Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "Munro Live" channel.

It was interesting how Sandy spends half his time marketing himself and talking about his achievements, and the other half comparing everything to Tesla... lol I am guessing that Nikola figured that even with the bad comparisons, his presence would make them look like a real true operating company, even if they didn't stack up well to Tesla, and it seems like he accepted their theater.
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You look at this as an electronic tech, but this is an automotive part, and they get swapped out. The old one gets sent to a shop to get remanufactured, and they don't really care how easy it is, because they charge whatever it takes to take it apart and repair it. Just like no one rebuilds their own alternator or puts new seals and bearings in a water pump abymi, but you swap it out with a Reman with a warranty. And most independent shops don't want to touch component repair, because it takes specialized equipment to test and diagnose, and they don't want the liability if an inverter they repaired shorts out and the car burns up. Now, I like fixing things myself, so not being easy to take apart would annoy me, but it doesn't really make sense for the auto industry to worry about a tiny percentage of people when gluing something together can save millions.
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You are in luck! Germany will soon be producing Teslas, so in around a year you can buy a German made Tesla and make your brain happy!
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@Mrbfgray I didn't say replace bolts with anything, I said design it so not as many are required. Most of those bolts are to attach brackets to the frame, and if you have worked on semis you know that the frame manufacturer will design the frame with structural cross members, and then the suspension company will design suspension cross members, and then the drive train team will design transmission and carrier bearing cross members, and then the air team will design brackets to mount the air tanks, and other brackets to support the air hoses, and other brackets to support the brake valve, and the suspension leveling valve, and then the electrical team will add a bunch of brackets to support random wire harnesses or connectors or magic boxes, and there is very little dual purpose designs, each department is seperate. If you want to reduce bolts and steps, you combine these functions into well integrated complex shapes, now fully possible with cnc metal forming and bending, and you can cut the number of bolts way down, by reducing the number of seperate parts that have to be attached to the frame.
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@Mrbfgray you can design things more efficiently where they don't require as many bolts however, even heavy truck frames.
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Sandy is always trying to market his services, that's the whole point behind his videos from the beginning, so yes, he's doing it to them, and in the video as well.
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@mikeselectricstuff you have to remember that Sandy simply hates screws/fasteners, because his focus is on eliminating parts and movements, and sometimes he takes this aversion a little bit too far lol If you remember this, you can filter out the hyperbole a bit better.
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@Mrbfgray I can tell by the sheer number of bolts that reduction is possible. And look at how Sandy pointed out the HV cable bracket and how it could be eliminated, and Mark agreed that there was a lot that could be reduced on the truck. Right now they have basically a stock frame, and so have to bolt everything to it individually, but if they do a Tesla on it, and start engineering parts out, a lot will reduce. Now, I am pretty sure at this point that you are going to take the opposite position to anything I say, and are letting your ego at being contradicted control you, so I am going to say that the earth is round and the moon landing was amazing! GO!
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@Mrbfgray and we all know that engineers do a lot of stupid things, and that a degree doesn't make someone smart, but you seem to be offended that you are being questioned, which prevents you from being able to learn new things. Kinda sad really.
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Sandy is more of the big picture guy, with a focus on screw count loly, and he has EEs etc on his team to take care of that side, but this video was not about the electrical design, this is not a Big Clive video, and so the exact purpose of the cap isn't important. I suspect he pulled it out starting to describe what it did, and then decided that he didn't need to give that long explanation, so he just gave an answer as of he was talking to a 5 year old lol
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@luca7069 no other manufacturer tells you when they make some mid year or even model year internal iteration or change, why are you bitter at Tesla for not doing something that no one else does? I am mechanic, and it's often difficult getting parts for vehicles, especially early production years, because you can have early year, late year versions of a particular part, or even different parts being used in different factories. And sometimes it doesn't even have to do with an upgrade, and it will just be a random mix as they use up a batch of parts of one design, or have multiple suppliers. Sometimes a dealer can look it up by the Vin and see what part is needed, but most manufacturers don't track the parts they use that accurately on a computer, and so the dealer often can't even tell what it's supposed to be, and no way that you would be able to find out the technical details of the parts used before buying the car. So basically you see unhappy that that Tesla is constantly making improvements, but not giving detailed technical build sheets listing every single change in design or parts. What a ridiculous and burdensome demand. I suspect you feel this way because you don't like not having the newest and greatest, and the thought of them making the next car be better than your car upsets you.
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@konasteph or, mount it to the motor since that's efficient, and then use other means to deal with vibration rather than a bunch of screws. There ARE other options after all. The first thing I thought of, since it's a layered design, just clamp it all together. Put some ridges on the cover with cast in place spacers on each layer that all squeeze together when the cover is tightened down.
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I am sure that they had to review and approve all the footage to keep any proprietary information, or embarrassing details, from showing, so while it sucks, it's not surprising, and probably not Sandy's fault.
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@GG-si7fw I saw that and I wondered if it was because of Sandy's roast! "guys, we need to hire someone who knows what they are doing! This is embarrassing!" Lol
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As the saying goes, anyone can build a bridge that won't fall down. It takes an engineer to build a bridge that just barely doesn't fall down!
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As a sound guy, I suspect that those foam blocks are to control the resonance of that cavity to avoid bad harmonics when the speakers are loud. It looks like a sound absorbing foam like used for studio walls, and would help eliminate the standing waves and reflections that would happen there, that can lead to the sheet metal buzzing and acting as an acoustically coupled diaphragm. If it were to stop the metal from moving, it should be under compression to resist the metal movement, but with it basically just sitting in there, it looks like it's for acoustic purposes, and they just needed a certain volume to absorb the energy and deaden the space, and a cube is the easiest and cheapest shape to cut foam into.
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The elephant was hard to see in such a vast and empty facility, so Sandy was carefully steered away from it... Lol
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These videos are probably required viewing for the design department lol
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@cengeb my point is that I am sure that Sandy would have loved to show and tell on all the things he sees, with close ups and such, like he does when he tears a car down, but they limited his access to the facility and what he could show. I see enough in here to show me how far behind they really are, and even his positive comments are pretty cutting. Put it this way, I would rather him play nice so he can get access to show us the inside, than have him give his unvarnished opinion on everything and be escorted out and his footage confiscated! He can share his real opinions later lol
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@raymondschembri5042 yes, semis have crumple zones. It's called a "Honda" in industry shorthand.... (which is why I do my best to drive safely...)
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@ADOENDRA the US doesn't use the Imperial System. Long ago, as in hundreds of years ago, we forked off from the Imperial System, and added some units, changed some units, and removed a bunch of units, and developed the US Customary system, which got refined over the decades by tradesmen and engineers into what we have today. At the same time, the Imperial system was also changing and being updated, but seperatly. It was only a few years ago that the length of the Inch/foot was standardized between USC and Imperial, because they had been a few thousandths different, and so they brought each one slightly to the middle to make life easier. But many things like the Ton and the gallon/pint are different, because they pinned them to a different standard than we did. But we don't use Imperial, any more than the UK uses USC, we just share some units. Meanwhile, the metric world can't let go of Celsius, and so has two different temperature scales, with Celsius not being very logical, and you also continue using illogical time keeping methods, when switching to decimal time would make MUCH more sense than the US changing what units we use, since what we use works perfectly well for us, and is just as accurate as metric units. It's kind of like telling us that we need to make the national language Chinese. Just because there are more Chinese speakers than American English speakers doesn't mean that we should have to change!
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No, you got it backwards, Area 51 is planning a raid to steal secret technology from Elon!
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@cuda426hemi but they DID claim that it was a functioning truck, despite the fact that it never was actually functional, and so stating that you have a fully functional truck, combined with showing a video of said truck driving, is fraud.
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Of course, the hydraulic hose is also a lot harder to field repair compared to typical air brake hose, so while it may not wear out as fast, when one gets ripped from a rock kicked up or running over a branch, or a tire blowout, broken chain, etc, then you have to either get a custom hydraulic hose made or have field repair hydraulic hose fittings on hand, which road service guys aren't going to stock. They have a lot of great ideas here, but some stuff is not as well thought out.
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@brianb-p6586 I suppose since they are building special purpose extreme duty vocational-specific logging trucks by hand, it makes sense, you would probably keep a coil of the hose on the truck as well when you are in the mountains, so the things that might not make sense for a fleet of highway trucks could be useful for this application. Part of the problem is that they make it sound like it's better than a fleet truck, when it has its own drawbacks in a highway fleet operation.
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This is not a good way to approach it, because often aftermarket chargers don't work properly with a new phone with higher power requirements, plus many people don't have the proper USB C charger setups yet, and so get the phone home and have no way to charge it. In addition, people have the expectation that a new phone will include the factory charger and cable, and so will be dissatisfied with Apple for cheaping out on a fractional cost, making them drive back to the Apple store and buy a charger in order to be able to use their phone. You live in a house and office overflowing with chargers, so you think everyone does, but a lot of people throw away any extra devices, or they lose them or the dog chews on them, or they only upgrade periodically, and only have lower power Micro USB chargers, and so to the rest of us, this looks like Apple is just being stingy and cheap. Now, if they stopped pre packaging it, but offered it as a free bonus for the people who needed one, they could save the money and waste on the people who don't, but not seem stingy for the people who need it, and just have a bucket of them wrapped in paper to hand to the people who needed them.
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I disagree with one thing here, and that's the comments on the Tesla oil cooler. By pumping and cooling the oil, they cool the gears and bearings, not just the motor, and and can pressure lubricate the bearings as well, allowing better control and reliable oil flow, rather than relying on splash lubrication and gravity like this does. It probably also reduces windage, so the gears don't have to throw as much oil around, reducing heating as well as the power loss. I do appreciate the VW design, especially how the power and cooling lines are integrated, unlike the Ford that probably uses 12 hoses lol. The cooling method is good, but it looks like it's primarily for the motor, not the gears and oil, but they are not as high performance as Tesla so it's probably all right for them.
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@craigamills8492 he changed lane position through an intersection. If he had continued in his lane he would have stayed in the left lane. The practical reason to use signals is to let other drivers know what lane you are going to use, because you can have people wanting to make a right turn into that right lane, and the turn signal lets them know your intentions, and since you are actually leaving the center lane and changing to the curb lane, the law requires you to use your turn signal. Remember, prior to that intersection he not in the curb lane, he was next to the bike lane, next to the center line, and he changed lanes away from the center line. It's also important for any bikes that may be in the bike lane who are now going to be using the curb lane, because he's entering their route.
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VW is smart, they want the Munro inspection report, but don't want to pay for it, so they send him a motor to do a video on, and take notes! Lol I also guess they were pretty proud of it, and thought it would be good PR.
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It's a casting, so not safely repairable if it's cracked or bent. But it would be an extreme or seriously wierd accident to damage it, so not really a downside.
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The thing I don't hear you mention is the possibility that the Tesla door may be designed to use the module as part of the structure, and the screws are needed to carry the loads, rather than simply holding it in place. Your idea of snap in modules makes them simply passive dead weight, when you could be using them as structure as well, thus making the door lighter. Just like with the structural battery pack, more fasteners will be needed to transfer the load, where a regular battery pack could just set in place. Also, I understand that you hate fasteners, but I hate clips and snaps because after a few years they start breaking off, and if you have to remove the part, there is a good chance that it will no longer go back on propely because some Munro Snap has broken, and so you have to either replace the whole piece, baling wire it in, or let it rattle.
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@yusha27 probably because in towns the right lane is often full of churn from people coming into and out of driveways. As a truck driver in smaller towns I will often ride the left lane through the business districts because of how messy the right lane is. But I also get back into the right lane as soon as possible lol He may just not be a polite driver and prefer camping in the fast lane... Lol
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@taxiuniversum I guess you have never heard of Kelvin? C is a random scale, because 0 is not actually zero. It's no more logical than F, which is based on the average temperatures humans live in for 0 and 100. But for the metric world to have dual systems and the associated confusion between them is not logical. Secondly, most measuring in the US is not done using fractions. And metric countries use fractions anyway, ever hear anyone say half a meter, or a quarter mm? Fractions are used in carpentry because it's easy, but any carpenter can use decimal inches if they want, but they generally don't. Also, most fields that use fractions are not having to do many calculations. And the fields where calculations are required, tend to use decimal. Surveyors for instance use the Engineering scale, which is feet and tenths of a foot. Machine tools use decimal inches and thousandths. I hear the claim that the US is cost billions by using the USC System, (we don't use Imperial over here), but that's stupid lol Even if we changed today, mechanic shops would still need two sets of wrenches for many decades, and that only costs a few dollars extra. But when you look at the big machines, the factories packed full with USC scaled lathes and machine tools, and you realize that they can have many decades of life, if you tried converting the country it would cost billions to replace all the long life span machinery, retrain all the engineers and workers, replace millions of street signs, reprogram electronic devices, replace all the USC measuring tools, and all the other things that go along with a major change like that. And it makes no sense to force that change, especially since the main people that will benefit are the YouTube comments section lol
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I cut my teeth on relay logic, I found it fun lol
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I don't know, but I know that most of the vehicles I have had have black door handles, and I don't remember ever burning my hand lol
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@togowack if a manufacturer is planning on high volume production, Lean Manufacturing would have them set up for the goal, not the the minimum. If you set up small for a temporary period, that's the opposite of Lean, because you have to get rid of the small stuff and duplicate the work. And it's not parts and materials that we think it's empty of, but rather the machinery needed to manufacture trucks.
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@togowack you either can't do math or don't understand reality. You think that they can build over 1,300 semi trucks PER DAY with the equipment we saw in this video? Half a million per year is about 1 rolling out the doors every minute. Are you seriously claiming that what you see here can get that kind of production? You can't fit enough people in that building to build that many trucks, and other than the little carts, I don't see a robot in sight.
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@togowack wow, you are so much smarter than every factory owner and truck manufacturer out there, because they are finding amazing savings and increases in efficiency by using robots for the very repetitive tasks. But I guess you know more than they do! And unless the factory process changes, robots don't get outdated, any more than humans do, they get reprogrammed. The assembly plant we see in this video is not able to produce whatever they put on paper, that's what they claim they can do long in the future, but this assembly plant we see in the video can probably only produce a few trucks per month, which is why I say it's way too empty, because it needs more machines, more tracks or robot carts, more people, etc etc.
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@togowack Elon said he underestimated the value of humans when he tried to do too many things with robots on the model 3, so he added a few more humans until he could get the robotics figured out. Have you seen any of the videos from inside Tesla factories? It's fully automated with robots doing as much as possible. Some of the stuff that still needs humans, like putting the dashboard in etc, the humans actually sit strapped into cockpit chairs on robot arms that swings them in through the car door and positions them correctly to install the parts, and then swings them back out. And it's all these robotics that allows them to produce so many cars with only 2 factories, and a 30 percent profit margin. Maybe the robots that YOU work with have those problems, and ancient software, but that's why Tesla purchased a leading German factory automation company so that they can make everything custom to their needs, and they have strong software engineering talent so they can write new software from the ground up. So when done properly, automation is amazing and extremely efficient, because it's perfectly repeatable at high speed, and doesn't tire out. Also, they use a lot of computer vision etc to give the robots eyes so they can be even faster and more accurate. This is the same company developing leading AI and computer vision on cars, and they can apply the same talent to the factory. So maybe you should go work for Tesla and enjoy your job a lot better working with much nicer automation! As far as the Nikola plant seen in this video, it looks nothing like the Iveco factories, which are full of equipment, and yes, robots. So if this is based on the European factory design, it currently looks nothing like it. It's almost like you didn't watch this video, or have never seen what an actual factory looks like inside. This looks like hand building prototypes inside a warehouse, and you say it can produce one truck per minute. That's what confuses me.
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@togowack Tesla is replacing 1000 STEPS by casting a single piece instead of welding together hundreds of small parts. The goal is to simplify the manufacturing process, not simply eliminate robots. And the Giga press is, of course, handled by a robot to remove the castings. Elon's goal would be to have an entirely robotic factory, the machine that builds the machine, which is one reason he's starting work on the humanoid robot, because right now there are some jobs that still work best with a human. And yes, robots create new problems, but problems are meant to be solved through engineering, and so they are gradually working to redesign the car to optimize it for robotic assembly, solving those problems one step at a time. Anyway, your philosophy is the opposite of Elon's, so I guess you won't fit in at Tesla! They only attract the best engineers. And if Nikola produced 1 truck per DAY their stock would go up! But they can't even do that yet... Lol But you were the one who said that this facility that we saw could produce half a million trucks per year, which is about 1 truck per minute run rate.
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@togowack Umm, the Gigapress is built by Idra, who is based in Italy. Tesla is purchasing them from Idra. Tesla purchased the German automation company so those engineers are not unemployed, they went from working for many manufacturers to focusing on Tesla alone. Elon is all about removing parts and steps, so if he gets rid of a robot it's because he got rid of the part or step the robot did, not that he's just replacing it with a human. Elon wants to eliminate humans from the factory as much as possible, and is only limited by the operations that they haven't figured out how to do with a robot yet, but they are working on it.
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@togowack yes, Elon is about solving problems, and one problem is that humans are expensive, slow, and high maintenance, while robots can work 24/7 with no breaks, are predictable, and can work faster and more accurately and repeatablly than a human. So finding all the jobs that can be sped up and made cheaper with a robot is a problem they are working to solve. And yes, I believe the access to talent was one big reason why they put a factory in Germany instead of some cheaper location. Same reason Tesla is in the Bay Area, and SpaceX is in Hawthorne.
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@togowack crashing is a human issue from bad programming or process design. Journals can be line bored and repaired, and if the castings are wearing out that means that you need to redesign the robot so that the journals are sleeved or otherwise repairable. Worn castings is ALWAYS a result of either bad design or poor maintenance, and is not something that should be allowed. And you probably don't have the authority to redesign the robot, but that's a pretty basic concept that Tesla can surely solve. And again, they are using machine vision or other means to give many robots eyes to compensate for misaligned parts. You are repeating the same drivel that the old auto manufacturers and Tslaq have been saying for years, that Tesla doesn't have manufacturering abilities, that there is no way they can manufacture better than Ford and GM and VW and Toyota, but now Ford and VW and many others are realizing that Tesla is doing BETTER at manufacturing than they are, so you may think that they are lacking in MEs, but they seem to be doing pretty well with what they have. It helps that they can share the best ones between SpaceX and Tesla, and it's one of the reasons why they have purchased several companies dealing with factory automation, battery cell production, etc, to get their engineers. So whatever you say about what they are lacking, the proof is in how fast they are able to build factories and get them up to speed, and how rapidly they are able to redesign the cars and constantly improve them.
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@togowack the factory to build the Cybertruck is currently under construction, did you expect them to build it in a barn? It also needs the 4680 cells that are still ramping production, so it's not quite ready to start. VW says that it takes them 40 hours to build their EV, while it takes Tesla 10 hours. That's mostly thanks to the automation in the factory. And that's how far ahead Tesla is from the top German manufacturers. Ford just decided to double their planned EV production, and their target for 2024 is about half what Tesla will do next year. And Toyota is having to partner with a Chinese EV company to build EVs for them. The old Ford plants would have to be fully rebuilt in order to start car production again, including the installation of thousands of robots, because that's how auto manufacturers do things now, so it will take years for such construction and then the ramp up. It's not like in the movies where someone walks into a dusty old factory and flips a big switch and the factory roars to life, because technology has changed so much that nothing in that old factory would still be usable, the layout would need to be entirely different, and remodeling an old building is usually more difficult and expensive than designing a new building optimized for your needs. So this idea that the other manufacturers are going to be able to magically make as many cars as they want faster than Tesla can is just funny. And look at how easy it is to make mistakes. Like GM having to recall every Bolt made to replace the battery, and now the rumors are coming that Porsche may have to do the same thing. And maybe Nikola will do all the manufacturing by hand no robots, but if they do, they will not be able to compete on price against Tesla with a truck designed for efficient construction using as much automation as possible. And the Cybertruck is also designed for maximum automation.
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I only have one complaint about this video... That's NOT an Air-Arc lol An Air Arc is a totally different, and even hotter, tool.. Basically its a hollow, copper coated, carbon electrode that goes into a special electrode holder which blows high pressure air through the hollow core. It basically looks like a large stick welder holder and electrode. It then connects to a LARGE arc welder power supply. You strike an arc just like with an stick welder, and it melts a weld pool just the same (though with hundreds of amps), and then the high pressure air blows the molten metal away. As you can imagine, it creates a BIG cloud of sparks! Quite fun to operate, very noisy, but beautiful curtains of molten steel everywhere. What they were using here was a plasma cutter, which is also an awesome tool, but much more delicate and precise. Like the difference between using a scalpel and a chainsaw to cut the turkey lol
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