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I was 9. I do remember it, though I didn't fully understand it at the time.

oh they made the reverse as well.

Awesome that he was accepted! So if you fence with him and lose, he won't let you bleed out?!?

Flew to McAllen Tx this morning to pickup a new car for the wife. As they were working on the paper work there was a new recall issued for the vehicle which put a stop sale on it. Took all day, but they were finally able to find out it was for the front seatbelts of vehicles made during a 15 day period in April. They are still waiting for the bulletin that tells them what the fix is so they can release the car. Could be tomorrow, could be a week. 😡. Hopping I can move this picture to the Mindless Consumerism thread tomorrow. 100% Brent’s fault.

true, which is why I have been upgrading the axis bearings etc. I agree prevention is better than detection, which is why I am going for steppers with double torque than the originals, plus the software that comes with the closed loop system provides graphs, including positional error which will allow me to fine tune the pid parameters and see what is actually going on and give me more options to fine tune and correct. I am also learning a lot - which is fun too. I loved metalwork and woodwork at school but when the route of computer science, but have always enjoyed making things - even if it's just putting together flat pack furniture for friends or soldering pcbs.

So Brent probably won’t be okay?

Made final preparations for Thursday's trip to Spokane for Lance's graduation. Just found out that Lance was accepted to the Cedars Sinai EMT program starting this summer. Lance also mountain bike rides and is a rock climber so for you HCers traveling out here to mountain bike Lance will be qualified to stitch you up, apply a tourniquet to your stumps or identify what is left of you after a mountain lion has you for lunch. Cheers!

Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's

By the time the closed loop steppers detect an error it is already too late as it already happened. Always better to have the machine itself running more accurate and perfect cabling and controllers.

Catching up on Melissa's last two albums - On Blue Note Now (yay) 12 Stars by Melissa Aldana (2022) https://album.link/i/1599823297 Example: I really like her style, it is rooted in the moden style with lots of improvisation. and Echoes Of The Inner Prophet by Melissa Aldana (2024 -- Just on Sunday the 5th) https://album.link/i/1727103842 Example: A deeper exploration. I found the overall sound quieter, that being, more moments to let notes breath. Also not in a rush. I really enjoyed this new album.

Hi Shel! Have fun in Colorado and you'll forget that United Airlines screwed you over before you know it. 🙃

One last update. Finally got the group photo back from the photographer. Thought I would share. Cheers - mikey

junk z axis. holy crap, I just disassembled the Z axis. The entire spindle weight is held by a 12mm ball screw. On each end of the ball screw is just one f688z bearing - (8mm ID, 17mm OD with a flange 18mm diameter). These tiny bearings have no preload and not designed for axial loads and have axial play. Looks like fox alien are relying on the weight of the spindle alone to push down on the lower bearing and that's the only thing stopping the spindle from dropping. Piece of absolute SHIT! The bearing housing has no recesses, no preload mechanism, no adjustment mechanism, nothing it's just unbelievable. Looks like I'm going to need an entire new Z axis too... Does anyone know if there is a angular contact version of the f688z?? sigh single tooth carbide partial profile (so it will do multiple thread pitches and the tool pressure is a lot less than other threading tools.). It's more versatile and cost effective than buying complete profile thread end mills. With 5 thread mills I have every metric pitch (both fine and course) covered from m3 all the way to m10. https://www.shop-apt.co.uk/single-tooth-thread-mills-dlc-for-aluminium-internal-60/internal-single-tooth-carbide-thread-mill-partial-profile-05-10mm-pitch-dlc-coated-for-aluminium-39mm-head-diameter.html The thread mills don't come with all the necessary parameters (e.g. tooth height, distance from the centre of the tooth to the bottom of the end mill etc.) for the software I use so I had to take multiple measurements with a 0.001mm micrometer and average the results and guestimate other parameters. The threads are m6 I ran 7000rpm, 150mm/min feed, 70mm/min plunge 0.0054mm per tooth chip load, bottom to top cutting a right handed thread. This resulted in the threads being cut in two passes and the chips falling into the bottom of the hole (which I made 1.5mm deeper than needed to hold the chips). To make the thread go all the way through the 10mm mounting plate I found I had to start about 1mm below the bottom of the material, so I painters tapped and superglued a 3mm sacrificial aluminium plate underneath.

Impressive! What kind of tool do you use for threading?

In the same boat as Carl. Haven’t been spending enough time here - miss y’all. Classes are over though and my life is calming down so I’ll be around more. In the meantime I’m trying to fly to Colorado but evidently our new plane (the one we supposed to be on had some mechanical issues) had too much fuel and they had to defuel, getting rid of 5600 gallons of fuel!? WTF? Anyways, just spend the last three hours on the plane waiting to de-fuel. We’re finally taking off. Thanks United.

"Map traps" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

Well, I decided I needed to upgrade my CNC machine (replace almost everything from the original machine I purchased). having already upgraded the controller, spoil board, spoil board mounting and spindle it's time to look at the axes .... First I got myself an 80mm diameter er20 ceramic bearing 2.2KW water cooled spindle with labyrinth seals to replace the cheap 65mm 1.5Kw er 11. To fit the 80mm spindle I had to make a new mounting plate. This included experimenting chamfering and threading. I settled on 0.3mm chamfers at 45 degrees and experimented with thread milling. The result I think is ok: (full discloser I purchased tooling plate so the top and bottom surfaces were already machined flat, but all the other surfaces got machined. I have ordered 4 nema 23 closed loop steppers (3NM - about twice the holding torque of the original open loop steppers the machine came with), which will entail replacing most of the wiring loom, removing the existing open loop motor drivers, removing the motors, some software config of the new closed loop drivers and some changes to the controller wiring. The original divers have no error output pin so the controller has no idea if a stepper has an issue. The new drivers include error output pins so they will need to be connected to the controller. (stock jpeg from the ebay listing, I'm still waiting for delivery) I have also replaced the standard 'deep' groove (6001 series) bearings inside the bk12 bearing housings with angular contact bearings (7001 series) as per this you tube video: I also noticed that all the bearing blocks were attached to the machine with m5 bolts despite the blocks being designed for m6, So I plan to replace those bolts and find a way to make new threads in the machine housings. The nema 23 motors are also designed for m5 bolts but the machine uses m4 (on avery axis except Z), again I don't know why fox alien decided to use one size smaller bolts on everything that drives the axes so I will have to machine new back end plates/motor mounts too. After these upgrades and fixes the only original parts of the machine left will be the frame, axe and the metal case the electronics came in. It's so nice to have a cnc machine so I can make parts to upgrade my cnc machine...

Similar thing happened with Tektronix back in the day. A big part of their business was supplying to the US DOD. But in an attempt to reduce cost the DOD placed an order with Hickock and Lavoie, saying that they wanted them to copy the Tektronix scopes. Tek got wind of it and started putting a random hole in the rear panel of the vertical plugin. When this appeared in the Hickock copy, Tektronix sued the UK government in 1961. Took a while (18 years!), but Tek won $4.5m in damages from the US Government. Described here https://vintagetek.org/clone-scopes/ So "mistakes" can show up a plagiarizer of the design.

BBC Planet Earth II (2016)

I still go back and watch this scene from time to time. The way Edge immediately gets up and moves to see Jimmy's hands, Giving no Fucks about blocking the camera and the crew. And Jack has to put his guitar down and give that oh so loving look... good stuff. I do wish that they just played together more, and just did a lot more of ^^ this. The movie could work in a much longer format. But this was before the Netflix mini docs. Thanks for the reminder.

That guy's articles rule.

I'm not enjoying it as much as Band of Brothers or The Pacific.

I skew that chart considerably. Country and Classic Rock are two of my favorite genres. And I'm a very liberal Democrat.