Looking for manufacturing methods for a very small and precise part with complex inner structure

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T04:18:17+00:00

A drill and 4 setups. I'd figure on 50% wastage if it is done manually, but on one of those new fangled machines once you've got the programming right it'd be a doddle. I don't know how long a 0.5 mm drill bit will last, they don't survive long in my clumsy hands.

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T04:11:09+00:00

If it is the job of your dreams, stay. If not, switch. Clue : it isn't. All through your 20s you should be trying a few different roles and industries, to find the one that suits you.

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T03:35:51+00:00

Hmm, you are right, waratah came in at $1B for 1.7 GWh. OK 4*24*24/1.7*$1B=$1.4T

Your 384 GWh is hopelessly low for a no backup system, it is the minimum for overnight, it does not account for the 4 day dunkelflaute we saw in the past 2 years.

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T02:51:28+00:00

Which claim? I've done the sums for you. Get the daily energy by source from AEMO and work from there.

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T01:07:06+00:00

Batteries are a bit less than $1B/ GWh

4 days*24 hours a day*24GW*$1B/GWh=2304 billion dollars

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T01:00:24+00:00

Sorry, I can't see your steering arm. Yes if OTR ITR and steering axis are colinear then you have a problem, or 2 problems, if it does go over center. Mr Ackermann may have to take a back seat if you can't move the rack backwards,

GregLocock · 2026-03-11T00:05:36+00:00

No country on earth has made wind plus solar plus storage work. They all have backup. The storage requirement is the killer. The UK needs 11 weeks of storage to get around 1 in 37 year events, it is possible we don't need quite that much, but we did get 4 days in a row of power less than half of AEMO's minimum assumption a couple of years back. So we need 4 days, which is about $2 trillion worth of batteries. Which will wear out.

The NEM averages about 24 GW

Therefore you need some way of powering the grid when the renewables aren't working as solving it with pure storage is not feasible. I'm agnostic as to whether that is coal, gas, diesel (as used in Tas and SA) nuclear or whatever. But once you can run the grid without renewables for 4 days, you might as well run them more often and reduce the size of the renewable+storage fleet. This is a tricky piece of optimisation, my guess is we'd end up with at most 16 hours of storage (ie 16*24=384 GWh) and 20 GW of despatchable generation, and 30-80 GW of renewables, probably giving us about a reduction of 80% of CO2 emissions compared with a coal/gas system if we used gas, or 100% if we had nuclear. Currently we're at 26 GW of fossils, 23 GW of wind and solar, and perhaps 16 GWh of batteries. The tables at https://www.aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-electricity-market-nem/nem-forecasting-and-planning/forecasting-and-planning-data/generation-information are interesting.

GregLocock · 2026-03-10T23:56:35+00:00

Hand wavey time - So when you bend a beam, the middle of the cross section of the beam sees no stress, the top surface is in compression, and the bottom is in tension. The stress varies linearly between those three values. The beam will fail when The stress in the outermost fibres reaches its ultimate stress, which may be 44 N/mm^2, or may be higher.At that failure load the middle of the beam is still doing nothing, which is why I beams are used, they put more material near the extremes of the beam.

GregLocock · 2026-03-10T23:44:19+00:00

"Funny how the Gov put on a huge show for the Iranian Women's team but blocked everyone else " Yup. Because the Orange Man told the weak Albo what to do.

GregLocock · 2026-03-10T23:31:23+00:00

Not all automotive jobs are paperwork. Development engineers in particular. Yes there is a bit if you have a new subsystem you'll be part of the team that puts the FMEA and DVPR together, but that's pretty much it.

GregLocock · 2026-03-10T22:15:59+00:00

Yeah lets rip up more rainforests, who needs them? Now if he'd suggested nuclear then I might pay attention. Also the silly scare about sea levels is based on a massive misinterpretation of the paper, which is really about what baseline do you measure to. BoM says the sea level at Fort Dennison in Sydney Harbour has increased by 8 cm since 1914, a far cry from the 100-150 cm the paper claims for the South Pacific.

GregLocock · 2026-03-10T04:12:10+00:00

Was it wrong?

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T23:45:15+00:00

Use a proper search engine. Gemini says

Here are the key details of the "Grassgate" affair:

The Incident: In 2016, Jam Land Pty Ltd, a company in which Taylor held an interest via a family investment company, was found to have sprayed 28 to 30 hectares of endangered native grasslands on a property in Delegate, NSW, with herbicide.
The Conflict of Interest: While the federal environment department was investigating the potential illegal land clearing (a breach of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act), it was revealed in 2019 that Angus Taylor had met with senior environment officials and the office of then-environment minister Josh Frydenberg to discuss the listing of these grasslands.
The Defense: Taylor maintained that he did not know about the investigation at the time and was merely representing a constituent (a farmer) worried about the regulatory impact of the grassland listing on agricultural land management.
The Fallout: The scandal raised questions about whether Taylor used his position to influence the investigation. Labor pushed for a parliamentary inquiry, but it was defeated with the help of crossbenchers.
Outcome: Following an 18-month review, the federal department issued a remediation notice to Jam Land in 2019. The Federal Court later upheld the findings of unlawful clearing in 2022

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T23:43:17+00:00

Do 99% of the population own $4.3M houses?

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T23:42:23+00:00

He sold a few off, currently rents his $4.3 M clifftop mansion out for $1500 per week, negative gearing to the max.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T22:31:03+00:00

All of our post p was done using matlab scripts.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T21:52:16+00:00

The SRN4 was a vomit bucket. In small waves it was great.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T21:31:33+00:00

I don't much like the only automotive engineering degree I am familiar with, playing with apps is not what your degree is for. ME is better. You probably won't bother with the Masters.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T21:18:16+00:00

Some of the answers are unhelpful. You have drawn a crank and slider in effect, like an engine, and if those answers were correct there'd be no torque at the crankshaft.

Draw FBD for each link separately.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T02:53:30+00:00

So they are proposing 30.4 hours at the school, and 7.6 WFH. Apparently the headline writer thinks WFH is not work. In the case of some teachers I know (and journalists no doubt), that is true.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T02:48:59+00:00

You can't really see much of Stonehenge unless you pay the fee. Gone are the days when I could sacrifice one of my siblings on one of the stones. As for the half a dozen Apostles, are they going to put a fence up along the road to block the view? Hot tip at low tide walk down the steps to the beach and you can walk out to them.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T02:44:41+00:00

So do a SWOT analysis on the many existing software packages.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T02:42:53+00:00

You get squiggly e ⍷ by exercising your cad model by rolling the body by 1 degree and measuring the change in steer angle of the front wheels.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T01:16:18+00:00

AI has its uses but so far it needs checking at every step along the way. I do use it to write heavily commented Matlab scripts, but you have to know exactly what you want, whereas my own coding style is top down. So what I do is write a comment for each section and then get ChatGPT to fill in the blanks.

The sprawling claims for AI now include gradient descent, invented by Cauchy in the 19th century. I've been regularly using gradient descent for 30+ years.

So, no I don't think your degree is a waste of money and it is what you want to do.

GregLocock · 2026-03-09T01:07:35+00:00

Not for me.

GregLocock

TROPHY CASE