both continuous and indexing),
free-floating pallets on flat conveyors (gripped and held at various
manufacturing stations), "walking beam" transports, rotary turrets, and
screw drives (sometimes with variable pitch to match speeds between
different substations). And, of course, manual transport for testing and lab
work. (Using Whyte nomenclature, this last would be an "0-5-0." If you
understood that, you must be an ferroequinologist*.)
Sample manuals are a problem, because most (if not all) of these machines are proprietary. (You wouldn't want yours presented as a sample!)
Here are a couple of older machine manuals from defunct companies that I've
modified to disguise both the manufacturer and their customer:
Since they're older machines, the design of the manuals is somewhat
dated, too, of course. (A manual's design is almost always determined by the
customer, and usually reflects their previously-released manuals.)
Services:
Operations and Maintenance
manuals: For the most part, the manuals I've prepared have been for custom packaging
machinery and for pharmaceutical filling lines. Other projects
have been manuals for a surgical gown manufacturing machine, oil filter
assemblers, food packagers and various testing machinery, including
(blush) a machine that squeezed douche bags to make sure they didn't
leak.
Computer software and hardware
manuals: Past customers include Springboard Software, DigiBoard
/ Digi International and Chameleon Management Solutions, Inc.
Engineering Manuals
and In-House Documents: (Company policies, standards,
etc.) My most recent effort along this line is an intranet web version
of a company engineering standards manual. Very convenient! And no more
having to update every engineer's copy...
Archiving:
(Organizing, 35mm negative scanning / photo scanning, CD-ROM burning,
etc.) Most of this has been for my own business, but the techniques and
tricks I've picked up could be useful for yours. I've recently
been scanning in 20-year-old manuals, as storage is getting to be a
problem. I scan them for good text reproduction, then digitally
paste in the original photos (assuming I can still find them!) and
output the whole thing as a print-quality PDF file. This way I can still
supply a manual when somebody loses theirs, but don't have to store the
paper manual any more. My very first original manuals were
composed on a Commodore PET or 64, so there's no electronic text. With
later ones, I'm converting them to the most recent software I have. This
is something that should be done by all of us periodically.
Translation translations: For
multinational corporations selling in the USA, I can take a quick look
at your in-house translation and fix the terminology and idioms that
drive consumers here crazy, and that make your company not look as good
as it should.
PowerPoint to DVD: I learned how to
do this for a customer who couldn't count on being able to use a
projector at a customer's site, but could always rely on a DVD player.
You lose some clarity (due to the DVD's lower resolution), but end up
with a more universally playable presentation.
This is probably a
dead issue now.
VHS to DVD: Many of my customers have
VHS tapes of their products that take up more space than DVDs. The
magnetic oxide on those tapes deteriorates with time, too. I can also
supply MPEG, DIVX, or smaller web-compatible files.
This is also probably a dead issue now.
"Make it look better": One of my
customers was about to send out a sales email (Adobe Acrobat .pdf format)
with some diagrams created in Paintbrush (ugh!). Please let me
spend an hour on it so it doesn't look so bad! I can also extract text
and graphics from PDF files and modify them for your applications.
Web Sites: Nah,
I'm out of the loop now. Like you hadn't already guessed.
Brochures / newsletters /
"Promo": Again, most of these have been related to music.
The samples I had here were lamentably ancient (from the last century,
no less) so I deleted them.
Visual Basic Custom Programming:
Pity, but it's a dying issue. I still write monstrously useful
database front ends for myself, though.
Old CorelDRAW Conversions: I've kept
an "ancient" 286 PC with CorelDRAW 1.1 on it, so I can read your files
from WAY back then and convert them to a modern format for you. (The
fonts may suffer if you used unusual WFN fonts.) I also have CorelDRAW 3
on another older machine to read CorelDRAW 1.2 -- 3.0 files, so they can
be saved in a format readable by X4 and above. This is probably a
dead issue now.
History of Bruce Jaeger Technical Services
Bruce Jaeger Technical Services is a one-man company--I picked that
rather long name when I had to get a sales tax number. (If you put your
full name in a company title, you don't have to file d.b.a. papers.) It also helps keep me
from being confused with dozens of other businesses like Bruce Jaeger Aroma Therapy for
Horses, Bruce Jaeger Holistic Drain Cleaning, or Bruce Jaeger Silicone Thigh Implant
Company.
After working in the retail music world (yech!) and as a freelance
magazine writer (starve!), I got started in the technical writing business in 1983 when an
engineer at TL Systems Corporation threw up his hands and refused to write any more
machinery manuals. (A high-school buddy worked there, and he knew that I had a journalism degree
and some mechanical ability because of my sports car autocross and rally
days.)
Almost every new customersince then has come about because an
engineer moved to another employer, was told to write the manual about his machine, threw
up his hands and said "Not me! But I know somebody who CAN!" What's hard to
believe is that I actually enjoy doing it.
My first manuals were written on a Commodore PET (I missed using a
typewriter for them by just a year) and printed on either a dot-matrix printer or a Juki
daisywheel. I processed and screened my own B&W photos for the press runs of up to 15
manuals. Now, of course, it's digital photography and color lasers. (For archival
purposes, I'm slowly scanning in all of my old B&W 35mm negatives.
There are still a LOT left!)
Customers: (In no particular
order. Not all are current customers. Not all are still in business. Honest, it wasn't my
fault!)
TL Systems Corporation (now Bosch Packaging Technology, NA)
Springboard Software (R.I.P.)
DigiBoard (now Digi International, Inc.)
Massman Engineering LLC.
Midmac Systems Inc. (R.I.P.)
Classic Manufacturing Inc.
Pinnacle Feeding Systems Inc.
Despatch Industries
Great Northern Antiques
LasX Industries Inc.
Tech Logic Corporation
Minnesota Transportation Museum (pro bono--draft manual for the Minnehaha
steamboat)
Dimension Industries, Inc.
International Wolf Center
Home & Hobby Software (R.I.P.)
Lyons Safety
Intelligent Automated Machines, Inc.
Community Literacy Collaborative
Chameleon Management Solutions, Inc. (R.I.P.)
Minnesota Literacy Council (pro bono)
Miram International, Inc. (R.I.P.)
Paragon Machinery Corporation. (R.I.P.)
Pharmaceutical Feeding Corporation (R.I.P.)
Scherping Systems
Straub Design Company
TL Feeding Systems (R.I.P.)
Tricord Systems, Inc.
ViatiCare Financial Services, LLC
Automation Engineering (R.I.P.)
Voyager Mindtools, Inc. (R.I.P.)
Magid Glove and Safety
Cactus Software & Communications, Inc.
Applied Automation Inc. (R.I.P.)
American Mfg Company
Personal
I play with trains, computers, and musical instruments. The "Bruce's
Scrapbook" page will tell you more than you can possibly want to know.
