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Tony Wilson
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Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Elon Musks UNBELIEVABLY stupid legal defense!" video.
Yeah as an engineer who's been involved in manufacturing I can state quite comfortably that there's at least a million engineers who know more about manufacturing than Elon Musk. Just consider every other manufacturing sector that Elon Musk is NOT involved in then ask what would he know? Here's some basic manufacturing questions: 1) How do you make the cardboard of a milk carton waterproof? 2) What's the basic difference between moulding the plastic for the reflector in a headlight versus the front lens? 3) 2 of the main metals his teslas are made from are Copper and Aluminum what's the basic difference between how they are extracted from the ore? 4) Why do you need to anneal copper? 5) In a machine shop what's the basic difference between a lathe and a milling machine?
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Answers below Just in case you thought I was being facetious. 1) There's a very thin film of plastic. What's odd about the process is that for a plastic process its done at much higher temperature than injection molding so that it sticks to the paper/cardboard. Normally polyethylene and polyethylene/polypropylene mixes are moulded at 160-180℃ while for paper coating its 300-320 2) Because reflectors have to deal with heat from the light bulbs they were traditionally made from thermoset plastics which look and feel a bit like bread dough. Its pushed into the die where it is HEATED then cooled. The shiny surface is created by first spraying the front side in a lacquer that's UV cured and then under vacuum has a layer of Aluminum about 50-200 atoms thick embedded in the lacquer. Its the lacquer that makes one side shiny and the other dull grey. 3) Copper like many metals is first extracted from the ore using acid leaching. Aluminum does not dissolve from the bauxite using acids and it is instead done with caustic at temperature and pressure. The process is known as the Bayer Process and yes it was by a member of the Bayer family now famous for pharmaceuticals. 4) Copper unlike most metals work hardens as you bend and flex it so it need to be softened through the opposite process to the quench hardening you see on the sword & knife channels. It differs from tempering. Annealing unlike tempering aims to make the metal as soft as practical while tempering aims to specifically keep some hardness while reducing brittleness. To see examples of these processes I recommend watching the sword & knife channels for hardening and tempering and the hobbyist channels making things like model steam engines for annealing. the channel Blondihacks is currently building a model steam engine made from copper. 5) I'd expect that any mechanical engineer knows the difference between a lathe and a mill. Look at what is rotating in the main spindle. A lathe has the part held to the spindle and rotates while the tool is moved in 2 or more axis to shape the part. A mill has the tool mounted in the spindle and it rotates while the part is held to the table and moved around in 2 or more axis to make the part. Where it gets confusing is that it is possible to use a mill as a lathe and a lathe as a mill.
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@DrWhom Actually 2 out of 5 is incredibly good for most people. Which 2 by the way? And EM wouldn't know the ore one because Tesla is an end user. These are the sorts of things you only find out from being in those industries. FYI - I started with a degree in aerospace but landed in industrial control systems and automation in the manufacturing sector. That's where I know the manufacturing stuff from. In 2002 I met Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt who told me to check out Helium-3 which is a potential nuclear fusion fuel and the only known industrial level source is the moon which is where I wanted to go. So I went off to get some experience in mining which was fortuitous because Australia was just starting a boom in new mines to feed the Chinese beast. Because I was interested in how you actually get raw materials out of the ground and get what you want I paid attention to everything I could. The main lesson I got from the mining game was infrastructure. A lot of our mines in Australia are in remote locations and you have to build EVERYTHING from scratch including all the basic services like power, water & sewerage AND THEN maintain it. So I've had an odd and varied career so far. Its actually the infrastructure thing that has me most concerned these days because without it our modern world just stops. Its why I hate the media and their endless over hyping everything. We just aren't getting any air time on things we actually need.
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