Random Thought Thread

Once I bought a motherboard for my computer — it was the very newest AM5 socket for processors. The exact same thing happened to me earlier with Intel.

Because of some security features and CPU overclocking-related options, the motherboard wasn’t working properly: the computer kept randomly rebooting whenever I ran any real work task.

And the fix turned out to be — to my surprise — just a very simple BIOS flash. Big companies and their official support couldn’t solve it, even with updates (I contacted them multiple times).

But some regular guy from a small city reflashed the BIOS and fixed the whole issue.

We simply disabled that feature… even though, honestly, that very feature was one of the main reasons I paid an extra $500 for that board in the first place 😅
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
My air compressor has a password. Two actually.

The UPS has a password

The machine tools have passwords

I helped a buddy move a forklift and it sensed that it got jostled and went into an emergency stop mode and COULD NOT BE MOVED until I figured out the password.

My air compressor isn't working because it has a bad pressure transducer

The old one just had a pressure switch. You know, like with springs and stuff

The transducer allows it to see the exact pressure and then determine whether or not it wants to turn on or off based on that pressure. Which is great I guess. But it's really not doing anything useful with that information, it's not like it's a fuzzy logic controller and it's spooling up harder and slowing down as it approaches. It's just using it as an on off switch.

This, of course, now requires a circuit board and a PLC also.

This unnecessary component has the compressor stopped. Which has us running on a 5 horsepower Atlas copco which means we can only run half the machines right now.

I had the exact same problem with the oil pressure transducer on the generator.

It's like we are intentionally designing things to not work. In a way that costs more money. It serves no purpose, it really doesn't.

I had an air conditioner stop working because an internal USB drive failed. The drive wasn't even being used for anything, it was just there on a circuit board. It was there in case somebody wanted to make it a smart device that could be managed from your cell phone but we weren't using that functionality.

I had the monitor on one of these machine tools crap out and it cost five grand to replace it. It was serving a purpose that could have been done with a computer monitor or even a CRT but they had to get all fancy with it and there was no alternative but to replace it with a $5,000 unit. It doesn't actually serve any special purpose.

These are features that I do not want, and they're making it increasingly expensive to produce things in America
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Nathan the Machinist said:
Our gv503 has been down for 2 weeks now. We had a problem with the power and it tripped up a power supply that was providing juice to some rechargeable batteries that maintained certain system parameters. So a brownout bricked a 20,000 lb machining center. And that machining center, which is sharpening the fat bastards and cutting the blanks for the choppers, is feeding the other machines in the shop so we are literally down.

Because of a battery charger

The old machines, when the battery gets low it says "hey my batteries are low change my batteries". And you do it with the power on and it doesn't lose parameters. They're just D cell batteries.

This one had to get all fancy and have a integrated charger and lithium-ion batteries. That cannot be replaced. It's probably some part of some green initiative. Saving the planet, four D cell Energizer batteries at a time.

So I just spent $1,100 for a little battery box module and have to have a Mori tech come out and work on the machine for 2 days. I looked at his bill, it's 7 hours of labor at $220 an hour and 6 hours of travel time, at $180 an hour. There's also hotel and meals.

Because some design engineer wanted to get cute with the batteries.

I paid $200 to have the replacement unit next day aired from Texas and then it just sat here for days until the tech could come in and put it in. He was unavailable cuz he was doing training.

We've been down for 2 weeks

Because of a bunch of cute bullshit, and now the air compressor isn't working. I'm so mad.

None of this would have happened if the big double conversion power conditioning UPS would have been working. The ups that I installed weeks ago. That isn't working. I got it to help fix our power problems. But get this, it doesn't like the quality of our power and so it's not willing to use it. Isn't that cute? There's nothing actually wrong with the unit. It's just unhappy and doesn't want to work.
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Nathan the Machinist said:
Our gv503 has been down for 2 weeks now. We had a problem with the power and it tripped up a power supply that was providing juice to some rechargeable batteries that maintained certain system parameters. So a brownout bricked a 20,000 lb machining center. And that machining center, which is sharpening the fat bastards and cutting the blanks for the choppers, is feeding the other machines in the shop so we are literally down.

Because of a battery charger

The old machines, when the battery gets low it says "hey my batteries are low change my batteries". And you do it with the power on and it doesn't lose parameters. They're just D cell batteries.

This one had to get all fancy and have a integrated charger and lithium-ion batteries. That cannot be replaced. It's probably some part of some green initiative. Saving the planet, four D cell Energizer batteries at a time.

So I just spent $1,100 for a little battery box module and have to have a Mori tech come out and work on the machine for 2 days. I looked at his bill, it's 7 hours of labor at $220 an hour and 6 hours of travel time, at $180 an hour. There's also hotel and meals.

Because some design engineer wanted to get cute with the batteries.

I paid $200 to have the replacement unit next day aired from Texas and then it just sat here for days until the tech could come in and put it in. He was unavailable cuz he was doing training.

We've been down for 2 weeks

Because of a bunch of cute bullshit, and now the air compressor isn't working. I'm so mad.

None of this would have happened if the big double conversion power conditioning UPS would have been working. The ups that I installed weeks ago. That isn't working. I got it to help fix our power problems. But get this, it doesn't like the quality of our power and so it's not willing to use it. Isn't that cute? There's nothing actually wrong with the unit. It's just unhappy and doesn't want to work.
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Wow, your power must be really bad if the UPS won't work. Depending on the issue, maybe an isolation transformer in front of the UPS will help.
 
Moorik said:
Seriously, some things — even considering all the complexity and high-tech involved — just shouldn’t cost that much, given how mass-produced they are and the fact that they’re not made in one-off pieces.
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A completely unnecessary pressure transducer where a pressure switch would have worked fine. It's not actually doing anything useful with the information.
 
jlauffer said:
Wow, your power must be really bad if the UPS won't work. Depending on the issue, maybe an isolation transformer in front of the UPS will help.
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I have a voltage conversion transformer and a Delta wye transformer between them. Pretty well isolated.

So I dropped 10 grand on a "phaze perfect" voltage regulated three phase inverter phase converter to feed it delicious tasty utility grade pure sine wave.

If this doesn't work, we're looking at maybe needing to move out of the compound and into a shop in town with access to better power options.

A 5,000 square foot workshop in Mooresville runs about 1 million.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
I have a voltage conversion transformer and a Delta wye transformer between them. Pretty well isolated.

So I dropped 10 grand on a "phaze perfect" voltage regulated three phase inverter phase converter to feed it delicious tasty utility grade pure sine wave.

If this doesn't work, we're looking at maybe needing to move out of the compound and into a shop in town with access to better power options.

A 5,000 square foot workshop in Mooresville runs about 1 million.
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Is it possible it's not the actual quality of the incoming power, but something internal, like load imbalance pulling down a phase?
 
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