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I made the jump from leading top tier software development teams to designing and manufacturing electronics a few years ago and was just reflecting on one of the biggest things I've learned.
Cycle Times
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Luke Bayes (Eight Amps)
4,629 posts
Luke Bayes (Eight Amps)
@lukebayes
Making robots that assemble PCBs and assistive tech for disabled vets at Eight Amps. Led the effort to bring YouTube to all the big screens. USMC Veteran.
- I know I'm ignorant and probably missing something obvious, but shouldn't the software in these machines make this impossible? It's 2025, we live in the future. People be out here building karate terminators, but machine makers can't prevent crashes on a fixed gantry?!Bad day bud 😭
- Replying to @joelmfgNo question whatsoever, it must be a Benchy.
- We made this vacuum pump 5 years ago by flipping a $10 aquarium oxygenator valve, adding a thumb-valve, regulator and a syringe. I can't recall which YouTuber gave us the tip, but it makes me smile every single time I break it out. The lower tray is 3D printed, fits into our
- We officially have a winner! I'm really looking forward to taking delivery of these ICs 37 years from now. @ST_World Please discontinue parts if you don't have the ability to produce them.
- I'm calling it Lattice Manufacturing. This is where you have many inexpensive, flexible cells that run in parallel. While some cells specialize, most cells can perform most tasks. Materials and WIP can be routed to any node from any node, not just in a single line.Broke: Batch Manufacturing Woke: Lean Manufacturing Bespoke: Dextrous Manufacturing
- TIL something amazing I don't know if this is really true or not, but it sounds so damn good, I'm going to pretend it's fact and repeat it for the rest of my life without ever looking into it any further.Replying to @parthingle_xFun fact: If you look on the top of many HAAS machining centers, they have one of these as a braking resistor for the spindle drive:
- Replying to @SosowskiYou are standing in an open field, west of a white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
- Replying to @shpetimThis is the learning I'm here for. "Chips and coolant fly everywhere. You'd trip light screens and ruin proxies and switches. Vision? You'd need a few GPUs running full blast and you still wouldn't be able to keep up with a modern high speed cnc." I get that it's quite a bit
- Replying to @sokol_ccI'll never forget those warm Summer days of June. All the children in the neighborhood would come running when the tube laser man rounded the bend on our little culdesac.
- Spent multiple days dealing with the quoting process to get some US-made aluminum parts anodized in the US. The anodize cost more than the parts. It took a full month to turn the order and then they tack on a ~$115 "environmental fee" that was never mentioned at the start, not
- Replying to @ptrschmdtnlsnWe use both RP and ST parts. We lean toward RP because the SDKs and docs are just so damn nice. The price difference isn't a big deal either way for our volumes, but being a little less expensive is also nice. Because I come from software, RP is a better culture match, but STM32
- Replying to @peteoxenhamI don't know about mills or sewing machines, but 100% on Brother Printers. Brother is literally the only company on Earth that makes printers in 2024. Everything else is just hostage taking, low-quality scams.
- Replying to @KennethCasselThese piezo positioners are wild and I can't wait for their prices to approach their actual production costs. The world will be changed forever. There's like $10 worth of material in these devices and the only thing keeping the prices so high are IP and access.
