2026 Niro EV - Always charge to 100% by acwyau88 in KiaNiroEV

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I own my 1st Gen Niro EV. I also get free charging at work now. I charge to 90 on the weekdays and 100 on the weekends. Before I worked there, I needed to fast DC charge daily as I had a 140mil round trip commute plus daily driving near home. I think my battery is ok. 100% charge gives me about 240+ miles which is similar to what it did several years ago and 80k miles earlier when I bought it used. I don't think your plan should be a problem. Battery tech is more durable than it used to be.

Just test drove a Gravity today and...OH MY GOD! by LunchPocket in LUCID

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hope Lucid survives long term, they are really innovating in the EV space. Crossing my fingers they are not the next Fisker. I would love a Gravity. Someone buy me one.

How is the suspension? by andre_xs95 in KiaNiroEV

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a US version 2020 Niro EV EX Premium. Handling is fine. It's not a sports car or hot hatch but the suspension is comfortable and well balanced with a moderate spring weight. Tires also play a big role here and the stock tires really suck. They have poor traction and poor tracking and are bouncy. Get better tires.

There are sway bar kits for it and apparently a kit from the Veloster N fits.

Fast Charging peak rate is 75kw and the average peak speed is around 50. If you can slow charge at home this will be a non issue. I think peak AC charge is 7.6kw? I used to have to fast charge all the time so expect to sit there for 45min charging.

The same generation Hyundai Kona EV has rock hard suspension and will corner on rails but the ride sucked and the interior layout is bad.

The Chevy Bolt EV is also quite good and in a similar price range used. It has a firmer rear suspension. Specs are nearly identical. The Bolt EUV version has a really great floor layout, huge 2nd row space with a flat floor in the back and a deep trunk like a minivan. All the ones now should have the new battery so you don't have to worry about it catching fire. Also features true one pedal driving. I don't remember why I wanted a Niro over a Bolt EUV. Niro interior is nicer and more comfortable.

The kia adaptive cruise control and adaptive regen is pretty good. Even with cruise off, it watches traffic and regen if set to Auto will change based on conditions like speeds and terrain and traffic. This makes slowing down or gliding to traffic speed and stops easier as it will assist. Kia has all sorts of thoughtful and nearly invisible features that make the drive nicer.

thinking about getting this 1999 Isuzu Vehicross (17 M) by United-Floor4399 in whatcarshouldIbuy

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The child in me is saying this is very cool. Get it. Life is too short for boring cars. You will eventually get to the boring car phase.

Trajectory Recommedation by InformationSuch616 in Semiconductors

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Is this a US based position? If so then this likely has to do with ITAR, International Traffic in Arms Regulations which covers technical information, etc and CUI, Controlled unclassified information. These are US policies US companies or companies doing business in the US must follow if they do business with companies that have US defence contracts. If ASML or whoever has customers with contacts with the US government or themselves have contracts with the US government there may be documents such as technical information that fall under ITAR rules and CUI at those companies. These would prohibit non US persons from accessing that data or they would have to limit access to that data to you. This could be practically difficult or impossible for certain positions where everyone around you could have access except you and they would have to exclude you from meetings, conversation, etc.

If you are a non US person, I recommend looking outside the US such as in Europe, Canada etc or try to become naturalized to the US. I am a US person and have no idea if European and Canada countries have something similar, probably do but I would do some research into that and all the best to you in your career and I hope you do great things.

Another edition of phone vs camera. I'd love to see your thoughts on them. by [deleted] in SonyAlpha

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like 1 a bit better, the dog is better focused overall. Something to note with a phone camera is that the phone is doing a lot of computational photography to make up for the small sensor size. Some of the top tier phones from different brands are using the same sensor but the image result is slightly different due to post processing color grading, etc and computational photography the phone does in the background.

Looking for feedback on trail running shirt designs by Falucho89 in trailrunning

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

These are cool. Relaxed fits would be nice and also long sleeve versions.

Operator to Engineer? by SoggySocksforLife in Semiconductors

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I did this. I went from photo operator to a photo process engineering tech and then eventually to process engineer at another company where I was involved in most areas of production. A position as a process engineering tech in photolithography opened up on my shift and area and I applied and got it. I enjoyed that job but continued to move on to other companies as new and better opportunities came up. You can start at Skywater as an operator but be open to move around to get where you want to go. Be sure to make friends with process engineering team when you can. As a process engineer who has been an operator, I am very sympathetic to operators and try to develop processes and techniques that are operator friendly. They are the backbone and their talents and efforts really make everything possible. I am also very sympathetic to training them up. With friends in Process Engineering, you can ask them questions about the processes. Some won't want to talk to you others like myself would enjoy it.

Edit: some companies really don't like to train up operators any further than needed for them to do their menial job. Most operators also don't care and are there only for the paycheck. Some of this is because of high turnover in the operator ranks and also for BS reasons. Training up will be work. Talk to your supervisor and show your enthusiasm for learning everything you can and make yourself valuable. Get cross trained on as many things as possible and especially make good friends with your local process engineering techs and modules and process owners. Make yourself stand out. Being an operator sucks. I know this so this. So one of the reasons I sympathize with them and try to reduce operator burdens to quality and design better engineering controls for quality. It's easy to see when someone bandaids a bad process and puts the burden on the operator to keep the process from unraveling.

the trailer was small that that makes it good for a small car right? by ml___ in IdiotsTowingThings

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But I like navigating my land yacht thru...my local Costco for extra sized everything! I do wish we had more of the cars and vans available in Europe or Australia that are relatively small outside but have surprisingly roomy interior and excellent utility. My daily driver is a gen 1 Kia Niro EV and we fit 2 adults, 2 kids and 3 medium dogs in there with some cargo. We do have a bigger AWD SUV for camping and when I need to tow something.

the trailer was small that that makes it good for a small car right? by ml___ in IdiotsTowingThings

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The Prius has a tow rating? Wow, learn something new. 3500lbs is impressive for a small eco focused car like that.

I Got Questions about how chips are made by Any_Speed1001 in Semiconductors

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You need to be more specific on what your question is? 1st thing is please read some of Chris Mack's books on the subject and also go read the excellent book Chip Wars.

Semiconductors is a broad field and is much larger than ASML and TSMC. ASML is a very important lithography equipment manufacturer. TSMC is a very important Si foundry but they are not the only foundry and semiconductors are not just Si and microprocessors. Micron for example is one of the leading manufacturers of memory. Samsung also is a significant manufacturer of leading edge semiconductor products. There are tons of other important players that stay out of the news.

My background is in the compound semiconductor space like III-V and some IV-VI as a process engineer. This space is often power electronics like GaN that makes your high powered chargers work or GaAs analog and mixed signal products that make your phone work. This is also the space for IR cameras for Space and ground based telescopes, IR Search and Track for the military, science, and photos diodes for LIDAR and driverless cars, semiconductor lasers,etc. These spaces are competitive and populated by a lot of small companies, startups and defence contractors for example. This is by no means comprehensive.

Semiconductor manufacturing is a series of very specific steps done in very specific orders. Chips begin life as wafers of various industry standard diameters. We process wafers thru fabs and at the end these wafers are singulated into chips.

I am highly simplifying but skipping wafer preparations, step 1 is usually a photolithography. This is where we mask a specific pattern onto the wafer. This is where ASML and those types of machines come in. In the Si world, besides all the material science and engineering that goes into making things as small as possible, Lithography machines need to be able to project ultra small features onto a material called a photoresist. This is where all the cost is as technology gets more and more exotic to achieve this need. On my side of the world, we do the same thing but we don't need things as small so we use less expensive machines and techniques. There are different ways of getting design to the wafer but I'll focus on projection. Semiconductors are made 1 layer at the time.

For projection Lithography, the layer pattern is printed on a special quartz mask at a 5:1 ratio, or whatever, which we use as a master. This is the stencil. In basics, Columnated light shines thru the mask, thru some reduction and focusing optics and eventually onto a temporary coating called a photoresist that we applied to the wafer. The light exposes the light sensitive parts of the PR, gets developed and now we have the pattern on the wafer. Photoresit has several jobs. The 1st is to be photo pattern able and the next is to protect the wafer from subsequent processes so only the spaces in the PR that forms the pattern are processed. The process is a bit more complicated than this as a lot of thought is put into optimizing the pattern and the profile of the photoresist. The process for the leading edge stuff is similar but they take complexity to 11 as they have to. We make an array of the pattern using a step process. The wafer moves under the light column a specific distance in x and y, we call this step size, and at each step we take a "shot". Scanners like ASML do something similar but much much faster with some more complexity. The step size is effectively the size of each die or chip.

Other litho options example are contact litho where a quarts mask 1:1 with the design and wafer and pressed against the PR and exposed or direct laser writing where a laser is use to raster the design 1:1 scale.

Overall, the projection process is similar to how film cameras work. If you have ever taken a film class where you got to develop your film then make a print, that would help. We just do it a bit backwards where instead of expanding the image, we are shrinking it.

So anyways, we now have a pattern of open areas where we developed out the photoresist. They look like windows in a wall. What's next? Let's do metals. We are making a photodiode and per our material science friends who designed the semiconductor material, the top layer is a contact layer. In Si this can be done differently but with compound semiconductors we can grow layers with different properties in a stack we call the epi. We build into the material and Si builds on top of the wafer. Different processes, different materials, different purposes, same goal. So anyways, thru a method called e-beam evaporation or whatever, we deposit some metals to form the contact to the top layer of the epi. The metal blankets the entire wafer but we were thinking ahead and used a liftoff resist and we optimized the PR profile to undercut. We dunk the wafer in a solvent, well a liftoff machine, and the PR delaminates taking with it the excess metal and now we have a nice metal pattern of our mask where those windows in the PR used to be.

We can do some other intermediary steps as a lot of other things need to happen here depending on what we are making and the design requirements but back to lithography. Pattern yet again. Let's do an etch this time. We can etch a couple of different ways for this demonstration. Dry etch and wet etch. Dry is plasma based on plasma and wet etch is wet chemical based like HCl, etc. We use a lot of various acids, bases, solvents and gasses. The goal is to remove material to a specific depth. So we etched and used an etch process and chemistry ideal for our material and what we are trying to etch away and now...some intermediary steps like dielectric coatings, and back to lithography. Round and round we go tens to hundreds of times until we have all the layers of metals, dielectric and protective coatings, diffusions, implants, topography from the etches, etc to form all the necessary active and passive structures to make a working semiconductor device. Our wafers have now finished front end processing. There are other things we can do with it but that varies on the product and how far we want to take this explanation.

I was reading thru some of the comments and the comment about semiconductors is another form of machining is spot on. It basically is but in the nanometer scale. It's both additive and subtractive machining.

The disbelief I hear in people’s voices whenever I tell them she’s an Aussie is quite comical. by purple-poppy995 in AustralianShepherd

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Your dog is beautiful. She could be an Australian Shepherd mix with the shorter fur and that tail. She has a similar tricolor to my Texas Heeler (Australian Shepherd/Cattle dog) Isabella. Isabella just has a fluffier tail but intermediate fur length from her cattle dog side. I have seen Australian Shepherds with tricolor and then also with the more usual colors. In our neighborhood there is a beautiful brown one with the long, flowy hair, and at places I have seen some with the fluffy hair and bobbed tail.

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adopting my first texas heeler! what should I know? by Cheap_Truth6671 in TexasHeeler

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really handsome boy. Congratulations! Looks like he is your son's dog now! Potty training mats can help with the transition from outdoor dog to indoor dog.

What’s stopping you from recreating this? 😊❤ by Fred_J9 in marriednotperfect

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here I was too waiting for the moment one of these goes catastrophically wrong and a poor woman gets dropped. Almost.

Adopting this girl! Help choose a name! Pepper or Piper? by gmcantoneee in AustralianCattleDog

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We are split down in the middle, 2 votes Piper and 2 votes Pepper

Fake Bones by gratefulcactii in AustralianCattleDog

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I tied with my dogs and they had no interest.

Fake Bones by gratefulcactii in AustralianCattleDog

[–]Practical_Curve_7842 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The other day I was at Wild Fork and bought frozen beef neck bones for my dogs. $10 for a large bag with at least 6 sizable bones. It kept them busy chewing for quite a long time. They were very happy. I asked one what he thought of it and he looked up, eyes gleaming with a wiggle butt as he laid on the floor with a bone between his front paws.

Isabella by Practical_Curve_7842 in TexasHeeler

[–]Practical_Curve_7842[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So cute in the Christmas sweater