On 3/19/26 08:16, andy pugh wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2026 at 12:07, Bertho Stultiens <[email protected]> wrote:
FWIW, you do not need a PhD to see the problems in the LinuxCNC code
base. Just the common sense of a reasonably versed programmer will
detect over 90% of the problems at first or second glance.
Part of our problem is that many of our developers are not
programmers. They tend to be machinists, either hobby or professional.
I'm not sure where you would catalogue me, i'm a hobbiest
for sure but my programming goes back to the later 70's &
an RCA 1802 Micro. I'm a guy with an 8th grade education, a GED
and a CET, now 91 and a long term diabetic. Tested at 147 in
the 7nth grade by the Iowa test, my list of BTDT's starts at
12 yo. SS has been bleeding my paychecks since until I retired
24 years ago.
This includes me. I learned to program in C _specifically_ to add some
missing features to the Hostmot2 drivers, because I wanted to drive
some 3-phase servos that I had acquired.
And my PhD in metallurgy is no help at all in spotting coding errors :-)
But you know EXACTLY why trying to sharpen an HSS tool with
a diamond abrasive is a lost cause, destroying the diamond.
And EXACTLY why a CBN wheel Just Works.
TL;DR: When the machinist we hired to make the camera cases
that were protecting the cameras we put on the Trieste in January
1959, each case started with about 1.5 tonnes of navy bronze we
had to use a fork lift to mount in a huge LeBlonde lathe. Our
cameras were 2.5" in diameter but the external pressure they had
to withstand at the bottom of the mohole was about 18,000 psi.
CBN hadn't been invented in '58. This machinist knew that but
he also knew the cure. When it came time to shape the HSS tools,
he went to his tool cabinet & pulled out part of a record player
turntable he had modified with a brass table about 1/4" thick & 5"
in diameter, And a tool holder jig he had made by drilling holes
thru it at several angles he probably took to his grave. He got out
a nail polish sized bottle of about 2500 grit diamond dust in oil and
painted the disk.
He mounted the HSS tool in that jig, turned the motor on and
using the holes in the jig to hold the angles by dropping the
jig over an extended center post thru each hole in turn. I
learned a lot by watching him make that tool cut that naval
bronze like it was warm butter.
Needless to say they worked, the pics they took were used
in the encyclopedias of the '60's. My claim to fame is that
my fingerprints were in those cameras that made that trip
to the bottom of the mohole, a speechless bit player in that
project. I was just bench teching for a 4 pack of engineers
building a camera that could be cable towed thru a sewer
system to spot leaks when the top brass of the navy walked
in and bought the first two cameras we built, the smallest
tv cameras in the world at the time. Now your I-phone has
better ones. . .
I have in my retirement years, spent a lot of time searching
fleapay for a similar tool I could use like that, but have never
seen anything like it. Now we have carbide tools for that, but
they are not as sharp w/o tuning them up on a diamond disk. I
should have made one 20 years ago but the knowledge of
the angles involved was never shared. He was the Leonardo
De Vince (sp?) of machinists of his time AFAIWC.
Thanks for reading one of my trips down Memory Lane.
Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Don't poison our oceans, interdict drugs at the src.
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