kristof65 Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 4 minutes ago, Cranky Dog said: As a mechanical engineer, this is also something some of us learn along the way. If something is going to break for going above the specs, make it something inexpensive and easy to replace. I had a boss at the amusement park I worked at long ago that learned this the hard way. We had a number of large heavy duty shredders at the redemption counters for shredding the tickets from the skeeball and other arcade machines. They had metal gears everywhere, except for this one plastic gear that kept stripping out. We always had 5-6 of these gears on the shelf because we would replace one like every month. He happened to run across a gear for another piece of equipment that was nearly an exact fit for this plastic one, so the next time he fixed a shredder, he used that. You can probably see where this is going And the next time the shredder jammed up, it shredded every gear in the assembly. I learned this the easy way, when, after being frustrated with changing my third or fourth gear, I asked him about trying to to find a metal replacement gear. He pulled the remains of the broken shredder gear assembly from a desk drawer and showed them to me, while telling me the above story. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 4 hours ago, Cygnwulf said: I maybe fall on the other side on the office Keurig debate... as long as it's actually one of the better machines that holds heat better. current office actually has a water cooler that has a pod brewer built in. Push the button and water flows right away, already hot, so the wait for your cup is only about 30 seconds to finished or so? But it's a faaar cry better than the smell of scorched pot (and once smoke detectors going off) because some dunklehead couldn't be arsed to start a new pot so they left half a cup in the pot so that they "didn't finish it off, there's still coffee left" and also left the burner on under it.... oh god some of the debates I've seen on local groups between avid bikers and people who don't see the point. There is so much hate directed at bikers 'riding in the middle of the lane' forcing cars to change lanes to go around them. (oh the horror). I even saw someone say "If you're going to insist on living in the last century at least be decent and ride on the sidewalk." Spoilered for long and pointed observation on bicyclists from a Truck Drivers perspective Spoiler As a truck driver who had to regularly go up and down a narrow country lane that was in the coastal foothills of California I have a great deal of animus to the "Spandex Commando's" who would on a regular basis take over the road. This road was originally pioneered by a mining company and the lower end later paved by the county as vineyards and then a couple of housing enclaves [the gated community kind] were built. The mine was built to access a deposit of industrial grade limestone, useful for many products. The bicyclists have both an entitlement problem and a drug problem, the drug problem being their own endorphins produced in quantities to stimulate euphoria to the point of recklessness in the operation of their equipment, creating a hazard of nightmare proportions for the bulk tankers and dump trucks that sometimes [as in my case with a high-cube bulk tanker] need the entire width of the road plus another foot to negotiate sharp curves with overhanging obstructions in the form of 100 year old plus oak trees. I've seen them riding four abreast when they know a truck is coming because of the air horn having been used as a warning on the curves. I've observed similar behavior in city street situations. Leading me to the conclusion a lot more attention needs to be paid to people on bicycles by law enforcement, which would be greatly aided by the requirement for any bicycle used on a public right of way being required to display a license plate so it is possible to "get their number" when observed engaging in the sort of reckless action liable to lead to a crash with injuries, which I refuse to call an "accident" when the rider has materially contributed to the likelihood of an accident through lack of judgement and actions likely to result in such a crash. Bicycles wrok in places like Denmark because the bicycle riders "stay in their lane", don't engage as a general rule in the sort of deliberate violations of traffic laws that are common among bicycle riders in the USA, especially in the spandex crowd, and in general display a level of courtesy, awareness, and care for those around them not in general practice in the US. Until this attitude changes, bicyclists will continue to be viewed as rolling road hazards by the motoring public. My perspective, based on several years of observation of people who should know better behaving recklessly. On happier news, my Reaper Package is marked "Out For Delivery". GEM 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 4 hours ago, kristof65 said: (this rant will probably only make sense to you if you have a basic understanding of electrical/electronic circuits) So a few weeks back, I got handed a site because they have an ongoing problem with one self service bay that supposedly keeps blowing up boards - they've going through something like 5 boards in as many months. What I discovered was that the bay keeps blowing the output fuse on our circuit board. But somehow in their troubleshooting, they keep managing to blow up/break the board in other ways - I'm not exactly sure how for the ones before me, but todays board they broke the fuse holder off. In a nutshell, the circuitry of our board boils down to this: All of the circuitry on the board is literally there to turn on a relay coil, which closes a normally open contact that is wired to the self serve pump stand. This output is fused with a 3 amp fuse, so that if the pump stand draws too much current, it pops the easily replaceable fuse instead of damaging the contacts on the not as easily replaceable relay. The self serve pump stands are from a different manufacturer. I cannot seem to get them to comprehend that the real problem is NOT our circuit board, but whatever keeps drawing more than 3 amps, thus popping the fuse. Their line of thought is "Well, the fuse is on your board, therefore it must be your fault." And then, on top of that, they're managing to handle our boards so roughly, they're doing things like breaking the fuse holder off. So they're getting upset with us because we "can't fix the problem", and I'm getting upset with them because they don't understand the problem nor how they are making it worse. All I can really do is continue to make detailed notes and bill them for time and parts, and let the powers that be sort it out with them. In a rational world this one would have the account flagged so they don't get any more of these parts until they initiate troubleshooting to find out what is causing the fuse to blow and boards to be damaged/destroyed.. It isn't fair to your other customers to have one knucklehead going through your supply of spares because they refuse to recognize it is other equipment, which I am assuming is supplied by other vendors, that is causing your safety equipment to do its job. GEM 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 2 hours ago, kristof65 said: Yep! The electronics engineers who designed these circuit boards were pretty good about that*. Just about every input/output that interfaces with the wash equipment (which we don't manufacture) is fused or protected in some way, to protect against field wiring errors and wash equipment failure. Over the years, I've seen those fuses save customers thousands of dollars (cumulatively, it's probably into the 6-digit range by now). Most people get it - especially the distributor techs - but occasionally I run across a site that doesn't. Best one was the site owner who hired a supposedly licensed electrician who didn't understand this point. I told the owner to fire his electrician and get someone competent on site - refused to work with that electrician. Found out later that part of the reason the fuse kept popping was because the field wiring was partially wrong. Guess who the original installing "electrician" was? *but not always. In the initial design of one circuit board, the engineer used a surface mount fuse that was soldered to the board for a fuse he didn't think would blow often. The engineer was right about how often it would blow - I can count on one hand the number of times that fuse has blown in the last 20 years - but he failed to anticipate how pissed off a customer would be about having to spend $500 to swap out an entire circuit board for a $1 fuse. When service ran the cost analysis on the first incident for a site that was still under warranty, it was determined they could have socketed that fuse for a thousand boards for the same cost. It's now socketed. Similar story from the place I used to work at in the 90s, pre car wash. Engineer was something like $0.20 over the target per unit cost management had dictated. He tried to get them to budge, but they wouldn't, so he eliminated all of the anti static protection on the input/output of the device, which was a couple of capacitors and zener diodes, because his only other option was a near complete redesign, which would lead to months of delays that management wouldn't approve either. When I started receiving back a number of units with the same output chip failure, I went to the engineer, and he told me to replace the chip and add the caps and diodes back in (spaces were still there on the circuit board). He also told me to give him a log of every unit I got back with this failure. After a few dozen failures, he went to management and said "Hey, I need to add a protection circuit to these units, it will cost about a quarter more per unit", and got them to agree by showing them they were spending more on fixing units. Observation: How Passive/Aggressive is done on the Engineering side of things. GEM 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Chaoswolf Posted October 19, 2022 Moderator Share Posted October 19, 2022 My, y'all were a chatty bunch today. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted October 19, 2022 Share Posted October 19, 2022 Just now, Chaoswolf said: My, y'all were a chatty bunch today. Might have something to do with it being Wednesday. GEM 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Chaoswolf Posted October 19, 2022 Moderator Share Posted October 19, 2022 That's as good a reason as any other. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted October 20, 2022 Share Posted October 20, 2022 It's Here! Reaper Order arrived at 5:15 PM. I has a Ghoulie Bag. 😄 GEM 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Chaoswolf Posted October 20, 2022 Moderator Share Posted October 20, 2022 Yay!! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Green Eyed Monsty Posted October 20, 2022 Share Posted October 20, 2022 I ordered the Dragon Bust, a set of the Dragon Paints and a half a dozen misc. figures. Going to keep me busy for a while. GEM 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted October 20, 2022 Share Posted October 20, 2022 I got a Google photo reminder today of a couple pics I took at a October ReaperCon a few years ago. Fun time of the year for ReaperCon. I'll admit at first I was a bit skeptical about the date move, but in the end I think it was the best time for it. Good night for D&D @ the FLGS tonight. In a surprising move, the parents of the player that died late last month came by tonight, as they wanted to give some gaming items to a couple of people that was close to their daughter (dad & his teen daughter players), they also gave me a Critical Role mug. I appreciate the gesture, as Sarah was a fun person to be around & she brought a different perceptive to the table. I'm a better person for knowing her. She will be missed. The teen daughter player was really close to her, as she called Sarah, her "RPG Mom", she plays a cleric & I'm gonna honor Sarah when her character casts Spiritual Guardian, as the spell produces a warrior that absorbs damage, so when she casts it again, I'm gonna have to show Sarah's Fighter character instead. Just my way to honor her. 15 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Chaoswolf Posted October 20, 2022 Moderator Share Posted October 20, 2022 How the Grinch celebrates Halloween: 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator Froggy the Great Posted October 20, 2022 Author Moderator Share Posted October 20, 2022 I look at my gaming surface and realize it is now covered with a layer of projects and detritus from 6 months ago, which is itself covered with another layer from 3 months ago. 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cranky Dog Posted October 20, 2022 Share Posted October 20, 2022 1 hour ago, Chaoswolf said: How the Grinch celebrates Halloween: To think that people were scared of razor blades in apples. This is the TRUETM Evil. Then again, I *like* Brussel Sprouts. Make it salted caramel and you got yourself a deal! 4 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnwulf Posted October 20, 2022 Share Posted October 20, 2022 (edited) More bike discussion Spoiler 16 hours ago, Green Eyed Monsty said: I've observed similar behavior in city street situations. Leading me to the conclusion a lot more attention needs to be paid to people on bicycles by law enforcement, which would be greatly aided by the requirement for any bicycle used on a public right of way being required to display a license plate so it is possible to "get their number" when observed engaging in the sort of reckless action liable to lead to a crash with injuries, which I refuse to call an "accident" when the rider has materially contributed to the likelihood of an accident through lack of judgement and actions likely to result in such a crash. You're right, there are a LOT of dumb cyclists out there. I'll frequently call out other riders for failure to signal, riding in the driving lanes when there is a bike lane, rolling stopsigns, crossing intersections in the crosswalk, and many more. A bicycle is a vehicle, which means you have to obey all the same traffic rules that cars do and be aware that you ARE a slow moving vehicle and you need to allow faster moving traffic to pass you. Some cities will ticket them, but it seems like it's almost always a case of 'wheres the traffic cop when you need them'. I had a buddy who's been ticketed twice, once for riding on the sidewalk and once for rolling a stopsign at a busy 4 way stop. But most of the time there's no enforcment, and there's no organized effort out there (at least in my part of the world) to educate cyclists at all.... I'm a big advocate for SAFE cycling, the problem is, only cyclists want it. People who don't ride will shout you down when the subject of better bike friendly infrastructure is brought up, they don't want their tax dollars going to backward bumpkins who can't be bothered to drive a car to work. And when there is a bike lane, people won't respect it, not looking for a cyclist in the lane, curb parking to block the lane. Bike paths (clearly marked with center stripes, grooved for speed zones, speed limits, the works. Clear signage stating that pedestrians must yield right of way to cyclists because this is a bike path. ) and yet large large groups of pedestrians will stick their earbuds in and ignore your shouted requests to pass on the left... Edited October 20, 2022 by Cygnwulf 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts