What Type of Joint for Sheet Metal?

Hai everyone,

I tried to make a box out of 3mm MS sheet, with 2 of its ends(opposite faces)) open. Faces are open so that i could make an inlet & outlet. But my problem is ; i am using this box for a sachet delivering system.The flow of the sachets should be smooth, so that i can

Vortex breaker

A vessel has a boot of 3' ID and 11' height. The outlet is from the cylindrical surface and not at the boot bottom. The outlet is located 1' from the boot bottom. The liquid level is filled completely 100 % in the boot. Is there a chance of vortex formation and is there a necessity of vortex brea

Tales of Holiday Techno-Failure [Holiday Horrors]

Is it any surprise that when I asked a bunch of Gizmodo readers to share their holiday horror stories, you guys sent in tales of frozen cameras, techno-challenged dads and—yes—porn-filled PS3s?

Frosty the Frozen Nikon

A fellow who goes by Skunkabilly sent his pictorial tale on Flickr, which documents a camping trip to Monument Valley and the miserable story of a D90 which froze up—literally. Apparently the poor camera was set up outside the tent in an attempt to capture one of those gorgeous swirling-star slow exposures of the sky.

I've lived in Southern California my whole life, so I don't really understand how this whole cold and frost thing works.

When he woke up, his precious DSLR was covered with frost. "What the crap is this?" he asked himself. "Ahhh, yes. All hail Frosty the Nikon!" He tried to thaw his camera on the engine block of his Subaru, but ultimately decided to take it inside the car. Sure, it fogged up on the inside for a bit, but it was fine eventually, and the rest of the trip was smooth.

The part that caught our attention though? Skunkabilly ended the tale by saying, "Hopefully I won't rappel into a pool and drown it to death like I did with my D200." Yikes! Sounds like there's a history of gadget abuse here.

How the Phone Guy Saved Christmas

Marte, better known as infmom, sent in this photo from 1961. It's Christmas morning, and she and her brother are admiring the elaborate electric train set their father had bought and built for them. Only that fact in itself was mysterious, as their father "could barely change a lightbulb."

Marte explains that, to his dying day, her father referred to record players as "Victrolas" and refrigerators as "iceboxes." Not so much Luddite as someone who didn't usually get involved with the technical processes of the household, he decided that year to break the trend, and get constructive.

A few days before Christmas, Dad brought home the train set and the plastic scenery and the controllers and a bunch of wood and nails and smuggled all the stuff into the basement through the outside door and told us to stay out of it. He borrowed a hand saw and a hammer from the neighbors and set to work trying to build a table to put the train set on. Including sawing a sheet of plywood to size. With a hand saw. Laid across our basement coffee table, which was a hollow core door on legs. When my mom heard the language coming from the basement she told us to stay way away from it.

Though his effort to this point was valiant, the electrical engineering—and a certain amount of required drilling, for which he lacked a drill—did him in. Still, on Christmas morning, the train set was up and running. How?

We were thinking some kind of miracle had occurred, until our mother told us that later that day we were to go over and thank our neighbor, who worked for the phone company, for responding to Dad's late-night cry for help.

Marte thinks that's the point where she vowed to grow up learning how to fix things herself. And considering that she's lurking around Lifehacker and Gizmodo, odds are that she did. I feel bad for her father though. While Marte and her brother got to enjoy their gift, to him this must've been a genuine holiday horror.

Floppy Disks Sold Separately

We've heard of coal in the stocking, but Jeff's story sounds worse. One Christmas, he hit the jackpot, scoring not just a cool RC car, but a set of Crazy Bones figurines too. So the next Christmas, he was reasonably quite excited:

I used to love sleeping by the fireplace at night, right next to the Christmas tree. Every season, I would do this with my little brother, and fall asleep to the warm glow of the fire, and wake up in the morning with presents all around us. I went to sleep too giddy to even imagine what I was going to receive the next morning.

I awoke to the sound of wrapping paper crumpling around me, as I stared at two of the biggest packages I had ever seen. I immediately started shredding the paper [the first one] was wrapped in, like a hungry wolf digging into its prey. What did I uncover? Two brand spankin' new... comforter and blanket sets. [And in] the smaller package next to it? A 100-capacity floppy disk lock box.

Sadly, he did not even receive any floppies to put inside it.

Photo by alliet

Son, You Can Play With Your Toys When I Sell You the Batteries

Luckybob343 grew up in the '80s, a time when "Christmas wasn't Christmas without a remote-controlled, battery-operated something."

The trouble was, Santa brought all the cool electronic toys but he never brought any batteries. Those we had to buy ourselves, but in our house we could only buy batteries from my dad's independent electronics store.

Sure, sounds nice to keep it in the family, but there were two catches: First, his dad bought hisbatteries in bulk from Walmart, and jacked up the price by $2 per pack. And second, Luckybob's dad's store was closed from Christmas Eve until January 2nd.

Come the new year, we'd fork over three weeks of allowances over to my dad to get to play with our toys one week after we got them.

Luckybob finally got some revenge though. This year, he got a multi-instrument weather station that he knew his dad had been eying, and he took out all the instructions except the ones written in French.

Photo by cosmic tito

Porn in the PS3

Jose was happy to return home after finishing Navy boot camp last Christmas. Most of his family members, from age one to age 65, were gathered at his house. There his step-father had recently installed a 50-inch plasma TV and all the gaming console goodies that should go with it, including a PS3.

One of my little cousins wanted to play the PS3 so he turned it on and a porno came on. Everyone's mouth just dropped to the ground. My sister quickly turned it off but it was too late.

Jose told us that about 25 dear family members heard and saw what was likely a film by the Bang Bros. Everyone stared down his step-father, giving him "the look of shame." Some family members left because of it, and are pretending Jose's step-father doesn't exist. Needless to say, his mom had to throw out some DVDs. There is a silver lining, though: "We are having the Christmas eve party at my aunt's now!" Yikes.

Photo by me vs gutenberg

You Name the Winner

So, who wins the pizza? Each story has its own particular charm (and nastiness), so we thought we'd put it to a vote. Have at it, and by the end of Christmas Day, whoever has the most votes on this baby wins.

Which of these stories deserves a pizza?(survey)



How to Make the First Move [Data]

You just saw a cute girl. How do you approach her? Do you follow her on Twitter in hopes of catching her attention? Friend her on Facebook? Get her number and call? This chart will help you decide.

You can click on the image for a closer look.

Yeah, the message is something you probably already knew: Stick to the old-school stuff. Get her number, call her up, go out for some ice cream, and see what happens. Then again, you never know, you might get the same result through Twitter. I'm not really here to judge, the chart is. [SF Weekly]



Climate Scientist — Change Occurring Faster

This is not the “change” we wanted to believe in. This is the kind we could live without.

Earth Focus Interview:  Michael McCracken

Michael McCracken is chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute.  He discusses important new findings of the recent UN Environmental Program (UNEP) report, which illustrates how climate change is occurring faster and on a larger scale than predicted by the IPCC in 2007.

The most dramatic example is how sea ice is melting much more rapidly than initially projected.  The report suggests that sea levels will rise an additional three feet due to melt from Greenland and Antarctica.

On another front, MacCracken claims that China has been successful in cleaning the quality of their air.  I don’t believe it. due to a recent photo essay I’ll post tomorrow.

Read More at LinkTV

How to configure the drive is 4 quadrants?

Dear Friends,

I have an old DC drive for 94KW for which I want to configure if it is a single quadrant drive or four quadrants? The drive has 6 thyrister modules and four control wires are coming out from each module. It seams like each module contains two thyristers and thus a 4 quadrants dri

Here’s the Final Space Shuttle Mission Patch []

The shuttle is retiring next year and, according to NASA, the remaining five flights may be the most difficult ever flown. That's why they created this contest for the final space shuttle patch. One of these will be the winner:

Among other activities, they organized the final mission patch contest to make NASA employees more involved and concentrate on the missions ahead. The entries—a total of 85—were created by all shuttle program members, from technicians to astronauts. Fifteen of these will go into a voting web page, where NASA employees would be able to vote. The favorite—although this could be vetoed by NASA's top brass—will be the final mission patch. My bet is hidden in the gallery, but looking at it, it's clearly perfect NASA patch material. [Collect Space]



guidance for designing hydraulics systems

we are in final year undergraduate course in Mechanical engineering we have been given a project to design a system to move a pedestal according to input distance .we planned to make use of hydraulics system to move the pedestal since we have only basic knowledge of hydraulics systems we would b

End Caps SF & Knuckle Radius

Friends,

How to Calculate the Straight Face Length & Knuckle radius of an End Cap.

In B16.9 Code, found only the Dia & Length of the Weld Cap. But can't find the SF & Knuckle radius.

Please reply me soon about how to calculate Sf & Kr..

Christmas Cars and Diecast Dreams

Hot rods make occasional appearances in the world of diecast, but it seems the large majority of diecast collectors like to see factory-built vehicles.

Rick Hanmore of Danbury Mint, however, has a background in scratchbuilding models, and his creativity just couldn't be contained by th

Relocation of used LPG Horton Sphere

SA 516 Grade 70 (material) were used for fabrication of LPG Horton sphere during 1980-81. It was designed as per BS 5500-1976. Design temperature was defined as (-) 6 to (+) 55 deg C.

At present design temperature requirement is stiplauted as (-) 27 to (+) 55 deg C and the recommended design c

Wind tunnel problem

My graduation project team and I are facing a sort of a problem. The project is concerned with aerodynamics, we have 4 BMW (scale 1:18) car models and we are putting them in a wind tunnel.

We are Using a Hampden wind tunnel. The problem we are facing these days is fixing the car model on a plat

Chevy S-10 Security Light problem

Hello, I have a 2001 Chevy S-10, with a 4.3 litre votec engine. I've always had problems with security lite coming on at an particular time. A VT dealership soldered a wire somewhere and changed the lock cylinder, with same key cut. It has 71,000 miles on it and seems to happen more as the weather g

Researchers Accidentally Demolish Building With Cannon-Like Gun [Blockquote]

Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have managed to accidentally cause $3 million of damage as they blew up one of their own buildings using a large-bore powder gun, a weapon which acts like a Civil War cannon. Updated.

According to Project on Government Oversight's Senior Investigator, Peter Stockton, this incident "is a new twist in the long history of screw-ups by Los Alamos." I can't really blame him for saying that when testing a gun results in several million dollars of structural damage, propels doors away from the building, and leaves pieces of the weapon spread out on the ground outside. Geez.

Let's look at the positive side of this though. The gun was a mess, but they discovered a heck of a bomb here, no? [Pogo via Wired]

Update: Wired reports that they've received an email from National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Damien LaVera which implies that what we've first heard might not be the exact story:

Here are the facts: On December 16, Los Alamos conducted a standard proof test on a new design for a catch tank in the target chamber for one of our large bore powder guns (LBPG). These types of experiments are routine and responsible. The LBPG is used to conduct measurements of material properties at pressures needed for understanding nuclear weapons performance. During this particular test, unexpected explosive damage occurred and, because that damage could result in $1 million in damages, an investigation was automatically triggered. That investigation will seek to identify the cause of the incident and any changes in procedures that might be required. NNSA, Los Alamos, and all of our facilities take their commitment to safety very seriously. It is important to note that no personnel were injured from this event, no hazardous or radioactive materials were involved, and that lab's incident response mechanisms appear to have performed as intended.



Singularity Institute launches "2010 Singularity Research Challenge"

Over at the Singularity Institute, a new fundraising campaign, the "2010 Research Challenge" has been launched this Christmas:

Offering unusually good philanthropic returns — meaning greater odds of a positive Singularity and lesser odds of human extinction — the Singularity Institute has launched a new challenge campaign. The sponsors, Edwin Evans, Rolf Nelson, Henrik Jonsson, Jason Joachim, and Robert Lecnik, have generously put up $100,000 of matching funds, so that every donation you make until February 28th will be matched dollar for dollar. If the campaign is successful, it will raise a full $200,000 to fund SIAI's 2010 activities.

—this seems like a great opportunity to donate to the Singularity Institute!
On the Grant Proposals section, we see a whole host of valuable academic papers proposed, including
  • Containing Superintelligence: Feasibility and Strategies
  • The Coherence of Human Goals
  • Machine Ethics and Superintelligence
  • Anthropic Reasoning and Decision Theory: What We Don't Know, and Why It Matters

Clearly these are important topics, and overwhelmingly deserve to be funded. Definitely worth a look.

The FCC Finds Verizon’s Termination Fee Defense "Troubling" [Verizon]

Verizon's been defending its ridiculous $350 smartphone early termination fee to the FCC, but those folks aren't having any of it. In fact, the five-person committee dealing with the issue thinks Verizon's answers are "unsatisfying and, in some cases, troubling."

Mignon Clyburn, a member of that FCC committee, wrote a letter with a laundry list of issues she has with Verizon's treatment of its customers and makes it a point to say that she looks "forward to exploring this issue in greater depth with [her] colleagues in the New Year." Yikes. Not such great news for Verizon, but it could lead to some good for consumers. [FCC via Engadget]



Stem Cells Cure Blind Man [Science]

Tis the time to be amazed: A 38-year-old man has regained vision in his blind eye thanks to a new stem cell therapy. It won't cure all blind people, but it's a giant leap. Here's how it works.

Englishman Russell Thurnbull got attacked with ammonia 15 years ago during a street fight. As a result, he got an extremely painful condition called Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency, which resulted in blindness in one eye. After much medication, he became a lab rat for all kinds of treatments until a team from Newcastle's North East England Stem Cell Institute got the miraculous cure he was waiting for.

First, the team took a minuscule sample of stem cells from his healthy eye's cornea. This millimeter square of cells was placed on a amniotic membrane, which was placed inside a liquid made from his blood, glucose, insulin, and hydrocortisone. The cells will grow in that solution until taking all over the membrane, which then is used to replace the damaged cornea.

The result: He completely gained eyesight after only eight weeks of the operation. It is not Christopher Reeve walking, but if this is not the future ringing the doorbell, right here, right now, I don't know what it is. [Channel 4]



Sudden Management Change at IV&V

Keith's note: IV&V had an unexpected visit from NASA's Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance Officer Bryan O'Connor today. He relieved Butch Caffall immediately of his duties as Facility Director of NASA IV&V and re-assigned him to NASA HQ "to work some technical issues for NASA starting early in January" according to an internal memo. Greg Blaney is acting IV&V Program Manager and IV&V Facility Director. IV&V employees had been expecting something to happen but this action was more abrupt and sudden than had been expected.

According to a NASA IV&V engineer: "The immediate re-assignment of the NASA IV&V director represents the end of modeling of NASA projects as part of our IV&V analysis. We have endured four years of spending IV&V funds on, what has been from the onset, an R&D effort to create a new method of doing IV&V using an independently built system reference model (UML based) of a space vehicle design based on Project artifacts. Its been costly in dollars and in performance. This R&D has taken countless man-hours away from our directive to find issues/problems with S/C FSW development."

"Critics of NASA IV&V would argue that we have never been effective or productive to justify the $35M annual budget. The argument I make is that the intent of IV&V is not as a lead effort to debug and assure mission success but rather as a final step in assuring mission success. We receive documents not in draft but primarily first and later revisions after peer review, V&V and/or I&T have analyzed artifacts. This is the ideal circumstance. We do receive, in fact, drafts and documents lacking project V&V and under such circumstances we do find more issues.

But the bottom line is that we cannot be expected to find numerous high severity issues or many issues overall. On this basis, the NASA IV&V funding level is well spent. NASA IV&V has delivered high severity issues to many projects that have saved development time and/or prevented serious events from unfolding during a mission's operation. Additionally, IV&V has functioned also as a watchdog and has kept Project developers, V&V and I&T more on their toes. This latter point is a hard to measure return on investment but it is significant.  One other question that arises is whether, IV&V needs to reside off-site, as presently, and remote from all Projects. It is not necessary to be remotely situated to maintain independence of the V&V.

However, I strongly disagree that NASA IV&V should be disbanded, removed from WV and distributed to NASA centers. The present IV&V facility has acquired an excellent group of analysts who, if given a proper directive, method and also cooperation from the Projects they support, will deliver the analysis and issues that cost-effectively raises the mission assurance of every project they review. Our existence is the result of the efforts of our Senator and Congressman to bring technology jobs to West Virginia. The nation's capital metropolitan area, FL, TX, CA, AL, MS, OH have benefited greatly from the presence of NASA Centers.

NASA IV&V remains a critical core group in the Technology Park developing in Fairmont and it is a very small price to pay to assist the West Virginia economy. Given the proper support from HQ and from the Projects we assist, the existing IV&V personnel in Fairmont can function effectively and fulfill the directive and fill the needs that have were found lacking after review of the Challenger and Columbia disasters and the string of Mars mission losses in the 1990s. As with the question of continued funding of major NASA Centers that have been on the chopping block over the years, politics is a major factor. The whole NASA budget is only ~1.4% of the Federal Budget.

NASA IV&V is 2/10ths of 1% of the NASA budget - a small sum expended on added assurance. Added expenditures and over-runs due to poor project management and design errors amounts to on the order of 100 times more than the cost of the IV&V budget. Our divulges involving modeling do not represent a catastrophic event or loss of mission. We argue that our mission be righted and our funding maintained. The engineers in Fairmont very eager to make needed changes."