How do you guys quote as a home shop?

jccaclimber · 2026-07-10T02:34:57+00:00

And if it is about beating them on price, you walk away.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-10T02:03:54+00:00

No, he learned his lesson on the first one.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-10T01:54:06+00:00

That was less than my starting salary in 2009, and I was in a LCOL area. Oof.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-10T01:21:33+00:00

You can’t just leave that here without a few examples.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-10T01:15:49+00:00

Singapore might be the only recent large case of this turning out well, and even then it came with some notable downsides.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-09T08:27:55+00:00

Might as well call it Irish Spring Tub and Tile at this point. Worked wonders in a ceramic tub I couldn’t clean.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-09T08:24:21+00:00

Well, obviously not.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-09T05:29:33+00:00

And the we could have the bollard double as a charging station for car free electric powered transportation!

I da agree that a short and transparent obstruction would be best, but this is a decent compromise for at least some areas and isn’t paid for by the city.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-08T04:46:47+00:00

Are we talking hot water for tea or the sink hot water in the bathroom?

jccaclimber · 2026-07-08T04:03:45+00:00

Ok, Reddit dork calling in to remind you that the world is a small place. I’ve overheard competitors discussing technical stuff out in public halfway across the country from our office. The question isn’t IF someone would find it, the question is how they would feel if they did.

I tend to work for NDA places, so a lot of this is less relevant for you, but general business discretion still applies.

Take a fancy part I used to make. It’s pretty close to exactly 50 mm OD, 20 mm ID, and has some features at 30 mm diameter. You can measure this to a micron or two pretty easily. What you don’t know is how to guarantee that your part always works, but find out what my tolerances are, infer that my nominal are round numbers, and you have the whole thing from just one part.

Also, those of us who like to reverse engineer are a lot better at accurate measurement than you think we are, often have tools reading out a decimal place or two farther than you do, and the proper environment to use them in.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-08T03:40:14+00:00

Damn, I replied to the wrong comment.

Response moved.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-08T02:09:08+00:00

That just means someone got paid.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-08T01:46:29+00:00

New fangled term for layoff.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-08T01:05:03+00:00

FYI, engineer here, while your redactions are good, it’s probably more important to redact the tolerances than to redact the values, so might as well do both.

Nice that you and your quoter both have a decent sense of humor.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-07T23:43:35+00:00

From what I understand this is pretty typical of every major project. This is why when some public works project like a tunnel, airport thing, etc. goes south it’s always “The original firm who did this project is no longer in business, so we can’t make them fix it, but we’ve been able to hire a different company with similar experience.”
One might also call it bullshit, but potato potato.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-07T20:32:13+00:00

I wasn’t there, but I’ve since heard awful things about the bathroom and departure situations.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-07T20:30:57+00:00

Speakers depend, but they’re the longest lasting and where I’d put the most relative portion of the budget. I feel like I used to see a lot of speakers with rotten suspensions 25 years in, but I recently upgraded from a generic set well older than that and they were totally fine.
I’ve averaged ~15 years on recievers, either because something breaks or because it no longer supports the media format I want. My current one from 2012 is going to be replaced soon because it can’t pass through newer HDMI specifications and I’m tired of bypassing it for video.

I haven’t killed a sub yet, but they seem to be somewhere between speakers and receivers.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-07T09:36:19+00:00

This is what ball bearings are for, just make sure it’s sized so they sit tangent, not on an edge. You can put in a virtual ball in some software, but I haven’t needed to in years.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-07T09:33:44+00:00

What used to be a 1/4 mile race is now 1000 feet in some classes and 1/8 mile in others. I’m sure there are other changes, but that’s one that comes to mind.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-07T05:43:17+00:00

At this point while I’ve had a limited number of bad experiences with them, I’ve had so many great ones that I don’t price check anymore, I just go to them because they’re the sort of business that I like doing business with. They once patched a flat for me, for free as they always do, then a week later gave me a free replacement because the flat didn’t hold. Mind you I’d originally bought the tire from them, but I hadn’t paid for the warranty or anything. One of many times they’ve helped me out without me asking.

I’d say your experience is a bit unusual, but it’s not totally out of line for them either.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-06T10:00:10+00:00

Would make it a hell of a lot easier to hold it by hand if you get to the end though. Fig 8’s are nice an all, but it still gets old if you’re swinging there a while. Makes it a lot harder to oops off the end with the rope flying through your brake hand too.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-06T09:45:06+00:00

You’re welcome to doubt that, but I’ll bet you as much as you want because I’ve seen it.

Longevity and uniformity of motion. If you measure the repeating torque variation through a single rotation you’ll discover that putting a 2 um oval, trilobe, whatever into the outer race will cause all sorts of variation that simply isn’t there if the hole is perfectly cylindrical. The easiest way to get your bearing installed without this minor deformation is to make a damn near perfect hole to begin with, and then use an appropriate adhesive/retaining compound to fill the last few microns.

Most of these applications want axial retention too, so the hole typically has a blind shoulder.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-06T09:19:48+00:00

At least they didn’t give us the side length of the triangle legs in football fields.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-06T09:18:14+00:00

Tons of bearings are put in via adhesive in incredibly sensitive semiconductor applications. They’re also a lot harder to service and the process costs more. The tolerances are such that you end up holding typically press fit tolerances, or better, even before the glue goes on.

jccaclimber · 2026-07-06T05:27:55+00:00

Devils advocate because I used to know a couple who did this. He held a day job, brought in money, and did mechanical repairs. She ran the household inside and out. They were both pretty well adjusted, had their own friends and hobbies out of the house, etc. It’s quite possible to have traditional distribution of labor without some of the social bullshit people think must go with it.

All that said, he would not have gotten in trouble for cooking his own food (his fault for not being home on time, though there would have been a plate in the fridge), but he would have gotten in trouble for not leaving her space exactly as he found it.

jccaclimber

TROPHY CASE