101–110 of 378 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm dying of curiosity how cheap a cheap laser welder can be.
There's a killer Neal Stephenson plotline in here somewhere. Redneck protagonist zapping enemy drones with a modified laser welder.
Fortunately I had the proper goggles on but was always terrified of catching a stray reflection and blinding myself. Now we live in a world of dirt-cheap high-powered diode lasers, and when I see all the stupid things YouTubers do with them with almost no discussion of proper eye safety, I wince.
Safety guys always ruin the fun. I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire it off the flight deck of the ship" or "No, not here, that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when it goes off." No, that has a kill distance of 6 miles, you have to fire it into a hill." Blah, blah, blah. So after I got out I joined the Na…
I may or may not be aware of hull damage being caused or not caused by a rifle being fired from the flight deck of a ship. My point being, your safety officer had a point.
How did that happen? Our MarDet would occasionally do live-fire training off the flight deck (CVN-65); they naturally pointed their weapons away from the ship ....
Or are you talking about hitting the hull of a different ship, e.g., one of the tin cans in plane guard, or alongside during an UNREP? Seems like that would ... get noticed by a lot of folks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they know that. I read their comment as sarcastic.
It's really, really close though. The kill distance of six miles is what tips me over the edge of reading it as sarcasm.
Safety guys always ruin the fun. I was in the Marine Corps and every time we got to test some new piece of gear the safety officer was like "No, you can't live fire it off the flight deck of the ship" or "No, not here, that village is down wind of the dust you will kick up when it goes off." No, that has a kill distance of 6 miles, you have to fire it into a hill." Blah, blah, blah. So after I got out I joined the Na…
It's all fun and games until you walk in front of a live AESA radar and sterilize yourself.
I’m not saying it didn’t happen as described, but this really kinda reads like the “Bald eagle named Albert Einstein flew into the classroom” copypasta…
Yeah, the story contains some obvious bullshit. There is no way in hell a flashlamp-pumped Nd:YAG laser could cut through a piece of steel. With typical ~Hz repetition rate and ~J pulse energy, the average power is only around 1 W. This is three to five orders of magnitude lower than typical welding lasers. This could burn some paint or engrave metal, but burning through a wheel well and brake line is completely ridi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm dying of curiosity how cheap a cheap laser welder can be.
So, to clarify - what i have is a very nice IPG lightweld 1500 XR. They are normally not cheap (30k), and are very nice and well thought out safety wise. One of the fun parts when i lived in the bay area was that as companies got acquired, they didn't know what to do with the stuff they had before acquisition that isn't needed anymore, and it either sits in a warehouse, or gets auctioned off (or both!) So for example…
So now I have to know why Google has a machine shop. Beyond the obvious "why not?"