All the bits about MEM are out of my league, but what about forgetting the sensor and actuator crap, and considering cheap plastic tools machined from materials reenforced by carbon nanotubes? I don't know the specifics of the technology, but what I've run across with this seems to indicate that it would be really strong and stable. Then you'd have a more or less conventional tool that wasn't prone to rust or bending, but was as durable or more durable than steel or iron. Granted, there would be some weight issues, but I imagine it would be fairly easy to make a nice heavy stand for a machine that was underweight so long as the materials were strong enough to handle the job. Sure would beat some of the aluminum and conventional plastics used in cheap tools. (BTW, I still say that if self-correcting tools ever hit the market, it'll be servo motors and cameras, not mini robots with swarm behaviors)
You've got a lot of good points here, and I'm not going to argue them- like I said, out of my league. Just thought I'd toss in an alternative "rosy future" for the tool industry!
Looking back at the original statement, I guess it doesn't mean much in the context. I was just pointing out that there were synthetic diamonds, just as there were artificial sapphires. Whether or not they're good as a coating is a whole different matter- I'd imagine a coating is only as good as the adhesive that holds it together.
Just to clarify, the blacklisting referred to relates to the jewelry industry, not the industrial sharpening industry. It was tossed in with the above to pre-emptively answer the inevitable "then why can't I buy a clear white diamond ring for $100?" question.
Those thrillers any good? I don't believe I've run across them.
It would be superb- then maybe people would realize that a diamond is just a damn rock, good for grinding and real pretty for the ladies- but a rock nonetheless. Hardly worth people getting all hyped up over.
Sounded like he was referring to supply houses and jewelers, not industrial shops. I should have been more clear on this, as I mentioned in the last post I responded to. There's also a chance that he's a little paranoid as well, though I'm not going to make that claim.
I think your sig below explains why I didn't bother with that! :)
Yeah, I used to like them. The author's name is Gerald Browne, IIRC. The technology may seem a wee bit ludicrous these days as all of them I read were written in the '80s and '70s. I do love stuff from that era as it attempts to describe the then current state-of-the-art computers, which in almost no case did the writer understand at all.
Fortunately given what a freelance writer makes in too many years, my wife feels the same way. She prefer colored gemstones (but, man, have you priced emeralds these days!).
Charlie Self "Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy." Edgar Bergen, (Charlie McCarthy)
I rather doubt your black snake chewed it's way in ... though what a good idea for a horror movie! Actually, you had field mice chew their way in, and the black snake followed the smell of mouse farts, surrounded them and had a nice mouse snack.
I saw a similar situation helping my brother move some lumber he was air-drying (he built his house by himself, cut the cherry for the floors and trim, air drying it and then did all the milling himself) ... and when we lifted a layer, there was a black snake in a nice coil, surrounding the remains of a mouse nest. The snake had several mouse-shaped lumps ... so we were able to figure out how that evening ended.
That's become painfully obvious. In fact it leads me to wonder why you're so intent in participating in this discussion at all.
Your gut obviously tells you that the tool I am describing will never exist. And that's fine. Your gut may even be right. However the logic and facts you are attempting to use to support your gut feeling are anywhere from fatuous to flat wrong.
What's more, your arguments are rapidly degenerating into a series of flat statements with no support whatsoever. Which is increasingly less convincing.
Wrong on both counts. I am claiming that _in another few decades_ the woodworking tool I am describing could easily exist. Clearly a device that I think will exist in a number of years can't be said to do anything at all today.
As for backup for that claim I have cited a number of examples demonstrating that the technology is coming into existence. By contrast your 'evidence' so far has consisted of a single citation of a paper from which you drew a correct, but utterly irrelevant conclusion. (Of course microturbines get their advantages from being small. That's the whole point.) It also appears you didn't bother to read the entire paper -- or at least you missed a couple of tables and discussion that answered one of your other questions.
If any of those scientists and engineers are participating I'd be very interesting in hearing their opinions.
From my discussions with scientists and engineers involved in MEMS, active structures and such I doubt seriously any of them are cringing
(And on the the side issue of flyng cars:)
I am not aware of any case where runways or lack thereof had a detrimental effect on flying cars. Are you? On the face of it, it's difficult to see how they could. The essence of flying cars is that the vehicle is both an airplane and a car. It was not, as generally conceived, a personal helicopter. In other words it flew as close as it could reasonably get to its destination and drove the rest of the way.
Cost is a more difficult issue simply because it is more speculative. However examination of the structures and components of various flying cars shows that a lot of them could have been produced at prices which would have given them a significant market. (Not as big as automobiles, obviously.)
And many people can't afford to fly a private plane. However thousands of people can afford it and do fly them. It's a non-argument unless you're trying to claim that the flying car would have to replace the automobile to be a success. That's a fairly nonsensical standard.
Again, the essence of a flying car is that it acts as both an airplane and an automobile. It's hard to see how the runway issue would have been significant. Especially given both conditions and attitudes in the heyday of the flying car craze in the decade after World War II. Towns and cities everywhere were building airports. So were private individuals.
Have you? As it happens I have. But let's quantify this discussion. Give me an acceptable noise figure (and profile) in EdB -- as well as a source for it -- and we'll have something to discuss.
I used to work across the street from the plant where Boeing (ex MacDac ex Hughes) builds NOTAR helicopters, as well as Apaches. There's also a helicopter flying school there. So I've been exposed to a lot of helicopter noise. Even the difference between a conventional helicopter and a NOTAR is considerable.
No but it can be quite thrifty on a gallons per mile basis.
(Back to the main argument)
That would be a good point -- if I was claiming this woodworking tool exists. I do not and in fact I don't expect such a thing to exist for several decades. I don't know why you have so much difficulty grasping this, or why it makes you so angry. But you obviously do and it obviously does.
Wrong again. See previous discussion and citations. What I am saying is that a lot of the design will depend on how the field develops. If you think you can predict the exact shape of cutting edge devices even five years out -- well, you're going to be seriously wrong more often than not.
Semiconductors.
MEMS has been around as an industry for more than a decade. That's long enough to see the patterns developing and to compare them to other high technology industries.
In what ways is MEMS different from electronics? Don't just wave your hands, give specifics. Justify your answer with appropriate citations.
There we agree.
Personally I'd say that it will happen, but that's what makes horse races.
RAND stands for "Research ANd Development". It is a government-sponsored think tank which concentrates on high technology. It was established after WWII and AFIK has no connection with Remington-Rand. As for the 'personal computer' . . . well, do a little research and find out. No reason to spoil the joke for you.
I not only have 'a clue', I've seen the principles I'm talking about demonstrated in the lab, in production or in other contexts. You could get an excellent basic education in them if you were willing to read the research papers, company literature on existing projects and other reports.
Even done a parts count on a modern PC? Even with the current level of integration, there are still a lot of parts.
Computers are small because it is to our advantage to make them small. If we had reason to make them large we could make them large -- and still inexpensive. Do you seriously believe this thing is going to be size of a modern laptop?
The sensors and actuators are going to be small. Where do you get the weird notion that this tool is going to be made entirely of silicon?
semiconductor-grade silicon
Silicon is going to get a lot cheaper but what makes you think the active elements are going to be composed of semiconductor grade silicon?
For the record: Some of them may well be -- if we're still using silicon. But a lot of MEMS technology can be easily built with much cheaper grades of silicon since the electronic charcteristics don't matter.
Again the confusion over the existence of the tool. I'm talking about several years out.
Incorrect.
True
Wrong. I'm claiming it's going to incorporate MEMs elements as key components. It is no more going to be 'made entirely out of MEMS' than a modern desktop computer is made entirely out of silicon.
It is not.
I don't know what you're reacting to in all this, but it clearly is not what I am actually saying.
The active components, in the sense of things like actuators and sensors, will be small. They will also be cheap, but not just because they are small.
In MEMS, as in electronics, economies of scale are a major consideration. The cost to produce something in quantity, no matter what the size, falls very rapidly.
Wrong question. The right question is 'how much power can a bunch of dirt cheap MEMs actuators control?' The answer is 'more than enough'.
I hope so.
Which directly contradicts your claim. You're apparently making this stuff up as you go along and that is not a good strategy.
Oops. My error. A couple of years ago that highly refined silicon was selling for *$3* a pound, not $30.
The first reason the cost of semiconductor silicon today is irrelevant is that what drives prices in the semiconductor silicon market is refinery capacity versus worldwide demand. The 2000 recession disrupted that market and the recovery disrupted it in the other direction.
The second reason it's irrelevant is that you don't have to use semiconductor silicon for most of these devices. The reason we do so today is that the methods of processing semiconductor silicon are well understood. It's more convenient for researchers and it's cheaper for relatively small production runs. However both researchers and manufacturers are rapidly developing competency with other matetrials, incuding less pure grades of silicon.
look at it?
For starters you get about a 2.25 increase in device count, plus other economies of scale -- principally in processing consistency. To balance that you have the somewhat higher cost of the handling and processing equipment.
You're still hung up on this thing being built entirely out of silicon. Again, that's like assuming that an entire desktop computer is built out of nothing but silicon.
These 'little bitty things' are the control system. They replace the expensive, heavy, high-precision components that we use today by substituting active control for the passive systems based on weight of material and mechanical precision.
Let's take a kindergarten example: An actively controlled fence. The fence itself will consist of a strip of thin aluminium backed by an array of actuators and the whole assembly is mounted to the saw guides by not-very-accurate mounts. The actuators deform the aluminium in response to signals from the sensors, mediated by the processors.
The fence actuators can be a strip array, like the array of LEDs in my $100 Brother printer. They won't be much more complicated and in all probability they'll be a lot cheaper. In addition there will be another network of sensors to check the the distance of the fence from the cutting element and their parallelism.
Mechanically, the 'fence' will be a cheap, low-tolerance, device, more cheaply constructed than any Harbor Freight special. It will be sturdy enough to stand up to shop use, but not much more. The mechanical parts will cost only a few dollars.
The magic is in the active elements. The sensor array will constantly track the movement of the wood, the cutting line and various other factors such as temperature at the cutting interface and the cutting speed and well as distance, parallelism, etc. And of course the fence's processor(s)
Let's say you want to rip a 6" board. You crank your 'fence' over to
6" indicated. The tolerances will be loose as a goose, but you don't care. The device will tell you when you're close enough, parallel enough, etc.
Now, turn on the saw and start pushing the wood through. As the sensors detect the cutting position, the actuators in the fence will deform the aluminium strip to steer the wood exactly where it needs to go. It won't need to move it very far because the fence helped you line things up with sufficent precision before you started. The cutter will contact the wood at precisely the right point on the right angle to produce the cut you need. Accuracy is likely to be measured in hundredths of an inch because that's sufficent for woodworking.
Now please note this is NOT a description of the kind of tools I have been talking about. It's another one of those proof of principle devices you seem to have so much trouble grasping -- albeit a more advanced one. It is simply an example to demonstrate how these technologies could be applied.
Wrong again. You're hung up on the idea that the whole thing will be active.
They're not going to be limited to a 1/2" square bit of silicon. Take those 40 million devices, spread them out over several square feet supported by an appropriately design mechanism you get something very useful for cutting wood.
The essence of a modern control system of nearly any sort is using a combination of intelligence, sensors and relatively low powered actuators to control larger forces. We do it every day, although generally on a larger scale today.
Someone is definitely not thinking there. You've made that painfully obvious in this message.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
It could well happen. One of the big advantages of things like carbon nanotube composites is that you can tailor their characteristics to the job. If you need them stiffer in one direction than another you can do that, for example. You can also build stuff with other remarkable properties.
Fundamnentally it's the old tradeoff between relative cost of production and relative capabilities. The cost of composites and nanotube structures is definitely going to drop and we're going to find out how to tailor them to do a lot more things. If that's going to be enough to make them advantageous for woodworking tools, I don't know. But they easily could.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
Actually I think most of the industrial diamond on the market today is synthetic. GE is a major manufacturer.
The real fight is over gem quality diamonds. In the last few years we have learned how to produce gem diamonds and that has the diamond merchants running scared.
That's not as true in the case of diamond as it is with, say, sapphire. For example most of the synthetic ones are yellow because of included nitrogen. Personally I think canary yellow diamonds are a lot prettier than the colorless ones, but not everyone agrees.
Diamond film blades, yes. Low cost, well that's the sticking point. Even DLC would run up the cost substantially with today's production processes.
This is a real good example of the effects of deriving a technology from the semiconductor industry. Diamond and DLC (Diamond Like Composite) films are traditionally produced by Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), which was developed by the semiconductor industry. As a result both the equpment and standards are very high -- as is the cost. It is taking time to 'dumb down' the tools and process to apply it to larger markets that don't need semiconductor quality.
I definitely think we're going to see something like this in the next five years. It will probably be DLC rather than diamond for added toughness and it will probably be a butt-ugly coating, say dingy brown or an unattractive black. The bits will have a premium price and the early ones will probably have tool life issues because of chipping rather than dulling, but we'll see them.
Razor? Think sharp, man! Think sharp! Seriously, so can I. So can Norton, which is one of the major manufactrurers of diamond films. The problem, short-term is getting the price down. IIRC there have been several experimental knives produced with diamond film on the blade which have sold for astronomical prices.
Oh yeah, sharpening these tools. The diamond film will only be applied to one side of the blade and it will be sharpened from the other, uncoated side, to expose more diamond/DLC film.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
Incorrect, as it happens. Diamond films are being used, especially to machine composites.
See the last item under Product Profiles in:
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they have the potential for a lot more growth in cutting tools. See:
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The main problem is not diamond's brittleness, it is the different coefficient of expansion between the diamond and the metal substrate. See the NIST reference above.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
The reason you can't get that $100 diamond ring is that we can't make them yet. Gem quality synthetic diamonds of any color are just emerging from the experimental stage and they are still expensive to produce. (Although a lot cheaper than natural ones, especially in larger sizes.)
Wait a few more years and watch the diamond cartel crumble.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
I don't know that it will be. But that doesn't effect my original statement that MEMS devices are tough enough to be used in artillery stills. (Not all of them, but not everything has to take the 5000 Gs that's the reference acelleration for an artillery projectile in the tube.
Well, no. There are economies of scale as well as a learning curve to consider. (Not to mention amortization of equipment.) And it is untrue that more parts can necessarily be fitted into each square inch. You're neglecting the growth in die size in things like microprocessors as they become more complex and more powerful. The cost decreases hold true even though the feature size has been dropping like a rock. If you were to hold the feature size, and hence the die size constant, you'd get at least a factor of 10 improvement in price per square inch over the first generation parts.
Absolutely true, as far as it goes.
Nope. You're assuming the whole tool is made of active elements. Of course it won't be any more than a desktop PC is made entirely of microprocessors.
In fact the tool I'm envisioning is cheap because it is built light, low precision parts. The accuracy comes from the sensors, processors and actuators built into it.
Nope. This is a common misconception about semiconductors and it is even less true in MEMS systems. The low cost relies on the peculiar economics of semiconductor-like manufacturing processes. Essentially no matter how complex the device, the cost tends toward the cost of the raw materials. This is independent of density.
The principle is the same however. Higher precision by deforming the active element under precise control rather than trying to make the active element rigid.
At least equivalent accuracy, lower price, increased safety. That will do for a start.
Huh? This is incorrect. It is a _much_ cheaper way to make telescopes of equivalent performance. In fact I'm not sure we could build telescopes with conventional methods that could match the performance of the big adaptive instruments.
As I noted, it is not cheaper because of the economics of large astronomical telescopes. The use of adaptive optics in these instruments has focused on added capabilities rather than reducing the price of an instrument of the same capability as existing instruments.
The tool does. Probably the 'fence' in combination with the cutting element and some kind of speed control in the table itself. (Think a variable friction surface leading up to the cutting element.) In the first instance this provides feedback to the operator. Feed too fast and this element slows you down by increasing the friction on the table. Try to overpower that and the machine stops.
The actuator is the element in the control system that causes the thing to move. It isn't necessarily the whole moving part. So, yes, you make the actuators entirely this way.
Not much.
Not if it's properly supported. The answer is the components be as durable as they need to be.
Again, you seem to be envisioning this thing as being built entirely out of unprotected silicon. That's silly.
What high forces? How high do you think these forces have to be?
For the cost equivalent to perhaps half the cost of a good-quality table saw. Or, to put it another way, about the cost of a Harbor Freight cheapie.
Obviously I disagree.
Today no. Give it a few years and things might be different.
Once again, the time confusion.
And you base this opinion on what, precisely?
Gee what a surprise. Something that isn't predicted for a few decades doesn't exist today.
There's a huge difference between 'precision' and 'adjustment'. I suspect the initial adjustments will be made by hand, or if not by a cheap screw actuator -- just threaded rod driven by a cheap motor, for example. That's the 'adjustment'. The precision comes from the sensor/processor/actuator network handling the fine control once you're in the neighborhood. That's the precision.
Time confusion.
I'm pretty sure using nothing more than a big hammer I can break any tool in a woodworking shop -- unless you consider an anvil a woodworking tool.
Strawman. And a rather absurd one at that.
The point is that in the first generation, using wildly unoptimized design, we get equivalent results in basic design paramters.
Who said anything about subsituting them? Powering aircraft with microturbines, perhaps. But it's not going to be a subsitution for a WWII era engine.
except some pie
There are a lot of people in the field who disagree with you. However again you're getting sidetracked by your inability to follow the argument. I offered the microturbines as examples of the toughness, strength and efficency of MEMS based technologies.
You still don't seem to have an answer for that.
This is another irrelevancy, but. . .
Depends on how much power each one produces. As a rough estimate thousands of them.
Like nothing you've ever seen.
They'd probably be integrated into the structure of the aircraft rather than hung on the wings in nacelles. It's unlikely the aircraft would look like a 747, although you could design a craft to match the performance of a 747.
Understand powering aircraft of any size isn't going to be the initial application. (Well, okay, maybe some tiny RPVs). Battery replacement is a much more likely application.
The guy was being facetious, for God's sake! See if you can get your mind off these irrelevancies and stick to the main issues.
I mentioned it to demonstrate the compactness and power output of microturbines, not because anyone's going to build one.
--RC
You can tell a really good idea by the enemies it makes
On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 14:03:17 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@TAKEOUTmindspring.com calmly ranted:
I know it's in part due to the lousy photography, but those emeralds look awfully pale, as do the hydrothermal rubies. The pulled rubies are a lot deeper, more realistic. Have you seen these in person? If so, how do they compare to the real items?
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