Over the years I’ve seen a couple of fascinating applications with powdered additive manufacturing.
Living metal - powdered metal parts with bacteria ‘in the gaps’. Activated with heat their byproduct was lubricant. Great for bearing faces in mechanical equipment doing long distances in space.
The other was calcium powdered 3D printed parts that had a chemical forced through their porous mass, changing its chemical composition.
The specialist applications of powder metallurgy are awesome, not to mention the fact that lots of refractory metals can only be used with sintered powder (eg tungsten). It should also be pointed out that powder metallurgy parts have long been an important part of engineering (mostly sintered bronze bushings impregnated with grease), and have recently become hugely common as powder gears.
Manufacturing standard spur gears in particular has benefited HUGELY from powder metallurgy. You can use it to make exceptionally accurate and cheap extrudable shapes, and gears have traditionally been hugely expensive and wasteful because you have to cut out the teeth, harden, and final-cut. Powder metallurgy has created an important middle ground- exceptionally cheap medium-quality gears. Now instead of unhardened gears you will always get powder gears, which are better. In places where final-ground gears were overkill, powder gears have come in at acceptable quality and greatly reduced prices. Powder metallurgy is awesome!
> Now instead of unhardened gears you will always get powder gears, which are better.
Nope, now instead of unhardened gears you get powder gears which are even worse (but much cheaper than those good powder gears), but minimally better than plastic. My father is power tools' serviceman and since sintered gears became more common, there are MUCH more broken transmissions (but yeah, they are a little cheaper).
Or maybe a modern car and a classic car? I have a classic car and a few classic motorcycles. Great fun, easy to work on, parts are cheap, no MOT, no road tax, and low insurance premiums. What’s not to love?
I'm English. A couple of years ago I started learning Italian by listening to podcasts (Coffee Break Italian) and reading children's books. I then travelled to Assisi to try it out for the first time. The locals were fantastic, they slowed down and spoke very clearly. It's a beautiful place.
I agree though, travelling and learning about new places in another language is awesome, it unlocks so much, and really encourages you to learn.
I wish Austrians were the same... unfortunately most folks here tend to switch between fast German with a thick local dialect, or talking back to me in English, neither of which helps me to actually improve my German...
If a foreigner came to my country and asked me to speak to them with an accent from another country, I would be insulted.
If living in a region or a country I like to learn the local dialect.
Although I admit that leads to general laughter later e.g. when I spoke Spanish in Seville people laughed at my hick Cuban accent, and then in Madrid they laughed at my hick Andalusian accent!
However I think trying to learn accents helps you a lot later with your spoken language ability... I have seen how strongly some regional people negatively react to a "correct" Spanish Madrileño accent (seen as very snobby/uptight/unfriendly). I had fun the other day taking to a Chilean: I could hear some parts of the accent which were reminiscent of Sevilla, so I could mimic some of the Chilean accent and not sound like a twat (and we had an awesome discussion about it too).
I've given up the idea of ever considering learning German. It's simply not necessary. They all speak English. Unless you're going to live there long term, you don't need it.
They’ve also significantly reduced the materials consumed over the years. Cigarettes went from 8.6mm diameter to 8.5, 8.4, 7.9. Introduced slims 7.1, superslims 5.4. They started expanding the cellular structure of the tobacco with co2 to increase its ‘filling capability’. Longer filters, hollow filter tips. Thinner tipping paper. Thinner paperboard, thinner foil, less glue. The list goes on and on. Lots spent on R&D, but small material savings on billions of cigarettes soon adds up.
I used to design and build high speed packaging machinery. When I started my apprenticeship in the late 90's I saw machine lines running at 6000 units per minute with 3-4 operators per line and regular maintenance performed by a team of skilled engineers. Mid 2000's it was 10,000 units per minute, 2 operators per line and periodic maintenance performed by a skilled engineer. In 2012 I visited a factory with row upon row of machines running at 20,000 units per minute, fully automated lorry loading for dispatch and the machines diagnosed their own preventative maintenance. There was a guy wandering around with a broom. Two years later I jumped and changed industry.
Looks like each time they took a person out of the loop the machines got faster, and the factory increased in capacity. I think this is the true benefit of automation. The cost reductions from 4-1 operators is pretty minimal. The increase from 6,000 units a minute to many lines with 20,000 units a minute is where the money is.
Quite right. The production facilities do tend to shift to less expensive regions for labour too though, which does increase the impact. The first factory was in the UK, the second Poland, the third was in China. The UK one doesn't exist anymore.
But thats because you are only looking at it from the perspective of the parents example. Now extrapolate further and keep some of sort accelleration in mind and you will see that the next step which is cost reduction from 1-4 factories.
I've got the new Hyundai Ioniq with adaptive cruise control and lane assist. Last weekend I drove 160 miles with both enabled for the first time. I just found it shifted my focus. I was much more aware of what was going on outside the car. Setting the max speed to 75 mph enabled it to follow the car in front very effectively and overcame the incline and corner speed issue. Only problem was having to intervene to prevent under-taking.
I second the effectiveness and pleasantness of Hyundai's implementation. My 2015 Sonata has those features (its standard now, but was introduced that year for the Limited trim). It, combined with auto-hold to apply the brakes when the car stops, made road trips and slow going commutes so much more pleasant. It sucks for stop and go traffic, since it disengages when the car completely stops. But I can't fault a cruise control system for sucking at a scenario that doesn't actually involve cruising.
