drop out vowels to avoid spelling naughty words  or use dashes.
cc

> On Jun 25, 2008, at 3:24 AM, Mohit Mahajan (Lists) wrote:
>
>> How many instruments do you manufacture ?
> Actually the flavours are a lot. For example, we have a dry bath  
> heater
> that controls the temperature of a block of aluminium. This block of
> aluminium has holes to accommodate various sizes of glass/plastic  
> tubes.
> It can be 24 holes of 10mm tubes, 30 holes of 8mm tubes, 18 holes of
> 12mm tubes. Then, it could be a resistive heater heating alone  
> model or
> a peltier based heating+cooling model. So the permutations/ 
> combinations
> are a lot.
>
>> Do you want the serial number to be human decodable
>> or will a simple computer application do ?
> Human decodable preferably.
>
>
> Thanks for your suggestion with the example. It'll still need a
> calculator to work out. However, something like what you wrote but  
> base
> 50 would be easy. Let the "a-z" be "a-n".
>
> Thanks,
> Mohit.
>
> Cedric Chang wrote:
>> How many instruments do you manufacture ?  Do you want the serial
>> number to be human decodable or will a simple computer application  
>> do ?
>> I am going to recommend that you use A-Z  and a-z and 0-9 for your
>> serial number.  This gives you a base 62 digit.  Be sure to use a
>> type style that differentiates between O ( oh ) and 0 (zero ).  A
>> slashed zero should work.  Also make sure upper and lower case look
>> very different.  A slashed Z would help as well.  You could order
>> them 0-9, A-Z and a-z.  ( or whatever )
>>
>> One digit will give you the years 2008-2069 which should be pretty  
>> good.
>> One digit should give the week of the year.
>> One digit would give you 62 model numbers.  Two digits would give
>> you  3,844 model numbers.
>> 4 digits for the serial number will give you 14 million discrete
>> serial numbers per model.
>> ( 3 digits gives 238K discrete numbers )
>>
>> So a serial number like Fa05-34AB   would translate to
>> --year = 2008+15 = 2023
>> --week = a [base 62] = decimal 37
>> --model number is 05 [base 62] = model #5 ( decimal)
>> --34AB [base 62] = 3*(62**4) + 4*(62**3) + 10*(62**2) + 11*(62)    
>> <---
>> decimal
>>
>> cc
>>
>>
>> On Jun 24, 2008, at 9:37 PM, Mohit Mahajan (Lists) wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> We manufacture a lot of different kinds of instruments (but each in
>> small quantities). Our serial numbering scheme so far is pretty  
>> basic:
>> ABCD-EFGH. AB tells us the week and CD the last two digits of the  
>> year.
>> EFGH starts at 0000 every year in January, and increases count  
>> with each
>> instrument manufactured. It gives no indication which model or  
>> what was
>> manufactured. This info would be given by a spreadsheet where the
>> description of the instrument is entered next to the serial  
>> number. So
>> we'd have to look up the serial number in this sheet to know what
>> instrument we're talking about.
>>
>> I'd like suggestions for a serial number scheme that could  
>> indicate the
>> instrument model/type, date of manufacture (for warranty  
>> purposes). And
>> it shouldn't be too long, about 8-10 characters.
>>
>> It would be great to know what schemes members here or their  
>> companies
>> use to number their products.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mohit Mahajan.
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