Greatest Electrical Game Changers

[Mikegh]

RCD

Voltstick

Led lighting

PIR detector

 

[telectrix]

Haggis hunting? Out of season?!

it's in season for clockwise haggis. out for anti-clockwise. you need to check the legs. clockwise haggis have the right legs short and the left legs long.

 

[littlespark]

it's in season for clockwise haggis. out for anti-clockwise. you need to check the legs. clockwise haggis have the right legs short and the left legs long.

And that’s why they evolved to run backwards

 

[nicebutdim]

Scissor lifts.

 

[telectrix]

everythingcmentioned in previous posts would be a total waste of time without the one essential thing that has not yet been mentioned.





you got it??????.....







electricians.

 

[Mikegh]

Tel, I believe you may be right...however, the true Spawn Of The Devil is...


the inkjet printer!

Many of you will know EXACTLY what i mean!

Biggest con-job after ECUs and Certifications

 

[telectrix]

Biggest con-job after ECUs and Certifications

agree. my right foot has served well as engine management for 60 years. why change what ain't broke.

 

[Simon47]

I gave up on parallel ports years ago and use a cheap usb to parallel cable.

I've not used a non-network printer for ... a long time. Being a Mac user we've been used to being networked a long time before it caught on in the PC world, and we didn't have to fight the system to make them work (mostly).

My daughter was given a new macbook something for her work, and it is a beautiful thing to behold. I was comparing it with my asus windows one.
I asked her, does yours have a touch screen? No.
USB ports? No.
...
I began to think my£299 piece of crap wasn't so bad after all...but of course I'm an old git and just haven't got to grips with the mac thing...and I won't be trying to either.

Errm, it will have USB ports, they've not made one without since ... a couple of decades ago when USB took over from the 4 pin ADB ports and 8 pin serial ports. Other things are optional : the MacBook Air is designed specifically to be very small (thin) and very light - so loads of ports which need the machine to be "not thin" removed.
Get a different model and you get other choices of ports - but less thinness.
But I am in agreement that some ports just need to be there, and aren't. So the end result is having to carry around a bag full of dongles.
I've just upgraded from a 2005 model to a 2015 model - it'll probably be my last Apple laptop as after that they don't even have upgradable storage, the last laptop with upgradable memory was 2013. It's partly technical, but it's mostly commercial - i.e. you have to buy a new machine rather than upgrade your old one, and they can stiff you for well over the market rate for more memory or storage. Design considerations might be valid for something like a 13" Air, but for the machine I've got, a couple of memory sockets wouldn't need extra thickness or board space ?
But apart from that, whenever I've done meaningful comparisons an Apple machine hasn't come out as exorbitantly expensive. Yes you can buy a lot cheaper, but then you generally aren't matching specs. And back when I was running IT for a manufacturing business, we could keep the Macs in use for a lot longer than the PCs - so the effective annual cost was around the same.

I tend to daydream alot when I'm working alone. I always end up thinking about how sparks in the past would be doing the same work in doing and how it may be more difficult. Power tools are such a big improvement. Drills, drivers, angle grinders, saws etc.... I job that I could do in 1 hour probably took 3 or 4 times as long to complete.

Just the impact drill and TC tipped drills must have made a huge difference. Before my time, but I believe it used to be the apprentice's job to drill the holes when the new fangled Rawlplug "drill" (pointed chisel that you hammered and turned like a manual impact drill) came out.

 

[Dave OCD]

Yep I had to use a Rawltool quite a bit as a young apprentice, you end up with blistered hands.

 

[Simon47]

Oh yes, has someone mentioned plastic plugs ?
I recall dad whittling bits of wood, and he had a tin of some white stuff that I believe contained asbestos, you mixed with water and stuffed into holes - then waited for it to set (?) before putting the screw in.

 

[ipf]

Yep I had to use a Rawltool quite a bit as a young apprentice, you end up with blistered hands.

Aye....from nipping when your aim was failing and the chisel butt was giving.
Think of all those cauliflowered chisels. Once a month on the grinder getting rid.
Pad chisels/bolsters used to be the worst.....as well as hands....smashed hell out of with lump hammers.

 

[Mikegh]

Oh yes, has someone mentioned plastic plugs ?
I recall dad whittling bits of wood, and he had a tin of some white stuff that I believe contained asbestos, you mixed with water and stuffed into holes - then waited for it to set (?) before putting the screw in.

Plasty in general I reckon was a game changer

 

[telectrix]

tried some bakelite wall plugs once. if you could get the screw in would they serves as fire rated?

 

[rapparee]

Variable Speed Drives

Has anyone mentioned these yet?

 

[telectrix]

tried one of them on the vacuum cleaner. it still took her all day for 2 rooms.

 

[Simon47]

Variable Speed Drives

Has anyone mentioned these yet?

Don't think so, but then they have actually existed almost as long as motors have existed - just not in the modern, compact, electronic form. Actually, I suspect that variable speed drives of some form or other were more common before everything went AC - and then we had to wait for the development of power electronics to get back to where we were.

I believe the lift in our tower block when I was at uni was driven by DC machines. I suspect an AC driven MG set with an amplidyne or metadyne as the driven machine, driving a DC carriage motor. The machine room for the lift was within earshot of our library, you could hear the set start up before the lift moved, and hear it stop again after a period of inactivity. They still (just) taught those when I was an undergrad, I understood the amplidyne, but despite dad attempting to teach me, I never understood the metadyne ?

And while talking about such devices, the auto-synchroniser must have made something of a difference in some industries. We were taught the 3 lamp method - though someone had designed in a solenoid lock on the teaching board we got to play with. I did wonder if it was part of the original design, or if it was added on after experience with "slow learning" students ?