prova_modena

It's gentle on the transmission and clutch if you rev match on the downshifts.

I did several semesters' worth of biology fieldwork in college that involved handling many of these guys, under the guidance of a professor who was obsessed with them. Their toxicity was discussed more as a point of interest rather than an immediate danger. We always wore gloves when handling them, but the rationale was more for the newts' protection rather than our own. I never heard of there being a newt poisoning incident during the past decades of this professor overseeing similar fieldwork. Of course, eating them was out of the question.

The straps tend to break after a few years. Casio G Shock straps last a lot longer, despite being very similar. Not sure if it is because the F91W strap is thinner or made of a less durable material.

As of 2019, 72% of Arizona's water supply was used for agriculture.

https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts

The American Alpine Club publishes an annual journal called "Accidents in North American Climbing" entirely dedicated to accounts of climbing accidents that happened during the previous year.

http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/about_the_acciden...

They publish one accident report every month that you can read without being a member/subscriber:

https://americanalpineclub.org/prescription

They are very informative for outdoorspeople of any kind, not just climbers.

The SF90 resale values seem to also be impacted by issues with the battery and charging system. I remember reading quite a few stories about electrical gremlins on FerrariChat. Even if the issues are worked out by later updates (which they may or may not be), that kind of bad reputation can have a big impact on depreciation.

...to get an allocation for the latest and greatest model. Pretty sure you can walk into most Ferrari dealers today and order a Roma, for example, without previous ownership history.

Ferraris have to be serviced by licensed mechanics.

"Have to"? Says who? "Licensed"? By who?

As someone who is very close to both the "factory authorized" and "non-authorized" sides of the Ferrari service industry, this is incorrect or at best a gross oversimplification of things like warranty service or the Ferrari Classiche process.

There are a lot of misunderstandings and myths circulating about Ferrari ownership, but this is a new one to me.

We used old HP Laserjets in a warehouse up until about a year ago. Towards the end, we had to repair and replace them with increasing frequency due to the beige plastic becoming very brittle. As a result, the printers became hard to service and more prone to damage during regular use. Replaced with a cheap Brother laser.

Dunning-Kruger effect.

Can you elaborate on what the signs were? Is there sufficient interior volume remaining in the wreck for a sub to actually maneuver inside?

Regarding desoldering tools, I also hate solder suckers and instead use a mix of desoldering stations and desoldering braid. I used to very heavily use desoldering tools in challenging situations, such as large traces/joints covered with a lot of flux residue or conformal coating. I ended up working my way up the Hakko desoldering line and developed some opinions.

The Hakko 808 is discontinued and the FR-301 seems to be the current replacement. I used a FR-301 for a while and it was a fine tool. I've now switched over to a FM-2024 which connects to a FM-206 base station (among others). I found out that with heavy use I had many more issues with the FR-301 due to the longer tube between the nozzle tip and the solder capture chamber. The FM-2024 has a much shorter tube and the nozzle is integral with the tube. These factors make the FM-2024 more reliable and easy to clean under heavy use. The FM-2024 is also more lightweight and can be used with a gun or pencil grip. So if you do a lot of desoldering, desolder a lot of gunky/fluxy stuff, or have/want a compatible Hakko soldering station, I would suggest the FM-2024 over the FR-301.

As someone who owns a FA430 and has a sensitivity to flux fumes causing headaches and drowsiness, I agree with everything in this comment. Keep in mind you can become sensitized to flux fumes after repeated exposure (happened to me) so IMO it's better to go overkill on fume extraction before it becomes a problem.

It's "absolutely useless" because it doesn't do the thing its advertised to do, which is extract fumes from your workspace. It dilutes and mixes the air right in front of your face, but your workspace will still gradually fill with solder fumes as you work. If you're an infrequent solderer, that may be fine. But if you are making a habit of soldering, or its your job, get something that actually filters or removes the fumes. I'm giving this advice because I used a setup as effective as yours for years and it caused me health problems through sensitization even though it seemed ok for a long time.

My belief is that people who review the FA-400 positively would be as well served by a regular fan (and even better served by a box fan with a decent furnace filter in front of it). Possibly they are infrequent users or just not sensitive to flux fumes like I am. My understanding is that activated carbon filters like in the FA-400 rapidly lose effectiveness when exposed to the air.

It's probably possible to DIY something as effective as the FA-430 by adapting an existing purifier or fan, as long as you carefully seal the pre-filter path. Since I use the extractor every day in a workshop with coworkers, I need something durable and idiotproof with parts and filters easily available. So it made sense for us to shell out for the FA-430.

I would add a good fume extractor as a must-buy to this list if you're soldering once a week or more. The fumes from flux are noxious and prolonged exposure can cause sensitization. I have always been slightly sensitive to flux fumes, so since I began soldering on a daily basis for work I have always used some form of fume ventilation. I use a lot of the MG Chemicals 835 flux mentioned in the article. Even with a ducted extraction fan removing the smoke from my workspace, I began to develop headaches and fatigue from exposure to the flux vapor. These symptoms worsened over time and began starting with less and less exposure. Now I use a fancy Hakko FA430 extractor, which has a bulky HEPA filter and allows me to solder all day without ill effects. Even so, I watch my exposure and have drastically reduced my liquid flux use as just the flux aroma can make me feel a little off. I believe I have been permanently sensitized from using sub-optimal ventilation and that's not a good feeling.

I don't think you need to go buy the $700 FA430 I use, but I would say the extractor needs to have:

- a hose/duct that can be positioned right at the soldering site

- some kind of HEPA filtration or equivalent, even if it is exhausted outside your workspace

- well sealed ducting/hose/fan housing, so fumes don't leak out. I first used a duct fan with some hoses and loc-line for fume extraction, and I now believe it was leaking fumes into my workspace the whole time because the system wasn't airtight :(

Those little "benchtop extractors" with a fan and a carbon filter are absolutely useless. I wouldn't be surprised to learn companies buy them for "regulatory compliance purposes" as they don't really do much of anything except be cheap.

Older games, but "Omega Boost" and "Zone of the Enders" 1 and 2 are great examples of trying to realize this style.

They specifically removed the text on the website saying you can get API access from feeding, replaced this with a link to their paid RapidAPI (under "Enthusiast Usage Terms") and no longer automatically give you API access with an active feeder key. That seems like a pretty clear message even if they made an exception for you. Besides, how long do you think your free access will last under the new ownership?

EDIT: In their FAQ it currently states: "In very limited situations ADSBexchange.com may choose to allow non-profit, research, or educational entities access to the historical data or API at reduced fee, in these situations such entities must meet all other requirements including hosting a feeder. ADSBexchange.com API pricing is a fraction of the cost of ADS-B data available anywhere else." To me that is quite different than their previous policy of providing automatic noncommercial API access to anyone hosting a feeder. It removes an incentive to feed and discourages use of the API.

ADS-B Exchange used to have another incentive to feed in the form of free API access, subject to certain limits and for noncommercial use only. They stopped that a year or two ago, I believe because various commercial operations kept abusing it.

Well, dang. I have been maintaining a Twitter bot that uses the ADS-B Exchange API, but paused development after Musk started going after ElonJet aggressively and Twitter began to ban aircraft tracking accounts. I just restarted work this week to implement Mastodon support, but looks like I need to pause again to reassess what ADS-B data source(s) to support.

I would really like to know the story behind this acquisition as my previous interactions with the ADS-B Exchange owner (edit: after checking back in on the discord maybe this person was not the owner, but one of the main team members) on discord were positive and they seemed like a very passionate and principled person. This was like more than 1 year ago now, though. My suspicion is that the loud, polarized public discourse around the ElonJet controversy, which led to ADS-B Exchange getting banned from Twitter, may have caused them to reassess their priorities. I hope they are not under any kind of legal threat from Musk.

Perhaps that commenter observed that the author of the paper seems incredibly personally invested in the success of this method and tends to personally attack any detractors without regard to the soundness of the criticism. The author seems to also have a lot of fans who do the same. Publicly engaging with a person like that requires a certain tolerance for crankiness that not everyone possesses.

I just changed a filter in my air purifier after having it next to the kitchen for about 6 months. The prefilter was covered in a layer of cooking oil mixed with dust. The built in air quality monitor always shows poor air quality wheen cooking. Its no joke, especially in places that have poorly constructed/cheap stove ventilation.

True, I would also add that a major contributing factor to the danger of the group B era was absolutely horrendous race organization and scheduling, creating dangerous situations for competitors and spectators. Most notably and tragically at Portugal in 1986. While Gr.B cars required great skill, the danger of the cars themselves was perhaps overemphasized by Jean Marie Balestre's FISA to direct blame away from their own organization and on to the manufacturers.

It really depends on what area of industry you are in and the safety culture of the shops you are around. I hear a lot of stories of really bad safety practices in metalworking. Including the exact inverse of your statement about machinists/woodworkers and missing fingers. I would also argue that accidents with common machine shop tools like lathes and mills may have higher consequences than your average table saw or jointer in a cabinet shop. The "potential energy" is higher so to speak, although I'm not trying to downplay the forces involved in something like a table saw kicking a workpiece back. For example, there's a prominent post on r/machinists now where a poster witnessed their coworker getting sucked into a lathe (fatally). This is not something that is a risk at most cabinet shops, but is a risk at most machine shops. That accident was indirectly caused by disabled safety interlocks on the lathe, an unfortunately common practice in the industry. All anecdotal evidence, of course, but I think machine shops have a different risk profile that isn't necessarily less risky overall.

Woodworking was also my gateway into CNC and machining metal. The most important lesson it taught me was that every manufacturing process has a system of tools around it. One tool is almost never enough to build anything of quality. Early on, I was very interested in the charm and ingenuity of individual tools. After learning more and working in the field, I realized that building sophisticated things is all about the integration of tool systems into stable, predictable processes. A holistic approach is necessary.

Agreed. I've seen a lot of people coming from 3D printing become interested in CNC and assume the complexity, risk and investment are similar. They hit a wall pretty quickly when they realize all these things are much higher when machining metal. There are a lot of hobby mill companies willing to perpetuate this assumption by selling cheap benchtop mills. But to do produce anything with "industrial" precision, strength and surface finish at a decent rate, the physical size of the equipment alone is more than what most garage shops are willing to accommodate.

I skipped right to the section on CNC machining because that's what I have some expertise in. A couple pieces of feedback:

- In section 2.1.1 there is a note that states "CAM applications are designed to fail safely; that is, if any of the features of the model cannot be reached without plowing through another essential section of the geometry, the problematic region simply won't be machined at all." This is really, really bad advice for someone learning CNC, because it's the kind of statement that may be true 90% of the time but the remaining 10% where it is false can have serious consequences (ruined workpieces, broken tools, crashed machines, injuries etc). Every one of the 6 CAM programs I have used has both intended behaviors and bugs/edge cases that will violate this assumption. A CNC learner should instead be instructed to have a step-by-step verification checklist to determine the correctness and safety of a new program. This includes steps utilizing both the simulation functions within their CAM program and dry running on the machine. In addition to behaviors within CAM, there is a whole additional class of unintended (unsafe) behavior that can emerge once the program is actually run on the machine and will not be caught in CAM simulation. The exact composition of this verification process will vary depending on what you are doing, but the main idea is to never assume your CAM programming will fail safely like this article suggests.

- In regards to Total Indicated Runout in section 2.1.3. The article has a good discussion here, however I would add that the smaller tool you use, the greater effect TIR has on tool longevity and surface finish. As overall tool diameter get smaller, allowable chip load generally decreases. TIR effectively changes the chip load on each tooth as the tool rotates. If TIR is large enough relative to chip load, this imbalance will destroy the tool in short order. Why is this important to a new CNC user? Lots of new CNC operators assume that since smaller tools reduce cutting forces, they can use very small endmills on their benchtop end mills and not worry about rigidity. However, due to the TIR + chipload issue described above, demands on spindle precision actually increase if you want to use smaller end mills. There is a sweet spot where the end mill is cutting, has decent life and does not exert overly high cutting forces, which will depend on the machine and tool holding setup. But this does not necessarily coincide with using the smallest end mill possible.

- In section 2.1.7, jaw chucks (like a drill chuck) should not even be mentioned, except to caution users away from them. The article describes them as if they are just a non-optimal choice, but they are outright dangerous to use for milling. They are not designed to deal with the lateral forces created by end mills. They also are often mounted on tapers that can't deal with those forces either. Please do not reply and tell me you have had success milling with an X-Y table on your drill press. You may have, but you won't be doing it in my shop. It's not safe.

- Section 2.1.8 is overall good info, but misses mentioning what is one of the most important keywords to understanding how CNC machines interface with CAM software: the postprocessor. All G-code is interpreted and comes in many different dialects, with varying degrees of compatibility across CNC controller manufacturers. Which dialect your CAM system outputs is controlled by the postprocessor, which is a build script that can be interchanged to support different CNC controllers. Of special interest to the HN audience is the fact that these postprocessors can be written and (usually) modified, which may be advantageous to support unusual machines or customize your production process. IIRC fusion360 postprocessors are javascript. Professional machine shops without in-house software dev expertise pay big money for custom postprocessors.

If anyone is interested in getting deeper into this subject, I have been curating a list of resources for learning machining on my website here:

https://www.r-c-y.net/posts/machining/

I began compiling these because I was mostly self-taught when I started machining and at the time found it pretty tough to find good learning resources that weren't primarily focused on hobbyist-scale machining. These should provide a good introduction to industrial scale, professional quality machining rather than small scale benchtop milling like this article. However, the fundamentals apply to both, so even if your ambitions are small it's good to learn from the pros.

The best quality traditional style adjustable wrenches I am aware of are made by Bahco. They are made with tighter tolerances than typical Home Depot grade stuff, which reduces slipping and damage caused by jaw movement.

https://www.bahco.com/int_en/products/wrenches/adjustable-wr...

However, I prefer the Knipex pliers wrenches mentioned by other commenters. They are also useful for many other gripping, pressing and bending tasks that the traditional adjustables cannot do.

Edit: For vise grip type tools, Grip-On is the best value/quality. They have a slightly different release mechanism than the Vise-Grip branded tools that improves the ergonomics of the tool significantly. They are (or were last time I checked) relabeled by some high end tool brands like Snap-on. For the most part, I consider them an inherently destructive but sometimes necessary tool that will mess up a fastener. However there are a wide variety of jaw styles (and removable covers) available that can mitigate this, depending on the task.

From the article:

"As Schlichting speculates, “The most logical explanation [is the miners] found a major discovery, and the mine owners gave them new jeans” as a reward. Outfitted in new attire, the miners may have discarded their old denim in the spot where they ate lunch or kept their tools. Alternatively, the men may have left their dirty clothes in the mine and ascended to the surface in clean gear, failing to return to the site and recover their used jeans for reasons unknown. A third explanation is the jeans belonged to the mine, which provided them to miners as a work uniform."

A few thoughts, from someone who is in the business of supporting 20+ year old high end vehicles.

- We are already seeing many 90s-early 2010s vehicles where we cannot repair or support certain parts. One big issue is the difficulty of board-level repair on discontinued electronic parts. Most auto shops can't/won't tackle that, their comfort level is just replacing whole electronic modules. Even if you can/will do these kinds of repairs, there is zero documentation and individual components may no be longer made or have obfuscated part numbers. There are some independent specialists doing good work in this field but it's still really hit-or-miss. If manufacturers were compelled to release detailed schematics and parts lists once parts are discontinued, it would help.

- Also, I see many shops struggle to run older specialized diagnostic software/hardware. For example, certain subsystems that can only be programmed with proprietary interfaces that won't run on anything newer than windows 98. Or technical documentation software that needs a hardware key attached to a parallel port. I've worked around some of this kind of stuff using VMs or preserving older hardware, but it's really tough for the average shop and not something that's easy for an independent entrepreneur to turn into a product or service. Again, mandatory open-sourcing once things are discontinued or no longer serviced by dealers would be a major help here.

- Regarding the two points above, I've heard counterarguments about the average new car being much more reliable than older cars. Mechanically, this may be true, but in my experience lots of car electronic systems fail due to age, not mileage. So my prediction is that even though new cars may travel 200k miles without major mechanical malfunctions, as they age a whole cohort of these cars will be plagued with issues due to stuff like capacitors leaking, solder joints cracking, water/dust intrusion, adhesives and coatings failing etc. This will be tough on lower income buyers who previously could buy something like a used 90s Camry which provides reliable cheap transportation even today.

- The article uses the common euphemism of "labor shortage" to mask what is a crisis of labor conditions and pay. The automotive repair industry in the US is undergoing a severe brain drain due to a combination of exploitative labor practices and bad pay. I'm talking about total lifetime earning potential, not just "low starting wages" mentioned in the article. The trade association representative quoted at the end is doing a lot of wishful thinking about attracting young techie folks to the industry, because the industry currently is a very raw deal for any smart young person compared to other options. I imagine we will soon see articles like these invoke "passion" and "inspiring young car enthusiasts" as the industry tries emotional appeals to gain new hires.

- Ultimately, NONE of these concerns about supporting older designs or attracting talent matter to the major manufacturers. Even high end cars now are only built to last the warranty period. The ideal new car customer leases the newest model each year and never buys. Under this model, dealer techs will only need to do routine maintenance and occasional parts swapping. No diagnostic skill required. The manufacturer considers the cars essentially disposable and "someone else's problem" once they can no longer make money off leases or financing. The incentives are completely against high quality, durable, repairable cars, and this won't change without some kind of stronger right-to-repair regulation.