The Black Hole......

1967 has always been my favorite year for American car style. Name a make & model, and chances are my favorite version of it will be the '67, from back when I was 9 years old. 🤓

My grade school's "playground" (the church parking lot) was adjacent to a major artery through town, leading to the bridge across the Mississippi. Every new model year, my buddies & I (and our dads) would check out all the new advance looks in the car mags, then before long we kids could watch the real deal, coming off the bridge on the big car carriers from points east, during recess out on the abrasive tarmac.

I thought the Mustang looked OK when it was introduced, but I still remember watching those beautiful new '67s going by on the trucks with that perfect new look - whew, love at first sight. We'd stand on the edge of the lot and whistle and cheer for the Mustangs and 'Cudas and Cougars, oh my! Sometimes the truckers would wave and honk.

I guess I feel a bit sad for kids these days. It's just not the same with new cars anymore. Or cars in general, I guess.
 
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An oldie goldie, stolen from a gas tank sticker on a Harley. Perfectly period correct for anything British or American, but embarrassing for my 1975 R90 airhead, which should have proper Teutonic reserve. We're all walking a line between death and diapers.

Or diapers and death. Cosmic , My Dude
Chris
Arf!
Applies here, as I am home from the hospital recovering from covid.
Got sloppy and caught it.
Puts a new perspective and how many days you have left and what to do with them.
Stay safe and don't get sloppy guys.
Thanks Chris you made my morning !
 
Been following the launch and unfurling of the James Webb telescope and every so often having a 'how the hell have they done that' moment. Latest one came last night reading about the mirror adjustment. There are 144 actuators used to adjust the primary and secondary mirrors. All of them have to work for the telescope to work properly and they have to be able to position things to within a couple of nm whilst at -220C. Tribologists dream or nightmare?

https://www.esmats.eu/amspapers/pastpapers/pdfs/2006/warden.pdf interesting paper here talking about how it works. I'm seriously impressed they've got stepper motors to work in those conditions!
 
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ZETEX / DIODES INC SELLING MATCHED PAIRS OF BJTS

Probably I'm the last person on earth to find out, but I just stumbled upon Zetex's sales table of matched pairs.
Built with adjacent die from a single wafer: DC Current Gain, hFE, VCE(sat), VBE(sat) are matched to a 2% maximum tolerance.

They've got the 5401/5551 parts rated 150V, and a bunch more. Have a glance: (LINK)


_
 
Been following the launch and unfurling of the James Webb telescope and every so often having a 'how the hell have they done that' moment. Latest one came last night reading about the mirror adjustment. There are 144 actuators used to adjust the primary and secondary mirrors. All of them have to work for the telescope to work properly and they have to be able to position things to within a couple of nm whilst at -220C. Tribologists dream or nightmare?

https://www.esmats.eu/amspapers/pastpapers/pdfs/2006/warden.pdf interesting paper here talking about how it works. I'm seriously impressed they've got stepper motors to work in those conditions!
I'm not in the least surprised that steppers work in such balmy conditions, 55 Kelvin.. That's almost a warm summer day. The beauty of a stepper is the lack of brushes to fail in space. The choice over three phase brushless is most likely because the steppers do not need to be energized to maintain position where 3 phase ones usually do, and in vacuum you can't keep the coils on or they will overheat.

As for position resolution, 1 nanometer resolution absolute position linear encoders are off the shelf product, I'm using those for motion control of multi-ton objects..(the requirement was 1 micron accuracy, we settled with 5 nm). They even sell the optical scales in invar to prevent temperature dependence.
The bulk of the devices are either steel, aluminum, or neodymium, so the environmental temperature produces the biggest errors. Even a 1 degree C change causes expansion and contraction that far exceeds the 5 nm position repeatability. So that 5nm is really the encoder position accuracy..the mechanical engineers have to figure out how to minimize temperature dependence.


The most difficult aspect I see is getting all the electronics to operate at 55K, but that is common nowadays. Actually, having lots of experience with kapton films, I think the biggest problem is surviving a launch without ripping any of the films. Once kapton has a nick at the edge, it will easily tear under tension. I have no idea what pinhole defects in the film would do.
The best aspects of kapton is that it is the only plastic that still flexible at 4.5 Kelvin, and that stuff is huuugly radiation resistant.


John
 
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John, you take all the wonder out of extreme engineering 😛
My work experience is in a very focussed and narrow regime.

However, I have three advantages over many....I watched every episode of "The repair shop" ( waiting with baited breath for the next season), and always look for "How it's made" episodes. Two of my favorite shows. And I stayed at a best western last night...

I think I helped design the manu process for the webb imaging arrays, soldering, TCE, matched expansion epoxies... not sure, the engineer I worked with retired, so I can't ask him if that was what it was for.. It might have been for some other project, not sure... Don't matter anyhoo..
John