I took a printmaking course at a local art school (MCAD) a long time ago and it was so much fun! Some of the others in the class were printmakers who had signed up for the course just so they'd have access to bigger machines than they had in their shops. It was really cool watching them work.

I'll have to investigate LEGOpress.

In my case? Two days I think (it was long ago). Two very eye-opening days.

Interlocks are especially interesting when they have to be integrated with software.

For safety, you want the interlock to be performed in hardware (what if SW crashed?) but at the same time, the software should be informed that the interlock is active. e.g., the operator opens the door while the machine is moving. A hardware switch should stop the motion, and the software controller must be told that the door is open and take appropriate action.

The fun part comes in when the interlock is implemented as a hardware switch that turns off power to everything (this is the easiest way to do it!) except the main CPU and then at the last minute, when software is close to completion, inform the software team that "oh, by the way, you have to respond to this interlock triggering at any time during operation and recover gracefully." So now, the first indication that the operator opened the door is that the subsystem you were talking to over a communication link is no longer responding. Is it a comms error? Did the subsystem crash or reset? Or did the user open the door and the interlock powered off the subsystem? Who knows? Just Do the Right Thing.

I loved my 1987 Toyota 4x4 pickup with all its mods. My wife used to say that I'd get rid of her before I got rid of it (wife's still here; I sold the truck long ago).

But no way in hell would I want to be a real accident in one. That's why they're no longer sold in the US. Amazing off-roader, cheap and extremely reliable.

But they're stuck in 1980's crash survivability while the rest of the world moved on.

They're selling side by sides today in the <3500 dry wt. category which can be road registered. If used primarily for agriculture, they're even tax exempt from registration in some states. The 80's toyota pickup is better than a side by side and weighs less than 3500, arguably safer, and offers better utility for agriculture. There are plenty of Toyota manufacturing facilities in the US, which would avoid the chicken tax on import. It's not impossible or unreasonable for light weight toyota turbo diesels with hydraulic systems, an aluminum frame, and manual locking hubs to materialize.

That's the dirty secret, is that a lot of the side-by-sides kind of suck in relation to an old Tacoma, S10, Mahindra Roxor or a Kei truck, and cost an arm and a leg. It's amazing to me that Polaris sells as many as they do, given what they cost and their capabilities.

Just looked up their figures -- I would have never guessed they sell 600k+ units/yr of side-by-sides given what they charge for them

Hard to believe that it was that long ago!

This is new? Farmers have been using Belarus tractors for decades. As far back as 1998, I remember a friend in SK whose father had one on his wheat farm.

I am not a farmer, dude. But if I were to buy a car in central Europe, it would probably be a pre-AdBlue diesel.

What's your beef with AdBlue?

To me it seems just like another layer of complexity.

What, you didn't build a snow blade for it :-)

I was just happy I could start mowing again. But since it is a Craftsman they have a ton of accessories available on the used market for very cheap so I might pick up a plow for like $100 to see how it does for next winter.

"It's not cheap, it's Builder Grade."

This kind of thing is not new. In 1998 I worked for a large corporation (I think they were an F100 at the time) that built machines with a feature that could only be enabled if the customer paid an extra fee and had a field technician come out to "install" it.

Unknown to the customer was that all machines were identical. The technician's "installation procedure" was to enter the Service Mode password, select the feature enable option, and exit Service Mode then run a test to make sure it worked.

This is pretty common in commercial/industrial manufacturing. The exception cost to omit certain hardware subsystems when building a product is often higher than the cost of the hardware itself, so it makes more sense to build everything identically and enable/disable features in software.

I love the look of Unimogs and FMTVs.

I was seriously thinking about looking into finding a surplus FMTV until I realized just how loud and uncomfortable they probably are. Sure, that can be fixed, but I have enough projects.