Bruce Jaeger Technical Services 5500 80th Avenue North • Brooklyn Park, MN 55443 (763) 560-7663 voice   (763) 560-2466 fax Email: Bruce@BJTechServ.com
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Bruce Jaeger Technical Services

If you are a customer looking for manuals or graphics to download, click on the "Customer's Pages" link above. Note that you will need a password to access your page.

Since 1983, I've been preparing Operation and Maintenance manuals for (mostly) custom machinery manufacturers in the Twin Cities area. This site has descriptions of the various services I perform.

Samples are a problem, because most of these machines are, well, proprietary and secret! (You wouldn't want yours presented as a sample!) Here are a couple of older machine manuals (from defunct companies) that I've disguised: Samples/Terminal_Assembler_Rev_C.pdf, Samples/Valley_Girl_30440_Rev_A4.pdf   Since they're older machines, the style and design of the manuals is somewhat dated, too, of course.

Services Offered

	Operations and Maintenance manuals:   These are mostly for custom machinery and pharmaceutical filling lines.
	Translation translations: For multinational corporations selling in the USA, I can take a quick look at your in-house translation and fix the terminology and idioms that drive consumers here crazy and that make your company look bad.
	PowerPoint to DVD: I learned how to do this for a customer who couldn't count on being able to use a projector at a customer's site, but could always rely on a DVD player.  You lose some clarity, but end up with a more universally playable presentation.
	VHS to DVD: Many of my customers have VHS tapes of their products that take up more space than DVDs. The magnetic oxide on those tapes deteriorates with time, too.  I can also supply MPEG, DIVX, or smaller web-compatible files
	Computer software and hardware manuals: Past customers were Digi International and Chameleon Management Solutions, Inc
	Engineering manuals and In-House Documents: (Company policies, standards, etc.)   My most recent effort along this line is an intranet web version of a company engineering standards manual. Very convenient! And no more having to update every engineer's copy...
	"Make it look better": One of my customers was about to send out a sales email (Adobe Acrobat format) with some diagrams created in Paintbrush (ugh!).  Please let me spend an hour on it so it doesn't look so bad!  I can also extract text and graphics from PDF files and modify them for your applications.
	Web Sites: While this web site is no great shakes (the cobbler's son has no shoes, the plumber's faucet drips...), the one I created and maintain for the Middle Spunk Creek Boys is pretty neat.  Or see Great Northern Antiques.  It's not what I really do (and don't want to get into full time), but I can probably help.
	Catalogs. Limited run, small business types. See Great Northern Antiques (6.2M .pdf file).  For laughs, I also just scanned a semi-serious 1976 "Bicentennial Christmas Catalog" that was put together in the days before I had a computer. (Most of the body text came off a Friden Flexo-Writer, if you're a historian.  Or a collector.)
	Programs:  Most of these have been related to music. See  2007 Laughing Waters Bluegrass Festival (Large 17.5M .pdf file--I usually create "press-ready" PDFs.)
	Brochures / newsletters / "Promo": Again, most of these have been related to music. See the older (now obsolete) MSCB Promo Pack (408K .pdf file) or the newer MSCB Promo Sheet.
	Archiving:. (Organizing, 35mm negative scanning / photo scanning, CD-ROM burning, etc.) Most of this has been for my own business, but could be useful for yours. I've recently been scanning in 20-year-old manuals, as storage is getting to be a problem.  I scan them for good text reproduction, then digitally paste in the original photos (assuming I can still find them!) and output the whole thing as a print-quality PDF file. This way I can still supply a manual when somebody loses theirs, but don't have to store the paper manual any more. The very first original manuals  were composed on a Commodore PET or 64, so there's no electronic text. With later ones, I'm converting them to the most recent software I have. This is something that should be done by all of us periodically.
	Visual Basic Custom Programming: These have primarily been killer front-ends for Access databases, with a few of my own utilities (see the link "Utilities" link at the top of this page) thrown in. In my freelance writing days, I wrote dozens of "type-in" programs for Commodore-related magazines, and did programming-for-hire for programs like "Planting Pal" (a gardening program) and "Magic Mover" (a rearrange-the-furniture program). I miss the "good old days" when I got powerful royalty checks from Share Data ("Load 'n Go Software") for my game programs.  I'm not up to speed on VB.net, as its database capabilities are far inferior to the "old" VB.
	Old CorelDRAW Conversions: I've kept a 286 with CorelDRAW 1.1 on it, so I can read your files from WAY back then and convert them to a modern format for you. (The fonts may suffer if you used unusual WFN fonts.) I also have CorelDRAW 3 online to read CorelDRAW 1.2 -- 3.0 files.

Customers:      (In no particular order. Not all are current customers. Not all are still in business. Honest, it wasn't my fault!)

• TL Systems Corporation (now Bosch Packaging Technology, NA)
• Springboard Software (R.I.P.)
• DigiBoard (now Digi International, Inc.)
• Massman Engineering LLC.
• Midmac Systems Inc. (R.I.P.)
• Classic Manufacturing Inc.
• Pinnacle Feeding Systems Inc.
• Despatch Industries
• Great Northern Antiques
• LasX Industries Inc.
• Tech Logic Corporation
• Minnesota Transportation Museum (pro bono)
• Dimension Industries, Inc.
• International Wolf Center
• Home & Hobby Software (R.I.P.)
• Lyons Safety
• Intelligent Automated Machines, Inc.
• Community Literacy Collaborative
• Chameleon Management Solutions, Inc. (R.I.P.)
• Minnesota Literacy Council (pro bono)
• Miram International, Inc. (R.I.P.)
• Paragon Machinery Corporation
• Pharmaceutical Feeding Corporation (R.I.P.)
• Scherping Systems
• Straub Design Company
• TL Feeding Systems (R.I.P.)
• Tricord Systems, Inc.
• ViatiCare Financial Services, LLC
• Automation Engineering (R.I.P.)
• Voyager Mindtools, Inc. (R.I.P.)
• Magid Glove and Safety

History of Bruce Jaeger Technical Services

Bruce Jaeger Technical Services is a one-man company--I picked that rather long name when I had to get a sales tax number.  (You see, if you put your full name in a company title,you don't have to file d.b.a. papers.) It also helps keep me from being confused with dozens of other businesses like Bruce Jaeger Aroma Therapy for Horses, Bruce Jaeger Holistic Drain Cleaning, or Bruce Jaeger Silicone Thigh Implant Company.

After working in the retail music world (yech!) and as a freelance magazine writer (starve!), I got started in the technical writing business in 1983 when an engineer at TL Systems Corporation threw up his hands and refused to write any more machinery manuals. (A high-school buddy worked there, and knew I had a journalism degree and at least a modicum of mechanical ability because of my sports car autocross and rally days.)

Almost every new customer since then has come about because an engineer moved to another employer, was told to write the manual about his machine, threw up his hands and said "Not me! But I know somebody who CAN!" What's hard to believe is that  I actually enjoy it...

My first manuals were written on a Commodore PET (I missed using a typewriter for them by just a year) and printed on either a dot-matrix printer or a Juki daisywheel. I processed and screened my own B&W photos for the press runs of up to 15 manuals. Now, of course, it's digital photography and color lasers. (For archival purposes, I'm slowly scanning in all my old B&W 35mm negatives.)

Personal

I play with trains, computers, and musical instruments. The "Bruce's Scrapbook" page will tell you more than you can possibly want to know.

Thanks for your interest!

BRUCE

Stupid link!