On Aug 21, 1:54 am, "Lew Hodgett" wrote:
wrote:
"We found the manufacturer's instructions to be difficult to
understand, but a call to tech support helped us sort things out".

As a field sales guy, my comment to the product engineer was always
the same when a new product was to be introduced and an O&M manual
needed to be written.

The conversation would go something like this:

Me: Are you either married or have a S/O?

P/E: Yes.

Me: Are they technically trained?

P/E: No.

Me: Good.

When you are finished writing the manual. give it to your wife and/or
S/O and have them read it.

If they can understand it, you have written a good manual.

If not, you have work to do.

All of which begs the question, What ever happened to tech manual
writers, much less tech manuals?

Lew

Again, I've written manuals, and I think they were pretty well done.
The problem is, most distributors do NOT want to spend the price even
for printing a new manual, never mind photographing and writing it.
When they do pay, the amount is so small the time put into manual
writing has to severely limited. Not only do most distributors also
have their own ideas of what a manual should like like, the writer/
photographer runs into a lot of "givens," l'il items that the
distributor thinks MUST be done a certain way. It takes more than a
week to write a good manual, and there's a lot of different kinds of
work involved, from studio photography of the tool and its parts to
setting the tool up, running it, adjusting it, repairing it (or
simulating repairs) that may double that time, IF a complete manual is
done. Most are incomplete, covering assembly, adjustment and operation
and can be done in about a week. But that still requires amortization
of tools, photography gear, shop, etc., being included in the fee.
I've got relatively low end DSLRs ($1,000 each) and relatively cheap
($400 each) studio flash units, but outfitting all that for use has
cost me well over $15,000 in the past three years. Basically, I have
to get around $2,000 per *incomplete* style manual to make it worth my
while...that's for a stationary tool, such as a bandsaw. Obviously,
it's faster and cheaper to do such a manual for a drill, cordless or
corded, or a circular saw or similar small tool.

The stationary tools need a lot of heavy lifting, too, something I am
beginning to avoid. At this moment, my right knee is panting,
"Oxycodone, oxycodone, oxycodone" while I try to feed it Tylenol
instead. Age and battering take their toll, and the thought of setting
up and adjusting 24", or even 18" bandsaws, is not one I really want
to entertain too often.

If you can show distributors where a better, more comprehensive and
understandable manual might help him grind the faces of the
competition, he might jump for it. But that's an iffy proposition. Do
any of us buy tools because a manual is great or because the tool is
great? Some of the worst manuals I've ever seen came with someof the
best tools--Laguna's 18" bandsaw was an example. The manual was close
to being an atrocity, aimed at serving for five different saws, some
from of a totally different set up, which was never explained.