After Kevin’s attempt at ‘snark’, I was simply going to ignore this post going forward. On the other hand, Dui, ni shuo de dui brought out some other things that I thought I would address.
A little history- I’ve been around before the term ‘DIYers’ existed. We called it ‘hobbiest’ in my day. When I started building things, we often didn’t have plans, some engineer had thrown together a drawing and we got at times no more than 5 sentences to build with. It’s one of the reasons that ‘shitty regulations’ for safety now exist. I’ve been around a very long time as a DIYer. I’ve attached just a few pix of a few projects in the past 2 years, not to mention my building and soldering together personal computer circuit boards back in the 80’s, wiring and operating a mainframe for a bank, creating my own engineered designs of various jigs/hardware/electronics etc. and a lot more.
Before these connectors existed, we had a tool called a wire-wrap tool that was the core wiring methodology. A wire that wasn’t in place properly could arc and shut down a million dollar machine. Many of the newer connectors including Molex can be ordered from Mouser Electronics that lock into the board. It’s not that these are unavailable by any means or unreasonably expensive.
At every level Ryan has taken my ‘complaints’ and addressed them in the way he sees fit. His engineering design is excellent as is his product. However, with most engineers, the documentation element is lagging and by far the most boring part of the exciting world of creating new products and having ideas come to fruition. More often than not, the engineer writes from the perspective of working on a product for several years and forgets that some individuals that come in fresh don’t have the base knowledge that the engineer has after many years of working on the product. When a fresh person looks at something and brings up a point, no matter if no one else has ever brought up the point, it should be noted as a possible issue and considered and corrected. Ryan has been working to do this.
After working with well over 500 engineers in my career- ExxonMobil, Mannington Mills, Wheaton Glass, IBM, Bose, USAF, nuclear energy sites as a few companies and working in over 2 dozen industries, I would consider myself well versed in being able to communicate as well as understand the complexities of engineers as a whole. After writing business specifications and tech specs for over 35 years, I fully get how in some fields, you have to query the person multiple times for a long period of time to get the actual knowledge transferred from their brain to paper so others can use it.
I offered to help Ryan with the website and get the site streamlined for the LR2 to insure individuals could not only find information but be able to translate it easily into a building and working a SAFE product without missing instructions or chasing down facts needed. Considering I run a self designed and built server farm, have over 1000 programs custom designed, developed and deployed in top companies including hundreds of websites, it wasn’t a trivial offer. The offer still stands if he is interested in getting the site and the knowledge in a location that is cleanly and directly available for his users.
The Z drop on Friday is serious and can have some deadly consequences (ie; bit sheers off on the drop and a 20000 rpm piece of raw sharp metal flying through the air into a human). Ryan had adjusted the website with the new stepper link AFTER I ‘complained’ and had already assembled the unit. When I plugged in the connectors on the board and tried it for a second run, I had no expectation that the connector would pop out. They have since been silicone locked in and Molex connectors are on order.
AGAIN, For the umpteenth time- I fully respect Ryans hours he has put into this project and his willingness to share it out in the community. It’s a brilliant project that in my opinion ranks in the top 5 machines that will be in my shop. I fully respect that he has an outstanding product. He’s put a TON of hours into making this work and function for the DIYers community. HUGE props for doing that. With that said- there is ALWAYS room for improvement (ie; version 2 of the product). The connectors would be one place where the product could be improved and safety insured.
At no level are my posts intended to INSULT Ryan or COMPLAIN. They are simply to advise areas that I see as deficient that could improve the experience for the users as well as provide feedback on an items that appear in my own build. If the forum users aren’t comfortable with individuals bringing up these kinds of points for the ENTIRE COMMUNITY, maybe you need to check your ego’s and start thinking about what the topic is and what is truly at stake. One injury due to something like the connector Z drop could ruin Ryan and damage the DIYer community. I personally think Ryan DESERVES to hear feedback about issues that concern his product(s). What he does with that information is fully on him.
I hope folks can address the issues in the future and not attack the messenger. Sometimes, a different perspective on an issue leads to new discoveries and clarity where murkiness existed before.
Allison
P.S. Kevin, you can apologize at any point (snark).