Month: April 2015

Lathe, only machine to make itself?

In my Materials class last week we watched a video that bothered me with a statement that the Lathe was the only machine that can reproduce itself. Its not as if there aren’t other machines that can do that, right? Actually wrong, after a small investigation the Lathe and the Mill are the only 2 machines that have a chance of making themselves in the manner that I now think of it as. Many people on forums mentioned Dave Gingery who actually produced parts of a lathe using a casting then proceeded to use that lathe to make the parts more accurately and make the lathe more efficient. I have never seen this process before but I can tell you with almost absolute certainty that a 3D printer cannot do that. Of course a 3D printer can produce most of its support structure but many of the moving parts need to move along a straight metal rod, or multiple rods depending on the design, and many 3D printers cannot print metal so it is going to be a while before they can fully reproduce and they can’t make themselves from nothing unless I missed something. The only part of a lathe that cannot be made by a lathe is a power source which means that somehow you will have to hook it up to an engine or some type of turning machine (waterwheel maybe?). Assuming that the 3D printer would not be able to make the computer which is like the power module for the 3D printer but neither can it create the wires which power all of the processes while the gears would be easy to make in a lathe with some modifications.

So I say that the video about lathes when they say the lathe is the only machine to make itself is most likely right other than the fact that it can’t do that without an operator which is an argument in its own right.

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Reviewing my Moto G from Republic Wireless

Hello one and all, I haven’t posted anything of significance lately but I have recently bought a Moto G 1st generation from a new and awesome carrier. So, first off, if you haven’t heard of Republic Wireless I don’t really blame you but I saw the beta going on a few years back and had more recently ordered a Defy XT off of ebay and activated it. The main thing about this service is that it can use almost any wifi network to make calls even if you don’t have signal in the house. My grampa has one of the slowest networks that I know of (hughsnet in the middle of nowhere) though me and my mother were both able to talk on our phones through that network easily.

Now Republic is not without it’s problems, such as the first phone I had, The Defy XT, could not do picture messaging and could not turn over calls to the cellular network if you started the call on wifi. The new Moto G still has some problems but it is a large step up from the Defy.

Specs: A bunch of data that makes no sense to the average person who wants to know only “does this thing actually work?”

So, The speed is decently fast, there are hiccups here and there but that only started to appear when I started to use custom launchers, my daily launcher is Yahoo Aviate. The phone has clear audio compared with any phone I had before including my nexus S 4G which was a very good phone.

I think that the wifi calling is a great thing but I have had to transition a few times onto the cellular to hear the person on the other side, though this mostly happens at times when there is high internet traffic in the area I do get a bit annoyed. The battery will last all day with location and bluetooth off but I usually have to charge it twice in one day which is near impossible to some people so buyer be warned when it comes to battery life.

I would like to add other things to this review so if anyone has a question about the phone leave a comment below and I’ll be sure to respond as fast as possible.