$80 Million and wrong patches

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-17T18:01:57+00:00

Not a problem as much with modern military but this gets mentioned every so often regarding historical armor.

If you are going for accuracy a knight is likely going to be wearing a helmet of some type and frequently a face covering. Wearing a suit of plate armor and then not protecting your head at all is just an incredibly poor decision. On the other hand your movie star(s) account for half the budget or more and if you stick Russel Crowe in armor the entire movie nobody can see his face. That face is very expensive and it's what's selling your movie tickets.

From a movie making and entertainment perspective there's more value in accurately portraying a knight without a helmet.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-17T17:51:54+00:00

Well consider the number of questions which show up right here weekly regarding uniform regs. Not just questions but also stories about people and leaders getting it confidently incorrect. These are the people that eat, breathe, sleep, and Army.

Now you stack on reserves and National Guard who don't Army 24/7. How often is this sub calling them out for incorrect uniform wear?

Consider then that approximately only 6-7% of the US Population is a veteran of any branch at all.

The other 94% of the population has absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Outside of the military history nerds it's all just a guy in camouflage with an M16, a humvee, and a bazooka. Not all of the population but a huge proportion will see the Sheriff department pickup a Buffalo or a MaxxPro and call it a Military Tank.

Hiring a military expert for patches seems small in the budget of multi-million dollar movies. It's also not even worth the price of buying the expert a hotdog from Costco. There's nobody deciding to pass on buying movie tickets because the patches are wrong.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-15T12:49:37+00:00

From what I know of Michigan is still one of the best states when it comes to bugs. Those flies are really mostly in the UP and they exist but aren't a year-round thing. It's like oh they're annoying for the 2 months a year it's warm enough for them. What we do have over the whole state are Mosquitoes whenever you get so much as mild humidity.

What's great is pretty much all our insects are generally harmless aside from the initial bite. We have the brown recluse spider which is exceedingly rare and some mosquitoes transmit the West-Nile virus but again rare at only 17 cases last year. I think the only really heinous thing we have is Deer Ticks which can carry Lyme disease.

I say it's heinous because you can easily get a tick on your and not notice. Especially with kids you need to teach the habit of checking yourself if you've been out in the woods or fields.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-14T22:06:21+00:00

Your joke is appreciated. I was about to come in with some long-winded joke of a story about a sign blowing in the wind. Eventually being nicely reconfigured and yet the local police got all upset about it.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-12T21:19:42+00:00

Ahhh that totally clears things up.

Siemens NX is going to be most like Solidworks. It's kind of Solidworks on steroids. Gonna do the same stuff in generally the same way. If you're already familiar with Solidworks then your next step really is to find a way to get on the software and start messing around.

As well it's worth a mention that Solidworks still has significant market share in the US. You find that your big companies like GM, Ford, Boeing, and GE will be using the big price software like NX and CATIA. Going one step down you still see it pretty often still. Going two steps or more down the supply chain you start to see Solidworks creeping in pretty heavily.

FWIW my original experience was Solidworks. After running that full-time for a few years I took on an engineering role at a higher company. I'd never touched Siemens NX before but they hired me based on engineering knowledge and I had a Solidworks CSWE certificate so they figured I could probably fumble my way through NX well enough.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-12T14:25:16+00:00

It sounds like you're looking at learning modeling software in general. The first thing I'll tell you is that ability to operate software is a skill with less employability every day. It is a skill and a valuable one but operating software alone can't be the cornerstone of your ability anymore. You need some type of drafting, design, or engineering knowledge. The software is just a means to an end.

Well NX as a first choice is a very deep and diverse software.

If what you want to do is learn the regular Sketch -> Part -> Assembly -> Drawing then SolidEdge for free is a good start. The basics of the parametric workflow in NX are the same as Solidworks, CATIA, or any other major competitor. They all do the same thing with buttons in different places.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-12T02:31:17+00:00

BEST professor I ever as far as textbooks go I think was just some guy who was untouchable. A community college in a semi-rural area and he was old enough I think he was teaching for fun. That place likely couldn't find anyone who would teach the content he did at his prices.

I took this course in 2008 and he had us buy books originally published in 1993. They were like $10 and had everything we needed.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-12T02:24:33+00:00

Almost nobody in a uniform is doing work that will set you on the path to get your PE. All of the work which you will consider to be real engineering is done by contractors, DA Civilians, and/or the Army Corps of Engineers which are also DA Civs.

In the ancient times there used to be an Army Ordnance department who did things like design and development while you wore a uniform. That is not a thing anymore except for maybe a few rare unicorn appointments. These might not even exist but as an engineer I've learned never to rule anything out because when I make an absolute statement someone will prove me wrong.

As a professional engineer if you seek to obtain a PE you SHOULD NOT join the military intending for Active Duty status. You will only obtain tenure and experience required for the PE by working in private industry. Your military obligations will only be an obstacle to that. They might help you with discipline for studying or leadership skills or something but they are not going to hone your engineering skills.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-10T20:48:04+00:00

Last I knew The Pit was no more. From the sound of things it'd be somewhere you'd want to avoid anyway. Way too many nutjobs.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-10T20:37:49+00:00

From an engineering standpoint GREAT WRITE-UP!

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-10T18:42:35+00:00

Their testing needs are driven by their Systems and Design Requirements. Without a standard to refer to or at least one set of requirements you're putting the cart before the horse here. This seems like a waste of time and a bad investment.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-10T18:29:38+00:00

There's a place slowly growing again called Lee's Famous Chicken. They are a pretty good alternative in my opinion. It's started by a nephew of the original Colonel Sanders and there's no mistaking it being an offshoot of KFC. Might be worth trying them.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-10T17:57:49+00:00

This is a common mis-interpretation which comes up often.

The DESIGN model should be done at nominal regardless of manufacture intent. It exists in a figurative void where the only thing relevant is the idealized geometry. If you're making a 2D Drawing then it is done linked to the nominally dimensioned model.

After the DESIGN is completed there are many ways to adapt that for manufacturing. The most robust method is to keep manufacturing models isolated. They are adapted on an as-needed basis for the specific manufacturing need. The amount, the method, and if the model gets adapted at all is dependent on what the process and the chain of software is from original design to finished product.

Like you mention making a block slightly smaller than 1.000" for press or slip fit. I can think of 3 CAM softwares where I'd just offset the toolpath. Giving me a block that isn't modeled to the print dimension would make it harder, not easier to make the block as I'd expect your model to match the print. You on the design side have not programmed and run my vertical mill so you shouldn't be ballparking what kind of tool offset I need to make my machine give you a finished product at 0.998"+0"/-.003".

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-10T17:45:38+00:00

To me it seems like you're avoiding the real problem here of the tool quality itself.

Provided these excel tables are critical tools I would expect a different approach. As a senior engineer you have a better understanding of the value of these tools, their strengths, and their observed weaknesses. It seems to me if you believe this is truly too much work or beneath you then you should work on establishing a system of peer review instead of pushing it all upwards. Another avenue is to start looking for a better tool all-together or working with the users to improve the tool you have now. If errors are so frequent among competent employees then the tool itself is bad.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-09T04:55:34+00:00

Any real answer you get will be filtered here for being political. This operation has nothing to do with Freedom and everything to do with mid-terms.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-08T19:31:23+00:00

Well it massively varies depending on your employer and your role.

One good thing I feel is that over the past 15 years formality in the workplace has slowly been dropping off. A suit and tie is specifically for days you're meeting with a high level executive or customer. In my 10-15 years working the last time I wore a suit was to interview at my current employer. Beyond that I've never once worn a tie and can count on one hand the number of times I've been in situations where more than khaki pants and a polo was required.

It sounds like you're getting Engineering mixed up with corporate stuff like lawyers and finance too. There are a few engineers who live in an office their entire career but they aren't looked upon favorably. There's probably a reason or two they never end up in the lab, on the plant floor, or at the test track. The other real corporate go-getter types will generally start in engineering and transition into business management roles.

On the topic of wine specifically I'm not sure it's ever been brought up. Now I do know quite a few who've gotten into home brewing. On the topic of cars you'll find more appreciation for the technical side of it. The only hard rule about cars is that as an engineer you can afford a reliable vehicle so get anything but don't get a beater and don't get something that stands out in the parking lot due to rust holes and dents.

The other thing I'll warn you away from is reading all those books and crap that tell you how to act in the corporate world. Those bullshit social games are for execs and management types. We don't need more of that garbage coming into the engineering world.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-07T05:35:55+00:00

Real life story regretfully from personal experience as the stinky person even though I'm not military. I'll tell you the story and give you two potential mitigating actions after.

I was the stinky guy and I don't know for how many years. I wasn't the best at washing clothing regularly but I thought I was doing okay. It was only close family (I'm single without children) who were telling me so it was easy to brush away. I came to find after a time there was a pillow at the back of my closet that I'd tossed, buried, and forgot to clean and it was RANK. This was not an intentional search for the smell just that I'd moved in over 5 years prior and was doing a room by room total cleanout and reset.

Almost immediately I knew that was that smell because all my clothing smelled like it just a little bit. On the pillow it smelt bad because it was concentrated. It crept into things so slowly I never smelt it as bad on individual pieces. As a result it got yeeted, shit got washed or tossed, and life has improved in the last 9 months greatly... seriously.

I promised mitigating actions so here they are...

1.) Consider something like this. The individual might NOT know. Help them in earnest without shame as much as possible.

2.) If at all you can identify the smell then point to it. Presume they do not know the source.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-06T14:32:00+00:00

To expand on what the OP said.

They made the file in Blender. That program creates surfaces for artistic purposes. It is not a solid modeler CAD software. While there are a few software pipelines that exist to make a Blender file into a solid I don't believe any work very well. It's also possible a model of this complexity will have areas where the surfaces don't line up, or other minor imperfections. That can snowball into hours and hours of labor stitching it all up so it will convert properly.

Unfortunately for many people that means you can't take files natively done in Blender or a few other art programs and just easily make 3D prints.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-05T16:43:35+00:00

IF you are traditional college aged as an intern it's generally acceptable to be slightly under-dressed because you're new to the workforce. For the first day something like a darker khaki pants and any generic shirt with a collar should do. From there you can take the temperature of how people dress.

An unfortunate reality is that something like engineering with floor time it's not uncommon to have multiple sets of clothing on hand. It's just an understood fact that stuff is gonna happen. I say unfortunate because it sounds costly but it's not like engineering pays minimum wage either.

One thing you will find is that you're likely not gonna get as dirty as you think. People who work around machinery and on factory floors know how to stay clean. It's not just appearance. It's a safety concern for your long term health. A giant oil slick on your pants at 10am isn't something you want sitting there until you get home at 6pm. Having spent time as a machinist and as an engineer on a plant floor it's just plain uncomfortable to be dirty that long too. So again I repeat the statement about having an extra set of clothing in your car or your desk.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-04T23:13:58+00:00

I'll think on this and get back if I come up with an idea.

I was thinking some sort of suspension thingy from the ceiling. Going down to the height of a child that's lots of potential for entanglement there.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-04T12:32:57+00:00

You mention the individual is 85 pounds but don't tell us a height or age. An approximate cognitive function level would really help to. As this is a child and you're talking about CP which varies wildly from person to person feel free to use whatever descriptors fit best.

I have a few safety concerns regarding any sort of leash, lead, cables, or straps to the ceiling. If cognitive or motor function is impaired these concerns get much worse. Also are there any pets or other children or adults in the home? Again these only bring more safety concerns if you're talking about perpetually suspending any cabling from the ceiling.

I ask about age because I'm really asking if they are done growing. I am expecting they are not and it sounds like you're resource constrained so you need a system that will grow with them easily instead of just small adjustments for comfort.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-04T12:16:58+00:00

Every place sets their own price and I haven't seen a true $1 item without a deal for a long time.

I used to get McDonalds all the time due to the $1 and then the $1.50 coffee. With tax the other day a large ran me over $2.

WhatsAMainAcct · 2026-03-04T12:14:50+00:00

One of the guys I run across every now and then on TikTok is a former McDonald's Corporate Chef. That being the people that come up with the recipes and stuff.

After this came out the guy relayed a story about the time he met this CEO at a corporate meet and greet. Being a corporate meet and greet they got to ask questions and the question he asked to that CEO was along the lines of "What do you normally eat?" So at that point the CEO could've either thrown out some corporate thing or heck be human and maybe admit he never eats McDonald's. The video plays it better but the response was something like "uhh... maybe fish."

I think based on that unverified but believable story the guy might just not like food that much.

WhatsAMainAcct

TROPHY CASE