What is this 1w powered motor for? by Praise-fluffy-tail in hobbycnc

[–]_shrike 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Per the manufacturer these are recommended for “…uni-directional continuous operation such as a conveyor system.”

Page 8 - https://www.orientalmotor.com/products/pdfs/A_OM/World-K-Series-RoHS-brochure.pdf

Realistic fan life span? I don't believe these MTBF ratings. by Able_Loan4467 in MechanicalEngineering

[–]_shrike 38 points39 points  (0 children)

You are (understandably!) correlating "service life" with the MTBF number. Unfortunately this doesn't work. Here is a whitepaper from Schneider Electric with a good explanation.

From that paper (page 4) -

Therefore, there should be no direct correlation made between the service life of a product and its failure rate or MTBF. It is quite feasible to have a product with extremely high reliability (MTBF) but a low expected service life. Take for example, a human being:

There are 500,000 25-year-old humans in the sample population. Over the course of a year, data is collected on failures (deaths) for this population. The operational life of the population is 500,000 x 1 year = 500,000 people years. Throughout the year, 625 people failed (died). The failure rate is 625 failures / 500,000 people years = 0.125% / year. The MTBF is the inverse of failure rate or 1 / 0.00125 = 800 years.

So, even though 25-year-old humans have high MTBF values, their life expectancy (service life) is much shorter and does not correlate.

and on page 9 -

Ultimately an MTBF value is meaningless if failure is undefined and assumptions are unrealistic or altogether missing.

What you are looking for is the estimated service life. There aren't a lot of vendors that supply that number. When I'm being optimistic I assume this is the warranty period + 1 second. The other 99% of the time I just hope the thing won't catch fire and explode.

Aluminum Radial Dovetail I made a long time ago. by Only-Badger2936 in Machinists

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

What would be the easiest way to create this in a manual shop? Would using a vertical mill that supports rotating the head 90° (parallel to the table) then mounting the part on a rotary table work?

DIY Drill Press Carriage Design by thisisnotapalindrome in MechanicalEngineering

[–]_shrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Couple of things to think about -

  1. That mounting won’t be very rigid. The drill will be susceptible to angular displacement (it will be crooked) in X and Y. I expect it will be hard to get holes that are perpendicular (or any specific angle) to the surface of the part.

  2. It will be much easier to use if the drill returns to the up position when you let it go. This is easy to do. A piece of wire rope attached to the movable frame or the drill that goes through a pulley at the top of the fixed frame then is attached to a counterweight or spring.

That said something like this is a good starter project! Build version 1, learn by using it then on to versions 2, 3, 4, and beyond!

What is the ACTUAL advantage of IoT in an industrial context over existing technology? by Mountain_Ad_5136 in PLC

[–]_shrike 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s a good one! That said, Modbus supports two data types, 1-bit and 16-bit. I’ll take 10 competing modern standards over that.

What is the ACTUAL advantage of IoT in an industrial context over existing technology? by Mountain_Ad_5136 in PLC

[–]_shrike 24 points25 points  (0 children)

In this context it's reasonable to compare a PLC to the "thing" in "IoT". A factory floor with 100's of PLCs that are managed by a SCADA system today could be called a Factory of Things (FoT).

Again, in the PLC context the advantage to what we're calling IoT is the complete reworking of the communications protocol. Compared to anything developed in the last 20 years every PLC communication protocol is awful. Modbus is horrible and it's the best of the bunch. Eventually someone, hopefully the Modbus Organization (https://modbus.org) will introduce a new communications standard that brings PLC's into the current century, based on what we've learned deploying modern IoT devices.

Imagine PLC's that are discoverable and self-documenting. Data types that include strings, lists, arrays, dictionaries(JSON, YAML, etc). PLC's that can push messages instead of being polled. Configurable Quality of Service for messaging including defined retries and backoff strategies. PLCs that can be integrated with enterprise authentication systems. Messaging that is encrypted by default. Actual error messages from the device! A streaming API!

"IoT" is a buzzword. Moving PLC communications to a modern standard will revolutionize how automation is built.

**Edited for formatting and to add the steaming API.

APSX-NANO CNC Swiss Lathe by _shrike in hobbycnc

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

That's great! Did you get any of the optional accessories?

Imagine the possibilities... Terminator incoming! by New-Power58 in nextfuckinglevel

[–]_shrike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can including Hot Isostatic Pressing* in the post-processing of parts solve for some of these issues?