General > General Technical Chat
Laser-ing the IC markings off on a budget.
mnementh:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on March 24, 2021, 03:31:43 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on March 24, 2021, 12:41:56 pm ---The important thing is to design for longevity and change the attitudes about constantly buying a new one. Fortunately the market i work in wants longevity and robust designs so I don't have to cut corners to the degree that commercial product cut.
i once read of a guy returning 3 lexmark printers to the store after every single one stopped working after 16 pages were printed.
I have a hard drive that mysteriously stopped working. When I went searching I discovered that this was a common fault and happened after a certain time period and that the manufacturer was offering a firmware upgrade for those that had not reached this time or if the drive had stopped working they would take it back and sort it out. I sent mine back and it was returned to me in perfect working order. No explanation was ever given of why it stopped working in correlation to a particular number of hours. We all know what happened but the manufacturer (seagate) would never admit to having a time to fail in the firmware.
--- End quote ---
There are those who claim that planned obsolescence isn't a "thing". - It is definitely a "thing"... in fact, every product ever (competently) designed has had a specific defined design life... if you buy a car, everything is designed for 100K miles or 10 years... if you buy a cell phone where the battery can't be changed, you know you are buying a product with a 2-3 year design life... and so on.
--- End quote ---
Those 3 LexMarks all stopped printing because the "starter" cartridges had run out. They and HP got a huge black eye over that practice in the late 90s... yet here we are again a couple decades later and everybody just expects it.
For certain makes & models, I think 10y/100k is generous... however, that figure is still much higher mileage than used to be the case. Difference is that cars were once designed to be repaired, and core parts like a timing chain and oil seals and clutch were considered part of maintenance, not held against a vehicle's record in terms of longevity. Current designs, and the insane cost of dealership service has changed that. Such service nowadays, if not done under warranty, are now cause to get rid of the car.
A lot of this has to do with the Japanese invasion... newer ways of making smaller engines that burn leaner and cleaner resulted in import cars lasting a decade or more with nothing but oil, spark plug and battery changes. That forced American manufacturers to abandon big V8s and get smaller too.
But the upshot of this, and reluctance of parts houses to carry parts for imports well into the 80s, forced the development of "BIC Lighter Cars" by those overseas manufacturers; where a car lasted a decade or so then everything started to fall apart. That has become the norm now; but what it really means is higher precision engineering, and engineering that is "just strong enough" not "10x over-engineered" because "Who cares, it's just cheap iron, and the car can carry it..." which means the car isn't carrying a lot of mass it doesn't need to. And it also means that individual parts now have a lot longer MTBF.... because they're being designed to last the entire service life of a vehicle, not with the intent of being replaced at 50k or 60k intervals like a V8 timing chain.
Personally, while I do lament the decline of all that gorgeous old iron from the 40s through the 70s... I have to admit that purely from a daily transportation standpoint, cars are now exponentially better than they were back then.
mnem
:-/O
Simon:
--- Quote from: mnementh on March 28, 2021, 06:57:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on March 24, 2021, 07:51:29 am ---
--- Quote from: mnementh on March 24, 2021, 03:45:47 am ---
You know, like some devices I've seen that "accidentally" have a positive DC rail on a black wire, just for grins. ;)
https://youtu.be/CSvf6FsSnjg
--- End quote ---
You mean like the entire German automotive standard wire colour coding? Black is positive, Brown is Negative - just for kicks, luckily wost stuff is reverse polarity protected.
--- End quote ---
Gewd laird... some people just effin' hate the color-blind, don't they...? :o
mnem
:palm:
--- End quote ---
wiring standards these days rely more on actual labels. I don't know about elsewhere but I am told that in the UK mains wire colours are no longer to be trusted, electricians clearly label the wires, although they still follow the colour code it is no longer binding.
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: mnementh on March 28, 2021, 07:33:16 pm ---[...] but what it really means is higher precision engineering, and engineering that is "just strong enough" not "10x over-engineered" because "Who cares, it's just cheap iron, and the car can carry it..." [...]
--- End quote ---
This. That approach is also what killed the motorcycle industry in the UK (precision made Japanese bonzai engine parts made lighter and much higher performing machines). There is no doubt that Western car makers got a big wake-up call from the East, after sleeping at the switch for a long time.
I've happily bought North American cars for the last 20 years, they have been very reliable and decently economical too, without setting world records.
--- Quote ---[...] forced American manufacturers to abandon big V8s [...]
--- End quote ---
The big V8s are still here, but they live in pickup trucks and performance cars only, not in Granny's grocery getter. Do you remember the days when Granny's Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight could get 40 feet of rubber leaving the idyllic suburban setting? What a waste! :D
coppercone2:
--- Quote from: Simon on March 28, 2021, 07:55:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: mnementh on March 28, 2021, 06:57:41 pm ---
--- Quote from: Simon on March 24, 2021, 07:51:29 am ---
--- Quote from: mnementh on March 24, 2021, 03:45:47 am ---
You know, like some devices I've seen that "accidentally" have a positive DC rail on a black wire, just for grins. ;)
https://youtu.be/CSvf6FsSnjg
--- End quote ---
You mean like the entire German automotive standard wire colour coding? Black is positive, Brown is Negative - just for kicks, luckily wost stuff is reverse polarity protected.
--- End quote ---
Gewd laird... some people just effin' hate the color-blind, don't they...? :o
mnem
:palm:
--- End quote ---
wiring standards these days rely more on actual labels. I don't know about elsewhere but I am told that in the UK mains wire colours are no longer to be trusted, electricians clearly label the wires, although they still follow the colour code it is no longer binding.
--- End quote ---
anything to save a fucking dollar huh?
they can do a green live wire?
I personally like banded wire, but it has to be a good band so it shows up good in the picture, you can keep different wiring runs thematic in a wiring harness if you have color banded wire (i.e. white with bands), if its just too many solid colors it looks like someone shoved a fucking rainbow in there and you can't figure out what the fuck is going on
labels are even worse, random from unit to unit, its the mystery meat leftover lunch for the electronics world, and you know they are gonna fall off
lets allow parallel wires for greater ampacity, so you get some stitched together shit made out of recycled printer cables in your new dream home bahahhaa
Simon:
Not really. Using the wrong colour is easy, but usually labelling is quite deliberate and less error prone.
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