LoL, I kill me! Working on a Bomag BW172 padfoot vibratory roller. The hyd motor for the vibrator crapped out, $1,600.00 from Bomag. The motor is Kracht brand, made in Germany. Got on internet, found U.S. distributor in NYC, called them this morning, gave him the long part # on the motor tag over the phone. There was one letter is the series of numbers/letters, a "B", that he said was wrong, they didn't make one with a B in that postition of the series, check it again. I checked again, meanwhile, he called Germany, they said the same thing, I must be reading it wrong. Now this is kinda holding up the process of finding a motor. Ok, fine, I'll figure out something. Got digital camera, but even in Macro mode couldn't get clear enough close pics of numbers on tag to see them in a pic. Then I gets this bright idea, never thought of this one before, but, what the heck, try it. Sure enough, downloaded pic to computer, nice clear/readable numbers. LoL! Emailed it to NY, he saw it, he forwarded it to Germany, they contacted him back and said "well, it appears we made a mistake on our end when we stamped the tag...but we can tell the motor should have been a "A" number. Got the motor ordered, delivered to NYC from Germany $940.00, another $35 to ship to me from NYC. :drinkup Ok, the pic trick, I used a magnifying glass in front of the camera! Ha, sometimes even a camera needs "a pair of glasses"! :tong. May not be clear in this small pic, but a full size pic on the computer is well legible. Thought someone else out there might make use of this trick one day.
Great tip, I'll have to remember that and another use for my pocket magnifier maybe if it is big enough.
good job boss, lol
atco, you are a freaking genius!
Naaaa, just figured the camera needed glasses...just like me! :tong
clever!
I love those conversations, "well, it's and S or a 5". " Which is it?"......."Which one will make you give me a part?"
I have a finger print card reader lens and mugshot adapters.... that work well.... and i have used the magnifier also..... stuff gets invented when the right tool isn't available....or you don't have it available Atco gets the GOLDEN JERRY CAN AWARD ....
LoL...desperation begats improvisation!
A good quality high megapixel camera will in effect do the same ( set to high quallity ) and a good image viewer ( like irfanview, you can enhance colors and shades if need be very easily for a better image ) along with a decent pc and monitor. Lighting conditions can play a factor flash on or flash off can make a dramatic differance. I wouldn't use the zoom either unless absolutely had to and the camera was resting on something. While zoomed camera is very sensative to motion and likely to blur. I have pics of my serial #'s on the truck incase I'm calling for parts on a rainy day and they want some obscure secondary number that I don't have writen down. Much easier to zoom in a little for reading off the pc as well. My pc goes with me every time I leave the house so if I drop by the parts house I have these things available no matter what truck I'm in .
Some of the Nikon Coolpix cameras have incredible macro abililties.Find a 950 or 990 or even the SQ model and you will not need a magnifying glass.That was a great idea however .Ron G
Nice bit of detective work Ace! We have an '87 BW142D. Same thing, the serial number is one digit off so it doesn't come up in their system. Have to substitute a number to get the system to pull up a machine. What distributor did you find?
Since we're constantly having to take good pictures of small parts ( to justify to our customers why we are replacing them, or to justify sending parts back to vendors that deem them good ) we've gotten pretty good at taking close up pictures and getting good results with $100 cameras. Two big tips i always stress are: Don't get too close! - Most digital cameras made within the last several years have enough mega-pixels to where you can zoom into them and not notice any deterioration in quality. From my experience, most inexpensive cameras don't focus well on anything closer than 8-12 inches. I took a picture of a tag this morning... The first picture is the original photo i took (note the distance). The second picture is the same picture, only zoomed into (cropped) using a photo editing software. Get enough light - One of the problems cheap cameras have is focusing on something that doesn't have enough light. The picture i took of the gear below, was taken in a fairly dark room, but i shined a flashlight on the section of the gear i wanted to focus on. The example picture has been cropped so you guys can see the detail i was able to get. For reference, the height of that tooth is about 3/4" tall. Hope this helps some of you! If you don't have image editing software, I'd recommend downloading the free image editor i use: http://www.paint.net
Thanks AmeriIndependent. Maybe my camera is getting old. I tried backing off and zooming in, results were no better in this case. It's a very small tag with tiny characters on it. I had to use the mag glass just to read the characters. Also, these aren't stamped numbers like shown on your Cat tag pic, they're those etched numbers, and not etched real cleanly. There was a D that you had to look at real close to determine whether it was a D or a 0. I needed to get this motor ordered, thankfully, the mag glass did the trick. :yup Hey Rob, I contacted the Kracht Corp distributor in New York. His name was Hieko Zahn. The motor has to come from Germany, 2 to 3 weeks delivery, but for 600 bucks less than from Bomag, the think can sit on the yard and rest for now. :tong KRACHT CORP. 100 Church Street, 8th floor New York NY 10007 646 845 7378 [email protected]