This, sir, is sheer genius. I genuinely loved your approach and the way you wrote it down.
Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
71–80 of 138 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#72> also be doable in 3 years
I would like to add more color to this. 3 year PhD is very possible for a motivated individual at, what I'll call, the low end of R1 universities. That doesn't mean you cannot do good research (the OP is a counterexample) but that there is a fundamental difference between the program that the OP went to and top-tier universities. Think Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.
It is normally pretty easy to distinguish these programs because they focus a lot on the course requirements and that the thesis counts as a course. From the OP's institution, you can see that the course load is at least 15 courses and I would not be surprised if some students do 20 [1]. These programs are more or less an advanced undergraduate with a real independent research project that spans multiple years. Conversely, top-tier universities typically operate under the "publish 3 things and you have satisfied the thesis requirements". This cannot be explicitly written and this is normally difficult to ascertain online. For example, Harvard has similar requirements [2] but you can still find it for some departments [3]. The Catch-22 with this is that someone who can publish 3 things in 3 years can publish 6 things (or more) in 5 years which will greatly increase their academic job prospects. Thus, at top-tier universities, even the best students stay for 5 years at a minimum to start working the job market. You need to be at Dantzig's level to finish at a top-tier in 3 years [4]. To summarize, if you want to finish a PhD in 3 years, look for course-heavy programs and don't expect to get hired into academia.
Edit: I see the OP commented somewhere else that they published 3 papers. The OP is obviously a standout but I think most people have to be realistic that very few areas of research allow for publications in your first year PhD. For example, if you are doing research in LLMs, you are looking at a couple of years just to be brought up to speed.
[1] - https://catalog.louisville.edu/graduate/programs-study/docto...
[2] - https://seas.harvard.edu/office-academic-programs/graduate-p...
[3] - https://www.math.harvard.edu/graduate/graduate-program-timel...
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's basically every other HN article for me. Zero context. "Blorglorp 2024.4.99 released" "With the new version, Blorglorp finally sheds its libgnipgnop dependency and increases efficiency by 1.25%". Bam, top post for the day, lots of multi-paragraph comments, and I'll still never know what it's even for.
The context tends to come some time later, when they close store. "We at Derplabs are proud that we dared to make an opinionated jpeg viewer, Blorglorp, that only interpreted the four first bits of every byte and ignored the rest. Commonly referred to as 'the naughty bits' by image-viewing connoisseurs. Unfortunately the market was not ready, but we are sure our ideas will gain traction in the future. Our deepest gra…
You think? All the closing announcements I've seen were "we've reached the end of our incredible journey, we're proud to have served our users but your data is gone tomorrow. Good luck!".
Meanwhile, I never find out what the thing even does.
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#74Have you explored fiber bragg grating. 10 years ago a student of mine semi successfully explored sensing the shape of firefighter hose using that technique. Seems to gain new traction again lately for optical shape sensing.
I explored FBG sensors early on and they are very cool -- I was aiming for a less expensive and more robotics-oriented application. Something that can be seamlessly integrated into a design at a lower level without the complexity of FBG technology.
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#75What an absolutely amazing idea, great work! Your sensor data seems to have quite large "dead zones" - those should be trivially fixable by reducing the inter-sensor distance, right? Would it be useful to sense the direction of the bend? I reckon this might be possible by dividing the tube like a Mercedes logo, and having three sets of the sensor in one outer tube. Is there a way to sense multiple bends? With the cur…
Great ideas! Even though I haven't implemented it fully it is possible to sense multiple bends because each bend will always have the same relative attenuation (across the strands) so it would just be a matter of matching on the relative deltas from one reading to another. The catch, though, is at that at some point no light will reach the end if every joint bends a lot. There are ways to mitigate that, but my comment is too long already!
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#76That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.
That's basically every other HN article for me. Zero context. "Blorglorp 2024.4.99 released" "With the new version, Blorglorp finally sheds its libgnipgnop dependency and increases efficiency by 1.25%". Bam, top post for the day, lots of multi-paragraph comments, and I'll still never know what it's even for.
I can die happy if I never have to work with libgnipgnop again
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#77That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.
This question surprises me. Bend location == locate where something is bent. Then some video's of the researcher bending a tube. Is there any confusion possible?
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#78That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.
This question surprises me. Bend location == locate where something is bent. Then some video's of the researcher bending a tube. Is there any confusion possible?
OP updated his blog post after I posted my comment. The opening paragraphs are now very clear and awesome.
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#79That's super cool and I hope you don't mind a little bit of unsolicited feedback but the first question everyone's asking is "what does it do?" At present the blog post starts out with two paragraphs talking about the format of the blog post and the applications but not what the sensor actually measures.
This question surprises me. Bend location == locate where something is bent. Then some video's of the researcher bending a tube. Is there any confusion possible?
[deleted]
Re: Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD
#80What an absolutely amazing idea, great work! Your sensor data seems to have quite large "dead zones" - those should be trivially fixable by reducing the inter-sensor distance, right? Would it be useful to sense the direction of the bend? I reckon this might be possible by dividing the tube like a Mercedes logo, and having three sets of the sensor in one outer tube. Is there a way to sense multiple bends? With the cur…
Great ideas! Even though I haven't implemented it fully it is possible to sense multiple bends because each bend will always have the same relative attenuation (across the strands) so it would just be a matter of matching on the relative deltas from one reading to another. The catch, though, is at that at some point no light will reach the end if every joint bends a lot. There are ways to mitigate that, but my commen…
No need to cut your comments short! You clearly have a passion, and passion is the best way to get other people interested! :D
(also, nice work!)