Sun-Planet Engine

[vederstein]

Is your bubble machine a piece of art or does it actually do something?

It actually blew bubbles, but very badly. I did it for the 2017 Maker Faire Season. It was more of a piece of art than anything else. I was feeling that the Maker Faires were getting too STEM (read kid) orientated, and I wanted to bring back a bit of whimsy and uselessness to the faires.

The design files are long since gone. I sold the CNC router I built which I used to make the Bubble Machine. So there was no reason to keep the design. After its last Maker Faire, I gave the Bubble Machine away. It's a memory (and a couple of videos) now.

Here a video of the thing when it was finished running off my PMR 5CI with live steam.

 

[Richard Hed]

It actually blew bubbles, but very badly. I did it for the 2017 Maker Faire Season. It was more of a piece of art than anything else. I was feeling that the Maker Faires were getting too STEM (read kid) orientated, and I wanted to bring back a bit of whimsy and uselessness to the faires.

The design files are long since gone. I sold the CNC router I built which I used to make the Bubble Machine. So there was no reason to keep the design. After its last Maker Faire, I gave the Bubble Machine away. It's a memory (and a couple of videos) now.

Here a video of the thing when it was finished running off my PMR 5CI with live steam.

Ho, ho, it's fab. Yeah STEM is a good thing but in reality, our education system doesn't have a CLUE about how or what to teach. Read John Taylor Gatto and he will tell you what the ed. system is for.

 

[William May]

HA ha haww! I laft out loud about your comment on Watt. Yes, I found out he was a thief like the scumbag edison. He took the inventions of his workers and called them his own. There are so many scumbags that do that, we all need to be very careful of those kinds of peeps. I tell my son to never give his ideas away to anyone who might take them. It's better to let good ideas die than allow scumbags to steal them. There are THOUSANDS of good people's inventions stolen by such people. I've workt for companies where the managers demanded that I give them some idea but when I ask what do I get out of it? (It IS MY work after all and I'm not being paid as an engineer, and I didn't do the thimking on company time), they angrily stalked away. Of course, they always get the bonus and credit for whatever. So to hell with them, I get the credit and the bonus or I won't give up MY ideas.

Yes, I worked for a company that made me sign an agreement that whatever Ideas I had while I worked for them, belonged to them.
HA! HA! I had a LOT of good ideas, but I never revealed them when I worked for the company. Now I am free and can do what I want. If I HAD had an idea that was potentially great while I worked for them, it would have been my WIFE who got the patent after she "thought it up"
I learned not to have any more loyalty to a company than they have for you, which is NONE.

 

[Richard Hed]

Yes, I worked for a company that made me sign an agreement that whatever Ideas I had while I worked for them, belonged to them.
HA! HA! I had a LOT of good ideas, but I never revealed them when I worked for the company. Now I am free and can do what I want. If I HAD had an idea that was potentially great while I worked for them, it would have been my WIFE who got the patent after she "thought it up"
I learned not to have any more loyalty to a company than they have for you, which is NONE.

Yes, I workt for an military-industrial company and the agreement I had to sign read as if I had a dream or idea at 2:00 AM, I had to get up, write it down immediately and call the company with the idea. I knew that I would get NOTHING for any ideas. I mentioned it to a friend of mine who was an engineer at the same company, I asked him what I got out of it for giving an idea. His answer was "Your job". I lost a lot of respect for him over that, as he was getting about 50thou at that time and I was earning about half that as a machinist. My belief is if I have to give engineering ideas, then I get engineering pay plus the bonus for it plus the credit for it. Lucky so far they haven't got machines to read our minds 'cause I had LOTS of ideas, still do, some of them naughty. LOL

Thing is, some times, a person who gives all their ideas to a company witll get a raise , bonus recognition and so forth, but only after too many years, yet at other times the company will keep you where you are because you do THAT job so well. Any person worth their salt, of course, will learn everything they can from a company like that and then move on to the next place, They can go to hell for keeping good people down. Corporate psychopathy.

 

[Richard Hed]

It does look like an interesting design, I'll be following along. Also interesting to hear Watt wasn't a nice guy (I'll go read up when I get the chance). I know of another big figure from engine history who is still revered today but was a truly terrible person as well (I dare not speak his name lest I be lynched by the American members).

I'll say it for you: Ford, but remember he was a goo buddy of edison who was also a corporate psychopath.

 

[William May]

Yes, I workt for an military-industrial company and the agreement I had to sign read as if I had a dream or idea at 2:00 AM, I had to get up, write it down immediately and call the company with the idea. I knew that I would get NOTHING for any ideas. I mentioned it to a friend of mine who was an engineer at the same company, I asked him what I got out of it for giving an idea. His answer was "Your job". I lost a lot of respect for him over that, as he was getting about 50thou at that time and I was earning about half that as a machinist. My belief is if I have to give engineering ideas, then I get engineering pay plus the bonus for it plus the credit for it. Lucky so far they haven't got machines to read our minds 'cause I had LOTS of ideas, still do, some of them naughty. LOL

Thing is, some times, a person who gives all their ideas to a company witll get a raise , bonus recognition and so forth, but only after too many years, yet at other times the company will keep you where you are because you do THAT job so well. Any person worth their salt, of course, will learn everything they can from a company like that and then move on to the next place, They can go to hell for keeping good people down. Corporate psychopathy.

Couldn't agree more!

 

[Richard Hed]

Yep, Ole Henry did a lot of good, but having read his book, having read about the history of his son’s treatment, and having made several trips to his museum, I can honestly say he was a smart guy and an anti-Semitic A-hole...

Still,, he did set the industrial world on its ear and put the world on wheels with his inventions...

Would I have sat down and had a beer with him? Probably not my kind of guy!

John W

Oddly enough old henry did not start out that way, he developed his psychopathy after many years.

 

[Richard Hed]

Well, I spent a few hours today on the design. I'm not really liking how it's turning out.

This issue is the eccentric cam. Because of the Sun-Planet setup, the eccentric cam for the engine valving needs geared down by half. This resulted in some alignment issues that I just didn't like.

Here's a picture and video of where I am currently.

...Ved.

View attachment 113479

This really weird mechanism--I hope I can get some castings for it. I thimk I would enjoy seeing this work. So old Watt did this to get around someone elses patents? Doesn't surprise me. Do you know how he got the parliament to pass special patent laws for him? It was obscene--sort of like how the corporations do today in America

 

[Richard Hed]

Ok, Assholes from the 1st and 2nd industrial revolutions:

James Watt
George Henry Corliss
Henry Ford
Thomas Edison
Cornelius Vanderbilt
John Rockefeller
(hell, just about all the robber barons)
Charles Babbage
Joseph Clement

The list of "nice guys" is relatively short:

Richard Trevithick
Glenn Curtiss
Robert Stephenson
Nicola Telsa

(Just my opinions and from the history I've read).

...Ved

I believe Boulton (sp?) who workt for Watt was also a good guy--Watt really gave him a B*tt* job.

 

[William May]

Oddly enough old henry did not start out that way, he developed his psychopathy after many years.

That's true. If you read his book "My Life and Work" that is the REAL Henry Ford. His behavior after that, towards his son especially showed his mental illness developing. I don't think he was a very likeable person. I have a lot more affection for Edsel Ford. EDSEL, I would have loved to have had dinner with.

 

[davidyat]

About 30 years ago, Ross Perot was worth about 3 Billion dollars. He was asked how he did it. "I just hire people smarter than me, leave them alone to create and just manage them". You don't have to be a jerk to be successful.
Watched, SpaceX, Journey to Mars. Elon Musk's employees at this space firm had no suits that I could see. T-Shirts, Jeans and Tennis Shoes of all kinds, nobody looked the same and all kinds of hair doos. And these employees actually looked enthused about their jobs.
I don't know who said this, "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way". Good advice.
Grasshopper

 

[L98fiero]

Thing is, some times, a person who gives all their ideas to a company witll get a raise , bonus recognition and so forth, but only after too many years, yet at other times the company will keep you where you are because you do THAT job so well. Any person worth their salt, of course, will learn everything they can from a company like that and then move on to the next place, They can go to hell for keeping good people down. Corporate psychopathy.

You know, there's nothing wrong with keeping an employee in the job they are good at, give them a raise, the bonus and the recognition but why make a machinist into something they aren't good at? There's the Peter Principle that says each person will rise to their level of incompetence and I've seen it quite often.
I'm not saying you aren't or wouldn't have been a good engineer but you were a good machinist and you saw things that could have been good ideas that the company could have made good use of while doing your job. If they had made you an engineer who's to say you would have been good at that and if you weren't, the company has then lost a good machinist and how do they send you back to be a machinist? What would have been wrong with being a $50k machinist?
One company I worked at had a plan where you would get 10% of the savings or profits for a year for any idea you came up with, the plan could have been more generous but the idea is there at least. In 1972 that made a heavy duty maintenance mechanic $25,000 and it made others look for ideas. Then again, 30 years later I proposed the same idea to a Tier 1 auto parts manufacturer who blew the idea off, imagine giving 10% of the money to an employee, they wanted all the money!

 

[Richard Hed]

You know, there's nothing wrong with keeping an employee in the job they are good at, give them a raise, the bonus and the recognition but why make a machinist into something they aren't good at? There's the Peter Principle that says each person will rise to their level of incompetence and I've seen it quite often.
I'm not saying you aren't or wouldn't have been a good engineer but you were a good machinist and you saw things that could have been good ideas that the company could have made good use of while doing your job. If they had made you an engineer who's to say you would have been good at that and if you weren't, the company has then lost a good machinist and how do they send you back to be a machinist? What would have been wrong with being a $50k machinist?
One company I worked at had a plan where you would get 10% of the savings or profits for a year for any idea you came up with, the plan could have been more generous but the idea is there at least. In 1972 that made a heavy duty maintenance mechanic $25,000 and it made others look for ideas. Then again, 30 years later I proposed the same idea to a Tier 1 auto parts manufacturer who blew the idea off, imagine giving 10% of the money to an employee, they wanted all the money!

I would not have made a good engineer, as I did not have the formal training, that is not the point. The point is, the company wanted free engineering work from every employee in the company. Had they done the 10% thing, the employees would have been trampling each other to get their ideas in. The company DID offer a 25$ savings certificate which matured into 50$ in 10 years or so, So one of my friends offered a way to save 10K$ per MONTH--he was awarded with the 25$ savings certificate. He was so angry he almost quit, he told me he would never give the company another idea--ever! Believe it or don't, that is one of the two good companies I ever workt for.

What you are saying about the peter principle happens all the time, however, what companies generally look for in an advancement (particularly the bad companies) is loyalty over competence. I've seen this MANY times. Some where the person advanced is so incredibly incompetent it's barely believable. However, I have also seen where a person is VERY good at ANYTHING they do but he/she is kept where they are because they do some job very well--in at least one case, I saw a person kept down because a manager psychopath did everything he could to keep competition for any raises, advancement, etc. that HE was in line of, down. Actually, I've seen that at least twice, the second example was an executive manager who was a sex addict--you can imagine the antics involved.

A great deal of the problem is what you say: the companies generally do NOT give the great employees a raise, bonus, etc.

 

[L98fiero]

A great deal of the problem is what you say: the companies generally do NOT give the great employees a raise, bonus, etc.

Yes, I worked at a company loaded with engineers, an electrical tech they hired programmed their IBM360 or 370 to design the complete electrical system of rocket payloads we were doing at the time, when he asked to be paid the same as the EEs they refused, he quit on the spot and went to work for their competitors. Karma!

 

[Richard Hed]

Yes, I worked at a company loaded with engineers, an electrical tech they hired programmed their IBM360 or 370 to design the complete electrical system of rocket payloads we were doing at the time, when he asked to be paid the same as the EEs they refused, he quit on the spot and went to work for their competitors. Karma!

hA Ha! Serves them right. the engineers certainly could not do what the tech did. He should have gotten double the pay for engineers.

 

[William May]

I have learned "Never stay where they don't appreciate you"
It will really reduce the misery in your life.

 

[wthomas]

Hi All:
I can say from experience that GM is no better then the others. It has a lot to do
with the supervisors. I was told it was my job as a machinist but the other machinist
was paid the 10% saving $10,000 check for scrap parts and I processed over 3,000 parts with
special tooling I developed.

 

[Richard Hed]

Hi All:
I can say from experience that GM is no better then the others. It has a lot to do
with the supervisors. I was told it was my job as a machinist but the other machinist
was paid the 10% saving $10,000 check for scrap parts and I processed over 3,000 parts with
special tooling I developed.

It's always the managers. It is claimed by efficiency experts or psychologists or somebody of that sort, that 85% of the mistakes are made by management. they interfere with the worker bees and make the work harder and slower, they rip off the extra that clever bees make and make work in general, hell. Do you remember what GM did in 1995? The ceo spend 45BILLION on robotting the place and it failed. 45BILL! of the stock holders $$. He wanted to robotize the place in a year or two, putting 100,000 people out of a job. Well the Japanese robot makers made a bundle and as a result, only 11 years later, they were going under. (I thimk that their going under was 'planned')

 

[Richard Hed]

I have learned "Never stay where they don't appreciate you"
It will really reduce the misery in your life.

There are very few that actually DO appreciate you but the place I was talking about that I worked as a machinist for 6 years, my immediate boss, and HIS boss, both appreciated us workers. It was actually a good place to work, and our place was in a small town in Central Washington where the corporate headquarters was somewher else. It was the corporates that didn't thimk their employees were worth a . . . well I can't thimk of a 'nicey' word that is allowed here.

 

[wthomas]

Hi Richard:
Sure GM's going under was planned, they even paid the guy $2,000,000.00 when he retired. He grabbed the salary peoples retirements because of all
the stock going broke. Did you see how it went up and down as the company was going broke so those that new about it could get rich.