[HN Gopher] Analyzing a failed drill bit with an electron micros...
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Analyzing a failed drill bit with an electron microscope [video]
Author : NotYourLawyer
Score : 226 points
Date : 2023-03-19 03:46 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| ar9av wrote:
| Reminds me of when I was a kid and a car part broke on the family
| car. I don't remember if the warranty or insurance didn't want to
| pay, but being an engineer and knowing a few people with tools he
| got a whole report that said the part was defective due to x, y,
| and z and got the damage fixed.
| logicallee wrote:
| What's most amazing about this video is that he was able to get
| an electron microscope for $3.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Wow this is seriously amazing, makes me I wish I had studied
| mechanical engineering instead of CS. I really admire this guy's
| self-studying though ;I also like to think of myself as an
| autodidact but this guy seems to have some serious focus. I wish
| I could meet more people like him in real life.
|
| Anyway, I just subscribed.
| nick47801676 wrote:
| I studied both CS and Mech Eng (double major). Totally worth
| the extra work!
| Kennnan wrote:
| I'm a High Schooler right now (pretty competent software,
| interested in hardware). If you dont mind me asking, what
| specifically has your double major opened up for you?
| samstave wrote:
| I was at lockheed and am still friends with some of the
| best engineers I have ever worked with ; Every single HW
| engineer I worked with also coded - and we have built,
| patented and pursued so many other paths based on the
| capabilities of HW engineers being able to design actual HW
| as well as spec the code required to solve the problem.
|
| So, if you have the capability, certainly go both... It
| will give you, at your age, the ability to build the change
| you want to see in the world....
| criddell wrote:
| I can't speak for the person you replied to, but I work for
| a software company that is always on the lookout for
| mechanical engineers who can write code. It's a pretty rare
| combination.
| enginoor wrote:
| Any suggestions for a mechanical engineer who has some
| coding aptitude and wants to switch careers? I'm self
| taught and have mostly worked on hobby projects. I have
| some professional controls experience programming
| automated machinery (PLC). My lack of formal CS training
| seems like a real barrier to jumping into a full-time
| software role.
| samstave wrote:
| PLC pays well - and often there are
| contracting/consulting opportunities - look for jobs in
| the Automotive area.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| It's true, you might be able to find a slow career move
| where your roles take on more and more code until
| eventually pure programming rolls trust your experience.
| However if you're looking for a faster move look into
| night classes, if possible. You can get a computer
| science degree for much cheaper in a couple years of just
| doing night classes along with your work. It can be hard
| to balance all that but career changes are usually
| difficult to navigate. I wish you luck!
| tony69 wrote:
| Materials science is more focused on these topics than
| mechanical engineering fwiw
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| MSE used to be part of ME (still is in some universities).
| khobragade wrote:
| True! Even my diploma in ME course has a subset of MatSci
| in it. Fascinating stuff.
| ghaff wrote:
| I had a materials science course as part of my ME
| undergrad. (And of course there was overlap in other
| courses.)
|
| When I went to grad school for a Master's at an engineering
| school which, at the time, was small enough to not actually
| have formal departments, I studied a fair bit of mechanical
| engineering but actually did a materials science thesis.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I have a MSc in MechE. Unfortunately a lot of the stuff he does
| is the "fun stuff" and like any engineering job, you're lucky
| if you have a 50/50 fun stuff to paper work ratio.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Your lifetime earnings as a MechE are probably only 20% of what
| you'd earn studying CS - especially at the high end of ability.
|
| You could just take some of those extra earnings and take up
| MechE as a hobby.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Then you'd just be a dilettante.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Not much wrong with that, as long as your family is fed. My
| degree is in Mechanical Engineering. Most every dollar I've
| earned was from computers. I still faff around doing
| enjoyable hobby projects in engineering (ultra-light ME,
| EE, CS) with the kids. It's a fine life.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I prefer the word amateur, which shares the same root as
| "love" for a reason.
| syntaxing wrote:
| 20% is probably a bit of an exaggeration. I wor in tech and
| worked in the regular industry prior. I would say my wage is
| about 20-30% less than my peers of the same level. I don't
| know anyone that works for a company that has a payband
| difference more than one sigma for each IC level.
| ghaff wrote:
| This is basically a drop in to Facebook or Google and make
| $600K/year or life isn't worth living sort of comment. (And
| I doubt if it's even accurate as someone with non-CS
| degrees.)
|
| And the idea that basically any other engineering major
| will make 20% of an even remotely typical CS major is
| idiocy.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Hardware engineers in MAANG makes about 20% less as well
| (anecdotally). Our wage is not that far off in tech (one
| signs as I mentioned). But we definitely have way less
| job openings compared to our SWE peers.
| ghaff wrote:
| Sorry but this is such an HN comment. It manages to
| simultaneously make everything about money, basically
| position things in the context of Big Tech, and assume that
| your specific undergraduate degree charts your career.
|
| For the record, I have an ME undergrad (and a grad degree
| that's basically material science) and while I've mostly only
| used my direct classwork a bit, I've done fine.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> MechE are probably only 20% of what you'd earn studying CS
|
| Maybe if you are a MechE working for facebook or twitter. But
| go to something like SpaceX or BMW and you will find the best
| MechEs paid way more than the software people. The insane
| paychecks in CS only exist at companies where software is the
| final product. Companies that produce physical products put
| CS into a support role. A department head at Boeing or LM is
| far more likely to be from an engineering background.
| Quequau wrote:
| I like this dude and subscribe to his channel. It's my hope that
| my next move will land me in a spot with enough space to build a
| home workshop. It seems like a great hobby.
| l33tman wrote:
| I didn't know the backscatter could be analyzed to show atomic
| element composition!
| ghaff wrote:
| I saw that and I was like hmm. Scanning electron microscopes
| have sure advanced a lot since I was a grad student.
| dylan604 wrote:
| it was one of those random, oh, this is how i learned about XYZ
| moment for me as well. yes, as he states in the video, i could
| also have read the wikipedia page (and at some point i probably
| still will), but his explanation went into so much new
| information for me that it was filled with so many "hmm, never
| really thought about that to even consider how it worked", but
| here's the info in a youtube video so now i just have answers
| to questions i didn't know i had
| legohead wrote:
| If you liked this, you'd probably also enjoy this video[1] where
| a guy tests cryogenically frozen drill bits and explains (and
| shows via microscope) why they are so much stronger.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAxi5YXTjEk
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Takeaways:
|
| - It makes the drills harder, but as a result likely also more
| brittle, so they may only be "stronger" for certain
| applications
|
| - Using the bit properly is much more important than what it's
| made of/whether it's cryo treated - he got an entire plate of
| steel with one bit with 30 m/min (and the bit was still good at
| the end) and then destroyed 7 bits, included some treated ones,
| on fewer holes than that using 40 m/min (I assume that's
| surface speed).
|
| - This also means he didn't test how much longer the bit would
| last under good conditions, only that it was able to withstand
| non-optimal conditions longer. While it's likely that this
| transfers, it's not guaranteed.
| HyperSane wrote:
| That dude has a $50,000 oscilloscope.
| rfrey wrote:
| Which he probably got at salvage and repaired.
| zokier wrote:
| Probably the least interesting piece of equipment he has.
| Anyways, at his latest video he has pretty pedestrian scope
| (~$2k) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO_EHceV9sk so any
| fancy scopes might have been just loaners from $work.
| class3shock wrote:
| Applied Science is an amazing channel. I'd also recommend
| checking out Breaking Taps and Alpha Phoenix for similar
| content.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| If you like learning how things work, like to learn lots of
| things and want a good subject to motivate you, restore an older
| car to perfect working order. You will be investigating
| mechanics, electronics, chemistry, metal working, even
| upholstery. Hell, I got into 3D printing too since some of the
| older plastic parts simply aren't made anymore.
|
| And at the end of it, you get a sweet perfect vintage car to show
| for all your learning.
| function_seven wrote:
| And my personal corollary: R/C cars when I was a kid. I learned
| so many useful things from building, driving, breaking, and
| fixing them!
|
| DC electronics, motors, suspension tuning and theory, PWM,
| basic mechanical "instincts", soldering, how transmissions work
| (some models had even fluid-filled torque converters on them)
| differential gearing (and some had limited slip!) and even
| regenerative braking.
|
| Years later I'd constantly be surprised how all of these things
| worked almost the same way in real cars.
| CrazyCatDog wrote:
| Ha! I started on flight sim, made it to rc planes, and the
| first day of flight instruction, I told the instructor and he
| said: "if you can fly rc, you can fly full scale." All I had
| to master was emergency procedures and some theory on the
| throttle vs pitch and I was off to the skies!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, flying a plane is "easy". It's the taking off and
| landing that gets tricky. /s
| doubled112 wrote:
| I'd imagine the stakes are a little higher when you're on
| the plane looking down than when you're on the ground
| looking up?
|
| The rest makes sense. Controls are in different places,
| everything is bigger, but the basics are the same.
|
| Is the bigger plane easier in the sense it is less twitchy?
|
| I've tried a couple of RC helicopters and the larger one
| was much easier to handle.
| Animats wrote:
| Looking at broken parts under a scanning electron microscope is
| common. I saw that decades ago in a hydraulics R&D facility. They
| had devices in life cycle tests (the largest being a locomotive
| transmission) and when a part broke, it was looked at in detail
| to understand why. Heat treatment failure? Machining error? Weak
| point in the design?
| OJFord wrote:
| That's why he did it, he's not claiming it's a novel technique;
| what's _not_ common is it being accessible to the hobbyist. Of
| course, it doesn 't really matter, as he says at the end
| there's nothing really to be done with this information, but it
| is cool.
|
| Clough42 is one of my favourite channels, always look forward
| to his reliably weekly video. Great mix of machining (metal),
| 3D printing, and electronics - CAD too which many don't show
| (and at just the right speed IMO, doesn't belabour it, but his
| narration of key presses basically taught me Fusion360, always
| in my head when I use it myself).
| lsllc wrote:
| I have picked up most of my (somewhat limited!) Fusion360
| skills by watching James' weekly videos!
| [deleted]
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Meta: there are lots of video posts tagged "[video] (youtube)",
| which is redundant, and gives no information beyond that it's a
| video. Could that second half mention the YouTube channel that's
| being referenced? That would be the equivalent of most website
| references. Perhaps "[video] (youtube.com/@Clough42)"?
| dylan604 wrote:
| that's doesn't seem like a bad idea to me, but how would that
| be different than having the author's name attached to all
| submissions? we see wsj.com, nyt.com, etc all the time with no
| other metadata.
|
| i get the label for [PDF] and what not, but does anyone think a
| link to youtube.com is _NOT_ going to be a video?
| gumby wrote:
| The purpose of that label is to warn people who don't want
| video. Anyone who wants the additional metadata can get it by
| clicking the link.
| nirvgorilla wrote:
| [dead]
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The call to action in the video (forced reason for viewers to
| leave a comment or otherwise engage to boost metrics) is
| cringeworthy at this point. Stop doing it. We all know what you
| are doing and it makes you seem unprofessional.
| viggity wrote:
| don't hate the player, hate the game.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I hate the game, and there are plenty of players who are
| successful without insulting the intelligence of viewers by
| thinking that adding some forced prompt into the video and
| nonchalantly remarking 'let me know in the comments' is going
| to fly past us as we all pause the video to give our opinion
| on whether you should use a drill to expand a pilot hole or
| not.
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