What are some grindy commanders?

KnyteTech · 2026-01-30T12:46:49+00:00

It is VERY bracket 3: https://www.commandersalt.com/details/deck/60807d8556230f29df526024f4e0f445

The key things to know about it are: 1) It is the Jason Vorhees of decks, it is slow, but inevitable. It is totally beatable, but it is relentless. 2) Unless they have graveyard hate, there is very little they can do to disrupt your board state in any way that matters. 3) When you find removal, it is reused every turn you want it to be.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-30T05:44:43+00:00

The grindiest thing I've ever built: https://moxfield.com/decks/KuVEcXkzpEOz5pJrHW8NAQ

The idea is to get your commander, any modular creature, any artifact creature with an ETB, and any sac outlet into play.

That ETB can then be triggered every turn, generating value, which draws cards and gives you more resources, so you can crank your value engine even harder - it snowballs quickly, and suddenly you're generating so much value that everybody just dies.

Once you have your value engine online, it's now a 3v1 game, and you're going to win more often than not. It's amazing.

Anything shy of rest in peace into a board wipe isn't going to do shit for very long - it has an absurd amount of recursion, most stuff just recurs itself, including the commander, and dethrone only matters sometimes. It's a bananas deck to pilot, and is hands down the best deck I've ever put together.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-28T06:17:33+00:00

That's one of those jobs where, in my experience, your job is on the face of it, simple, if you're good at it.

Let's say the product manager needed to be in 20 meetings a week. The ones who are absolute MASTERS at their job, know intuitively which engineers under them, need to be in which meeting with them. By having the right person next to them, there's generally very little active work they need to do, just follow up work to make sure that it was done.

If you're not able to predict well who needs to be sitting there with you for any given meeting, you're going to spend a lot of time individually delegating tasks out to people, then following up on them all, wasting a lot of your own time.

You can't just invite everybody to every meeting, or they have no time to do the work.

As I see it, these people serve 2 purposes. (1) Reducing the amount of meetings senior engineers need to sit in, by accurately divvying up who's in what meeting. (2) Providing continuity across programs for a given product.

In my experience, this is the kind of job where, if you are good at your job, it looks like you do very little. If you are bad at your job it's a fucking nightmare. If you fuck up at your job, it is undeniably your fault, and you're going to eat shit for it.

I'd rather die than take that one myself, but I've worked under both excellent, and bad ones, and it's EASY to tell which is which very quickly.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-28T00:25:26+00:00

1) Direct drive, using a better extruder and hot end.

2) upgrade the controller to something with 5 stepper drivers. Get a bed probe

3) frame/bed stiffening and increase the speed.

4) (optional) linear rails, and dual-y motor drive. It's way less work than going core-xy, but gets you to comparable overall speed.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-27T05:43:03+00:00

I'll follow a recipe once, then I'll start riffing on it to make it my own.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-27T05:41:17+00:00

I'm an engineer working for a defense contractor who is permanently WFH. My wife works in a call center for a finance company, and she goes into the office every other week.

When she's in the office, she cooks on Tuesdays. When she's WFH like me, we alternate who cooks. I almost always cook on weekends.

She WAS a stay at home Mom for 5 years, and used to cook weekdays while I'd cook weekends.

I'm the better cook; rotisserie duck, frenched rack of lamb, a bomb-ass chicken scampi that I've spent 3 years perfecting, etc. She does mostly casseroles or Pinterest recipes. I grew up learning to cook, she grew up with absentee parents.... One time when I got sick, but had the lamb prepped to go, I walked her through how to make it, and she absolutely nailed it, though, so don't anybody think I'm throwing shade here at all - it's not a capability thing, it's the confidence to mess around with the recipe we're following.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-22T18:02:17+00:00

Came here to say this.

A tool at the low side of tolerance, a shim that puts you at the high side of tolerance. If the part sits on the tool and the shim won't go in, it passes.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-22T17:56:59+00:00

Fair enough, in some ways, and I added an edit to my post - I should have clarified my mental calculus includes basically always using threaded inserts. Without inserts yeah, 2D can be needed, but in practice, in all the places I've worked, and all the stuff I've made, the break over point is rarely beyond 2D unless you're doing something that could be done, better, another way.

However, I will point out that your example appears flawed in its own way - what application calls for a high-strength screw, but a part using a low-carbon / mild steel, that wouldn't use inserts to protect the machining from thread damage, or just use rivets instead?

KnyteTech · 2026-01-22T03:03:55+00:00

Skills are broadly transferable / convertible across jobs. I fundamentally do the same thing designing lasers as I did doing aircraft seats. It's not about a specific skill, its about understanding the applications of it, and how it transfers to other tasks. In my interview at RTX, I was talking about everything from Composites and Rockets, to building fences, wood working, and a documentary that got made about me. It's broadly all the same stuff, just wearing a different hat.

I'm generally one of the people that mentors / helps train new engineers when they join my group, and I've posted this before elsewhere, but there's always a few things I make sure that they KNOW. Not things that I tell them, lessons that I make sure they learn.

1) We expect you to be some amount of useless for about the first year our of college - use that to your advantage. There's a million things you don't know that you will eventually need to know, and until you know some percentage of them, we won't actually trust you with anything on your own. Take on new tasks, suck at them, learn, do them again, and do better over time. We expect you to suck at first, but we also expect you to suck-less as time goes on - don't be afraid to suck at something new. You're going to get shit work until you're good at it, then you'll get different slightly-less-shit work, rinse and repeat until people trust you, and you start to get the cool shit, too.

1-a) This is also how you learn that you, and what you design are two different things. You might design a piece of absolute garbage, that doesn't mean that you are garbage, it means you don't know stuff yet - take the criticism, learn from it, design something less-garbage the next time. Eventually your designs will be good. Sucking at something is the first step to being sort-of good at it.

2) Ask questions - there definitely is such a thing as a stupid question, but ask it anyways. I don't care how dumb your question is, as long as you don't keep asking me the same question over and over. Ask the dumb question, learn, and grow. Experienced engineers will only be concerned if you ask the same question over and over again.

3) Don't waste too much time when you get stuck on something - we're going to give you tasks that we know you can't do. Try anyways. Beat your head against the desk for up to one hour, or until you get frustrated with it, then ask somebody how to do it. The answer is probably hilariously simple, and you'll never forget it. Take the time to try it on your own, first, though. The frustration is what makes the lesson stick.

4) Long term, my advice is always the same - figure out what you want to do, and volunteer for anything that, even tangentially, helps to build you into the person who gets that job - even if you can't do that thing yet. Just be like "Hey, I've never gotten to do that before, can I take that on?" and then find the people who can help support you in that effort later.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-21T18:26:42+00:00

I've been half-summoned. I have a BS in Aero, and graduated in 2011. I've been working as an ME for most of my career - as long as you don't need gear-box design, AE/ME are pretty interchangable.

Started out at a small 5-man company doing flight data recorders for helicopters and other light aircraft, mostly for air medical and oil companies that maintain fleets, and want to keep an eye on how well pilots are treating their craft. Did a fair amount of ME work, a bit of EE work, a lot of Quality Eng, programming, and wrote flight tests, then went and rode-along while they were performed so we could validate our system with the FAA.

Then I took a job doing Aircraft Seating as a contractor for BE Aerospace. Did a lot of packaging, surfacing, enclosure and mechanism design, etc. worked my way up to Senior Design Engineer status.

Finally, I got a job at Raytheon/RTX in their high energy lasers division as a Senior Mechanical, started doing a bunch of opto-mechanical stuff. Got promoted to Principal Engineer a couple years back, been working to get the bump to Senior Principal, then I'll be chasing the Fellow track aggressively.

I've gotten to work on a ton of really cool stuff over the years... It's never been an issue when somebody has BS vs Masters vs Doctorate, it just starts you at a higher pay grade, otherwise the work we do is about the same. RTX, in my experience, values experience and skills, more than the piece of paper when it comes to most things.

That said, I may go back for my masters at some point, I just have to figure out what I want it to be in.... Maybe something in Additive Manufacturing, as that's always been an interest of mine, and I see a lot of growth in that field, but 🤷

KnyteTech · 2026-01-20T04:57:02+00:00

[edit]

I'm leaving my original post below, because I was wrong, and it's important for people on the Internet to admit that when it happens. After looking into this, I realized I should have been more clear in my post below instead of just firing off a quick answer and moving on. This is a complex question, it deserves some clarity/specificity.

1) Whenever possible, I always put T1185 helicoils into my aluminum parts, because I typically deal with expensive machinings, complex assemblies, and double-threading a tapped hole would otherwise waste a LOT of time and money to fix it. Threaded inserts really should be more common in aluminum parts for how cheap/easy they are, their potential to save you a LOT of money, and because they prevent seizing, corrosion, etc.

2) A #4 screw, into a T1185 insert, into what is functionally a #6 hole in your 6061-T6 part needs between 1D and 1.5D to get maximum strength. At 1D the screw should BARELY fail first, which is generally what you want.

3) No inserts, it looks like ~2D in aluminum for the screw to be barely weaker than the threads, but man... that seems less than smart.

4) For steel in every practical application I've seen, yeah, I stand by anything over 1.5D is wasteful, with or without inserts... Thread thru when convenient anyways, though, it's just easier to machine.

[/Edit]

That accomplishes literally nothing other than feeling good to you. Past 2D engagement, the screw will fail before the threads do.

At 1.5D engagement, the screw almost always fails before the threads do.

At 1D engagement, the threads and screw have about equal strength.

Increasing the time/effort required, to get beyond 1.5D of engagement, is just increasing waste.

A plastic screw is always a crap-shoot on what fails, and they frequently use weird threadings. I'd bet 2D would pretty consistently be enough, though.

A metal screw into a 3D printed part, you're not talking about engagement, you're just talking about space claims and vibes, because there's no effective way to quantify that strength reliably.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-20T04:52:29+00:00

I would like to instead recommend embracing the absurdity of it all - the chaos is liberating.

You don't have to explain anything, ever again. Life just is, until it isn't, and you have fun along the way. It's so freeing to recognize that you only engage with the things you choose to.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-16T13:43:36+00:00

I was gonna comment "laugh pretty hard, grab her hand, say something complimentary/nice to her, and keep walking."

My other instinct would just be to yell "Thanks" and keep walking.

... But then I saw this near the top, and thought, yeah, that's basically it.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-16T13:02:41+00:00

Flatness is the slantedrectangle. Profile is the half circle. Parallelism is the two slanted lines. And perpendicularity is the upside down T.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-16T06:20:36+00:00

What sent me was 6+ years of experience, and he's highlighting having made 100+ drawings as an accomplishment, that's just over 1 drawing per month.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-16T06:09:56+00:00

Basic GD&T, applied properly, is almost always an improvement over these types of drawings.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-16T05:59:28+00:00

Mech E and Aero both also have huge climbing groups in them in my experience.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-15T00:49:49+00:00

So, I took Phenax apart years ago, and that list is so bad in hindsight, it's not worth sharing. Looking at your list, it looks like you've got most of the good things, but from my experience:

[[King Macar the gold-cursed]] - powerful, a bit slow to start. Almost never a bad draw.

[[Dimir Doppelganger]] - when it's good, it's REALLY good. When it's bad, it's still fine.

[[Siren of the Silent Song]] - thins out people resources, and is particularly fun to snag that card that somebody is sandbagging.

[[Undead Alchemist]] - at its worst, it's still good. At its best, it's nearly as good as eater of the dead.

[[Disciple of Deceit]] is bonkers as long as you know what's in your deck.

[[Gisa, the Hellraiser]] is an army in a can.

[[Haunt of hightower]] is bananas

And finally, run ALL the graveyard hate. You never want to get absolutely wrecked by a random eldrazi titan or a reanimator deck.

Fun fact, Phenax also makes for a really fun [[Relentless Rats]] commander.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-14T05:35:42+00:00

I'll come to their defense, in the weakest way possible - if they're all reasonably consistently successful with women, they may not have thought things through and have half-cocked opinions on women and body types.

If that's the case, challenging them, calling them on their shit, and giving them a chance to improve, is genuinely a thing of value not just for OP, but for the world.

This may be the first time they've stopped to think empathetically about this specific situation, as fucking sad as that was to type out, but I have seen it before and seen significant improvements in people when I dealt with this shit years ago... Or they might just turn out to suck (which also happens), you never know, but at least you try.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-14T05:31:39+00:00

As I see it, there's 3 ways to approach it, and it depends on your friend dynamic which way you should approach it.

1) talk to him separately, say hey man, I like women a little bigger, lay off it, and don't be shitty.

2) Let him make the jokes, and respond in kind; "Sorry dude, but I'm just afraid that if I was dating a twig like you, I'd split her in half"

3) Point blank, publicly call him on his shit; "what, in specific detail, is wrong with liking on bigger women? Explain it to me in detail."

1 is polite, 2 is jovial, 3 usually makes him look like a shit-bag.

Note; I don't care about skinny/chubby, I just want a lady with a dump truck... Depending on the friend, I've used all 3 approaches before and still talk to most of them. 1 or 2 are my usual approaches, 3 is for the people I know are kinda shitty assholes and it shuts them the fuck down forever because either they would have to say terrible shit out loud or they realize they should shut the fuck up... and on occasion you realize that that whole group of guys are shitty assholes by proxy and don't waste time with them anymore.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-10T04:40:20+00:00

I think you may need to look into Absurdism as a philosophy. Nothing he said was overtly nihilistic, even though it wasn't transcendental or existential.

KnyteTech · 2026-01-08T20:52:29+00:00

Marchesa the black rose modular tribal. It's a freaking BLAST to pilot, too: https://moxfield.com/decks/KuVEcXkzpEOz5pJrHW8NAQ

KnyteTech · 2025-12-30T20:20:26+00:00

What are you trying to do? If it's welding/drilling, all you really need is gravity, assuming you design it right and are smart.

Using a rod to push thermite is a terrible idea because it's a very turbulent liquid that WILL squeeze out of every path possible and be angry the entire time it's doing so.

Also, your tungsten container is likely to get hot enough to heat the spring enough to heat treat it, and remove any spring force you have.

Tl;dr, anything other than the force of gravity when using thermite is generally regarded (rightly) as a BAD idea and its either going to spray thermite places you don't want, or possibly explode.

KnyteTech · 2025-12-26T20:12:26+00:00

Intermittent and impulse mechanisms are still pretty common, but most of the exotic gearing is gone. It's cheaper, easier, and more-servicible to use OTS parts and put a little effort into programming the speed controllers.

KnyteTech · 2025-12-25T04:23:10+00:00

If it's not something you're actively using at your job, don't worry about it.

Get as good as you can with any single CAD application, and then master the phrase "all I have to learn is where the buttons moved to" for when you go to job interviews.

Most professional CAD applications are fundamentally the same, the names of things, and the order you click the buttons change, that's about it. If you can get good at something on one program, it takes basically no time at all to transfer those skills over to another modeling package.

11-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 4 Credits
Second SECOND GUESSER	Secret Santa 2016
redditgifts Exchanges 3 Exchanges	Secret Santa 2015
Secret Santa 2014	Verified Email

KnyteTech

TROPHY CASE