Prcmaker

I did some work recently while I was between jobs, designing and assembling camera lenses. It was so fascinating, and satisfying. Strongly disappointed they couldn't afford to pay me to stay.

I'm truly saddened to hear this Cliff, the way you wrote of her in your book showed such relatable affection.

In an old job I spliced a lot of fibre for our research, got the hang of it and got pretty proficient.

My research shifted, and I start making sensors using fibre and similarly sized capillary tube. It all got cleaved, spliced to assemble, cleaved some more, spliced again, then polished to spec. Getting the he process down was a pain, but the results were super satisfying.

Currently doing the finishing touches on a ww2 era surface grinder, closing out a new little design, and ramping my fitness up again. Next up is some duct work, some reverse engineering, and finishing my part of a paper.

I haven't had this much time off in over a decade and it's amazing. I've been hoping to get inspire for some outdoors or running related mechanical design/prototyping projects, but nothing yet.

I've somewhat found the opposite. The cycle I've been in is has had a tight grip on my time and attention that's its been hard to keep up with anything not mission critical. Now I'm backing off, I've got time to get more up to speed.

For keeping challenged long term, I've got a few products I finally have the time to do prototypes for and some chances to work in new areas.

I quit my job. Its forced me out of the cycle of 'just a bit more' and made change the only option. Is it the smartest move, likely not, but so far I stand by it.

A very good synopsis. I recently had the chance to put myself as the intermediate member between those expectations and our technical team. It raised the expectations on me, but helped reduce the unrealistic side of those from impacting my team.

It worked brilliantly for a while, but since things were getting done fast, well, and cheap, the expectations increased. I gave notice two weeks ago without a job lined up.

Thanks for your input and your time. A lot to think about. Much appreciated.

My position is that I've been in a failing start-up for years. Public company, but has burned through all their investment and has reached its ending days spiral. Small amount of equity has declined to be worth next to nothing, passion for the work has declined, both myself and more broadly.

On a week of vacation leave, I went and helped an extended family member in their home business. It combines the best aspects of my past three jobs. High tech, optics, design and manufacture, it's hard, and it's fascinating. There's a clear path to profit, with demand. Might be weeks, might be months, but in the meantime I can't make enough to cover my costs.

I can't risk my family's security. Having loved out of my car while studying, despite over a decade passing, the memory is fresh.

A pay cut would be fine, worth it, but the risk feels so high.

I guess my only question is how do you keep yourself from going broke while starting these projects. I've a chance to do some great work now, but it would lower my pay beneath what I can live on.

50% existential crisis, 50% meetings, 50% work a grad should be doing.

I've just taken a week off to help extended family with a project, and it's reminded me what a good job is.

I think you can play, just much harder to get through the end game stage.

And the means to achieve that destruction. Cockatoos are like flying bolt cutters.

Which, in my experience, almost never has any impact on anything.

I do this a bunch at home, my setup has also migrated to work. Simple solution made with vinegar, salt and sodium laurel sulphate, then a couple of cheap nickel electrodes. Run current through both to make the nickel acetate, then you're good to go.

Doesn't WiFi AC do beam forming?

Amongst a couple of guitar builds, I'm reverse engineering a bronze woodworking plane from the 80s/90s, a good friends dad used to make them. It's taken me over a decade to track one down, so I'm hoping to produce a set of models and drawings before passing on the original to my friend to hand down to their pending child.

In my experience, you get labelled as not being a team player.

Awesome, that sounds like a lot of fun. Good luck to your applicants.

I would like to see that happen, however, the current available guidance from FWC is worded very with a vast deal of of flexibility in it, and is highly open to interpretation. A manager may, in theory, decide any person responsible for any task may be contacted outside of hours. I've not seen anything truly restrictive.

With getting no overtime, no time off in lieu, and managers perpetually confusing a 'problem' with an 'emergency', I'm glad to see this happen. If it will actually make a difference though, I'm yet to be convinced.

Nice one team, I like it. Anything a remote mech eng can help with? Not looking to be hired, but keen to help with something different.

Really it's both ways in terms of required current. The thermionic effect requires filament heat, which since being a filament, take some amount of current, often around half an amp, some more some less. A filament could, in theory, be run at any current though so long as the power through the filament stays the same and the voltage is kept low enough not to arc to adjacent parts. There is likely also a minimum current requirement (since you need a source for those free electrons), which often then implies some non-linearity at the low end.

As others have mentioned, the 200amps of this case could be reduced substantially by running filaments in series (can be done with 6.3v heaters as the error from a common 5v or 9v supply is more than if you pair them up and use a 12V supply) though this introduces the failure mode of old Christmas tree lights.

Source: I make vacuum tubes.

The ones we purchased were made in two different ways. Production ones were made by using a diffraction pattern of UV light to modify the refractive index of the core slightly, the other was using femptosecond lasers to alter it more dramatically.

The UV light method worked fine, came out to about $600US per fibre with 32 gratings each, not exactly cheap. The measurement unit was on the order of $20k US though.

I've literally never had my ID checked at the gate. Australia and US domestic, Australia to US, Asia, and Europe.

I think you made the right choice. You've come up with a great sensor topology. FBGs are good, but there's so much to them that is just infuriating. I ended up late in my optics work spending most of my time finding ways to avoid them.

The perpetual issue with FBGs is cost, in my experience. For quality sensors, you can use cheap fibre with expensive detectors, or cheap detectors with expensive fibre. There's been a perpetual promise of the tech getting cheaper, but never seems to really drop significantly. We always struggled to find buyers once they saw the price tag.

Very cool! I used to build sensors similar in construction, but in all glass. Was a great challenge and a lot of fun. I like your spin on things.

Well done completing the Phd!

100% great suggestion. I found this solution the hard way, by hand, on paper, a few weeks before learning this algorithm already existed. Reminded me that a large percentage of efficient engineering is just knowing what tools you have available off the shelf.

The algorithm I figured out was mostly equivalent, though about 3x slower than implementing Goertzel. In my use case, it was already a win hitting the product requirements, but implementing Goertzel allowed background functionality to operate better while capturing data.

I haven't had an issue with SD cards where Pis had reliable power. Where I used to live though we had frequent power cuts, of only a couple of seconds, a couple of times a day. SD card corruption was a major pain. Even in areas with more reliable power, for a 24/7 on device, occasional power outages have lead me to move away from Pis. Battery backups are, of course, an option, but increase the cost for a reliable and simple system.