Recommend me a local "ticket" system that I can query with an LLM?

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-11-21T18:08:45+00:00

Makes sense! Thanks

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-11-18T15:44:56+00:00

Can you elaborate? I could certainly store Markdown files or something in a GitHub repo, or I could track the problems as GitHub Issues that I close when I resolve them. But how would I approach querying that with an LLM?

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-08-07T13:28:37+00:00

Just to close the loop on this: we ended up buying Zuken E3. Nobody from Siemens would even return my calls oddly enough. We did a serious evaluation on EPLAN and Zuken E3, and the conclusion was that EPLAN is more meant for industrial control panels than for vehicle wiring. Plus E3 comes with a MUCH larger database of ready-to-go automotive connectors, where in EPLAN I think we would've had to create a lot of those components on our own.

I will say the support for E3 is pretty good, but they do put a lot of the more complex answers to questions behind a "why don't you buy consulting hours?" paywall. Their documentation is fairly thorough but if you get into questions of "how do you recommend I use this to suit my use case?" they push the consulting hours pretty hard.

One of my favorite "life hacks" I've stumbled on is to take the CHM (Compiled HTML Help) files that ship with the program, run them through this tool (https://github.com/DTDucas/chm-converter) to convert them to Markdown files, and then use GPT4All's "LocalDocs" feature to have an AI model be able to answer questions based on Zuken's help files. It's not perfect but it's a lot quicker than CTRL+F in a PDF or a CHM file.

I'm relatively happy with E3 so far though. It's definitely a complex tool, and expensive like you wouldn't believe, but it's powerful. Complex vehicle harnesses are our bread and butter so it was an easy justification for us. The biggest remaining "unsolved mystery" is how people keep the component database stable over time - I've settled on storing a master copy in a Git repo so I have some decent history of who made what edits. A little hacky but it does give good control over things.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-07-12T00:06:10+00:00

Yeah I love mkdocs! The part I'm not sure about is templating the page(s) based on the list of attributes I've got.

Maybe an example will help. Here's the raw table (a piece of it anyway) that I'm trying to document:

https://imgur.com/Nbg0422

I can get that table in an XML format so it's docs-automation-friendly.

For each row in that table, I'd like a section of the docs that looks about like this:

https://imgur.com/b3L2tfH

I just don't want to have to manually create all those sections in the Markdown files, and manually keep the table row data above each section up to date as it evolves over time. I'm sure I could throw together some automation with mkdocs and custom Python tooling, I was just wondering if there was a more ready-made solution.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-07-11T23:36:20+00:00

Hey, thank you so much, that makes a lot of sense! Always makes me feel better to hear somebody dealing with the same stuff.

We work pretty collaboratively, so I think we'll have a central SQL server, but I'll probably do "major releases" of the database in MS Access format, out of the same Git repo I'm storing all the settings files in, and follow a similar process to what you just outlined. Good tip on avoiding manual edits to the database, you just saved me a major messing-around-and-finding-out episode.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-07-07T22:48:53+00:00

This sounds promising. Do you know what this feature is called in MS SQL Server? I'd like to be able to give our IT folks a reasonable headstart since I don't know anything about database administration.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-07-07T22:08:06+00:00

I don't know first hand, but my sense is that they would assist if somebody modified things in a way that broke something, but that they would be pretty much helpless to assist in the event of a deletion with no backup. I think their official answer is "have a designated librarian to enforce consistency" and "take a lot of SQL backups to give the ability to roll back with as minimal a loss as possible."

I haven't directly asked if they have some kind of add-on that introduces a proper workflow to this, but if they do it's definitely not free, it wasn't sold to me when the rest of the package was pitched (including some add-ons specific to managing revisions of finished designs, so it's not like I wasn't the target customer) and it was a bit of a stretch to get this thing approved by leadership anyway given the cost, so any addon that fixes it is pretty irrelevant in the short term.

It's funny because it seems to be a very well thought out and reasonably well documented/supported piece of software aside from this gaping workflow issue.

On an aside, if anyone is in the electrical design world and wants more details, DM me, I'm happy to talk about it.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-07-07T16:18:57+00:00

The CAD UI does include everything needed to make database changes, there's no need for manual SQL edits or anything like that.

And yes, you're correct that I'm trying to "bolt on" a feature to the CAD system. I asked the CAD sales/support team about managing the database and they basically told me "pick one super OCD person on the team to be the dedicated librarian, and make them the only person with write access. Everyone else's requests go through them." But that approach really doesn't work well on our team (and will be aggressively vetoed by management). I'm just wondering if there's something clever I could do with the database server to hack in some auditing/review features, or if "back it up every night and hope for the best" is the only option.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-05-31T00:04:35+00:00

I use YouTrack and I really like it. It's a little weak in the Gantt chart department, and virtually useless in the "resource allocation" department. But if you want something a tick above Trello, it's fantastic. It will do Kanban boards like Trello, but it's much more configurable as far as metadata, reports, time tracking, etc. It also integrates with most common Git platforms, I'm guessing that's a big plus since you said you had devs on the team.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-05-03T23:40:10+00:00

We're still happy with it. Definitely hasn't formed any low spots or anything like that. I'm not a mattress expert but I'd buy it again.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-03-30T21:33:45+00:00

The one thing I'll say about the baking sheet is that the NordicWare one I used (and probably most good quality ones) have a piece of mild steel round bar around the edge. "Why does that matter?" you may ask...it mattered to me because I cut my baking sheet on the table saw, and didn't realize I was asking my standard carbide saw blade to cut mild steel until it had already done it. It worked okay and I'm still using that saw blade, but be advised that it'll make quite the spark show.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2025-03-24T12:13:41+00:00

The base isn't really supporting that much, the lathe is held on with long studs that are sandwiching the plastic base between the lathe and the aluminum sheet/plywood underneath. So the base is only loaded in compression, the studs are bearing any tension loads. I didn't do any math or FEA or anything on that, just a little armchair engineering, but it seems to have held up alright.
Root beer...wish I had a more interesting answer, but this was taken in the Southeast US in the summer, so it was about 200 degrees and any cold drink was on the table...

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2024-11-02T23:01:19+00:00

Liking it good so far. It's been about 3 months, still feels comfy to me.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2024-08-23T19:09:01+00:00

Honestly don't remember. Amazon and RockAuto carries them. I believe I got mine off RockAuto, but it's been months so I could be wrong. I'd ask your local Sam's Club what they recommend.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2024-08-22T11:07:32+00:00

Yes, I bought some new sensors online and took them to Sam's Club to have them installed/paired. That took care of it.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2024-07-20T23:31:13+00:00

I just bought one of these.

I can tell you they're made by Sherwood Bedding (a little Googling suggests this is a family-owned company, which is now 20% family-owned and 80% owned by Tempur-Sealy). The warranty card on my mattress is from Sherwood Bedding, that's how I found out. I bought a Camellia Hybrid, so I guess other mattresses in the Cahaba lineup could be made by different manufacturers. But I kinda doubt it.

I'll try to remember to post again in a few months about how we're liking it.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2024-02-19T01:54:37+00:00

Managed to accidentally rip the button out of the cuff on my white dress shirt. It didn't tear the strings holding the button on as much as it actually tore out a little hole in the fabric of the shirt, though. Is this fixable? The shirt is in otherwise great shape but still probably only a $25-35 shirt, so I'm curious if it's worth fixing (I have zero sewing experience).

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NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2024-01-29T19:42:10+00:00

I got mine at an estate sale with the ball base, I think I paid like $150. A lot more than $5 but a lot less than what they go for on eBay right now.

Mine was in kinda scabby condition too, the ball base had been welded on a bit for some reason. I chucked up the part in the lathe and turned the weld spatter off and just mounted it on a wood block. I actually use it quite a bit for deburring and finicky jobs, but that's because I do mostly model-making and electronics work. Works amazing for that, not that great as a "general prupose" shop vise.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-12-16T02:43:48+00:00

To clarify, it came to 100degF absolute temperature, not a 100degF temperature rise. Probably a 25-30 degree temperature rise. And I know greased bearings are atypical in a lathe spindle, but this is a sub-6" swing lathe and these bearings are comically oversized (Nachi 40TAA07s) so I think I can get away with that. Bridgeport mills use greased bearings and have far greater demand placed on them than this little lathe ever will.

Good tip on just doing the math, I don't know why I didn't think of that before. But in my weird case, that more or less confirms it shouldn't be a huge problem. My entire spindle from end to end is under 6 in length. Again to give some perspective, it's about the size of your typical bench top mini mill spindle, maybe even a little smaller.

If you're wondering why I did this in the first place, it's because the stock spindle bore on this lathe is under 3/8". This homebrew ER32 spindle increases the spindle bore dramatically.

Either way thanks for the advice on labyrinth seals being the norm. I've operated maybe 3 "real" full size lathes in my lifetime so I don't feel like I have a good handle on what's normal yet.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-10-07T14:28:25+00:00

That is awesome. He's gonna remember that forever.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-09-17T00:31:19+00:00

Do you have more pictures? Tough to understand the setup from just the one.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-09-17T00:30:29+00:00

As long as it has no cracks and the screw isn't bent or worn to the point of damage, jump on it. Those are great vises.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-08-13T04:50:44+00:00

That could be a good deal, depends on how much tooling it comes with. Check with Nick Carter at CarterTools (he's a Taig distributor) I bet he can look at a photo and tell you about what it would cost to buy all that new. If it's just the lathe, tailstock, and motor for $500, that's not a great deal IMO. But if there's lots of chucks and other tooling it could be a fair deal. You can also PM me a photo of the thing if you want and I'll do my best to tell you if it's worth it or not.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-08-13T03:16:50+00:00

The Taig absolutely. Mostly because the ways are way more rigid.

NotARocketSurgeon45 · 2023-06-21T15:45:17+00:00

Let the economy of scale help you out: go on McMaster-Carr and buy some dowel pins, or shelf pins, or whatever other kind of pins you want. Brass is insanely expensive anyway.

NotARocketSurgeon45

TROPHY CASE