Recent content by OffTheRecord

Great ideas all. Thanks. By the way, the machine shop I use is not the one at work. Work just gives me free scrap metal. I use a public-access machine shop elsewhere, for a small membership fee.

So I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, access to a machine shop, and all the free scrap metal I want (steel or aluminum mostly). I also make perilously little income because I'm just a measly intern. I have a stash from my last job that is keeping me running until I can convince my...

Try this: if you're a student, chances are you don't have tons of experience. So instead of trying to come up with an innovative idea for a project on your own, try to find a local manufacturing plant or industry that deals with real-world problem on a day-to-day basis, and ask them what they...

Hmm. Well, not having maple at hand, I may never know. Anything similar in Matlab? Any way to create a solve function like that one?

I have a fluid dynamics problem I need to solve. There are 6 equations, and 6 unknowns, but the form of the equations are non-linear. Some unknown variables are not only multiplied by coefficients, but also by other unknown variables. Thus, I can't just do a Gaussian elimination matrix. I'm...

Does anyone know of a program that can give a good approximation of fluid flow based on the Navier Stokes equations? I know there are FEA programs out there that do linear flow, like in pipes, but what I'm looking for is general flow, for applications that aren't constrained to a pipe. Does such...

I'm sure someone has tried this, and I'm sure there's a reason it's not something that is widely used, but here's a question: Can a logical NOR gate be created by shining two lasers (an A and B input) through tiny slits (like the double-slit experiment), and determining an output at a known...

Hey folks. Question. Mostly about input/output in Lisp. At work, we have thousands of old AutoCAD files that were never named properly, and thus can't be searched properly by AutoCAD Vault. The title information (drawing headers, authors, dates, etc) of all these files are currently stored in...

Ok so starting outside and working in, you have: (A) Heat of radiation, depending on the reflective/absorptive characteristics of the outer panels. (B) Heat of convection outside, based on the 22C and, say, 100kph wind speed (highway), assume its fairly turbulent, over a smooth flat plate... I'm...

on a side-note, that link was very helpful!

yeah... i read a book and found some open source stuff. I kinda want to write my own anyway to get some understanding of the internals. I actually found a site where the guy wrote a bunch of FEA's in Matlab... got the code... read through it. It was extremely complicated: more so than I deem...

What's the best way to do Finite Element stress analysis? By that, I mean I'm looking for the best set of general fundamental assumptions to start with. In your opinion. I ask because I'm trying to write a computer code in Matlab that I can use as a general tool for who-knows-what sort of...

let's say you've got a set of x-coordinates, from x=0 to x=L. If you're using matlab, type the following: x=linspace(0,L,L) where L is the total length of the beam. That will give you an entire array of x-values. I'm assuming M is dependent upon x. You should have some sort of equation...

Yeah I like that... deform the wheel. That way, you can pick the material that works best. Hmm... so if my head-calcs are right, those wheels are going to be almost 2 meters in diameter, each. You're going to have to make 'em pretty light. Anyways. The closer the wheels are together, the more...

If you want a title and money, you need the piece of paper from a college. Alternatively, you could get a very practical, very cheap community college / trade school degree, and become a machinist, welder, plumber, builder, tech assistant, or IT guy. So ask yourself this: why do you want to be...