18
points
AlexMuir
Joined 7,500 karma
me@alexmuir.com
www.howacarworks.com
- AlexMuir parentYour mind produced a wonderful list of rabbitholes there! Lovely job.
- I've had various levels of interest, optimism and investment in crypto from 2011 (quite a lot) to now (zero). Much of its promise has been undelivered and yet it has prospered. The people that I speak to who are involved have changed from developers/entrepreneurs/tech-savvy financiers into almost exclusively deadlegs, hustlers and grifters.
At the same time, I feel like it's a race as to whether Bitcoin comes tumbling down before it's revealed that a significant amount (most?) physical cash is being printed by adversaries, and the national mints merely act as a top-up/shredding service.
I wrote this eleven years ago and it's largely proven to be accurate. https://web.archive.org/web/20160305014736if_/http://alexmui...
- Great question! A lot of absolute shite in the comments here. If you dream about building a factory then here's my thoughts:
Read
- Read "Faster, Better, Cheaper in the History of Manufacturing" by Christoph Roser - it's an expensive book but gives a great overview of how we got to where we are in manufacturing. From stone tools through bronze casting, Venetian shipbuilders, Josiah Wedgwood, the Portsmouth Block Mill [0] and so on.
- Simon Winchester's "Precision" is a great book too - more concentrated on the emergence of machine tools which will be your BREAD AND BUTTER in a factory.
Steam engines are irrelevant to you but the tools they drove - the lathe, shaper, milling machine are still pretty much exactly the same. Big difference is instead of a man operating them they are CNC.
To know how to make stuff, you need to be able to look at anything and have a rough idea how it's made. What materials, what processes, and then you can figure out why it's done that way. You won't find a piece of solid wood wider than about 3" at Ikea. Why? Because wider wood is massively more expensive than narrow wood.
- Materials: metals, plastics. Wood and glass are a bit niche really.
- Essential machines: the bandsaw, angle grinder, drill press, the lathe, milling machine, angle grinder, tube bender, sheet metal brake.
- Joining metal: Welding, riveting, rivnuts, taps and dies.
- Casting and foundry work, blacksmithing (surprisingly accessible)
I'd say woodworking is a terrible entry into manufacturing. I went that way because it's useful for renovations. But working the wood is a craft, and I wish I'd started with fabrication and machining.
Likewise, very little is 3D printed at scale. It's great for prototyping and looking at things - that's about it. People will argue, but go to any big-box retailer and try to find something that's been 3D printed...
Electronics: You can now build a massive amount of useful consumer electronics without needing to design PCBs. I've built central heating thermostats, wifi-controlled extractor fans, infrared break beams etc. ESP32, ESP8266 platforms are great for playing with. ESPHome is software that makes programming these devices really easy: here's an example of what you can make https://esphome.io/guides/diy - they have a list of devices they support, that's basically a list of industry standard electronics building blocks for you: https://esphome.io/index.html#sensor-components . You'll quickly realise that a lot of electronics is just the same stuff.
I'm out of time so I'm just going to throw references your way:
- Fireball Tool: Successfully set up a factory https://www.youtube.com/c/FireballTool
- AVE Boltr: Tears down tools and products with good insight into materials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY7XO5H_6HY
- Brits get rich in China - a classic following three entrepreneurs trying to setup factories in China https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKP40gLmVMY
- It depends on the level of comfort you want. If you're willing to shit in a bucket and shower once a fortnight then you can do it very cheaply and it'll be acceptable. Try that in a house and there will be concerns for your welfare. If you want a bathtub, on-demand central heating, a big fridge-freezer, bow thrusters, macerator toilets and a permanent mooring with mains electricity then you'll pay much more than you would for a house. Horses for courses. But doing things on boats is fun, and inventing solutions is great.
Edit: You wanted a figure - for the sort of boat you'll find on a canal in the UK. Bottom end: buy a small fibreglass boat for £5k, pay £1k a year for your licence (many at this end don't bother. Another £1k a year for maintenance and fuel )
Top end: Buy a big boat for £300k, £2k a year licence, £6k mooring, £1k insurance, £5-10k a year in maintenance.
Also factor in that boats mostly depreciate (though the last couple of years have been an exception). If you spend £100k on a boat today, you won't be able to sell it in 10 years get that £100k back. If you fail to keep on top of maintenance a boat will rapidly lose value.
- Fellow boater here - I live on a Dutch Barge. Also awake at 0530 with creaking lines in this storm. Lovely lifestyle. We registered our new baby’s address as the boat on a birth certificate last week and had no problems. Good luck to any future researcher geocoding that! I expected a postcode to be required but it wasn’t :)
- I didn't but it was worth the Google https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGFtV6-ALoQ
- I too had that very book as a teenager. It's a small world - when I was at uni I was hired to build a website for someone. Their friend then asked me to build them a site and I recognised their name from the caption of a photo of a couple of schoolboys on the back page of that very book. Turns out they built the car at school and went on to build an automotive company.
- Lots of this stuff surprises me too. If you haven't already - check out Tim Hunkin's Secret Life of... series. https://www.youtube.com/@timhunkin1
- This is true - I can only speak about Europe but almost no young people have feasible access to either the space or tools to do any of this unless it's their career or they have family. I wish I could solve the space, tools, and money situation but I can at least help with knowledge.
- I was lucky that I chose the Miata - it was an affordable car which I wouldn't need to cut the roof off to film inside. I knew nothing about them when I picked it but it really was the perfect choice.
It's a car distilled down to its essence and that's why it's popular for kit cars and conversions. The components are tough, readily available and dirt cheap.
I honestly think I might still choose a Miata because you need to understand everything on this car to go much further. If were were to take the engine out of the equation then I'm afraid I don't know - my recent engineering experience has been with boats and diesels, rather than electric.