Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Machine Thinking" channel.

@garethfuller2700 An awful lot of stuff in the British Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, New Zealand,......) Even though we've had metric for decades and that almost anything new is metric there are still a lot of older machines and copies of older machines that have BSW and BSF threads. Most notably you find these Whitworth threads around pipes BSP. If you do anything around pneumatics or hydraulics you come across it all the time. Its one of those obscurities that has survived despite all other attempts. You'd also be very surprised how many lathes come with their main lead screw as a British Imperial rather than metric. Its actually very easy to make the both metric and Imperial threads so long as your lathe has a 127tooth gear. I eventually got my pilots license and flying is a bizarre mix of Imperial and Metric systems. The visual range is given in kilometers, but distance over ground is still in nautical miles. Altitude is still done in feet, but the pressure for setting your altimeter is in millibars (metric) or mm.Hg as in millimeters of Mercury (again metric) Fuel capacity is usually (but not always) measured in gallons and fuel weight is usually measured in (but not always) kilograms. That one depends on the plane and where and when it was certified. All pilots have to be very careful with the conversions or you get the Gimli Glider scenario.
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The company still exists (I just checked) but it does other things these days. Still hyper precision stuff but the Jig Borers and CMMs seem to have gone the way of the dodo, which is kind of tragic. But on their website they will still sell you a copy of Wayne Moore's “Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy” and his father's book “Holes, Contours and Surfaces”
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@MattH-wg7ou I'm Australian but I went to college in the states where I first learned to fly gliders while doing my degree in aerospace. Finally after many years I got round to doing my powered license. Got my aerobatics and started competing. It all got cut off a couple of years ago after I picked up a very nasty virus. Hoping to get back to some before too long. Down here all weather information services are in kilometers. Fuel is delivered in liters. Temperature is in Celsius. Weight is in kilograms. But any aircraft built in the US has manuals with gallons and Fahrenheit and pounds. We have to be especially careful with gallons because there's 2 - US (3.8l) and Imperial (4.5l). So you do need to be very careful with fuel.
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As an engineer who thinks that engineering as a whole is horrendously underestimated by the general public its easy to see why metrology is even more obscure because most engineers take calibration for granted. I work in industrial control systems and its staggering just how much we rely on the manufacturers getting things right. We simply take it on face value that the manufacturers made every pressure, flow, temperature,...... sensor accurately and that they measure what they claim to measure at the scale on the box. So at the practical application level we are separated from the metrology people by the manufacturing layer. Ever since I saw MT's vid on the Jo Blocks that was followed by his more recent one on the NIST I have gained a lot more appreciation for metrology and wish it was covered a lot better at the college level.
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@its.emma.jacobs Good point on standards. I love this channel for how well its researched and how well it presents engineering. His vid on Jacques de Vaucanson's lathe was brilliant.
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@MattH-wg7ou Thought I'd ask. Where I got my aerobatics ticket the school owner was ex-USN and flew both F4s and F14s. I asked on day he really surprised my in how much he liked the F4 and disliked the F14. But then Ward Carroll who has a YT channel points out that the F14 was a handful at low speed. What did you fly where there's an interesting comparison? If you can't no prob. As an engineer I like to understand what people do and don't like even if its in areas I'll never work. It all adds up when you are a solution provider.
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@MattH-wg7ou Yeah my frat brother is a senior instructor with one of the major American airlines on 737s. He was part of a team sent to Boeing to get the Max-8 sorted out. He gave me no details but did say "they broke the Boeing system." That actually scares me because I understand what he means by "system." That includes all the procedures, tests, methodologies and engineering ideologies that they use to go from words and blank sheet of paper through to you and me at 35,000ft. Basically a library full of knowledge and experience AND they broke it. I'm well aware of how little certain pilots fly. Way back in the late 80s there was a Concorde pilot who became the first pilot ever to record 10,000 hours as pilot in command at supersonic speed. That came up in a discussion at the glider club one day where a couple of our tow pilots we ex-airline with over 10,000hrs. When I quizzed why the big deal one of them slapped back at me asking how stupid I was because he knew I was doing aerospace. I'd forgotten just how little planes can normally fly at supersonic, because of how fast it drains the tanks. Plus it also thermally stresses planes. You might know better than me, but most air force pilots have less than a single hour at supersonic speed and most never record more than 2 hours in their entire career because its all little short bursts. For what was known at the time that 1 Concorde pilot had more hours at supersonic than the entire USAF history that was known. The SR71 hours weren't known at that time and could/would have changed that assessment. Concorde truly was an amazing piece of technology.
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@richardkell4888 If you don't have the right thread gauges working out what thread you actually have can be a mongrel especially if its worn and even worse if its an odd pitch. I'm an engineer and never underestimate people to do something odd for a 1 off part and NOT document what they did.
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@machinethinking Aerospace engineer here and I absolutely agree on this sentiment. My goal in life was a moon base as was many of my classmates back in the late 80s. We truly believed we'd build Space Station Freedom and then go back to the Moon. Then 1 morning Challenger happened. Irrespective I haven't given up the hope we'll get there and a couple of you videos have brought real clarity to what we'll need to do to build a moon base. Its a simple matter that we can't simply fly everything we'll need to the Moon. Its the simple cost. By various estimates its between 1,000 and 1,000,000 times more expensive to put 1kg on the Moon than it is in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). I do industrial control systems and I can tell you that copper is heavy so wiring up a Moon Base like its the Rebel Alliance snow base in the Empire Strikes back or any other Sci-fi movie is JUST NOT GOIGN TO WORK unless you can get the Copper locally. The same goes for all the other stuff we'd need. But we will need to make things that go together with parts made on the Earth. So one of the most important items that MUST GO to the Moon is a set of Johansson Gauge Blocks. I would NEVER have known that without your video. There's a pile of stuff I have learnt form your videos and unfortunately due to circumstances I can't do a lot more right now than thank you and offer my encouragement to keep doing what you do.
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@MattH-wg7ou Same to you. There's a Matt H who flies in Australia, did fly for the RAAF and these days likes High-G, low altitude flying between pylons?
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@MattH-wg7ou I have about 350 hours. How much do you have? Don't worry about the answer. One of my Frat brothers who did his back in college as over 22,000. I hadn't chatted with him for years. It was humbling when he told me what he'd been up to, but he was super encouraging to keep going.
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@MattH-wg7ou absolutely and totally understandable Have you seen Ward Carroll's YT channel? He's an ex F14 RIO.
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@MattH-wg7ou What makes it a great channel is that it sticks to its area of expertise. So many channels get side tracked in stuff they just shouldn't. The other great aviation channel is Blancholorio with Juan Brown.
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@MattH-wg7ou What he doesn't do which should be a lesson to ALL JOURNALISTS and public commentators is NOT embellish on known facts. Any opinions he gives he's clear about that they are opinions. As far as I'm concerned people like Juan are real journalists. He presents the known facts and explains what he can about them. He doesn't make up crap or try for any grand standing attention seeking nonsense.
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@Kineth1 I'd forgotten the CF bomber. Love that comment form the other pilot to "get back in it"
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@mescko I once heard Mario Andretti (I think) describe Colin Chapman's ideology of race cars. If a race car is built right it falls apart as it crosses the line. If the car crosses the line and can do another lap its too heavy and needs to be lightened. If it breaks and fails to finish only then can you add weight.
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@EamonnG76 Year I know that. Odd thing on my college transcript. Navigation 101. I needed some extra time my last semester and friends had introduced to me sailing and I found this ROTC course. So with bunch of future navy officers I did classical navigation right back to star fixes with a sextant. It was one of the best classes I ever had. I also have a pilots license and airspeed is still in knots too.
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@soundmapper I still see those older threads in air fittings like BSP threads. You also see Whitworth threads on things like farm machinery, older trucks and those sorts of older machines that never seem to wear out in factories (like power presses).
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Haven't you heard of contraception or did you do it on purpose???? Either way love to see you back doing stuff. Just so you know I am an aerospace engineer who had the long term plan to go to the moon and set up the first mining operation there. Your video on the Johansson gauge blocks is something I beat other engineers around the head with. You see if we are ever going to set up a moon base the fact is we just can't send all that we need to make it viable. From the very start we need to make stuff up there. One of the most important items in setting up a lunar base will be the set of Jo Blocks because they will be needed so that parts made on the moon will match parts sent from Earth. You do some really great work - keep it up.
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@johnasbury9915 That's the original Watt micrometer. Its scattered across several videos starting with the one on the "Origins of Precision" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58 He actually made one here's part of the build -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVROA6UZxNg And did a whole video on it -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K_NQlmOwqM
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@MattH-wg7ou I really notice it in things I understand - engineering & technology. That makes me wonder about so much else we hear and can't challenge because its in topics we don't know or have no experience in. I'm Australian and Rupert Murdoch's crime of crimes was pushing and promoting "opinions as fact."
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@peterforden5917 These days the favored small books with all that stuff are the black books.
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@mescko There's one I hadn't heard of or maybe just not noticed. Thanks. I wish this guy would do more vids they are so damn informative. There's so much of this stuff we are close to losing. Its one thing YouTube is getting right. Just recently Keith Rucker at Vintage Machinery did a "partial screw thread" for a vice screw. I'd never heard of anyone doing that let alone seen it done.
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@mescko Unless you get really lucky almost NO supplier would have any idea what you are talking about. I vaguely remember a joke about Lotus using 7mm bolts to save weight over 8mm bolts and how its still a problem for people owning older cars.
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@dicksargent3582 Interesting. In what ways do they differ? The Russians for a while had an interesting philosophy they had 1 gear box. The had the same gearbox in their trucks their tanks and anything else that needed a gear box. Their view was they could keep their tanks rolling so long as there was a truck nearby to steal parts from. At times other militaries have done similar.
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Hopefully.
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Here's an argument what's more important to human history the screw or Vaucanson's metal lathe? Yeah I saw your video on Jacques de Vaucanson's incredible lathe, which is one of the most important engineering videos I have ever seen (I'm an aerospace engineer with a background in automation, robotics and control systems). It also completely refutes the ideology of Milton Freidman - the father of "greed is good." He famously claimed that greed alone drove innovation and that we needed to free up regulations to support greed and drive innovation. It was the justification and basis for his entire economic theory which became Reaganomics and Thatcherism, which has lead the world to its current financial catastrophe. As to your question on bolts & screws. You are essentially right, if its forms its own thread then its a screw, but then you have things like "set screws" which don't form their own threads and are essential to holding many things in place, like pulleys on shafts. But consider that the 2 words bolt and screw can both be used as verbs. You can "bolt things together" or "screw something down." Notably when you bolt things together you use nuts. So it might be possible to define things by purpose and if you use a nut its a bolt and if you don't its a screw. But then there are tings like shoulder bolts and if you use one in a fixture without a nut its still a shoulder bolt. After writing the above I checked Wikipedia starting with "bolt" (which include the word nut) and then got to this -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw#Differentiation_between_bolt_and_screw Note what it says about the naming of lag bolts and coach bolts which are clearly screws but been named bolts. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️ As anyone can see going down that page the word bolt and nut keep being interchanged, so the definition is anything but clear. But in the most simplest case if it uses a nut to be tightened then its a bolt.
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HEY MT: Yes I got A/C but the other significant use for swash plate pumps is in hydraulic systems for the supply pump like the systems we use in manufacturing lines for shears and punches and presses. You also see these in the hydraulic systems for things like bulldozers, diggers and back hoes as well as some farm machinery. Basically anything with hydraulic rams probable has one of these. The reason we see them in hydraulics is because they are POSITIVE DISPALCEMENT pumps which makes them suited for the high pressures needed. Loved the video as always. Since you're keen on people like this how about Hero of Alexandria. In my field of control systems and automation he is not as famous as he should be, because he is credited with the invention of closed loop control. His book Automata is where we get the job title automation engineer, which after 2,000 years was STOLEN by the IT industry a few years ago. I once enquired about a job for an automation engineer at one of our universities in Australia. My question to the professor was why did he need an automation engineer for IT. It was then I found out why I was getting a lot of odd adds in my LinkedIn. The clowns in IT has STOLEN the job title "automation engineer." When I told the professor there were already engineers using that he asked how long had we been using that. I said "About 2,000 years, ever since hero of Alexandria wrote the book Automata" Yes there were many great mathematicians and thinkers in the ancient world but Hero was the great engineer who has simply been missed by many and forgotten by too many. Among his clever stuff were the first programmable machines, the first steam turbine (Aeolipile), automatic opening and closing doors (on of my favorites) and really cute he also invented the vending machine. His feed back loop was for a water clock. Water clocks usually had to vessels with 1 dripping water into the other. They didn't keep consistent time because as they drained they lost head pressure in the upper vessel. So Hero installed a 3rd storage vessel above the vessel that dripped water. Using a float valve he kept the head pressure constant and the clock kept consistent time. All of this circa 60 A.D.
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