SHINee Tools

A small  blog from a Enginer'd about tools and engineering. In unnecessary detail!

[shineetools]

SHINee Diamonds

I was in the shower watching the water droplets sparkle. Like the cats eyes in the road, the physics of the light bouncing around is a beautiful thing.

The internal refractive index of light in transparent spheres has lead to many practical safety applications, from reflective safety jacket to 3d augmented reality glasses (See CastAR) with retro-reflective materials.

Controlling how light bounces around is truly incredible.

To understand this interesting concept we need to know whats happening in stages.

The water falls from the shower head, while falling the water briefly experiences zero gravity or more accurately, relative neutral gravity.

The water then gets pulled apart into smaller quantities (due to the inconsistencies in size and wind resistance), which then (due to the even surface tension on the water droplet) forms a near perfect sphere (for the sake of argument).

The light from the viewers perspective goes straight into the water droplet, hits the back and gets reflected back to the viewer on the identical path.

If the light reflected back at the viewer is, more than the reflecting from the background, the droplet will seemingly radiate light.

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER!

Diamonds are a fascinating example of a well calculated refractive index.

It relies on the light entering the stone, hitting the back surfaces or passing through one path and  coming out another. Because the cut diamonds are faceted to

a specific pattern chosen for the size, the light will hit a surface and reflect light to the observer until rotated when the light has passed, causing the diamond to sparkle.

The art is working out how to get the biggest clean diamond from the sample and calculating the best number of facets for its size.

When beauty is bad.

Internal reflections can sometimes be a bad thing. Some early camera lenses had internal reflections. The problem was the light bounced of the elements in a way not intended by the manufacturer. In almost all camera lens designs the light has to be controlled to pass straight through the lens to a focal point without bouncing back of the lens surfaces (mirror lenses among others are an exception to this rule). If light reflects of the elements, it causes stray light, which intern causes a lack of contrast as the blacks are now not true black but washed out by the stray light.

So a big hats off to the diamond cutters and jewelers of the world that make gems sparkle. It really is a art and a science.

Yours, The Enginer'd

[shineetools]

The Russian KMZ turret viewfinder

I have often found the Russian photographic equipment to be a benchmark in engineering, to what is possible on a budget and how reliable you can manufacture a product. The KMZ Turret is holding up that legacy. In fact, I would probably go so far as to say, that this viewfinder is one of the nicest pieces of engineering to have left Soviet Russia.

Russian equipment always had a bad reputation for loose, sloppy and badly finished products. Unfortunately, this is not true. Sort of… Yes, Russian equipment did not have the best quality control in the world. However, most of the equipment was being produced in a time when Russia needed quantity, not quality. In many cases this showed. The speed of manufacture was at its peak. They were pumping out cameras to the masses, at prices the working class could afford. The modern term used is ‘building on the shoulders of greats.’

It is certainly no secret that Russia (may) have replicated other manufacturers of their time. They very much saw the practical view of ‘why re-invent the wheel’. This led to such cameras as the Kiev88 and the Fed rangefinder.

Many of these units left the factory in an un-polished state as the need for speed eventually became the priority. Some camera owners got left with a unit that would lock up, have slow shutter speeds or just plain outright would not work. This does not mean it was bad engineering. Realistically all these units needed was a good service after coming from the factory.

When being imported into Britain, some of the key importers took it upon themselves to service and test the units that they sold. Allow the public to buy working products that would work for many, many, years to come.

The Review

This turret has got to be the exception in the rule of the generic Russian fast-manufacturing processes. The quality of the finish and the size of the components is some of the finest I have seen. It looks like the using was produced by Swiss jewellers. Every part has been perfectly formed.

The unit itself, looks to be made from brass stock and turned and finished. With electro plating for the silver satin finish to stop corrosion and/or tarnishing. The same for the hot-shoe mount, only milled. The screws in much of the Russian equipment is usually made from a slug metal of lower quality, but it doesn’t seem that way in this product. Again, it seems a reasonable quality of material was used, then polished, cleaned and plated.

The viewfinder frame seems to be printed onto a glass lens rather than the typical plastic film of cheaper cameras. Improving the overall image quality and light transmission.

The viewfinder lenses are all primes, producing a much more accurate, sharper and brighter view compared to even Leica’s zoom viewfinders. The turret also allows internal shifting of all the lenses to allow for parallax error. All of this does however come at a cost. It is larger and heavier than the other manufacturers more expensive alternatives. I have not used to viewfinder long enough to tell whether there are many issues from the optical design, but I do not think there will be problems such as flare. The insides all look well matted reducing internal reflections and improving contrast.

All I can really say is, if you’re willing to put up with a slightly larger viewfinder on your camera, I promise you, you won’t be disappointed!

Yours, The Enginer’d

Specs:

Lenses: 28mm, 35mm 50mm 85mm 135mm Approximate Dimentions: 38,44,58mm

With Thanks:

A massive thanks to Exposure Cameras for the donation of the Turret Viewfinder. 

https://www.exposurenorwich.co.uk

[shineetools]

How far we have come in technology

Many people say that we have so far with technology over the past few years. Well, they'd be right.

We rarely give it much thought as to how far we have come, but reading an article in a radio magazine describing the comparison between tubes and transistors, I found it incredible just how far we have moved on.

We really don't give it credit in modern society as to the advances in technology.

When looking at the maths, we can start to make detailed comparisons between the two types of technology. Transistors VS Tubes.

The iPhone 11 contains (according to apple) 8.5 billion transistors. If each transistor was a tube, you would have 8,500,000,000 tubes running at approximately 2 watts per tube would be 17,000,000,000 Watts of power. It would weigh 231,200 metric tonnes and that's with more modern, smaller and lightweight tubes than 50 years ago.

The Cray-1 supercomputer released in 1975 weighed 5.5 tons and consumed 115kW. The amazing thing about this machine was that it ran on transistors, not tubes. It had a 64bit processor, ran at 80MHz, 303Mb of storage and 8.3Mb of RAM. It could compute 160 million calculations per second.

That was 1975.

Today the iPhone will run 154 billion calculations per second, has 256GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, consumes around 6 watts of power and weighs 194grams. All in something that can fit in your pocket so that you can play candy crush or whatever the latest fad is‽

So next time you complain about your phone being slow, just remember. Technology has come a very, very long way.

Yours, 

The Enginer'd

[shineetools]

A Good Cuppa - Adventures in thermal dynamics

A Good Cuppa - Adventures in thermal dynamics

There is nothing like a good cup of proper tea, and a post inspired by it.

It all started when a good friend of mine got me a thermally insulated mug as a present (they're brilliant btw (friends and thermally insulated mugs)). I wanted to enjoy my  tea without it going cold every 5 minutes, after repeatedly being pulled off, job after job, then coming back to find another cold mug of tea. After a while, there comes a breaking point.

A thermally insulated mug was the answer, but what was the question. How does it work. Well!

The Science!

When particles are hot they bounce around banging into each other causing friction, causing heat. eventually the particles get so hot and bounce apart so much they start to tear and form bubbles in the water. If you continue to heat the water more the particles get so shaky they bounce off pretty much everything with a lower effective mass causing it to rise upwards (although a better description is the air is falling down under steam particles causing the steam to be pushed up, like water in a heavy fluid). A good way to combat heat loss is to place the fluid in a container and suspend it in a vacuum as then the particles have nothing to bounce off and less energy shifted from where it needs to be (in the cup). There are practicable limitations to have a perfect container suspended in a vacuum. But we can get something close.

Designing the perfect mug

You first get a un-suspecting victim and tell him/her to stand in the corner with a left handed screwdriver...

JOKE!

As we know heat rises (or rather gets displaced by colder denser particles with more effective relative mass). We can start by keeping in the steam, by placing a lid on the container and that's where the most heat is quickly transferred.

We can then start working on the vacuum theory. But suspending a container inside another container and removing the air inside, we can make the walls of our vacuum mug. The high energy particles now can't transfer easily to the outside as there is nothing there for energy to transfer to.

The materials used can play a big roll in keeping our liquid hot as well. Dense materials have lots of particles for the energy to transfer to, making materials like metals good conductors. Materials like wood and expanded polystyrene (horrible packaging balls) with very open 'airey' structures, excellent insulators. *Fun fact: Some disposable cups are actually made of expanded polystyrene foam for this reason* You can't really use expanded polystyrene as a permanent cup material as when you put it in the dishwasher it would melt or tear. So something more rigid is required. The material also needs to be food grade, non-toxic. A more appropriate plastic like PTFE or Polycarbonate. Un'whala! Your perfect mug design, brought to you by science.

A few tips

If you don't have a awesome friend with a sexy thermally insulated mug (then I'm sorry). You can always try helping the situation by being careful where you place your cup. By placing you mug on a wooden surface rather than you metal Snap-On toolbox will help with the thermal transference from the bottom of the mug (I used a block of 4x4). Placing a lid on the top of the mug will help stop the pixies from escaping (something like a sheet of plastic or a Pringles lid can work wonders).

And there we have it, a bit of a ramble on the thermal properties of the humble mug. So drink up and don't let it go cold!

Yours, The Enginer'd

[shineetools]

He Totally Sucks

I'm not massively knowledgeable on the physics of pneumatics, but I thought I'd share a rather interesting effect that I come across quite often as a means to safely regulate airflow in industrial equipment.

Enter Giovanni Battista Venturi.

He was an Italian physicist and diplomat who studied fluid mechanics (of which the effect still applies). The effect works so well in the industrial pneumatics equipment I've come across because it allows blockages to occur while still leaving the main compressors to have free airflow and not burning out the motor and also providing suction to other areas of the machine. Although (in some cases) not as efficient, it does allow mechanically simple control of airflow with fail safes.

If one of the spurs of a piece of equipment gets blocked the pressure remains relatively consistent throughout the run. It's a simple principle often overlooked in industrial applications. From fuel injectors to wind instruments, it amazes me the relative simplicity and reliability of the Venturi effect and its many applications.

So today I doff my hat to a great engineer of fluid mechanics. Yours, The Enginer'd

[shineetools]

Russia, your Damn good!

For many years the height of engineering and technical excellence was held by the Germans, the Swiss and the Japanese. What may have been commonly overlooked was the rugged reliability of the Russians. Russians have made spacecraft, aircraft, guns, satellites, radio sets and some of the worlds best optical technologies (lookup Zeiss – it’s not all German).

Although the Russians aren’t held in high regard as upholding precision or quality in manufacturing techniques. They do however, carry the worlds reputation in quantity, ruggedness and reliability of their products. When did a Russian product break? When did a Russian device fail to function. OK, So they don’t look pretty, but Damn, they’re cheap and dependable.

The question is why?

Engineers have studied precision machining and manufacturing techniques for several hundred years, to build some of the finest watches, tools and cars money can buy and yet, we still can’t make it last as long as the Russians can.

Looking at the mechanical properties of their engineering techniques we witness a mechanical marvel. Loose tolerances are a bane of our culture, loose parts mean shoddy workmanship and poor fitting. To the Russians it means low cost,  fast turnaround and reliability. The loose fittings allow for inaccuracy's in manufacture to become usable. The lower the tolerance, the lower the rejection rate as the components won’t bind. If some parts expand at different rates due to differences in thermal mass this isn’t a problem. The parts now have room to move. There is enough clearance for ingress to not only get in, but also to be flushed out easily. Because of the clearance there are less points of contact reducing wear and allowing lubricants to flow freely. If the parts wear and become loose, it doesn’t matter as they were originally designed with that in mind. I’m not saying as precision engineers we should embrace this ‘loosey goosey’ culture they have, but maybe we should forward think our product design to incorporate wear as a factor so it becomes less of a problem. Maybe make swapping out parts easier, or allowing the consumer to purchase the replacements (rant for another day).

So hats off to those crazy Russian belt and braces engineers who kept the products cheap and reliable and working for generations.

Nostrovia to Russia,

The Enginer’d

[system76]

What’s New with Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS

Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS is our biggest OS release yet. We’ve got lots of new features and improvements for you to enjoy, including the talk of the town, Auto-tiling! Read on for more info on all our favorite new features from Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS.

Pop!_Shell

While most operating systems use the mouse as the main navigator, Pop!_OS takes full advantage of your keyboard. New and expanded keyboard shortcuts create a fluid experience—one in which your hands rarely have to leave the keyboard. Seriously. You can be just like those Hollywood hackers who never ever ever ever ever ever ever use their mouse at all. Ever.

Keyboard Navigation

The new keyboard shortcuts allow you to launch an application, switch between applications, toggle settings, and much, much more (as we’ll cover here shortly). In place of the default shortcuts, you can also use Vim shortcuts to navigate your desktop—without having to leave home row. For a good look at the full capabilities of keyboard navigation on Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS, click ‘View All Shortcuts’ in your system menu in the top right corner of your screen.

Auto-tiling

Auto-tiling organizes your windows for you as soon as you open your application. With organization taken care of by your operating system, Pop!_OS gives you more time to focus on your work and less time to waste on fiddling around with windows. Keyboard shortcuts make auto-tiling a breeze—you can move, resize, and swap windows to your liking without touching your mouse. Auto-tiling can be toggled on or off in the system menu, so it won’t affect your workflow if you prefer petting the profane rodent.

Workspaces

Meanwhile, workspaces allow you to keep relevant content together and irrelevant content out of site. You can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch between workspaces, as well as move your window between workspaces.

Auto-tiling, workspaces, and keyboard navigation work in tandem to make up Pop!_Shell, a keyboard-centric workflow experience on Pop!_OS. It’s buttery smooth. Like a moist biscuit at your fingertips.

Flatpak support with the Flathub repository

We’ve integrated Flatpak support in the Pop!_Shop. Now when you download an application, you have the option to pull packages from the Pop!_OS, Flathub, or Ubuntu repositories. Flatpak/Flathub support expands our software library and the number of applications available to you. Furthermore, applications packaged through Flatpak have significant privacy advantages, as these applications are limited in their access to only what the application requires to function.

Hybrid graphics

Previously on Pop!_OS: Laptops with Intel and NVIDIA graphics have the power to Jekyll and Hyde between integrated graphics and the dGPU.

Now on Pop!_OS: In addition to switching between Intel and NVIDIA graphics, you can choose Hybrid Graphics from the system menu. In Hybrid Graphics mode, your laptop runs on the battery-saving Intel GPU and only uses the NVIDIA GPU for applications you designate. To do this, simply right-click on the app icon and select “Launch using Dedicated Graphics Card”.

Application developers and maintainers can configure their applications to use the dedicated GPU by default by setting the following flag in their .desktop file:

X-KDE-RunOnDiscreteGpu=true

Automatic firmware updates

Update your firmware with a push of a button. Pop!_OS Firmware Manager supports firmware updates for System76 hardware, as well as any hardware vendor distributing firmware updates through LVFS. Firmware settings can be accessed on Pop!_OS through the Firmware tab in Settings. No, you don’t need to own a System76 computer to benefit from this feature. Yes, you do need to own a System76 computer to score batches upon batches of brownie points from our engineers. Application settings in the top barCertain applications such as Slack, Dropbox, and Discord use application indicators in the top bar on your desktop to make app settings more accessible. These application indicators are supported by default in Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS.

Offline OS Upgrades

Pop!_OS provides the latest features and security patches through rolling updates and periodic OS version upgrades. Additionally, version upgrades allow you to download the upgrade in the background and then apply it offline when you’re ready to perform the upgrade. This way, you can get all the new features and security patches without missing a beat. To upgrade to Pop!_OS 20.04 LTS from 19.10, simply click the notification to upgrade in your OS, which will take you to the OS Upgrades tab in Settings. In 18.04 LTS, you can upgrade through the About tab.

Alternatively, type the following command into your Terminal:

pop-upgrade

Important: This upgrade includes changes and additions to your keyboard shortcuts to accommodate the arrival of Pop!_Shell. To see additional keyboard shortcuts, open the tiling menu in the top right corner of your screen and click ‘View All Shortcuts’.

Fresh installs of Pop!_OS now set your desktop environment to Dark Mode by default. If the dark side doesn’t suit your style, you can change your DE back to Light Mode in the Appearance tab in Settings.

How to install

Looking for a fresh install of Pop!_OS? You can find it here!

Like what we’re doing? Help fund amazing features down the road by supporting Pop!_OS with $1 a month.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Space Weather News https://spaceweather.com

A ‘RADIO-ACTIVE’ SUNSPOT FROM THE NEXT SOLAR CYCLE:

A new sunspot is emerging in the sun’s southern hemisphere.

Its magnetic polarity identifies it as a member of new Solar Cycle 25.

Although the spot is relatively small, it is also dynamic, and has produced one of the first loud shortwave radio bursts of the new solar cycle.

[nasa]

Mathematician. Leader. Heroine. Remembering Hidden Figure Katherine Johnson

Tonight, count the stars and remember a trailblazer. 

We’re saddened by the passing of celebrated #HiddenFigures mathematician Katherine Johnson. She passed away at 101 years old. 

An America hero, Johnson’s legacy of excellence broke down racial and social barriers while helping get our space agency off the ground.

Once a “human computer”, she famously calculated the flight trajectory for Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

And when we began to use electronic computers for calculations, astronaut John Glenn said that he’d trust the computers only after Johnson personally checked the math.

As a girl, Katherine Johnson counted everything. As a mathematician, her calculations proved critical to our early successes in space travel.

With slide rules and pencils, Katherine Johnson’s brilliant mind helped launch our nation into space. No longer a Hidden Figure, her bravery and commitment to excellence leaves an eternal legacy for us all.

“We will always have STEM with us. Some things will drop out of the public eye and will go away, but there will always be science, engineering and technology. And there will always, always be mathematics.” - Katherine Johnson 1918 -2020 

May she rest in peace, and may her powerful legacy inspire generations to come! What does Katherine Johnson’s legacy mean to you? Share in the comments. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com 

[nixcraft]

Saw this on Twitter. LOL

[nixcraft]

Brilliant Dilbert meme describing every IT manager lol

[shineetools]

Been There!

[shineetools]

Nice feelings

- New wire cutters through copper

- Fresh smell of enamel paint

- Running a perfect weld bead

- Smooth toolbox draw runners

- High tooth ratchet wrenches

- Smooth ratchet screwdrivers

- Feel of cold chrome spanners

- When a screwdriver fits perfectly

- A proper tea when its just right

- Morning sunrise through the workshop window

- Finding the tooltruck has a tool in your favorite colour

- When something you made is perfect size with a micrometer

- High quality vernier calipers

- Rotating the dial on a AVO mutlimeter

- Spinning a freshly lubed bearing shaft

- A motor running silent after a service

- Waking up and realising it’s saturday and spending time in the garage.

Whats you favorite feeling?

The Enginer’d

[shineetools]

A gripping end, ribbed for your pleasure...

I had a conversation with a guy on a tool truck this week. We were discussing about why a particular design of screwdriver tip sticks in the screw head after tightening with a ratchet screwdriver. As he didn't know why, I thought I'd share with the SHINee tools community.

Not all brands do this rather brilliant but annoying trick. The brand that does it is ACR. The bit design allows for greater torque, without camout. I uses small ribs around the cross section of the tip to bite into the screw head. Unlike some of the extra grip toothed spanners on nuts, this does not damage the head of the fastener. It prevents slipping and is overall better for the screw.

The problem with similar brands is that ACR design is patented and therefore prevents other manufacturers using the same design. Like most other industries there are cleverer grey beards who can replicate the overall concept without treading on toes. So the new super grip bit was designed. It contained tool grade diamonds encrusted in the head of the bit, the diamonds then bite into the fastener like the ACR design. The problem is when great torque is applied the diamonds fall out of the driver and cause the tip to quickly wear. Not such a great alternative.

It maybe cheaper up front to buy the alternate brands, but don't. Honestly don't.

Buy once cry once, a joy to use and no swearing to get out that wrecked screw .

Until next time.

The Enginer'd

[shineetools]

The moment it clicks!

Compliant structures are all around us and yet, so easily overlooked. What makes them interesting is they have a premise about them by engineers saying that they'll never wear out. Well, fun fact, FATIGUE! Everything wears out eventually.  I first started noticing compliant structures at a very young age. Some encounters were possibly the first fidget boxes. I was given a jam jar lid with a Push logo on the top. If you pressed the lid down and it clicked, it signified that the jar had been tampered with and you shouldn’t buy it. Amazing to think this a simple solution that went unoticed by the masses and yet children everywhere spent hours clicking the tops of jam jar lids when totally bored, waiting for cable television to be invented.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is in true SHINee Tools fashion. A classic example of a compliant structure in its simplest form. When first pressed the side are forcing the central mass outwards until it reaches its its maximum states and flips over to the DARK SIDE other side.

Compliant structures are found in many other daily items such as mechanical metal switches, Childerens Jumping Toys and my personal favorite, Mole Grips (you’ll need to think about that one).

A rather interesting article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168218 I hope you find these structures as interesting and ingenious as I do.

Yours, The Enginer'd

[shineetools]

Moiré - Stop that already!

I was watching a video this week and I noticed a classic example of a Moiré pattern. This is interesting as modern camera generally have such good filters, it’s not particularly common anymore.

The effect is caused by two overlaying lines colliding with each other, a single line example would be like a barber shop sign where the lines move upwards. The line’s aren’t actually going up but your perception of them is. When two lines clash they create a Moire Pattern. This is quite uncommon to see these days as most modern broadcast equipment has a Anti-Moire filter placed in-front on the imaging sensor. Its a fancy name for a blurry filter.

Using a anti Moire filter does cause a rather obvious problem. It reduces the overall image sharpness, to blur together the clashing lines, therefore removing the unwanted effect. In the case of a camera the TWO sets of lines that are clashing are caused by the lines on the shirt and the pixel alignment on the chip called a Beyer Pattern, later corrected by the filter.

A particular camera manufacturer figured that there must be a better solution to just blurring the pixels together. Well... Fuji figured out that if you randomise the pixel pattern, it would eliminate the Moire effect. And what clever peeps they are. It totally worked. They created a X-Trans sensor different to the traditional Beyer pattern sensor. This had many advantages, one of which was a much sharper final image, as nothing is being blurred. The second was a much greater light throughput, as adding filters reduces the amount of stops of light. By removing the filter it allowed the camera to produce better cleaner images in low light.

Well... You’ve got to admit that Fuji did something really cool! Yours, The Enginer’d

[shineetools]

A continuous lubrication system that doesn’t suck!

The oil wick lubrication system has been around for a very VERY long time. My first encounter with this system was with a stationary steam engine. It required a small amount of lubrication to the main overhead shaft. Many types of lubrication system existed including a oil drip, but this was a simple solution to an otherwise difficult problem.

We now have modern alternatives, including sealed pressurised oil units for large machinery (common on mining equipment bearings) due to the grease needing to be pressed into the running bearings. The oil wick however is a more delicate solution for bronze shaft bearings and even some gears. An old fashioned, but simple solution.

The Enginer’d

[shineetools]

What wood you make?

A living, breathing, moving, material. Today is a day to make something new. To put life into a underestimated block of wood. It has grain and structure and knots and burs. It's warm to the touch and speaks if you listen closely. Wood has a soul that's deeper than our understanding. Sitting in the corner of a room, silent while echoing signs of its past.

How many winters has this tree seen. Watching a man at work on the lathe, listening as the tool chatters over the knots not to be touched and gliding over the grain wanting to be cut. The man doesn't shape the wood, the wood shapes itself. The shavings stream from the sharp tool that's guided by its master.

For today we lack a intimacy that our ancestors had. We lack a sympathy for the tools and machines we use today. An age of industry blinded by technology. So today, stop and listen to the wood. Create something by listening to what it wants to become.

- The Enginer’d