IT’S SHOW TIME : Those Wild and Crazy Engineers Are Back

James Georgeson came to see the plastic injection mold exhibit. Donald Bickler eyed the dry lubricants display. And Donald Howlett had a hankering for the ASF Model 7012 oil-less vacuum pump.

Pocket protector alert! Those wild and crazy design engineers are back in town holding their annual three-day trade show at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

More than 3,000 researchers, who develop most anything from clothespins to F-15s for private industry and the government, are expected to browse past 250 exhibit booths and a series of 17 high-tech conference sessions before the Design/West show concludes this afternoon.

The exhibition serves as a shopping mall for engineers, introducing them to state-of-the-art gizmos they can employ to undertake their often-esoteric tasks. There were designer urethanes, elastomeric mounts and threaded fasteners, for those who knew what they were, on display Wednesday morning.

So were several nifty applications of new technology, including a life-sized, unicycle-riding robot named Wendell and the Shedda Model L 13 Golf Caddy.

The latter device, which retails for $2,350, is a self-propelled caddy that employs a radio guidance system to follow anywhere from two to eight feet behind a golfer. The Shedda (“shadow” in Scottish) carries two golf bags but has no seat.

Asked what good a golf cart is without a seat, the automated caddy’s exhibitor, Design News editor Robert N. Boggs, explained: “Golf is a walking sport--this way you can walk a full course without lugging your clubs. And it doesn’t make nasty comments about your swing.”

A third exhibit, a parachute designed for executive airplanes--rather than their passengers--never made it to the Convention Center. Show sponsors blamed shipping hassles, not design problems, for the mix-up.

The design engineers’ confab might not rival a Shriners’ convention for wild fun. Even Charlie Howard, who staffed the American Society of Mechanical Engineers booth, acknowledged that “most people think of engineers as nerds--and they are not far off.”

Technical Tasks

Yet even the most technical of tasks has practical applications, exhibit-goers declared.

Howlett, for example, designs lab equipment for AIDS testing. The Reno researcher said he attended because he needed a noise-free vacuum pump, “and you can’t find that out over the telephone.”

Bickler, a Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, was interested in dry lubricants for an out-of-this-world purpose.

“We’re looking for bearings that would work on a vehicle we plan to send to Mars,” he said.

Since the show began a decade ago, its emphasis has leaned more and more toward computer-aided design. On Wednesday, seven desktop computer firms hawked units that employ three-dimensional color graphics to help designers develop products ranging from chairs to boats to airplanes.

“I tell people that slide rules are 19th-Century tools,” asserted Jim Law, an Apple Computer salesman from Newport Beach.

Pen Guards

The innovation also means that another engineer’s trademark--the pocket protector--may be fading into oblivion. Only a handful of convention-goers wore the familiar plastic pen guards.

Howard speculated that they may be disappearing because “computers have preempted a lot of the pencil work--we’re moving into paperless engineering.”

Yet there will always be holdouts, such as Ellis Pilgrim of Santa Barbara, who sported a white plastic protector.

“I still use a pencil because a computer is hard to carry,” he explained.