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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • “documenting the change” is a pipe dream.

    If you’ve ever worked in maintenance, active production, etc, you’ll be lucky to even have schematics. And trust me, there are a lot of hacks of people fucking with controls for 30+ years straight that soooo much of it is full of “fixes” like this, whether it’s something pushing a button in, or pieces of metal instead of fuses, or wires jumping over what’s “in the way” like whole safety systems and e-stops, contactors forced to run, etc etc etc.







  • Does an old school washer dryer that runs off timer relays / knobs / push buttons really have a CPU? I ask because that’s how mine is and I haven’t had to look at the controls but they seem dead simple to me. I get there’s different cycles but some simple ladder logic should be able to handle that, no? Half the world runs on simple machines like that.







  • Yes. Specifically industrial control and automation, which is apples to oranges to commercial and industrial building power distribution for example.

    I worked for GE as a grunt first building inverters for solar fields and power plants. Then I did field service for them in the American southwest when they shut down the factory and sent all the work to GE Germany and Japan.

    Then when all of the re-work we were doing was done, I passed on traveling indefinitely and came back home to Pittsburgh. I got hired opening a new factory for a company that makes machinery used for plastics recycling and worked there for close to a decade as their only electrical technician. That shop holds a deep place in my heart for the connections and friendships I made there. But I saw us getting slow as fuck and everyone quitting and decided to switch jobs this year for a better paycheck and closer commute. Now I work solely in testing and do a bit of design work and drafting.


  • octobob@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlWork is fulfilling and fun 🙃
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    11 months ago

    Trades are always hiring. My phone says I walk like 5 miles a day just working in our factory. I use my brain, body, problem-solving skills, and have real conversations with my coworkers daily about how to go about the work and solve problems, or just pass the time when we’re not as busy. I learn new things constantly and enjoy working with my hands and making my work look beautiful, which can be surprisingly deep in the field of industrial electrical work.

    Just know that if anyone’s interested in this kinda thing, make sure you have some thick skin and maybe leave a terminally online brain at home


  • FWIW, I’m still using a pixel 3A and don’t have plans to change anytime soon. They really do last for a long time.

    Things like (old) fast charging and not having to charge it every day are what still blow my mind and feel like modern innovations to me. It’s still pretty responsive and fast enough for what I use it for. Sometimes my texts take a little to load anymore but I don’t really mind.

    YMMV depending on what you want out of a phone I guess. I try not to look at my phone unless I have to for a text or call or email abymore. But I’ve been on this train since the Nexus 6P. If you want a solid, stable phone that lasts a long time and very little fluff or bloat, go pixel. The flexibility for custom ROMs and rooting and things is unmatched as well. I’ll continue to use this thing until I drop it down the street one day or it gets aggravating to use somehow




  • Well this is interesting.

    I worked for 7 years at a Swedish company who built granulators, Rapid Granulator AB. I worked stateside though as the only electrical technician.

    From what I could glean about the machinery we built and sold, they would say that the only viable way to recycle plastic is as it was being manufactured. So say you’re a facotry making hundreds of garbage cans a day. All the rejects (wrong chemical makeup, big bulge from the molding process, etc) would go into a granulator for “recycling”. The granulator grinds it down into small pellets which are then used at the beginning of the line.

    From what I remember, customers were very very picky about what could be used after granulation. A little bit of the wrong color of dye would ruin a whole batch for instance. I’m curious to see exactly how this site zero plans to recycle waste products coming from the general population, on an engineering / technical level…

    This, of course, is also dancing around the fact that it’s a bit of an open secret that most places in America do not recycle. And I’m talking systemically, not on an individual level. In my county I know that all recycling goes to the exact same landfill as all the trash. It’s a bit hard to feel hopeful when the USA sends 242 million pounds of plastic straight to the ocean every year. I felt a little better about it when China would sort through and recycle our plastics.