O GOD PYTHON

chorl

Yeah. The language used to teach 6.01. I keep putting semicolons on the end of everything and bracketing random things!

It’s a totally different thought paradigm from the likes of JavaC+++Script.

So I found out that the aluminum plate I cut the arm pieces from was actually .515″. Odd, but whatever. The arm links ended up being ~1/16″ wider than they were supposed to be, which messed with fitting things. So the solution was to plane down the links in the milling machine the next time I was in the Media Lab.

That sounded so simple. Anyways, here’s a picture of things that are supposed to be .500 +/- .003 but are not.

Yeah. That’s pretty damned inaccurate, but at least the mill is consistent in the thousandths digit. Fortunately, the thickness of the arm itself is a rather noncritical dimension.
I hate ill-maintained flakey public tools. I don’t even understand how things got fucked up this badly. Seriously, .465 on a part that’s supposed to be a half inch? Dialing in .015 seems to mean .005 to .025.

Something was tilted the wrong way also. That .465 part was .510 at the other end (about 12 inches).

If you had to pick between these two milling machines:

a) Huge old-skool Bridgeport, super smooth with DRO, but 1 good vise, no clamping kits, no parallels, no drill chuck, no edge finders, nor apparently the ability to change speeds, and about 10 minutes walk away

or

b) Shaky Taiwanese import mill-drill. Great tool selection, but shitty vise, backlash measured in miles, a Z-axis that goes Tokyo Drift at will (as pictured) , a clamped round-column that likes to move side-to-side, cheap vise, half a clamping kit, but across the street?

…which would you choose?

Man, if I could jack the ML’s milling tool bucket and have nobody notice, I’d totally take the Bridgeport. In fact, it’s so smooth and huge that I can’t use Ghettoedging because the massive amount of cast iron dampens the tool noises so much.

Oh well. Now that my giant slabs of aluminum have arrived, I’ll recut the arm pieces. 2024 precision ground is better than .515″ 6061.

.515… that’s such a weird thickness, isn’t it?

And we’re off.

chorl

Today’s class registration day!

The lineup as it stands:

  • 2.001 Mechanics and Materials I
    Effectively the “intro to course 2” class. Why stuff breaks. Rods, beams, trusses, the good stuff.
  • 6.01 Intro to EECS
    It used to be that the Intro to EECS course was exclusively software (6.001). But this new course alsointroduces some robotics. Hey, Charles and robots…. what can possibly go wrong?
  • 18.03 Differential Equations
    Learn more about why lines are squiggly and what that implies for the Universe as a whole.
  • 21W.747 Rhetoric
    I will be able to bash you over the head with reasons why art and literature suck in a scientific, rational manner.

TechFair is also today. I swung by after dropping off my registration materials and found out just how unprepared I was for these large “career fair” type events. Things like “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t bring my resumë…” Mostly because I dropped in on a moment’s notice and also because I don’t have one.

What?! Seriously?!

Yeah, at least not a real one. There’s my “get into college” scrap-together, but nobody really cares what clubs I was the captain of last year.

So I’ll be constructing one Real Soon Now, and probably post it here also. The site also doubles as my portfolio (which I also need to set up, at least a formal comprehensive gallery type) so it’s warranted.

Anyways, it’s the last day before classes begin. In a mad dash to get in the last possible bit of work on TB before Hell, I’ll be visiting more hardware stores. “Hardware” stores, I should specify, as it seems the majority of them are devoid of a good fastener selection. ACE Hardware is where I got most of my stuff in Atlanta, and there also seems to be locations close by, so they’re on the list. Let’s see if the Boston locations are any good.

When I need quite literally one screw, I don’t want to wait 2 days for McMaster to ship me 100. It’s nice for building a hardware cache, but I need one screw like right frackin’ now.

[06:00] aarontagg: im amazed theres none at mit
[06:00] aarontagg: screws that is
[06:01] thebluehamster01: i think there’s plenty screws
[06:01] thebluehamster01: but again
[06:01] thebluehamster01: I DON’T GET ANY

Update: T.A.G Ace Hardware in Porter Square wins an internets. They had a whole section of the store devoted to fasteners (as it should be) and I stocked up on every type of screw that TB needs.  I know what the only place I’m going back to is.