Snake oil?

[skotl]

The Audiophoolery thread on the apparently "North Korean" Vintage radio website is possibly the only one that hasn't been closed after a few pages. Some of the posts about these snake oil products, you couldn't make up!

The Audiophoolery Thread. - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

The Audiophoolery Thread. General Vintage Technology Discussions

www.vintage-radio.net

Jeez. One of the links takes you to this - pebbles for $99 each!

This really shouldn't be legal...

Brilliant Pebbles Advanced Audio Video Tweak

crystals, audio video tweaks, audio crystals

www.machinadynamica.com

 

[skotl]

 

[Seadog]

In the same vein

 

[redlig]

Super fuse, £65

As an aside, special fuses that allow smooth power to your welder will improve your weld beads. I can do them for £50 posted, PM me.
As they're for welding and can blow, I'll do a deal, £500 for 10, and I'll throw in a box of rods.

Damm I could have done with some of those last week. Too late now the welder has gone US.

 

[Morris]

Jeez. One of the links takes you to this - pebbles for $99 each!

This really shouldn't be legal...

Brilliant Pebbles Advanced Audio Video Tweak

crystals, audio video tweaks, audio crystals

www.machinadynamica.com

View attachment 432488

That was a pee take. Have a look at some of the other products.

 

[Morris]

The Audiophoolery thread on the apparently "North Korean" Vintage radio website is possibly the only one that hasn't been closed after a few pages. Some of the posts about these snake oil products, you couldn't make up!

The Audiophoolery Thread. - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

The Audiophoolery Thread. General Vintage Technology Discussions

www.vintage-radio.net

This is a long running thread.

More 'Audiophile' bullsh*t - Page 1 - Home Cinema & Hi-Fi - PistonHeads UK

There's also one on DIYaudio but I can't find it ATM.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Flanders and Swann

I used to love them, very clever.

 

[tom2207]

I used to love them, very clever.

a tad off topic , but I think this is genius ,,, not that off topic ever maters much here lol

 

[redlig]

I used to love them, very clever.

Hold tight!!

 

[Robotstar5]

Lots of water works I went to had "staging" load schedule systems to ramp up the works sequentially after a shutdown or power outage - otherwise the huge inrush of all the pumps would have the LAN voltage drop & trip everything out (plus they needed to have some kit operating before other kit could be started). AFAIK it was all managed by PLC's.

We had similar in the sand plant at the foundry, the conveyor belts had to be started in sequence, basically last one first because if you started the first belt it would dump that much sand onto the second belt the load would be too much for the second belt motor. no PLC's in those days, it was all push buttons on a big control panel running a couple of dozen belts.

 

[GRW]

We had similar in the sand plant at the foundry, the conveyor belts had to be started in sequence, basically last one first because if you started the first belt it would dump that much sand onto the second belt the load would be too much for the second belt motor. no PLC's in those days, it was all push buttons on a big control panel running a couple of dozen belts.

There's still some human intervention needed at the Water Plants.
If there are power cuts (& the backup gen kicks-in on auto) most of the sites Alarm in vi's Telemetry to a central control, who call-out the team staffer on s-by to check & restart the works.

WW were looking into whether they could fully automate and eliminate the Callout by having all pumps auto-restart instead of manual restart if they tripped out (to save money of course from Callout wages) and I was asked if it were possible. I had to say (from the genny automation side) that yes it was technically possible - but that from a Risk perspective I couldn't state it wasn't without risks to the plant.
I pointed out that a pump might have tripped due to a blockage or an electrical fault - hence the need for a human to confirm that the kit was safe to restart, & that kit damage, or fires etc are a consequential & foreseeable Risk from a failure to check before restarting.
It wasn't the answer they really wanted - but

 

[daleyd]

I was commissioning a big flotation dryer in a printing plant in Serbia back in about 2007 ish.

Think it had 4-5 big motors driving fans (2 X 75kW and the rest about 40 kW) - I’d already run them up manually one by one and all was ok until I came to test the automatic start, controlled by the PLC - each motor starts and there’s a 10 sec delay until the next one kicks in to stop the start up current tripping anything.

I’m stood at the screen around the back by the motors, pushed the button and the first motor starts, 10 secs later the second one starts, and as the third one kicks in the lights in the entire factory go out - silence apart from the sound of things coasting to a stop.

Guy was working on the water system just behind me had a bit of a laugh and a joke but we had assumed it was just a coincidence…

Got the power back on a few hours later and I’m repeating the same test - same result at exactly the same time, third motor…

Had quite an irate meeting with the factory manager about how I had cost them thousands in downtime and lost production, and how our gear was the worst he had ever encountered and he’d be suing us for compensation.

A few hours later he sheepishly came around and apologised as it turned out they had replaced the main breaker for the whole factory to put a bigger one in to accommodate the new line going in, but had left the overload setting the same as the old one - so an extra 150kW it could cope with but the third motor was just too much

 

[zx9]

I was commissioning a big flotation dryer in a printing plant in Serbia back in about 2007 ish.

Think it had 4-5 big motors driving fans (2 X 75kW and the rest about 40 kW) - I’d already run them up manually one by one and all was ok until I came to test the automatic start, controlled by the PLC - each motor starts and there’s a 10 sec delay until the next one kicks in to stop the start up current tripping anything.

I’m stood at the screen around the back by the motors, pushed the button and the first motor starts, 10 secs later the second one starts, and as the third one kicks in the lights in the entire factory go out - silence apart from the sound of things coasting to a stop.

Guy was working on the water system just behind me had a bit of a laugh and a joke but we had assumed it was just a coincidence…

Got the power back on a few hours later and I’m repeating the same test - same result at exactly the same time, third motor…

Had quite an irate meeting with the factory manager about how I had cost them thousands in downtime and lost production, and how our gear was the worst he had ever encountered and he’d be suing us for compensation.

A few hours later he sheepishly came around and apologised as it turned out they had replaced the main breaker for the whole factory to put a bigger one in to accommodate the new line going in, but had left the overload setting the same as the old one - so an extra 150kW it could cope with but the third motor was just too much

We had similar with a massive Christie 'laser' video cube wall, I had requested a 32A supply and using staggered start up which the boxes were capable of doing, could get the entire wall up repeatedly without failure. Until later in the day it did fail whilst running taking out the breaker, it continued to do so at seemingly random intervals until late in the afternoon when most of the staff had left, a meeting with the contractor who installed the new power was arranged for the next day. Electrical contractor insisted that the supply was adequate and correctly protected so it must be the Christie wall at fault, remember each cube pulled less than an amp but I was right at the top of the 32A supply. Whilst walking around with the contractor I noticed that shortly after a toilet was flushed in an adjacent room, the video wall would fail. Eventually it was found that our new supply was the supply to the hand dryers in the toilet which had been 'uprated' to 32A because what do video wall designers know about electrics ....
This was in a large control room displaying global deployment of assets, think the modern day version of WAFs pushing model planes around with sticks.

 

[Robotstar5]

There's still some human intervention needed at the Water Plants.
If there are power cuts (& the backup gen kicks-in on auto) most of the sites Alarm in vi's Telemetry to a central control, who call-out the team staffer on s-by to check & restart the works.

We didn't need a call-out as the maintenance crib was underneath the control platform, although there were alarms to indicate an overload we didn't need them as a couple of dozen big contactors dropping out overhead gave us a clue