Cinelli fully-sloping crowns- Mr. Brandt?

[Jobst Brandt]

Ken Harper writes:

> So, the real question is, from my point of view, has your engineering knowledge been applied in a
> methodical way to reach the 5,000 mile number, or was that a dislike of the design coupled with a
> guess? Which is fine, too; I've certainly got my guesses on things as well.

> But a statement like "5000 mile life duration" is going to suggest to me, and the OP, at least,
> that this is not a particularly good bike to ride, at least not often.

> Is the following a valid conclusion from your statement: if I have a frame with at least 5,000
> miles on it, and if it has such a crown, then I've already exceeded the crown's life duration, and
> I just might reasonably expect a failure at any point now?

I think you are reading your own scenario into my response of 5000 miles. That is how long the two
forks with the Cinelli crown that failed lasted. I had others that lasted longer but I have no way
of estimating how much because in those days we had no Cyclometers and I don't remember how long I
kept the bicycles. I had a number of Cinellis before getting frames from local builders.

The 5000 mile figure applies to the two failures. As I said, I don't have statistics to say more
about durability but the two design flaws, weight and stress concentration are hard facts.

Jobst Brandt [email protected] Palo Alto CA

 

[Gary Young]

[email protected] wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Gary Young writes:
>
> > I don't think personal injury lawyers pay much attention to bicycles. Sure, there are some
> > lawyers who advertise in the back of Velo news, etc., but they're probably suing drivers in most
> > instances. If lawyers were constantly breathing down the necks of the bicycle industry, do you
> > think we would be seeing ever lighter components, including things like titanium pedal spindles
> > that we know break in fair numbers? How many decades did Campagnolo produce cranks that were
> > prone to breaking? How many boutique companies come and go, putting ill-thought-out products on
> > the market and then disappearing from view in a few summers?
>
> I think you hypothesize about law suits of which you are apparently unaware. I have testified as
> an expert witness in defense of the bicycle industry against many weird claims. In most of these
> there have been other 'expert' witnesses who will testify to anything a plaintiff claims. I have
> testified against such experts in most cases of which none had any merit. These cases are
> generally taken under contingency and after I have shown that the claims are unsupportable, cases
> are generally settled, everyone getting a little payoff including the plaintiff (liar) and the
> game starts over. In contrast, most Japanese firms demand a judgment even if the legal fees are
> greater, in the interest of setting precedence. I favor that approach.
>
> Jobst Brandt [email protected] Palo Alto CA

You're absolutely right that I'm hypothesizing, in part because there is so little law related to
bicycles that gets reported in the usual reference sources that lawyers use. Very few of these cases
get to the appellate stage (which is where opinions are written), perhaps because most of them
settle. Do you know if anyone has tried to compile a comprehensive list of bicycle-related lawsuits?

I don't doubt that there are many frivolous lawsuits against bicycle manufacturers. But I
suspect (or hypothesize) that most of those lawsuits are rather small-scale from the point of
view of personal injury lawyers (by which I mean thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of
dollars in damages, instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars). Those
kind of recoveries are unlikely, I think, to attract the kind of lawyers who go after
industry-wide problems.

What I'm trying to understand is this: Given all of the frivolous lawsuits that you've seen, why do
you think lawyers aren't going after manufacturers for unsafe colored tires, Cinelli-style forks,
and other products that you believe are unsafe? Do plaintiffs' lawyers ever contact you about those
products? Is it merely a matter of happenstance -- no one has been seriously injured by those
products or no one bothered to trace an injury back to those products? The whole trend of the
industry seems to be in the direction of lighter and lighter products that are probably more prone
to failure. In my mind, it's difficult to reconcile that with the idea that lawyers are swarming
over the bicycle industry. (It may seem like a swarm in relative terms, but perhaps not in
comparison with the attention directed at other industries.)

Colored tires make a good test case. They haven't appeared on cars because they're unsafe. But they
have appeared on bicycles. Why? I'm suggesting that part of the reason may be that car manufacturers
are more fearful of the tort system than bicycle manufacturers. I know that can't be the entire
answer, because (to take just one example) car makers continue to produce SUVs in huge numbers
despite safety concerns. In that case, car makers probably decided that their big profit margins on
SUVs made the inevitable lawsuits just an acceptable cost of doing business.

Another point I wanted to make is that it's seems unlikely to me that the frivolous lawsuits you see
lead to changes in bicycle design. After all, how can you possibly make a product that is failsafe
against litigious idiots? I suspect (but don't know) that the biggest impact these frivolous suits
have is on insurance premiums. If they really started to get in the way of how you can design a
bicycle, manufacturers would probably start to appeal more often. (On the other hand, that may be
why they settle -- a settlement can be kept under wraps for the most part, thus putting copycat
lawyers off the scent.)

Another question I have: Why don't we see class action consumer fraud cases against bike
manufacturers? After all, many of them make claims that are fairly easily quantified -- faster, more
aerodynamic, etc., better corning and traction -- and thus fairly easily disproved. I suspect the
reason is that the pickings are too thin in the bicycle industry for the type of lawyers who do
those kinds of cases.

 

[Richard Sachs]

Ken Harper writes: (snipped...) In deference to Richard, I will duly note that these are
Cinelli-style crowns. (And I know that Richard has expressed some fondness for these types of
crowns in the past. Richard: did you find there to be an unacceptable failure rate, or did your
view of aesthetic issues change, or did something else cause you to adopt your now well-recognized
own design?)

I never liked these crowns. I think they're cool, but not for me. Here's a story I wrote about the
'state of things' using fork crowns as a metaphor. It was penned 10+ years ago.
http://www.richardsachs.com/articles/rsachscrown.html

Thanks. e-RICHIE

 

[Scoochiro]

"Jay Beattie" <[email protected]> wrote in message >
> Actually, PI lawyers love a good bicycle-related products liability law suit. They do not present
> the same problems as an auto versus bicycle case (drivers are jurors) and are usually subject to
> much higher insurance limits. The "problem" is that bicycles and components do not often break in
> a way that causes serious injury. I have broken four or five cranks, and never so much as fell off
> my bike or smashed my privates.
> >
> This would be an easy strict liability case against Cinelli or the American distributor. One
> expert, maybe two, to testify that the internal lug creates a stress-riser which results in the
> early failure of the fork. Assuming that there is a pattern of failures, go for punitive damages.
> Put those Italians out of business ladies and gentlemen. Remember Mussolini? Remeber the Fiat? I
> am outraged!
>

I think that Jay has hit the nail pretty well, and Jobst's subsequent post really drives it home.

The fact is that Jobst would be one heck of a good expert witness to testify in a products liability
case about the design defects of the crown. And if these things fail with any regularity at or about
5000 miles, then he would surely have a chance to do just that. (And, I'll bet he gets $300 an hour
or more to do such work.)

But, this has apparently never occurred. Surely, a major system component, with a potential to cause
serious consequences, would be ripe for such a suit. Sure, you would still have to prove some kind
of damages, and you would have to establish a causal connection between the crown and the injury,
but plaintiff's lawyers are good at precisely those kinds of things.

If, indeed, a potential suit existed, plaintiff's lawyers would be lining up to finance a bloody
class action to investigate such a thing. They'd name everyone who ever even saw a fully sloping
fork crown, serve a bunch of subpoenas, and extract whatever form of compensation they could. It
wouldn't be too hard, since a fork crown that fails with any kind of regularity at 5,000 miles could
quite easily be the basis of a product liability action for a design defect, at least in my state of
Washington.

Hell, I'd take that case, if there weren't something wrong with it.

And Jobst would be happy to help.

But, again, it hasn't happened, apparently, at least not to Jobst's knowledge.

Thus, this seems to be a case where the engineering appeal of the crown is much less than the
aesthetic appeal, but where not much real world, statistically valid, evidence of a 5,000 mile
useful safe life exists.

Which is exactly what I thought.

(Also, it seems that Jobst may have clarified his position on the 5,000 mile claim just a bit, and I
certainly don't want to criticize him for something he didn't say.)

I think it bears pointing out, though, that the original question pertained to a fairly new Mercian.

The owner ought to know that he should feel free to ride the hell out of it, rather than be
scared to death of the fork crown. To suggest otherwise is wrong (again, not that Jobst
necessarily said that!).

Ken Harper

 

[Jobst Brandt]

Gary Young writes:

> What I'm trying to understand is this: Given all of the frivolous lawsuits that you've seen, why
> do you think lawyers aren't going after manufacturers for unsafe colored tires, Cinelli-style
> forks, and other products that you believe are unsafe? Do plaintiffs' lawyers ever contact you
> about those products? Is it merely a matter of happenstance -- no one has been seriously injured
> by those products or no one bothered to trace an injury back to those products? The whole trend of
> the industry seems to be in the direction of lighter and lighter products that are probably more
> prone to failure. In my mind, it's difficult to reconcile that with the idea that lawyers are
> swarming over the bicycle industry. (It may seem like a swarm in relative terms, but perhaps not
> in comparison with the attention directed at other industries.)

Two main reasons that I see are that tires without carbon black are fashion and are not used to
perform hard cornering, especially when wet. Even if they were, it is a matter of degree that they
are worse and that degree is not challenged by anyone these days because there are so few people who
press tires to their traction limit in curves.

When the 7-Eleven team tried non-black tires in Europe the results were obvious to the team and the
scrapped them. No suit was filed against their sponsor although there was some painful raspberry.

> Colored tires make a good test case. They haven't appeared on cars because they're unsafe. But
> they have appeared on bicycles. Why? I'm suggesting that part of the reason may be that car
> manufacturers are more fearful of the tort system than bicycle manufacturers. I know that can't be
> the entire answer, because (to take just one example) car makers continue to produce SUVs in huge
> numbers despite safety concerns. In that case, car makers probably decided that their big profit
> margins on SUVs made the inevitable lawsuits just an acceptable cost of doing business.

I wonder about this because I am close to a machine that can easily test traction in corners, wet
and dry. No one seems to be interested in using the machine.

> Another point I wanted to make is that it's seems unlikely to me that the frivolous lawsuits you
> see lead to changes in bicycle design.

They don't because they are frivolous and get nowhere. They are usually a cover for some male rider
whose ego was bruised when his bicycling friends asked how he managed to take a dive.

Jobst Brandt [email protected] Palo Alto CA

 

[Tim McNamara]

In article <[email protected]>,
"Jay Beattie" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Actually, PI lawyers love a good bicycle-related products liability law suit. They do not present
> the same problems as an auto versus bicycle case (drivers are jurors) and are usually subject to
> much higher insurance limits. The "problem" is that bicycles and components do not often break in
> a way that causes serious injury. I have broken four or five cranks, and never so much as fell off
> my bike or smashed my privates.

Our heartfelt condolences! Dare we say "better luck next time?" ;-)

 

[Jay Beattie]

<[email protected]> wrote in message news:3FbDa.7$%[email protected]...
> Gary Young writes:

<snip>

> > Another point I wanted to make is that it's seems unlikely to me
that
> > the frivolous lawsuits you see lead to changes in bicycle design.
>
> They don't because they are frivolous and get nowhere. They are usually a cover for some male
> rider whose ego was bruised when his bicycling friends asked how he managed to take a dive.

The ego-bruise claims usually involve some sort of wall impact that breaks a part, like a fork. The
rider gets up and claims that he got launched because his fork broke and not because he hit a giant
rock. I like these cases. They give me the opportunity to get out of the office and go look at giant
rocks. -- Jay Beattie.

 

[A Muzi]

> news:[email protected]...
> > > > "Thomas Hood" <[email protected]> wrote in
> message
> > > > news:[email protected]...
> > > > > Just curiousity but could you explain what you mean by "abrupt
> > > transition"
> > > > > and "feathered"?
> > > > >
> > > > > "Cinelli sloping crowns....are failure prone at the abrupt transition from fork blade to
> > > > > the internal lug of the crown that cannot be feathered to a gradual transition as an
> > > > > external lug
> can."
> > > > >
> > > > > By abrupt transition I assume you meant that internal lug looked
> > > like the
> > > > > LCO4 shown here: http://www.ceeway.com/Fork-Crowns-2.htm
> > > > > I.e. the end of the lug is perpendicular to the blades and
> straight.
> > > > >
> > > > > However it would appear the Cinelli crown's end is not like
> this:
> > > > > http://www.ceeway.com/Fork-Crowns.htm The Cinelli SCA, Everest C60, C61A, C63, Columbus
> > > > > MAX all seem
> to
> > > share
> > > > > this. Do these not have 'internally feathered' ends or have I
> > > > misunderstood
> > > > > you?
> > > > >
> > > > > The reason I ask is that I have just aquired an almost new
> Mercian
> > > > > fillet-brazed reynolds 653 frame with said crown. Stunning
> > > craftmanship;
> > > > the
> > > > > guy I bought it off had too much money to spend and had just
> > > 'upgraded' to
> > > > a
> > > > > giant carbon fibre compact!?! I'm not complaining he sold it to
> me
> > > for £75
> > > > > including a record f/mech and titanium seatpost. However after
> > > reading
> > > > your
> > > > > 'colostomy' incident story I'm a bit wary of that bit....
> >
> > > "A Muzi" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> > > > Most Mercians I've seen, as most British bikes with that style
> crown,
> > > used a
> > > > Canetti rather than the Cinelli crown. ( You may know them best
> from
> > > Raleigh
> > > > Professionals, Raleigh Competitions and Holdsworth Pros) Canetti
> > > crowns are
> > > > thinner across the top between the blade and column. Cinellis
> are
> > > more
> > > > arched viewed from the front. Cinellis are "waisted" when viewed
> from
> > > > above, Canettis are not, there being a flat face across the front
> and
> > > back.
> > > > Canettis end more abruptly inside than the later Cinelli which is
> > > shaped
> > > > such that there is more penetration in front and back than in the
> > > center of
> > > > the blade.
> >
> >
> > "Jay Beattie" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> > news:[email protected]...
> > > Andrew, I was wondering if Jobst's problems weren't caused in part
> by
> > > over-cooking -- heating up a big internal lug and forcing brass
> through
> > > a small seam. I understand the whole stress-riser thing (and it certainly makes sense), but I
> > > used Cinelli full sloping crowns for
> years
> > > (and high mileage) and never had a problem -- even a fork that was involved in a wall impact
> > > that resulted in the usual kink in the down-tube but no damage to the fork. I recently broke a
> > > 25 year old
> set
> > > of forks with a Cinelli semi-sloping crown, but then I had to drive
> my
> > > roof-rack mounted bike into a too low garage to do it. -- Jay
> Beattie.
> >
> >
(AM) Are you speculating about brazing errors in a frame we've never seen,
> built
> > by someone we do not know and cannot even name? That is silly.
>

"Jay Beattie" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> Actually, I was wondering whether this was a problematic joint -- one prone to overheating. Silly
> or not, some lugs are harder to braze than others, and it seems to me that the internal plugs
> would be a big heat sink.
>
> > However, how many riders log as many miles as Jobst? In severe
> conditions
> > like long descents regularly at speed? There may not have been
> anything
> > "wrong" with his forks under a different rider who rides 500 miles
> per year
> > and hangs it on the wall a lot.
>
> Hell, in the '70s and 80s, I logged similar mileages living in the same neighborhood riding a bike
> with a full-sloping Cinelli crown -- and about 25lbs heavier than Jobst. 5,000 miles is not that
> far, regardless of the descents or the breaking forces (which, as I understand it, Jobst used
> sparingly). For a fairly devoted Master or Cat 3 in the Santa Clara Valley in the '70s and 80s,
> that would be about one racing season. This is why I thought there might have been some
> contribution to the failure from another source besides the design. -- Jay Beattie.
>
>

Oh, I think I understand what you meant. Yes, crowns are a different braze technique when they are
thick. We block them with firebrick on three sides and use a huge preheat with oxy-propane. Trying
to braze a thin blade into a heavy crown with a little hot actylene flame (or MAPP gas at a place I
once worked) torch is not good technique as you get hot and cool spots. I would think that anyone
who built for Jobst would do it properly. And I think a braze error (overheating spots or not
filling completely) would show up pretty quickly. Or at least braze errors at crown I'v eseen
returned here (notably, a certain manufacturer burned a whole year's worth of blades on a 531 model
with a cast crown once) were at much lower than 5,000 miles.

--
Andrew Muzi http://www.yellowjersey.org Open every day since 1 April 1971

 

[Doug Milliken]

On 3 Jun 2003, Gary Young wrote:

> You're absolutely right that I'm hypothesizing, in part because there is so little law related to
> bicycles that gets reported in the usual reference sources that lawyers use. Very few of these
> cases get to the appellate stage (which is where opinions are written), perhaps because most of
> them settle. Do you know if anyone has tried to compile a comprehensive list of bicycle-related
> lawsuits?

Iirc, there was an article in Adventure Cycling a few months back about a woman who collected all
this legal info, mostly as a labor of love. It might be archived on www.adventurecycling.org ?? I
can't find that issue, or I would give you a complete reference.

-- Doug Milliken

 

[Jobst Brandt]

Andrew Muzi writes:

>> Hell, in the '70s and 80s, I logged similar mileages living in the same neighborhood riding a
>> bike with a full-sloping Cinelli crown -- and about 25lbs heavier than Jobst. 5,000 miles is not
>> that far, regardless of the descents or the breaking forces (which, as I understand it, Jobst
>> used sparingly). For a fairly devoted Master or Cat 3 in the Santa Clara Valley in the '70s and
>> 80s, that would be about one racing season. This is why I thought there might have been some
>> contribution to the failure from another source besides the design.

> Oh, I think I understand what you meant. Yes, crowns are a different braze technique when they are
> thick. We block them with fire brick on three sides and use a huge pre heat with oxy-propane.
> Trying to braze a thin blade into a heavy crown with a little hot acetylene flame (or MAPP gas at
> a place I once worked) torch is not good technique as you get hot and cool spots.

One of the forks was on a Cinelli built frame that used the fire brick cauldron to braze and the
second by a skilled frame builder here who built the frame I have been riding more then 15 years...
for that frame. It is not so much the brazing technique as the abrupt cross sectional transition
that caused the failure.

> I would think that anyone who built for Jobst would do it properly. And I think a braze error
> (overheating spots or not filling completely) would show up pretty quickly. Or at least braze
> errors at crown I've seen returned here (notably, a certain manufacturer burned a whole year's
> worth of blades on a 531 model with a cast crown once) were at much lower than 5,000 miles.

The failure was not in brass but in the right fork blade on the Cinelli and the left fork blade on
the Johnson fork, both using the Cinelli sloping fork crown. The failure was precisely at the end of
the internal extent of the crown.

Jobst Brandt [email protected] Palo Alto CA

 

[Gary Young]

[email protected] (Scoochiro) wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>...
> "Jay Beattie" <[email protected]> wrote in message >
> > Actually, PI lawyers love a good bicycle-related products liability law suit. They do not
> > present the same problems as an auto versus bicycle case (drivers are jurors) and are usually
> > subject to much higher insurance limits. The "problem" is that bicycles and components do not
> > often break in a way that causes serious injury. I have broken four or five cranks, and never so
> > much as fell off my bike or smashed my privates.
> > >
> > This would be an easy strict liability case against Cinelli or the American distributor. One
> > expert, maybe two, to testify that the internal lug creates a stress-riser which results in the
> > early failure of the fork. Assuming that there is a pattern of failures, go for punitive
> > damages. Put those Italians out of business ladies and gentlemen. Remember Mussolini? Remeber
> > the Fiat? I am outraged!
> >
>
> I think that Jay has hit the nail pretty well, and Jobst's subsequent post really drives it home.
>
> The fact is that Jobst would be one heck of a good expert witness to testify in a products
> liability case about the design defects of the crown. And if these things fail with any regularity
> at or about 5000 miles, then he would surely have a chance to do just that. (And, I'll bet he gets
> $300 an hour or more to do such work.)
>
> But, this has apparently never occurred. Surely, a major system component, with a potential to
> cause serious consequences, would be ripe for such a suit. Sure, you would still have to prove
> some kind of damages, and you would have to establish a causal connection between the crown and
> the injury, but plaintiff's lawyers are good at precisely those kinds of things.
>
> If, indeed, a potential suit existed, plaintiff's lawyers would be lining up to finance a bloody
> class action to investigate such a thing. They'd name everyone who ever even saw a fully sloping
> fork crown, serve a bunch of subpoenas, and extract whatever form of compensation they could. It
> wouldn't be too hard, since a fork crown that fails with any kind of regularity at 5,000 miles
> could quite easily be the basis of a product liability action for a design defect, at least in my
> state of Washington.
>
> Hell, I'd take that case, if there weren't something wrong with it.
>
> And Jobst would be happy to help.
>
> But, again, it hasn't happened, apparently, at least not to Jobst's knowledge.
>
> Thus, this seems to be a case where the engineering appeal of the crown is much less than the
> aesthetic appeal, but where not much real world, statistically valid, evidence of a 5,000 mile
> useful safe life exists.
>
> Which is exactly what I thought.
>
> (Also, it seems that Jobst may have clarified his position on the 5,000 mile claim just a bit, and
> I certainly don't want to criticize him for something he didn't say.)
>
> I think it bears pointing out, though, that the original question pertained to a fairly new
> Mercian.
>
> The owner ought to know that he should feel free to ride the hell out of it, rather than be
> scared to death of the fork crown. To suggest otherwise is wrong (again, not that Jobst
> necessarily said that!).
>
> Ken Harper

How do you get to the conclusion that the rider "should feel free to ride the hell out of" the fork?
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I thought that Jobst said that his forks broke at 5,000 miles,
but that he couldn't say all such forks would last no more than 5,000 miles. That doesn't mean that
the forks are safe, only that we lack the necessary information to say just how unsafe they are.

Furthermore, I think the idea that we know a product is safe because there haven't been lawsuits is
ridiculous. There are a lot of factors involved in whether lawsuits are filed. How many decades was
Campagnolo producing cranks that were prone to failure? How many companies copied that design
despite fairly widespread knowledge that they were prone to cracking?

 

[Robin Hubert]

> > Hell, in the '70s and 80s, I logged similar mileages living in the same neighborhood riding a
> > bike with a full-sloping Cinelli crown -- and about 25lbs heavier than Jobst. 5,000 miles is not
> > that far, regardless of the descents or the breaking forces (which, as I understand it, Jobst
> > used sparingly). For a fairly devoted Master or Cat 3 in the Santa Clara Valley in the '70s and
> > 80s, that would be about one racing season. This is why I thought there might have been some
> > contribution to the failure from another source besides the design. -- Jay Beattie.
> >
> >
>
> Oh, I think I understand what you meant. Yes, crowns are a different
braze
> technique when they are thick. We block them with firebrick on three sides and use a huge preheat
> with oxy-propane. Trying to braze a thin blade
into
> a heavy crown with a little hot actylene flame (or MAPP gas at a place I once worked) torch is not
> good technique as you get hot and cool spots.
I
> would think that anyone who built for Jobst would do it properly. And I think a braze error
> (overheating spots or not filling completely) would show up pretty quickly. Or at least braze
> errors at crown I'v eseen
returned
> here (notably, a certain manufacturer burned a whole year's worth of
blades
> on a 531 model with a cast crown once) were at much lower than 5,000
miles.
>

Speaking of brazing errors, I bought a little Miyata for my girlfriend and the steerer was being
held on mostly by brass, having not been fully inserted into the crown. I found this while cutting
for the crown race.

--
Robin Hubert <[email protected]

 

[Bruce Jackson]

"David L. Johnson" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:<[email protected]>...
> On Mon, 02 Jun 2003 23:41:25 +0100, Tim Cain wrote:

>> Part of this could be that very many bikes never see 500 miles usage, let alone 5000.

> Well, a lot of Cinellis saw more miles than that. But most of those miles were a long time ago,
> possibly predating the rush to litigation.

Well, I have a bike with a fully sloping Cinelli crown that has many tens of thousands of miles on
it. Because of the design I do visually check it frequently but so far it seems as good as the day I
bought the bike and I am not a small guy. I also still ride two Campy cranksets that are about 20
and 30 years old respectively. I know that Mr. Brandt breaks these cranks like toothpicks but mine
still seem fine. When I worked in bike shops I did see several broken Campy crankarms but if they
broke at anything close to the rate Mr. Brandt suggests I would have seen a lot more of them.

Granted that both the Cinelli crowns and the old Campy crankarms are not the best design from an
engineering point of view but I believe that Mr. Brandt is also particularily hard on his equipment.
Perhaps Jobst miles are like dog years; 5,000 Jobst miles are like 35,000 miles for everyone else.

Bruce
--
Bruce Jackson - Sr. Systems Programmer - DMSP, a M/A/R/C Group company