I really don't care what he built by duct-taping motors to PC-104 boards from the back of Nuts-n-Volts. If he throws away scopes and iPhones he's not someone who impresses me as a Hardware Guy.
Edit: keep in mind that his cartoon is mostly a bunch of whining about how he can't do this and can't do that because of how modern electronic equipment is made. Meanwhile, a friend in Portugal just used his homebrew wire-bonding machine to repair an 18 GHz YIG-tuned oscillator for me. (He failed this time, which is damned rare for him, but he sure didn't balk at trying.)
I do respect his generosity, though -- hopefully, some talented kid's going to get a nice present out of it. I try to help out in the same spirit when I can, because I benefited from similar generosity as a newbie.
His job, his livelihood depends on a single terminal block/bad soldering & ducttape hackjob. I'm all for DIY solutions to unique problems, but this is just plain stupid. It's only a matter of time before that thing sets on fire.
Given that he has the source code to the controlling software it's probably a home brew system.
He's no doubt learned some important lessons, but I can't find destroying $12 million in equipment in any way funny. [c0deporn has updated his original to the more accurate and appropriate "interesting".]
So many times I see people comment about what he could do if this, if that, or they'll say "yeah but it only worked for a few seconds at best." To this I say: Show me the turbojet you built at all using the tools he used.
My own hobby is more fun when I build things or repair things not with unlimited resources, but with intentionally limited resources. Everybody knows that if you have enough money you can buy your way into many hobbies, but this fellow, eccentric as he is, figured out a way to use what he *already has* to build something that would be otherwise impossible with the resources given.
I don’t think he’s ‘dumb’. Just not an engineer. He unscrews computers and replaces parts and puts them back together. I’m disappointed he doesn’t concentrate on the important topic of right to repair and finds things to criticise that seem like they’re chosen to play to the lowest common denominator.
The idea of someone unironically having a vacuum tube radio repair-related bone to pick with Paul Carlson is just funny. He should make detailed reaction videos where he shit-talks Paul for his poor technique, lack of electronics knowledge, and inauthenticity.
I have over a decade of experience manufacturing medical, aerospace, and military electronics and I will say authoritatively that he is a hack. His main income stream is from selling Chinese tools (which are garbage), followed by YouTube ads, followed by repairing devices. Just because he fixed something you believe to be difficult the same day does not make him competent.
It's a bit of a touchy subject. It's clear that he's a brilliant musician and self-motivated to the brink of mania, but he struggles with perfectionism and his insistence on reinventing the entire field of mechanical engineering from scratch precludes him ever actually finishing the project to his own impossible standards. If he didn't have a huge community of experienced, fascinated, and often frustrated engineers and manufacturers pointing out his most egregious missteps, he'd be sunk. The past near-decade has involved being sucked into fractal rabbit holes due to unknown-unknowns while obsessing over imperceptible details. The second machine was thrown out entirely and he started from scratch in an attempt to fix what he saw as fundamental flaws with it, and while his process with the third machine seemed promising at first, at this point it doesn't seem like he's really any closer to success.
His videos are often entertaining (he's very charismatic and enthusiastic), and you'll learn a decent amount about engineering. But the most important thing that you'll learn are the unstated lessons: the necessity of compromise and the importance of setting measurable and realistic goals if you ever hope to actually achieve a given result. Though if nothing else, I applaud him for being so open with his efforts, especially when things don't pan out like he was expecting.
Meh. It is a $4K machine, not $16K. And a million views on a YouTube video (which this one is approaching and sure to exceed) can get you up to $40K in ad revenue. Somehow I doubt think the possibility of screwing up when putting it back together is too scary to him.
"we need to measure differential inputs" suggests he's not at home hobbying. Maybe he's too busy to look at it, or doesn't have the right paperwork to certify a repaired one, who knows.
Apart from you, that is, who jumps straight to "he seems to have more money than me therefore he must be lazy and stupid". Maybe $2k isn't a lot of money to him and he has plenty of brains and you're just judging him by your different-but-not-more-correct standards?
That guy must have had a steady hand and be really quick with the soldering iron. Making a new controller board while a 200k $ / hour line is down, well I always suspected my job was boring, now I know.
Edit: keep in mind that his cartoon is mostly a bunch of whining about how he can't do this and can't do that because of how modern electronic equipment is made. Meanwhile, a friend in Portugal just used his homebrew wire-bonding machine to repair an 18 GHz YIG-tuned oscillator for me. (He failed this time, which is damned rare for him, but he sure didn't balk at trying.)
I do respect his generosity, though -- hopefully, some talented kid's going to get a nice present out of it. I try to help out in the same spirit when I can, because I benefited from similar generosity as a newbie.
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