Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "Why Machines That Bend Are Better" video.

  1. That's because the headline is not even true. If you are trying to design a CNC router, then bending is to be avoided at almost all cost, otherwise your machine will only do three things: 1) destroy your workpiece, 2) destroy your tools and 3) destroy itself. If you don't understand why, then you still have a lot to learn, "mechanical engineering student". Engineers who are designing bridges and railways and pipelines, however, have learned centuries ago that compliance against thermal stress, etc. is absolutely required to prevent failure. You just don't know what you don't know.
    15
  2.  @iPlayDotaReligiously  Most machine tools are made for highly rigid tooling processes. If the tool is allowed to move in the direction in which it "bites", then we get a destructive positive mechanical feedback where the machine gets deflected ever farther into the wrong direction. The way to counteract that is with rigidity and mass. "Soft" machining can be done, of course and it's highly useful. That's how optical manufacturing processes work, for instance. Grinding and polishing can produce near atomic precision with machines that are all but precise and are completely floppy at the scale of the final precision. I find that absolutely fascinating in its own right. A stone mason is, if you want, also a "soft manufacturing process". He constantly compares the shape of the stone he has with the shape he wants. The tradeoff is time... soft processes take much longer than a rigid process. So yeah, there are plenty of applications, but one has to chose wisely.
    6
  3.  @keiyakins  I am also not saying that everything has to be rigid. We have plenty of examples from biology that prove that flexible structures are useful. We make our planes fairly flexible so they can withstand turbulence without catastrophic structural failure. It just happens that most of our technology is built using rigid design. Time will tell if this will change.
    1
  4.  @johnholmes-rz3vj  Why are you telling us that you don't know anything about machine tools? We don't care about all the things you don't know about. ;-)
    1
  5.  @johnholmes-rz3vj  Maybe, but you don't know how to use them. ;-)
    1
  6.  @bunsenn5064  I am a bit more than a geek. I am actually a physicist. ;-)
    1