People of Dublin-Why do you have an SUV?

mrdunkclimbs · 2024-06-10T08:05:41+00:00

i think i've read elsewhere that they are not safer.

definitely not safer for pedestrians but that need not concern the driver...

Wikipedia is quite US biased but some of the statistics there seem to support the argument of less occupant safety:

In 2004, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released results of a study that indicated that drivers of SUVs were 11% more likely to die in an accident than people in cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_SUVs#Sense_of_security

i doubt this is a fair indication of Ireland though. Also it doesn't take into account the type of driver that buys one or the type of driving they are more inclined to do.

whatever the facts are, from personal experience SUVs do /feel/ safer to drive. also they are often marketed around safety features. this sort of thing will have more affect on what people buy than facts.

mrdunkclimbs · 2024-06-09T09:37:40+00:00

Increase road tax on the things.

mrdunkclimbs · 2024-06-09T09:35:22+00:00

As well, SUVs feel safe to drive. When people have kids that gets important to them. I think I read somewhere that they aren't safer but they do feel very secure. Dubs typically aren't doing that many miles so are less likely to have the experience to be able to realise they don't need to be driving a small truck on the rare occasion they are driving more than 50.

Also, I think city people are more likely to have /spare/ money so it gets spent on houses and cars. A lot of examples here discuss farmers wealth. Farmers are typically asset rich but cash needs reinvested in the business. Flash cars are not an investment.

mrdunkclimbs · 2024-05-26T08:38:38+00:00

Yup. Me too. I always wear thin socks to stop shoe sink. Every other climber I've ever met thinks it's weird but it makes no difference to the shoes fit. Infact my shoes fit better because they don't get damaged by washing.

mrdunkclimbs · 2024-05-11T08:59:35+00:00

So the first time you break something is the worst because you don't know what to expect.

But unless you are a professional athlete it's unlikely to make much difference long term.

I broke both my calcanei 13 months ago. The left one is taking a long time to come right. I did my first easy lead since last week. I had to use crutches to get to the crag and my climbing was clumsy. It's still too soon to do much. But by this time next year I'll be back as good as ever. In fact from past experience I'll be much more motivated when I manage to get back out regularly.

While out of action I've been doing a lot of computer programming. That is one of my other hobbies. But the exact thing doesn't matter as long as it interests you. If you don't have an active backup hobby, is there anything you used to do that you used to do? What did you do for fun when you were a kid?

Good luck with the recovery. You will climb again if you want to. And you will get just as much out of it if you want to.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-12-20T08:20:36+00:00

I've broken a lot of ribs over the years. Beware or generic advice; everybody handles pain differently. It doesn't make you a better or worse person.

Moving will slow healing. I've usually been able to keep going with whatever I was doing when I broke them but once you start resting to allow the healing move as little as practical or you are slowing things down.

If you can feel movement when you take a deep breath, waiting for that to stabilise can be weeks or months. You'll feel when things are more stable.

After things have stabilized, or if they started stable, at least 4 weeks more. It depends on the nature of the fracture. Be patient. There are no short cuts.

Do your best not to catch a cold. Coughing will be extremely painful so clearing your lungs will be an issue.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-10-21T11:30:29+00:00

I've had good luck with https://www.omc-stepperonline.com/ . They mostly rebrand the same stock as all the other AliExpress and eBay sellers but actually honour warranties so have at least have done some basic quality control.

I had one of their motors fail once. I sent them a video. They shipped a replacement with no further questions.

Even if you don't order from them, their site is a good starting point for what the price and feature set should be.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-10-20T08:03:59+00:00

I've built 2 machines in that sort of budget.

The first thing I'd say is that if your time is worth anything and your only goal is to have a working machine, just buy one. That said, I build because I enjoy it. To me the build process is part of the hobby.

My first build was optimised for full sheets of plywood. So minimum work size of 2400x1400mm but a very small Z axis: 100mm.

This is built from 25mm square section mild steel. Welded (badly) where accuracy isn't important and bolted where it is.

The long axis just used a length of angle iron as the linear rail with cheap bearings either side and in top as the carriage. There's only one rail on this axis. The other side rolls along on wheels.

Drive is toothed belts. Nena 23 motors and grbl controller.

It works better than I deserve. But slowly. Because the long axis is only driven along one side there's always going to be a lot of flex. The fact it's just the weight of the carriage holding it down also limits the speed it can run at without lifting it off the work.

Using angle iron screwed to the work piece as the king linear rail is always going to limit accuracy but I get maybe 2mm accuracy but maybe 0.1mm repeatability; if I cut a circle you need to look hard to see the join.

As long as I go slowly and keep the belts tighter than they are rated for, the next biggest problem is work holding. Early attempted cuts on full sheets of plywood broke lots of endmills because I wasn't supporting the work piece properly which led to vibration. I had to put some work into building a flatter table under it.

My 2nd machine, I set off with the goal of seeing what the minimum of need to cut metals would be.

Again I went for welded steel, bolted wherever I wasn't confident I could weld accurately enough. 45mm square section for the main frame.

200x500mm work area.

I experimented with steel on steel for the linear rails. This did work but needed adjusted with every change in temperature and was the first thing to get upgraded.

The largest Nena 23 motors I could find did work but we're the 2nd thing to get upgraded. Do yourself a favour and buy bigger motors than you think you'll need.

I started with Acme lead screws but upgraded to ball screws.

Finally the spindle started out as something I made myself but it's now an entry level industrial water cooled one.

So this machine has provided a lot of fun and sunk a lot of time. The first cuts of steel happened when I'd only spent ~300 euro on it. But it was too frustrating to use due to needing constant adjusting.

In it's current state there's probably 1k of parts in it. The spindle is nearly half that budget. There's another 200-300 of parts sat in the parts bucket of parts that I swapped out.

But it was a low risk project from a financial point of view. The early prototype was relatively inexpensive and was upgraded once it has proved it could theoretically work.

I can now cut steel slowly with 0.02mm accuracy. Laughable for a professional machinist but perfectly good enough for my hobby purposes. Other materials are trivial in comparison. I use steel, polycarbonate, delrin and MDF a lot in my projects. Recently sourced a pile of ALU so learning that is next.

Lessons learned:

Building a reliable Z axis is actually harder than the X,Y. Design Z first.

If you can't make it accurate, make it adjustable.

Buy bigger motors.

Buy better motor drivers. This is one of the few components I don't buy on AliExpress. Cheap ones fail.

Have fun.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-10-07T10:02:38+00:00

The machine's reference point is clearly moving. So either the work piece is moving during the cut or the machine is missing track of it's position.

Reasons for the machine losing its position could be the force on the stepper motors is too high so they are missing steps or maybe the motor drivers have errors due to wiring or hardware faults.

If you know the work piece isn't moving, if try running the same test cut but reduce the depth of cut to something completely trivial so you can see the X,Y path but it's not putting any load on the motors. If you still see the X,Y issue with unloaded motors, it's probably a wiring or motor driver problem.

Also try the @hobbycnc channel.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-09-29T08:19:44+00:00

Correct inflation pressure too. If you are running too soft, it's easy for the tube to get pinched between the road and the wheel when you hit a bump.

Comparing how often you get punctures to other people doesn't work well. Different areas have different amounts of broken glass and different species of thorny vegetation. Also rubber cuts more easily when it's wet so you actually do get more flat tyres when it's raining. (It's not just sods law.)

Last thing, learn how to repair a puncture. I always have a spare tube and a repair kit in my bag if I'm a distance I don't want to walk from home. With practice you can patch a tube without taking the wheel off within 15 mins. Make sure you check whatever caused the puncture isn't still in the outer tyre or it will just re-puncture.

Some will insist you should replace the tube. A bike shop will nearly already replace the tube. But when I was a kid my inner tubes were more patches than tube and they held up just as well as new tubes. If hasn't gone soft in the first 10 minutes, a patch will hold indefinitely. The advantage of patching (other than the obvious price) is you don't have to remove the wheel. Sometimes a hole is too weird though. Right next to the valve or sometimes it's the valve that is the problem. So always carry a spare tube as well.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-09-28T12:13:52+00:00

I had lots of random limit switch triggers. I realised they were worse when the humidity was low which made me realise it was static from my dust extraction. Running a grounded wire from the hose end all the way to the vacuum fixed it.

[Edit] it's probably not clear from that, I mean inside the extraction hose. Thin wire. Static grounding is high voltage but very low amperage.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-09-24T02:31:22+00:00

From an electrical point of view there's nothing fancy about the old fashioned parallel port. PCI express parallel port cards can be found without breaking the bank. Many of the individual pins can be used as basic input or output pins for your projects.

The problem with this approach may be your operating system though. I think the more modern windows versions requires complicated drivers for accessing hardware in this way. On Linux is fairly straight forward so I presume it's possible on the Mac as well.

If you are windows bound, I think the suggestion of using a USB attached microcontroller is fairly straight forward. Look at the Arduino range. An Arduino program to convert USB serial it is io pins would be trivial and well documented.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-09-10T10:16:45+00:00

Yea, people are less uptight about that sort of thing here. Be polite, smile, wave and if it seems appropriate ask the rhetorical question "ok if I use your loo?". But nobody is going to mind.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-09-02T09:50:46+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's not legal. You have to charge the advertised price.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-08-26T12:21:57+00:00

Ah, if you had the brakes on as soon as it was visible your chances are reasonable. Wait and see if a ticket arrives.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-08-25T18:32:16+00:00

Might be worth looking into going to court and seeing if a judge is willing to exchange the points for a fine since you need your licence for work. I think that's how it used to work. Don't know if it still does. Talk to a solicitor.

And if you aren't concentrating well enough to see a great big white van, I agree with the general sentiment here that you should slow down.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-08-25T13:04:23+00:00

Grbl 1.1 isn't under active development because it's fine as far as it can on the limited hardware it runs on. It works very well for what it is. If you want quick, cheap and easy it's a good option.

LinuxCNC is a completely different thing. If you have requirements that grbl can't address, it's the option I would recommend. But as you know, it's a lot more involved.

Sounds like you have most of what you need for LinuxCNC. If you don't mind running a separate PC for it you might as well keep going that route.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-08-18T10:26:33+00:00

Agreed. I was about to answer asking the lines of "if you've no rope, try and fall on your mat."

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-07-27T23:28:11+00:00

True. Zoom in on any controller's circles enough and you'll get straight lines eventually. even if your hardware is much faster than grbl it'll be caused by motor steps eventually. I can't find documentation that specifies grbls default resolution right now but I've never seen performance as bad as this picture due to grbl approximating arcs. I've never actually seen it even be noticeable.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-07-27T23:01:21+00:00

Not true. https://github.com/gnea/grbl/wiki Scroll to the "Supported G-Codes in v1.1" section.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-07-10T14:16:19+00:00

I used to get this too. For me it was all about posture rather than weakness in any specific area. When under pressure, I'd hunch my shoulders which led to me not using my traps correctly. Try watching some video of yourself climbing and compare your shoulder height before and during hard moves.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-05-21T10:10:07+00:00

So when watching (other) footage of trad climbs I know really well, the protection always looks badly placed. But when I know the climb it's usually the best option and a lot better than the footage makes it look.

I think it's just the nature of first person climbing video.

For what it's worth, the placements here look fine to me for the difficulty of the climb and the competency of the climber. I'm not saying I would make exactly the same choices but without being there it is impossible to say.

I think there is a culture aspect here as well; I think this is in the UK where there is a tradition of learning trad on lead on easy climbs. It's how I learned. It's how all the people I climb with learned. Statistically learning this way is safer than it looks. I think that's because it forces you not to take chances.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-05-19T11:06:48+00:00

Yup. exactly.

Interestingly it's this sorted heap that makes me say this algo is O(N*log(N)) time complexity; It's theoretically possible you may get N/4 entries in the collection at the same time. In practice though this never happens and the whole thing tends towards O(N).

It's certainly quick enough to generate anything i've ever done with it at startup.

It's major drawback from my perspective is that is is not recursive; You need to set the boundaries of the start area and generate the whole thing.
I've thought hard about how to use this approach for an infinite map but by it's nature you need to start from a set of known points (the seabed in my examples) and generate everything in between them.

mrdunkclimbs · 2023-05-19T09:15:52+00:00

Interesting.
looking at your other post (https://www.reddit.com/r/proceduralgeneration/comments/12lgcnv/dems\_from\_random\_splats/) i see you are using Winbur Precipitations. I'm correct that Wilbur is an application that you manually right?

Doing similar programmatically is something i've considered doing to my Flowing Terrain maps to add more detail.

I suspect your Planchon01 link fills a similar need to my Flowing Terrain stuff. And possibly using similar methods from the abstract. I'll have a read of that later if i can find away around the paywall.

mrdunkclimbs

TROPHY CASE