Nerd Alert

Friction welding is really cool. My father was a manufacturing engineer, and used to talk about friction welding on occasion. The way it works as amazing, especially since two relatively dissimilar metals can be welded that way.
Didn't realize that one could put dissimilar metals together like that. super cool
 
The stir welding is really neat. Odd to think of metal in a plastic state and then weld bonding at a relatively low temperature. I believe it's related somewhat to the fluid(?) behaviour of metal in high energy ballistics or maybe that's altogether different again. I wonder if the lower heat distortion and deeper joint penetration of laser is used in shipbuilding now because of all the extra effort they currently take to un-heat-warp all the decking panels etc that are warped by the traditional welding? Or maybe its a simple horsepower thing where torches and arc are simply the V8 powerhouses that even with their power require multiple passes. Another vid showed Elon's tig-before vs laser-after, night and day. Same guy had a vid about spray (plasma) metallization where you could coat aluminum or zinc directly on steel or hardcoat or build up worn shafts or cylinder bores. One spray device had supersonic diamonds in the jet spray. With enough power and IIRC a bit of oxygen in the shield gas you can spray (plasma) weld mig with virtually no spatter.
 
Didn't realize that one could put dissimilar metals together like that. super cool
I'm not sure how dissimilar, but I do know it works to weld together a piece of hardened steel and a piece of a tough softer steel, to make a strong gear with a shaft that can handle torsion forces, for example.

I don't think it will weld together a piece of steel and a piece of aluminum, or such as that.
 
I'm not sure how dissimilar, but I do know it works to weld together a piece of hardened steel and a piece of a tough softer steel, to make a strong gear with a shaft that can handle torsion forces, for example.

I don't think it will weld together a piece of steel and a piece of aluminum, or such as that.
Well that's still pretty cool. Not as crazy as what I had imagined, but that would be asking a lot
 
Well that's still pretty cool. Not as crazy as what I had imagined, but that would be asking a lot
Looks like my memory was a little off, you can weld aluminum to steel! And some other pretty crazy combinations too!

 
I finally found the Briggs and Stratton 3rd electrode in their spark gap tester Mystery. The teaser electrode doing some pre-ionization for spark consistency. Dimensions etc to make it.

NACA report 202 from 1925!!! about 4 pages from the end. Briggs goes way back. I found a couple facsimile drawings in aircraft magneto tester manuals that agree. In self derail, the aircraft magnetos were neat in that to generate enough spark at two hands on the prop yank rpm, a little mechanical centrifugal (like decomp) mechanism with a spring like in a pull start would not transmit rotation, then release the spring force for a short rotation speed burst - voila spark - and retard the timing about 30 degrees so the prop wouldn't kick back and rip your hands off. I guess one spark on one cylinder to start(?) Some clever dude designed that.


Some power equipment mfs still Echo their design ;)

edit - I think I found a(different) forum post made by AI that interpreted 2 ground electrodes on a spark plug to be my inquiry and then referenced this ancient discussion about spark delay! Who'da thunk.
 
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1933 or 35 electrical engineering to bend your brain. They built and calibrated a photographic oscilloscope to measure spark voltage and current! 8 years of tech advancement.


edit - further to the UV light ionization enhancement from the teaser, Nuclear Plugs from wikipedia:

" Polonium spark plugs were marketed by Firestone from 1940 to 1953. While the amount of radiation from the plugs was minuscule and not a threat to the consumer, the benefits of such plugs quickly diminished after approximately a month because of polonium's short half-life, and because buildup on the conductors would block the radiation that improved engine performance. The premise behind the polonium spark plug, as well as Alfred Matthew Hubbard's prototype radium plug that preceded it, was that the radiation would improve ionization of the fuel in the cylinder and thus allow the plug to fire more quickly and efficiently.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_plug#cite_note-19"><span>[</span>19<span>]</span></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_plug#cite_note-20"><span>[</span>20<span>]</span></a> "
 
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Computer story

I remember back in school when Luxo the lamp was an amazing new animation and some crazy guy named Linus Torvalds was attempting to port Unix to PCs, motion pictures experts group was new - a different time. How things have changed.

 
Computer story

I remember back in school when Luxo the lamp was an amazing new animation and some crazy guy named Linus Torvalds was attempting to port Unix to PCs, motion pictures experts group was new - a different time. How things have changed.

That was a cool story
 
Yeah, it really puts things in perspective. The old saying, one wrong punctuation mark can take down 10,000 lines of code. Now it's one system access priviledge can negatively impact millions of people's lives.
 
I just watched some live NASA feed from the Artemis 2 launch and they had a camera at the rear of the craft looking back at earth. No blue marble as its cloudy weather. The earth was a crescent and you could slowly see the rotation into sun rise. The sun was just coming up outside my window. Then I realised I was watching my own sunrise from 40,000 miles away in outer space live as it happened!!

A while later the camera view angle wrt the craft body rotated about 15 degrees and the exposure whited out both the craft rocket engine and earth crescent. cool. I think the camera was mounted on the deployed solar panels because it made sense that the rotation would square them up to the sun. more cool.


edit - I'm re-thinking what I saw. I presumed the rocket was flying nose-first towards the moon. It may be coasting rockets-first instead, What I thought was terrain contrast rolling slowly into view may have been moon landscape shadows slowly changing due to camera exposure change. I just saw a far side solar panel move right after the camera view jiggled. Odds are the camera is on its own mast. The exposure is un-whiting and the rocket motor etc details are re-appearing. I'm now thinking the crescent is the moon because I just can't accept the probability that the earth is totally cloud covered eg the 25% that's visible in the shot.

Was fun to imagine while it lasted though :)



edit 2 - I'm happy again. Looks like I was right the first time. Likely little "blue" marble just due to camera.


edit3 - someone has to do a Neil Degrasse Tyson on this - orbit orientation and direction, relative earth spin, and if the visible sunlight edge is dawn or dusk (?)
 
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