For a number of years, I had a Panasonic inverter microwave. I found that it worked very well at its job of warming up food, like turning a frozen burrito from a cold brick into consistent-hot goopy shame, with no blowouts, and without having to do things like pause and flip it over.
It was programmable, too. 45 seconds on high, then 2 minutes at 50%? 45P5200S (where P is the Power button and S is Start).
I also found that nobody but me cared about any of that at all. Everyone else who ever used it always ran it at 100% power.
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One of these days, I'll get another one that has variable power like this again. But it'll be a "flat bed" Toshiba, since the present lineup from Panasonic all includes spinning glass carousels and those have always been both stupid and unnecessary.
> But it'll be a "flat bed" Toshiba, since the present lineup from Panasonic all includes spinning glass carousels and those have always been both stupid and unnecessary.
Is it? Or does Toshiba just mitigate the problem on the magnetron side?
My impression was always that the spinning is a crude compensation for non-homogenous power density (preventing hot/cold spots), which makes sense to me (except if you're just heating soup or somesuch obviously).
It is unnecessary. Carousels became mostly-ubiquitous during my lifetime; I have experienced both worlds. :)
In all cases, the magnetron emits a field that is somewhat akin to a modern flashlight in that it is directed (or a particularly fancy flashlight of yore), and it can be focused with some modicum of precision (or not). The emitted RF also bounces around inside the box like light does, and it therefore features standing wave interference patterns. So something has to move, or we get hot spots and cold spots (or perhaps even cold sides).
Carousels smooth things out by spinning the plate (and ultimately the food) around. It's easy to visualize: Just look through the door of any carousel oven in operation. (Shine a flashlight in there for extra effect.)
But (what are now called) flat bed microwaves achieve the same desirable distribution, and they do this with a rotating microwave stirrer. This spinnamathing also distributes the magnetron's RF output across the food being heated. This can be accomplished by deliberately bouncing the RF around in repeated patterns, or just disturbing the environment enough to mix up standing wave patterns, or both.
They're often shaped like metal fan blades. Sometimes, they're more-alien RF designs with deliberate ridges and/or holes. They're hidden in the top or bottom of the oven[1].
Microwave stirrers work very well. The mechanism is just invisible to the buyer while the carousel is very much visible.
And to be clear: The carousel also works. It just became the clear winner in the marketplace not because it was technologically advanced but because of buyer perception; it was easy to see, and therefore easy to sell. Microwave stirrers were (and are) much more hand-wavey.
But having scorched more than one bag of popcorn when it somehow got wedged and stopped spinning while I wasn't looking, I'd rather avoid spinning the food around. So that's how I endeavor.
[1]: The Kenmore we had when I was a kid had a mechanical timer (with a mechanical bell!) and an electromechanical speed knob (which I've come to understand was just a simmerstat like for an electric range), and the stirrer was at the top. It was metal, and fan shaped. It was hidden behind a plastic panel that was secured with little plastic pushpins fasteners. And that panel was somewhat translucent, so young-me could see that something was moving behind there.
I was little, curious, and unsupervised, so of course I took it apart. At first I was amazed that this microwave oven had metal inside of it and it had not yet caused a nuclear explosion and a black hole that wiped the entire galaxy out of existence. I figured the rest out over time.
This is just a longer version of "If we can spend so much on defense, why can't we do X?". The OP is compelling enough in understanding the tradeoffs of medical prevention vs. treatment. No need to rope in your pet peeve du jour.
I won't speak for other countries, but in the US, the answer to "Why do we spend so much on X" is typically because X is in large part a jobs program for special interests who are really good at lobbying, whether it is healthcare or defense or any other industry.
Representatives like high employment in their districts and employees of X like high salaries. It's an incentive-compatible equilibrium.
The implication of your comment is that the description/review/opinions expressed by Ben in that video were inaccurate due to having received the printer for free. Is that what you're suggesting?
In fact historically lieing in an ad could get you lawsuits or FTC complaints. I know creatives at agencies who would have to go through legal review to ensure every factual claim they made was true.
Stereo lithography using lasers, vs "sla" now has nothing stereo about it nor lasers, just an lcd screen that exposes a 2d slice.
Why it's better is a little complicated and maybe not all one-way.
Definitely there are a lot of difficulties inherent in the way the lcd type has to move the part for every layer and fight a lot of suction every time, damaging a film that needs to stay optically perfect, frothing up the resin with bubbles yet another source of optical defects.
Maybe the laser machines have their own problems but not having to move the part (or move it much less and in a different less violent way) and not having to physically abuse an optical part has to make some difference.
I believe the Open mode in Form printers disable couples of interesting features that don't seem strongly connected to material properties of resin used, like resin recovery to tank and vat stirring wiper.
Form resin vats/tanks/tray/bed/whatever you call it are also not just proprietary, but their equivalent of FEP film is not replaceable. The resin vat usually have what is referred to as FEP film, a thin transparent Teflon sheet at the bottom of about a phone screen protector thickness and durability, stretched and pre-tensioned like a drum. The non-adhesion performance of film affects print quality, and it needs replacement eventually(I believe it is characterized as after x thousand layers printed, internally by printer manufacturers). On most printers, the replacement film can be bought and installed by the user. Formlabs printers use something other than regular FEP, and uses tool-less assembly that cannot be reversed, and therefore the whole proprietary tank needs to be discarded and replaced.
It's like Bambu Lab but the printbed is proprietary too and heated bed turns off for non-Bambu filaments. As if proprietary nozzles was not enough.
The amount of upselling, extra parts necessary for basic functionality, predatory resin pricing and specific open "modes" that are free to be subjects to amendment by contract makes this seem like a cash grab for investors rather than serious product. Really sour taste in the mouth from this.
Just buy an open source version from China that has the necessary hardware in an open format and let Claude adjust the software if there are concerns.
I'm unclear what the open source version from China of a resin printer is. Creatlity and Elegoo don't appear to be at all it as they lock you to the chitubox ecosystem.
I use prusaslicer and uvtools with my Elegoo Saturn. No proprietary lockin. I also own a Prusa, so I don't feel bad using their software with another brand.
There is currently no open source version of the high resolution monochrome LCDs. The LCDs and their drivers lock you into the Chitu ecosystem.
The problem, as Chitu figured out, is that as soon as you cough up the NRE to make the LCDs and make it publicly available, EVERYBODY will copy you and then there will be no profit left to sink the NRE that you just spent.
Maybe you could be happy with that, or perhaps I could be as well, but you and I aren't ChiTu. And ChiTu is free to do whatever they want (including doing nothing at all).
And that matters because statements like "just buy an open Chinese printer" are non-starters. The machines themselves have the soul of ChiTu inside of them and openness isn't really their jam.
So while the PC software that produces the layer images can be replaced, the printer's brains stays the same.
(This is very different compared to the world of conventional world of FDM printers, wherein: It's just some sensors, motors, heaters, and sensors; a screen, if present, is optional. A person can replace the brainbox of a traditional FDM Cartesian rig with open, off-the-shelf parts and be printing something in an afternoon, and there's a whole industry providing parts to support this kind of thing.
Well I don't understand the paragraph you wrote starting with "The problem, as Chitu figured out". Did they figure out an actual problem or did they hallucinate a problem?
Does their proprietary software affect their profit at all?
Chitu, IIRC, originally were open when they were using the initial color LCDs (off the shelf) and then the first iteration of monochrome ones (required NRE as nobody made 1920x1080 monochrom LCDs by then). And then everybody in the universe cloned them and Chitu got mad and Chitu made sure that the next iterations of monochrome LCDs had encrypted driver chips.
This isn't an unsolvable problem. It takes probably less than $100K (and probably less than $50K) in NRE to make a truly open-source monochrome LCD and driver chip. This is on the order of a plastic injection mold.
But everybody simply whines rather than banding together, coughing up the CASH, and actually FIXING the problem once and for all.
Sadly, this seems to be standard operating procedure in the world of open source.
Dude, it's CHINA. Once developed, the manufacturer simply sold the LCDs to everybody.
Even now, there is nothing stopping you from going to the upstream LCD manufacturer and saying "Hi, Mr. LCD manufacturer. Here is a different driver chip, could you please take that nice LCD and use it with it?"
It all just takes cash. And not even a lot by manufacturing standards.
* If you buy the "Form Studio 1 Resin Tank Pro" extra at $79 because the included tank "is not compatible with Tough 1500 Resin or materials needing to utilize Open Material Mode"
You need to buy a tank anyway, which is $50 or so — that works with their new Alpha resins. The slightly more expensive tank is necessary only for their engineering-grade resins (only a couple are certified for the Studio 1 so far) and 'OMM' (Open Material Mode), which as mentioned above, comes out of the box on the Studio 1.
(Not replying to you directly, but generally to this thread)
$79 per consumable tank, yes, which is rated for 75000 layers (according to [0]) which is "approximately 190 prints with an average height of 39 mm at a layer height of 100 µm" - not that long if you're printing regularly.
In contrast, I can get 6 FEP sheets for my Mars 2 Pro for $21 which don't appear to have any official lifetimes but generic internet advice says "40-50 prints" on the low side. That'd be 240 prints for $21 compared with 190 prints for $79.
I'm not suggesting Formlabs would do this, but advertising the $79 add-on and then making very few of them available would be a way for a manufacturer to look open while actually not supporting openness.
The $79 addon is also needed to use all of Formlabs existing engineering grade resins, which are more expensive than the Alpha resins. The engineering grade Tough 1500 is already validated on the Studio 1, and requires the $79 tank, plus is a major selling point of this printer.
There no reason for FormLabs to limit supply of the $79 tanks, it would also limit their ability to sell their more expensive resins to Studio 1 customers, and also removes a clear pathway to get people to upgrade to their more expensive machines, capable of working with their even more complex, and expensive, engineering resins.
I don't even think they're driving hype, they just have a problem common in the hardware world, they are far too optimistic in their shipping timeline.
Versus a company like Bambu who seems to ramp up production now, in advance of selling the product.
A fire extinguisher will not get you out. A fire extinguisher it to clear a path so you can get to the path outside. Many people get this wrong - they put the fire extinguisher by the door, but if you are at the door you should be going outside not trying to fight the fire. (most fires are small enough that you can put them out with a fire extinguisher so this seems to work - but that is not the primary purpose)
What you need is a path out when there is a large fire. Both exits and fire extinguishers are part of that. Everything else is a nice to have (sometimes very nice), but you still have to prepare for when everything else fails.
Is that because the firefighters are bored or because they want to show the public that they're doing something valuable before the public realizes that we don't need so many of them?
Firefighters do a lot more than you probably realize. For instance, who is carrying grandma with her broken hip down the rickety stairs from her top floor bathroom? It's probably not just the two-person ambulance crew. You going to get grandpa to help?
These are the kinds of routine jobs that fire crews handle everyday that are invaluable to society.
Don't forget all of those cats stuck in tree that get rescued by local FD. Recent stories of pets in storm drains being rescued as well. But as someone else already posted, most are responding to auto accidents. Nothing as useful for redirecting traffic and shielding first responders than a giant firetruck blocking the lanes.
I realize it which is why their strategy is a good one. Does it make sense for the people who are able to do that job also all be able to put out fires?
I think someone that can carry grandma down the stairs and also occasionally put out a catastrophic fire is a pretty reasonable and efficient use of taxpayer money. The alternative would be what, having two different people to do those things?
It depends. In Ontario (or at least Toronto where I live), the fire department and ambulance services are separate. The paramedics are chronically underfunded and the result is that the fire department is constantly running up milage on multiple expensive and massive fire trucks for routine calls that should just have been a paramedic. This also compounds traffic issues when they park at their destination.
It makes sense for them to automatically show up for some situations (eg car accidents), but there should be a properly funded triage system.
Same goes for the police, which are often called for situations where there should be some other social workers available (again, there are exceptions where police should also be present in those situations).
Where I live, the fire department has rescue trucks which sometimes can be large (like a ladder-less fire truck) but can also be as small as a heavy duty work truck. Some departments have enough money to have all kinds of various vehicles for special situations while other departments have just enough to own one vehicle to cover as many needs as possible. It would make more sense to buy something smaller but can they justify the cost to the county or city? And in cities, they still need the big ladder truck and likely need to host an ambulance in the station and probably a fire chief vehicle too. The money is limited as well as the space. I'm sure cities are already rethinking what they actually need now versus 50 years ago. I've already seen paramedic vehicles that are not ambulances, they look like a work van or truck, just enough for two paramedics and enough supplies to treat someone that doesn't need to immediately go to the hospital or to serve as an auxiliary during a mass casualty event. The truck is way cheaper than an ambulance.
>It depends. In Ontario (or at least Toronto where I live), the fire department and ambulance services are separate. The paramedics are chronically underfunded
That isn't cost effective. They need the large trucks just in case - even though realistically they are never used. A large truck isn't that much more expensive to drive than a small one, and in any case if the large truck isn't used for more than a couple days you need to take it for a drive - ensure all the operators know how to drive it and if something broke (sitting is harmful to moving parts - wear is worse, but sitting is harmful) you want to find out and fix it right away.
Which is to say the small cheaper car only makes sense after you have enough large ones and conclude you still need more cars.
Maybe? Firefighting is extremely physically demanding, which is why you'll often see firehouses with built in gym, and rarely see a fat fire fighter. So that physical capability can be used in other circumstances.
Also, firefighters need to know how to dismantle a house quickly to support their operations. So if the door needs to come off the hinges to get grandma down the stairs, firefighters will be prepared for that and have it done in 30 seconds
Sure. And that's carrying someone out of a burning building. Most of the time the building you're getting someone out of isn't burning and you don't need someone trained to fight fires to do that and that person will cost less to employ.
Powerlifting doesn't teach you the technique and spotting required to walk backwards down a staircase while holding a stretcher above your head so that grandma, who is in extreme pain, doesn't slide off and tumble to the bottom.
Neither does firefighting. The point is if we don't need as many firefighters to fight the fewer fires we have, there are more cost-effective ways of maintaining a group of first responders for medical emergencies.
You must be enthusiastic about people using ERs when they have strep throat, right?
Let me think for a few seconds about ideas. Fitter EMTs who can assist people in more demanding physical situations. A subset of firefighters who can provide medical assistance but don't need the complete fire training curriculum and so can be paid less. Maintaining the ratio of firefighters and stations which was previously found satisfactory but adjusting it for requiring fewer of them since we have fewer fires.
The problem is that the need is spiky. You don't need many of them until an old apartment building or factory catches fire because of cladding made in the 70s.
They are like seat belts, or audit logs. You don't need so many of them, right up until you do.
Mass casualty events are rare, but you damned sure want a good response when one happens or the losses will be high. It's a never ending cycle that people seem to suffer from.
OMG so many people died, we need to spare no expense in insuring this doesn't happen again.
[time passes]
OMG these emergency services are so expensive, why do we even have them.
Ahh yes, the old "why do we have all these inefficient empty hospital beds???" problem.
On a fundamental level, efficiency and resilience are always a trade-off. A perfectly efficient system also tends to be perfectly brittle! In practice everything needs some buffer.
We shouldn't aim for "as close to 100% efficiency on as possible," but rather "lowest risk-adjusted expected cost, including mishaps." The latter correctly prices rare events.
> Except if you are hitting 100% utilization at any point, there isn't really any slack.
Yes, that's why the phrase "when the need lessens" is important.
Besides that, it may be a reasonable decision that 95% utilization is acceptable in order to spend the additional money on something that provides more benefit.
>> We're facing the issue in Ontario where firefighters are bored out of their minds and are being used as first responders for anything and everything. They show up to random fender benders.
> Is that because the firefighters are bored or because they want to show the public that they're doing something valuable before the public realizes that we don't need so many of them?
If they need to do that, it's not because of the public. It's probably because they got a "challenge" from some clever idiot with a business or economics degree.
Also, people typically want something valuable to do, so they go find it. That's not something the proponents of our coming AI utopia seem to understand.
I think that's being a bit too much here. I can't speak for Ontario fire departments, but in the US, major cities have specialized trucks with crews trained for things specific to auto accidents. Hazmat training to deal with leaking fuel/oil/fluids to stay safe and clean up.
Keeping firefighters from being bored is why you see them playing pickleball or other sporty things around the firehouse. If your firefighters are that bored, you should look at having the chief replaced with someone better trained. Especially for the city the size of Ontario.
Firefighters have interesting working rules. They are expected to work 8 hour days, but they are in the fire house for multi-day shifts.
Their work 8 hours which is a mix of physical fitness training (carefully designed to keep them in shape without being too wore out to respond if something does happen as they finish training) and training. They have a lot of time to learn about all the latest medical emergency treatments, the latest in fire fighting. They get constant CPR refreshers because even though they are often first on the scene when CPR is needed it still doesn't happen often enough to remember.
The other 16 hours - 8 of them are sleeping. the other 8 are theirs to do whatever. Any good firehouse will keep plenty of games (TV, board games, pickelball...) so that they are not bored.
You might not need (say) 100 firefighters for the day to day work in a medium city any more... but you absolutely need 100 firefighters when the large chemical plant goes up in a blaze.
It's hard enough in Germany to balance that, but we at least can draw on the advantage of Germany being decently settled which means we can have support crews come in from neighboring cities. But in the US where it might be the case that the nearest city with enough staff is hours of driving away? By the time you get enough staff on site, the entire plant is gone.
That is not how the US looks/works. The large chemical plant is in a large city (or suburb) where they can call plenty of other nearby cities for help.
Most of the land in the US doesn't have enough population to support a large chemical plant. The plant needs not only the people who work in the plant. It also needs schools, grocery stores, libraries, doctors... And that many people also really want things like sports teams. A small chemical plant can locate in a rural areas, but not a large one.
i'm telling ya clip the fire department, if a car wreck happens you can just have a doorfash guy come put cones around and light the accident on fire, itll clear up in a couple hours boom i just saved taxpayers trillions of dollars in waste
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