Thorry

Write a book about your struggles

I never understood the need to keep tabs open. I might be old fashioned, but I’ve never felt the need to keep any tab open ever. Depending on what I’m doing I often have multiple browser windows open, some of which do have some tabs I use a lot (online tools or documentation for example). But that’s like 3 tabs, which I close whenever I’m done doing what I was doing.

On my phone it’s specifically configured to wipe everything on exit. So no browser history, no open tabs, no cookies remaining etc. I can sort of reason why people would keep a lot of tabs open, but can’t understand the need to do so.

It’s because of the way these kinds of devices work. With a lot of electronics there is a power supply that converts AC to DC, sometimes a single voltage, sometimes multiple. It’s relatively easy to have these kinds of power supplies be able to switch between voltage ranges, or support a wide range so it doesn’t even matter. These kinds of power supplies also don’t really care about the frequency, so that helps as well. Often these have a standard socket on the back, so you can just have different leads to make it compatible all around the world.

However when the device includes a large heater, like in the home appliances you mentioned, having any kind of power conversion would be very inefficient and not needed. All we need is the raw energy and a resistor to be able to convert the power into heat. But the way that works is using Ohms law (V = I x R), where the power being converted into heat is P = I x V. The heating element has a fixed resistance, since it’s a physical thing. That means whenever the voltage changes, the amount of energy being converted into heat changes as well. Now this is fine if the voltage is somewhere between 230 and 250V like in Europe, that’s a small change that probably doesn’t impact the function of the machine. But when the machine is made for 240V and you put in 115V, that’s a huge difference.

The machine would technically function, but the heating would be piss poor. This means the iron takes ages to heat up, the water in the washing machine won’t get hot enough etc. This might also impact the design, for example the programs the machine can run, or how fast the water flows over the heating element etc.

The other way around is just dangerous, putting too much volt into components might damage them, heating elements will just burn out and melt causing a fire hazard. So that’s just dangerous and a bad idea.

As for things like blenders and refrigerators, that would depend more on the actual design of the machine. Sometimes it’s due to a motor running directly on the AC, but in my experience that’s rare these days. Often they are driven using DC and a motor driver which can provide things like 3 or 6 coil drives for smoother function and better efficiency, speed control etc. Something like a blender might be a bit too small for a physical switch or replaceable cord. So it depends and the reason might not be electrical in nature.

Did you dry your filament? How old is it? Did you get all your filament pre-owned as well? Depending on the kind of material, it has a limited shelf life, once you get beyond that it won’t ever print right.

Try some brand new filament and see how that works.

I AM CUTE AS A BOAR!

I feel you brother, but small scale wind is pathetic. It makes so much noise and produces fuck all for energy. If you look into the amount of engineering that goes into large scale wind mills, it’s crazy. They are really pushing the limits of what humans can do and end up with pretty good stuff. I’m all for windmills and would love to have one. But I’ve looked into it and it sucks ass for small scale.

You don’t put the camera on the eyepiece, the camera becomes the eyepiece. I’ve used my DSLR for decades with my scope, until I bought a real astro cam.

Usually it’s a combination of a T-ring to adapt the camera lens mounting system into a generic screw form. Then a T adaptor gets screwed into that, which is basically a small little tube with the diameter of the hole the eyepiece goes in.

On some of my scopes the hole is large, with a piece that slots in and allows for small eyepiece to be placed. When I remove all of that I’m left with a large hole to fit in the T adaptor. This is important as it allows the entire sensor to receive light.

There’s also an extra piece one could screw on called a coma corrector. This is an extra lens that reduces distortion due to the optics of the scope and of the camera not being exactly compatible. But these reduce light throughput and can cause vignettes, but some people swear by them.

These are all very cheap components (relative to all the other astro photography stuff) and they are easily available.

Have you checked wind loading in your area? These things can become a sail very easily and need to be securely mounted as to not go flying. Also the metal frames need to be grounded, I don’t see a grounding wire?

Not to be down on your project, it’s a cool project, but I wouldn’t want your work to go to waste within a year.

Are we going some sort of animal? Of more of like anime waifu kind of vibe?

Well yes and no. It’s a giant piece of silicon, but it’s also exposed to high energy rays all the time. Panels can suffer from water ingress and then crack when it freezes. They are exposed to all sorts of animals, both big and small that can cause damage. Have their top surfaces get more opaque due to normal erosion. Those things can either outright break the panel, or slowly make it less efficient. UV rays alone cause a degradation of around 1% every year. However modern more efficient compact panels suffer more from this than the older kind. So old panels might still be going strong, but give a modern panel the same amount of ageing and it might do a lot worse.