TESLA and Elon Musk - anything not elsewhere

[RTH10260]

Sounds to me like the European models will be getting a refit program soon. And the testing andlicensing authorities will be left with a

[Suranis]

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[Volkonski]

Legos and soda cans are much smaller than cybertrucks.

[Volkonski]

My father for much of his life was a skilled machinist.

He once explained to me the futility when engineers request tolerances that the manufacturing equipment cannot possibly produce.

His advice was to spend some time on the factory floor learning what was possible before designing parts.

[Gregg]

Legos and soda cans are much smaller than cybertrucks.

I build transmissions with tolerances a decimal point or two smaller than that. The fact is, a micron is a boulder in machining terms.

[Volkonski]

From his post I am pretty sure he was talking about the outer vehicle panels which are stamped thin sheet metal rather than precision machined engine parts.

[Sam the Centipede]

It's like something from a 1970s or 1980s low budget futurist science fiction serial for teenage boys.

Sort of thing that would appeal to Musk's permanently adolescent mind.

[sugar magnolia]

Does VW know he's bringing back the Thing?

[Suranis]

Hell does John Carpenter know he is bringing back the Thing.

[Kriselda Gray]

That is just one super ugly vehicle.

[neonzx]

It's like something from a 1970s or 1980s low budget futurist science fiction serial for teenage boys.

Sort of thing that would appeal to Musk's permanently adolescent mind.

That is what I was grasping for and I believe you are spot-on. Old-school sci-fi rendition of futuristic vehicles. (not that those movies then were not fun -- they were).

[Sam the Centipede]

And with echoes of the DeLorean, as seen in Back To The Future … except if that heap gets up to 88 mph its batteries will catch fire.

[Foggy]

I build transmissions with tolerances a decimal point or two smaller than that. The fact is, a micron is a boulder in machining terms.

Holy shit! A micron is too big for machining tolerances?

I had no idea, but I am seriously impressed. How the hell can you make a whole part of ... well, any kind of part, to tolerances a tenth, or a hundredth of a micron?

Ol' Wifehorn just said, "Wow." (She's buying a used Camry today, royal blue with 28K on it. She wouldn't listen to me recommending a Ford truck.) She's still having covfefe, I think she needs a little more time to let it sink in.

I mean, is a transmission manufacturing plant full of electron microscopes?

[Estiveo]

It's like something from a 1970s or 1980s low budget futurist science fiction serial for teenage boys.

Sort of thing that would appeal to Musk's permanently adolescent mind.

It's the Landmaster from Damnation Alley!

Estiveoshot_20230825_061746.jpg (125.48 KiB) Viewed 1551 times

[Sam the Centipede]

Those are stair-climbing wheels aren't they? Are they many staircases in extraterrestrial deserts?

[RTH10260]

At least one, when the Martian man stumbled and went extinct

But did they have windows ?

[tek]

Off Topic

It gets hard to see things below about .75um, because you're getting down to the wavelength of visible light..

Back when I was in the particle-sizing business, I learned about "Mie scattering" ... this is an effect where, when a particle gets down to a size on the order of the wavelength of light, instead of reflecting light it will focus it. So the particles actually become nearly invisible. Fun stuff

That said, half-micron tolerances are not all that uncommon in precision machining. 0.01um is pretty difficult to deal with, thoug.. that's getting down to integrated-circuit feature size..

[neeneko]

My father for much of his life was a skilled machinist.

He once explained to me the futility when engineers request tolerances that the manufacturing equipment cannot possibly produce.

His advice was to spend some time on the factory floor learning what was possible before designing parts.

When I was in school, the just showed us a pricing chart for cost vs tolerances.. explaining that sure you could ask for really tight tolerances, but it drives the cost way up, so you should really think about what you actually need.

[Gregg]

I build transmissions with tolerances a decimal point or two smaller than that. The fact is, a micron is a boulder in machining terms.

Holy shit! A micron is too big for machining tolerances?

I had no idea, but I am seriously impressed. How the hell can you make a whole part of ... well, any kind of part, to tolerances a tenth, or a hundredth of a micron?

Ol' Wifehorn just said, "Wow." (She's buying a used Camry today, royal blue with 28K on it. She wouldn't listen to me recommending a Ford truck.) She's still having covfefe, I think she needs a little more time to let it sink in.

I mean, is a transmission manufacturing plant full of electron microscopes?

No electron mocroscopes,, but some pretty nifty stuff, including laser measurment beams and this little gimcrack which I just to love towatch...

[Sam the Centipede]

Off Topic

After watching a demo of the new build Difference Engine of Charles Babbage (the shiny brass mechanical calculator, very steampunk) in London sometime last century I chatted with one of the builders. He said the Victorian drawings are very good but require some thought in a modern shop because – as was the custom – none of the drawings show tolerances, so builders must decide what's good enough and adjust to fit as necessary.

Somebody here probably knows when tolerances became A Thing.

[tek]

Off Topic

https://americanprecision.org/

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Cool museum!

[chancery]

Holy shit! A micron is too big for machining tolerances?

I had no idea, but I am seriously impressed. How the hell can you make a whole part of ... well, any kind of part, to tolerances a tenth, or a hundredth of a micron?

Ol' Wifehorn just said, "Wow." (She's buying a used Camry today, royal blue with 28K on it. She wouldn't listen to me recommending a Ford truck.) She's still having covfefe, I think she needs a little more time to let it sink in.

I mean, is a transmission manufacturing plant full of electron microscopes?

Foggy, have I got a book for you. Precision engineering for machine tools had advanced to crazy tiny units by the early-mid 19th century. Read The Perfectionists, by Simon Winchester, about the history of precision engineering, people like Henry Maudslay. q.v..

From the NYT review:

He tells us of the moment in his boyhood when his father brought a series of small metallic blocks — gauge blocks — to his London home. These blocks, carefully ground to exact specifications, could be stacked in different ways to make accurate lengths for measuring. As a 10-year-old, he watched in awe as his father lifted them from their velvet case. Young Simon was challenged to separate two blocks placed one on top of the other. He pulled at them to no avail. Then his father slid them apart with a flick of his wrist. As Winchester explains, the blocks were so perfectly flat that their surfaces bonded at a molecular level. The only way to separate them was by sliding them. This extreme flatness could be achieved only because humans had mastered precise manufacturing; and so, his fascination with the subject began.

gift link for the review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/book ... =url-share

IIRC, the book begins to lose focus towards the end, but the first 2/3 are riveting history. Winchester is a superb writer.



sorry-not-sorry

[Gregg]

I have a set of very cool Austrian gauge blocks.

[tek]

Off Topic

when I was in 7th grade, we had a half-year class in Mechanical Drawing... the teacher was an ex-machinist, and he brought in a set of "Jo Blocks" ... and explained to us what they were for and why checking your tools is important.

This was just the general public school system, not a voke school.
I learned a lot in public school, in a not particularly well-off school district. Good times.