Thank you Adam for bringing attention to the science of metrology. We hope you’re able to visit us and tour our facility one day. I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy the calibration lab!
mitutoyo, i would so dearly love to use your calipers, but you STILL do not make any left handed versions. we are 12% of the general population, and much greater in the creative community. please help us achieve our best results. thank you.
Adam, thank you for not editing out any goofs, repetitions or dead air. Being able to listen along at a human pace makes these tool tips unusually watchable amongst the breathless TikTok madness that is most of UA-cam.
I really dont think most of youtube is tiktok madness most of it is reviews on various forms of media,tools and entertainment followed by music, reactions and the tiktok crap.
@@amartinez97 I remember hearing there is something like 500 hrs of video uploaded every minute. Theres no need to be watching something you don't like. Shorts(rebranded tiki toks) have there place, and sponsored tool reviews are a joke. That being said, I wish yt wouldn't recommend that garbage so much.
From my time in a Cal lab I'll never forget this: "a man with a watch knows what time it is. Give him another watch and he's not so sure anymore." It's great to see a person as enthusiastic as Adam.
That's attributed to Einstein. Since your two clocks aren't in the exact same place, gravity pulls just a little bit different on them, and their velocity is a little bit different, so relativity warps the passage of time for the two clocks.
@@2993LP time is not going to dilate so much locally to matter to me. Now when they launched the first satellites they didn't know if it'd matter then. So they built the first satellites with a switch in them. If it mattered they'd flip the switch. It turns out it did matter too.
Adam at 37:34, "I am like a bull in a china shop." I'm surprised Adam still uses this phrase since he knows that bulls avoid knocking over china while in a china shop since he tested this on Mythbusters!
I think the video's point applies here - they measured that myth, and found it to be incorrect and inaccurate for their specific purposes, but for a quick throwaway metaphor to counter a bit of clumsiness with humour, it still fits our general understanding of the world well enough to fill in the gap.
I too had to make this same comment. Found it funny how he referenced a myth they did and it is also kind of a fitting how you can't really measure anything precisely. Like how destructive is a bull in a china shop really?
Oooh, this is a neat bit of history actually! "Bull in a China shop" is a fossil phrase. The use of the phrase lasted longer than the collective memory of its meaning! It originally referred to John Bull, who was kind of like England's Uncle Sam and first appeared as a newspaper comic satirizing English interference in Chinese markets.
I'm a metrologist and I'm making this video required viewing for all the engineers I have to work with. My favorite measurement tool is a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM). After almost 20 years of Adam teaching me new stuff, I finally know a little more about the subject than he did. Yet he still managed to explain it better than I could. Thanks, as always.
I'm a QC Inspector for the aerospace, defense, nuclear/powe-gen, and med device industry. I routinely inspect things that are measured to the micron and less, mostly spinal medical implants and parts used to perform angioplasty...on infants. I get small. In my 20 years of working small, I have never seen anyone so passionate and enamored of process as myself, until now. Also, your quote "All measurement is a compromise or circumstances." Is beautiful and I will be printing and framing it for my office (quoting you of course), come Monday. Thank you for shedding a little light on something I take very seriously. I could tell you some really cool stories and circumstances surrounding the processes and environments required to make measurements even smaller than those you discussed. Also, Mitutoyo, accept no substitutes.
I love how when faced with the decision, he opts to go less into how neat gauge block ringing is or about how useful it is to heat parts when fitting them, and more into the philosophical ideas behind what is knowable. It tickles a certain part of my brain which I enjoy a lot, and it takes a special kind of person to make the jump from these superficial facts to the abstract layers that lie beneath.
If there’s one thing that I like about this channel is just how improvised everything is. Most large channels are all well prepared and everything when it comes to making videos but Adam here goes out on the fly and takes it all in one take, even when it comes to asking Alexa something and then telling her to shut up or reading paperwork while the camera’s rolling. He’s a mad scientist and I love it
It's rare to have someone knowledgeable and charismatic enough to be able to pull that off. For most people they would come off as awkward and rambling.
I'm as of recently a Quality Analyst at an engine factory. I don't get to use it yet, but the measurement labs and equipment are terrifying and awe-inspiring. Terrifying in how unbelievably difficult it is to measure things this accurately, and we're doing it. I see lots of Mitutoyo's stuff as well as Starrett, lots of granite everywhere, and the really fancy stuff like the gauge blocks are locked up in a special lab that's squeaky clean, in stark contrast to the common filth of the factory. It just sparks a sense of reverence, Quality is the field where the philosophical and abstract are blended with the physical and concrete, that's why I love it so much.
@@galaga00 They are indeed. The ones at my work get sent off for external recalibration yearly to make sure surface wear hasn't taken them below the accepted tolerance
@@peteg22397 Every plant that has an ISO-compliant management system have regular calibrations that are traceable to NIST standards. Great initial portion of study (where does precision truly come from!?) in the field of Quality. Metrology is awesome, but I do prefer the people side of the field.
It's important to know that it doesn't stay that way through anything but hard work. When the rest of the plant is filthy, the lab is the place that MUST always inspire us to do better. Metrologists have a heavy burden, and not all live up to the title.
I love the “im like a bull in a china shop” line from Adam & then the silent pause & realization that he has already Busted that myth. Still one of my favorite episodes ever & biggest surprises from the show.
@@imnoblueberry8502 They tested the myth of the phrase "Like a bull in a china shop." which implies one is clumsy as much as a bull would tear through a china shop and destroy everything. They got an actual bull and set up a mock china shop and had the bull chase rodeo clowns or an equivalent through the "shop" or if that wasn't the case and I'm just having a Mandela Effect moment, at the very least they had the bull run through the mock shop. To everyone's surprise the animal did not knock over a single shelf and none of the test china was broken, completely busting the myth. The reality is that the animal didn't want to collide with any obstacles as much as you would not want to collide with any tree while running through a forest.
@@freekthecat oh wow that’s pretty cool and makes a lot of sense when u put it like that. Still crazy tho that a big bull can move quickly through rows with china and still not hit anything😮 Thank u for the response and clarification man😄👍
I was listening to this and as soon as he said it, I paused too and was like, "heeeeey, wait...." and I immediately stopped what I was doing just to see if anyone else had caught that and found your comment. 😊
I work in a metrology lab and I can say that I absolutely love my job! Waking up and going to work brings me joy! I also love how excited Adam is about metrology!!!
The Pursuit of Precision is such a fascinating tale of human endeavor. The development of zero, base ten math, calculators (both the people and then development of machines), engineering tolerances, manufacturing tolerances... the advent of the ruler which brought on the sliderule. Surveying using gunter chains and now GPS with accuracy down to micometers. Machinist chasing zeros. Mathematicians chasing zeros. Engineers chasing zeros. It's so intertwined with human history and development that we are at a point where precision can speak the tale of human development.
And precision is the reason humans are no longer part of a lot of manufacturing. Humans just cannot achieve repeatable, high precision results. That takes machinery. A modern high end CNC machine can outperform a master machinist and do it faster and more reliability. Now, it still takes a master machinist to do the setup and configuration of said CNC machine, but it only takes one time. Instead of having to hire an entire team of master machinists to make things, you hire one once to set up your machines, and then you're done. And there is no going back.
I've been a metrologist for 31 years, absolutely LOVE how much Adam brings to our science and career. Every day, tens of thousands of calibrations are done so that everything you use as a consumer is measured to the millionth of 'whatever'. Love this channel!
Just started a job as a (lab) metrologist - seeing him fumble through certificates is already familiar... Really cool to learn about Guage blocks and ringing
Now that is the rabbit hole from which there is no escape. Some are useful in some contexts, etc. I was able to get my head around it for scientific theories (them being the latest greatest approximation that was useful) but when this principle is extended to something like "truth" (where it is absolutely valid) one realizes every understanding we can have is relative, based on an imaginary model in our heads. That one can never know every single factor involved (no reductionist truth). I worked with some great physicists and learned to think in probabilities and that if something was 90% probable to them it was more certain that most people could be about anything in their lives. And of course that it's much easier to know when something is wrong though that's not the end of the story because even though someone's facts or thinking might be wrong their perception (e.g., of how something is interacting) might hold value. My picture of reality supplied by Hubble is still just a picture in my head and to pretend to myself that I understand it would be as crazy as someone's picture of a bearded god giving them their daily bread. That brings us to the "useful" part that I interpret as something that clicks with everything else and leads to greater understanding and ability to do things. People with too many imaginary false beliefs (lets say astrology and faeries) aren't usually able to fix their own washing machine.
When I first started machining. My biggest epiphany was wrapping my head around not only measuring but thinking of things in life you think are square. But in the machining world making blocks square is a whole different world.
@@fassay I guess it really just depends on how bad the saw cut is on the block and if I can get two sides parallel first. If the block is bad enough I usually just use the "pin method" ( not sure if it's actually got a name) on my movable jaw.
My favorite class in engineering school was uncertainty analysis... confidence and the degree of confidence, the certainty of certainty, is an amazingly useful subject, applicable in almost every imaginable area of study or thought. Not only can you calculate the things you know you're certain of, but also the things you can't be certain about, it's math-magical. Great show man 👏
Been a Metrologist for 23 years. You cant imagine how awesome it is knowing that more people will know how cool and amazing the field is from this. We define reality lol.
Just think of medieval times or even 50-100 years back when there were no gauge blocks. People measured with sticks and copied from reference objects. It's even more a mystery now how they built the great pyramids with those big heavy stone blocks.
My dad was a carpenter from the age of 13 (he quit school to support his siblings) until he died at 67. In my teens (i'm mid-50s now) I worked with him off and on. When calling out measurements he used to say "cut the line" or "leave the line" it wasn't until recently that I internalized what he was telling the saw-man with that phrase. My favorite measuring tool: the foldable wooden ruler. There's just something about it that I enjoy.
My current favorite measuring instrument is my oscilloscope! A little peek into the world of quite short time periods! It turns "I push the button and it closes the circuit" into "I push the button and apparently it actually kind of rattles as it settles into being firmly connected over the course of 60 microseconds". It lets you move from measuring only steady states of electronic circuits to understanding how they change over time.
I can't remember a better video on a combination of Physics, Philosophy, an appreciation of the natural world and our understanding of it, I have watched in years. The sheer excitement and enthusiasm Adam conveys spews out of the screen and envelops you. Tolerance and uncertainty are the cornerstones of every measurement as the late, great Walter Lewin used to insist. We do not get to appreciate the nuance of that in our daily lives until a great educator like Adam comes along to make you think about it. This man is a national treasure.
Just wanted to transmit the surreal experience of watching the video normally then scrolling to the comments and reading the OP quote the video as it was being said.
Or as my detail design professor in engineering school said thirty years ago, Design it with a computer Draw it with a pencil Mark it with a crayon Cut it with an axe It isn't as bad as that but dealing with everything from the designers to the assemblers I can tell you it is a very rare designer who understands the limits of the ability to make or measure the features they are designing. "Why do you have the tolerance for that feature at +/- 0.0001"" "Because that is what the program is set to..."
@@kennethfharkin Also, there are two kinds of manufacturers, the ones that make the part to spec and bill you accordingly, and the ones that call you to tell you that you're an idiot. I greatly prefer the second kind.
For over two decades I have worked as an engineer closely with the machinists, metrologists, customer manufacturing, design and production engineers, quality departments and customer inspection. Before that I worked in a metrology lab. Almost all the machinists I deal with are literally Swiss machinists. Our normal tolerances we work with are +/- 0.001" (25 microns) with the smallest PRODUCTION tolerance I have had to work with for a multimode fiberoptic ferrule +/- 0.00025 MILLIMETERS! Accuracy and Precision are an incredibly complex subject which get exponentially more complex when you begin discussing Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility (GR&R). It is one thing to make an item once or twice for your own use but now try making 10,000+ of them for assembly and use by your customer in something like an implantable cardiac device or minimally invasive surgical component. Now you need to be able to measure not just the part but study the variations from operator to operator when making such measurements along with the variations in the measurement devices used just to determine if all parties can effectively measure the features in question. Then you can start discussing such things as gage tolerances where both you and the customer have certified Go and No Go Gages yet the product is conforming with your gage and non-conforming with the customer's simply because of variation within the allowed tolerance the gages are made to... These are the things which put me on planes to production sites and customers and keep me up at night.
I had a professor working on nanoproduction. His precisions were incredible, on the order of hundreds of atoms. At the same school, I had engineering students who told me that they calculated that they needed the precision of their senior project (often go-cart sized) to within a micron (sometimes a lot less). They just used formulas blindly, no effort to understand the numbers.
I find that a significant issue in most all gauging, especially tapered thread gauges. The tolerance stack up combined with uncertainty narrows the effective manufacturing tolerances by a notable margin to conform to the gauge. It gets right out of hand at times. Metrology and expectations of accuracy and/or precision are challenging items to fully account for. I've literally solved non conformance by requesting the receiving facility double check the temperature at which the measurement was made.
Never thought a video about measurement would make me tear up, but here I am! This inspired a pure sense of awe and fascination about the world that we think we understand. One of my favorite quotes is, "The more I learn, the less I know." What seems like a simple question and answer becomes a constellation of variability. I find that amazing.
I put the speed up to 1.5 because I noticed most of it was not presenting anything revelatory, but merely evidentiary . this video is proof positive that when you begin to get very senile : even simple elementary notions of new understandings seem to be monumental achievements which can foster euphoric propulsion for being mentally toastified for hours about your own personal incredible diadactic ingenuity .
Hey Rhett, found you here just before jumping over to your channel, yes Adam is a hero for a lot of people and has a great channel. The last suit build is crazy good. Helps me out nursing a cracked rib after crashing my bike the day before xmas, only four weeks to go? Ughh See you on the other side!
Will you guys be talking about the guitar player/effects builder equivalents on the podcast? My first thought was tuning with harmonics instead of only fretted notes, or knowing and using more than one vibrato technique? I feel like you two would have great thoughts on the subject.
Dude, totally same. I've noticed a lot of patterns of "learning the next level of how something works" between making and playing... Always cool to have Mr. Savage corroborate our experiences.
Adam, I love they way you don’t just explain things per point, you have a great story telling ability you marry with you explanations. It’s so much fun listening along to your journey to your main point.
Adam I've been in fabricating and machine my entire working life, and am currently a quality manager at a machine shop. Thank you for being passionate about something that so many take for granted. As I was showing my wife portions of this video, and I was geeking out over it, she looked at me like she had to hurry up and go change the cats litter boxes and I was keeping her from that. I appreciate it more than you know!!! Have a fabulous day!
Adam, you are pointing out such important things, as you so often do. New eyes in the case of Impressionism was not merely practice in an existing field - it was adjusting the critic’s (and the western world’s) whole concept of what painting was meant to accomplish. That it wasn’t to spend countless hours hours drawing and painting create a polished representation of a traditional idea of figures in space as it had been worked out over centuries. The impressionists worked quickly to catch a momentary glimpse of how humans actually perceived the modern world. Originally, impressionist paintings looked careless, clumsy, untutored, unfinished - bad. But it wasn’t bad - it was a new kind of good. Grasping that demanded an incredible level of new learning, seeing, and understanding. Our world keeps changing and our tools change with it - we all need to continually change how we see and understand. You and your gauge blocks are helping us to understand that. Thank you! (And yeah, I’m an art historian.)
I've been working in a building with a lot of impressionist paintings on the wall and my favorite part is how your mind fills in the blanks and from across the room they look incredibly realistic
@@sheyannev2757 The mind is a wonderful thing. What we actually see is heavily processed by our brains to create the image we “see” in our mind’s eye. It’s a fascinating process that most of us don’t even consider.
i was not, nor am i still particularly interested in metrology, but Adam's energy is intoxicating. He has a way of sharing ideas, concepts, stories etc that is extremely captivating and entertaining. A true pleasure to watch. That was really cool of Mitutoyo. It's always great to see/hear about companies that aren't just faceless entities
Very well done class Mr. Savage. I have been a QC inspector and manager for 32 years ,before retiring and helped build our companies inspection standards to today's quality. This would be a very good class for any starting inspector to watch. Good show.
Adam, I love, love, love that you were hit by this wonderful epiphany. I’m a practicing statistician, and I can happily tell you that the whole point of statistical methodologies isn’t to measure a thing…it’s to tell you how much to trust/believe/discount/exult your measurement! Precision is relative and is endlessly battered by exogenous factors. Great episode!
Endorphin rush received. Through the first 90% of the video, I was screaming "this needs a reshoot with a proper script with cutaways and tidy editing". But toward the end, I realized that Adam's pure energy and delight in the topic comes through *because of* the stream of consciousness style. So for some, a clean linear presentation might be more effective, while others will grok better with this scattershot approach. In any event, thanks for the deep dive into the philosophy of metrology!
I absolutely love this! The first part reminds me of something I learnt some time back on the stages of competence - when learning a new skill we all fall into one of four categories of increasing competence. It starts with being unconsciously incompetent, where you don't know what you don't know. You then move to being consciously incompetent, where you gain an understanding of what is involved and can start to do the thing, albeit poorly, and with constant attention to what you are doing. Next you become consciously competent, where you can now do the thing well as long as you pay particular attention to what you are doing. And then lastly you become unconsciously competent, and can now perform at a high level and have an intrinsic understanding of what is involved and no longer have to consciously think through what you are doing. The second part of the discussion reminded me of something that blew my mind - the engine of a Formula 1 car is seized solid at room temperature! All of the components in the engine are machined to be within tolerance only at the operating temperature of the engine, so the entire engine is heated before it can be started! And, as you mentioned with the different coefficients of thermal expansion with your gauge blocks, there are many dissimilar materials that make up the various parts of the engine and they all have to be machined for their own particular rate of expansion to work when the engine is hot - this absolutely amazes me and I'm in awe of the engineers that design and build them!
Adam, I am a Journeyman Millwright for the last 15 years. Your description of the art and science of measuring things was golden. Most people don't realize how everything expands and contracts with heat or the lack thereof. A great tool for calculating this is the Coefficient of Thermal expansion which can be found in the Machinery's Handbook. A teacher I once had said that with that book alone, you could teach yourself to build most anything you wanted. Thank you for your passion and honesty with all your projects.
I had kind of an epiphany when you said, “the closer you look at stuff, the harder it is to measure” and I kept thinking back to modern physics and the uncertainty principle. That concept is so unbelievably hard to have an intuition for. However, at least for me, you gave an intuition for that principle on the limits of the smallest things in the universe. It’s simply just a scaled down version of what you’re describing. The uncertainty is larger than the measurement itself.
Indeed, doing engineering in university I did a course that included the concepts of accuracy and precision, plus the accumulation of error. There's a specific process to combining measurements and the uncertainty in them, allowing you to ignore some (if they're substantially smaller than another, more massive error), and sometimes the results - the accumulation of tiny, tiny errors - can be rather surprising. This applied equally all the way from my quantum computing class up to literally measuring dots on ticker tape with a ruler in a physics lab.
Something that I find equally amusing and unintuitive is that color doesn't exist at the smallest scales, as the wavelength of light is larger than some of the smallest particles/objects. The fact that our measuring devices are limited by physics in this way is really strange but cool.
As an electrical engineer my intuition for why you can't measure at the smallest level is that to see something you must shoot it which will deflect it. Normally the "bullet" is a photon but when we need a smaller wavelength of the bullet we use electrons. I also know that my chemistry professor explained the uncertainty principle once as not being quantum, it was just a part of the base equations where you could only know one variable to a certain range of the other. I also accept quantum is just black magic, electrons can jump through voltage barriers and respond to stimuli a few milliseconds before the stimulus happens (again black magic).
Indeed, if there is a "smallest particle", then there is a limit to how accurately you can measure it, because your tools cannot be more precise than the size of the particles they are made of.
As a high school science teacher and maker, I loved this dive into the weeds! The thought process of “knowing” is fascinating and using measurements is so necessary. My students have not developed the needed “eyes” to properly understand or appreciate measurements at your levels, and, honestly, to the precision that a meter stick provides.
Oh! Adam! Watching you is such happiness! Seeing a person exhibit such awe, excitement, and sheer pleasure from having and sharing knowledge makes me feel all warm inside! It brings me memories of my childhood in 1950's, learning about ancient cultures & history with my father -- and again, listening to my grandson info-dump about the pharaohs & pyramids. Knowledge is power, is wonder, is joy! Keep bringing joy to our world Adam!
For most of this video I sat on the edge of my seat watching in horror at the UNLOCKED box of ceramic gauge blocks on the bench. Thankfully they remained there the whole video and didn't end up on the floor. I kept shouting at the screen to lock the box then Adam notices the steel block box is open and closed it but leaves the ceramics open. Oh the humanity!
I quite enjoyed this. In my own career as a glass artist and working with kilns I found that the amount a given material will move when it is heated up. Generally, I was working with temperatures ranging from room temp up to around 1650 F. With glass you can fuse different sheets of glass together and they will bond, but if they have different rates of expansion then, if that difference is great enough the piece will not survive over time. If the expansion is greatly different then the piece will break on cooling down. If it is slight then it may last hours, days or months before it breaks. Then you went on to mention the expansion of the cables of the Golden Gate bridge at noon vs. dead of night. This brings me to another thing I learned early on in my kiln work. If you put a piece of steel in the kiln and take it up to 1500 F it will be just fine. It will heat up and then cool down and be pretty much the same-aside from the spalling on the surface. However, if you have it constrained, then it will bend and twist and be deformed when it cools down. The understanding I gained from my kilns and trying to build metal forms to shape glass gave me a great insight into why the Twin Towers collapsed. The burning jet fuel heated up the steel supports but because they were supporting hundreds of thousands of tons they could not expand so they buckled and once they buckled they could no longer support that vast weight. A digression from what I intended to say, which was to thank you for this discussion of measurement.
Exactly right. The fireproofing was blasted off by the aircrafts entry into the interior of the building. It was only a matter of time before the support structures buckled, stretched, and broke. There was even a documentary showing that. Had it been just the fire, the fireproofing would have given firefighters time to put it out. The Empire State Building survived a crash by a B-25 in the late 30’ early 40’s. The Empire had massive steel girders in its structure. You might say it was overbuilt!
@Joseph Roach Hardly surprising, in demolition they break out the supporting walls with sledgehammers or mechanical means then use explosives to remove the supporting pillars. Once the lower support is gone the building drops in its own footrprint. The plane and the fire just repeated that on a slower timescale. A curious thought is that the WTC had an unusual structure, instead of being a frame it had a central spine, once the supports in the spine were weakened the building dropped straight down because all the centre supports raeched their failure point at about the same time. If it had a frame construction would the supports have only failed at the point where the fire was worst and then the top hundred floors would have toppled at the failure point. That might have saved a lot of lives below but would it have killed more people inthe surrounding area?
Ah, leave it to Adam Savage's fans to have me going back to watch Jonathan Cole, PE's videos experimenting on cutting structural steel with homemade jig tools and thermate over 10 years after their original posting and over 20 years after the events took place. So many answers to questions the government doesn't care about.
I would _LOVE_ Adam Savage to get to experience seeing a Scanning Electron Microscope look at something on the nanometer scale if it's not something he's had the opportunity to before - because I will never forget the first time I did, and how it gives you an understanding of just how intertwined everything is. The sample we looked as was held in a vacuum sealed chamber, in another stabilized container, and those containers all have various forms of other insulation to help remove the sample from interaction with the outside environment. This allows it to be stabilized to the device and apart from as many other surfaces as possible to act as insulation against energy transfer disrupting the focus and visible output. Despite that, if you talked at all while you were in the room with that device _even just at a whisper,_ the tiny vibrations from your voice would cause movement on the display, because that miniscule audible sound energy is transferring into and through all of the interconnected solid materials, and past all of the multiple forms of insulation and stabilization, and reaching the sample you are looking at. Then the more you understand about the tolerances and just how much all of those stabilization and insulation measures reduce the amount of anything from reaching that sample, the more monumentally impressive the scale of just how tiny and interconnected everything is. In the years since, that's made learning about things like cold welding in space even more impressive because of helping me to wrap my head around details that I'd never been able to grasp before.
I love SEMs, we have a few where I work. I remember when in our old office, if a tram was driving four blocks away, you could see the vibrations in the image.
Yeah, those things are cool. Very similar to the width of the line on the tape measurer at that scale the wavelength of light itself isn’t small enough to interact.
@@jonwallace6204 Yeah, there are _crazy_ techniques that they have to do with photolithography to be able to make some types of modern electronics because of that. That's the kind of stuff that blows your mind and helps underscore how much those in that field really understand the science behind those things.
An old machinist gave me the best advice when measuring engine parts. He said " the difference between a micrometer and a fancy clamp is the standard". This statement has fundamentally changed the way I view measurements and my tools.
@@schwarzerritter5724 the standard is the rod, manufactured to a precise length, which you use to calibrate the micrometer. Without it you have a fancy clamp.
I had a similar epiphany when I saw a BBC interview of Richard Feynman. When the reporter asks him "why" (for magnets) he gives an absolutely beautiful answer.
Adam, thank you for this excellent introduction to metrology. This video is a mandatory watch for the students. Even the non edited confusion about what is a nanometer is a valuable lesson: it’s a great skill to have a feeling for when something is wrong, even if one does not know how to fix it yet, then take the necessary steps to learn, then come back and get it right. Love it all 45min.
This was something that bothered me from a young age. Whenever I was asked to measure things I always tried my best to minimise inaccuracy. I'm a mechanical engineer now and after studying metrology my questions were finally answered. I feel like you did a very good job explaining all of this!
Something that bugged me in highschool was that even if i could memorize every formula, if stranded in say ancient Greece (ignore htf the timetravel happened) i could never build anything remotely advanced because how could i replicate our units. Sure i could declare some bar of metal to be a pound mass based on feel but it wouldn't be perfect so all our carefully discovered univeral constants won't apply. Now i am an electrical engineer so I'm doubly incapable of close enough units because how do i make a multi meter and get reasonably close to what a volt or amp is without a reference/calibration device? Now obviously a mech E could make functional machines and i could probably get reasonably acceptable electric lighting or something without proper measurements but that's not the point. I guess my point is the existential crisis of how do you remake units from scratch, especially without having to recalculate all the universal constants.
@@jasonreed7522 It's quite doable, but you have to dive deep into some history of science, foundations of your discipline sorta stuff. There's a standard definition of the volt that's a thing that can be measured using a fascinating little apparatus, but of course you'd have to build your way up to it. The 3-plate method of getting something really flat is a good place to start. The second thing is that you'd just need to put up with a little bit of slop at first. Go with a historical definition of something until you can measure cesium atoms pulsing to get a proper second and measure the speed of light. The rest follows from there, though machining precision will be the core of your ladder when it comes to building the apparati needed to nail down each.
@@jasonreed7522 well just like any other frame of reference, all of the constants like pi or eulers number, they are all comparative measurements. Absent the existing measurement reference, the formulas should work with ANY measurement as long as that metric is consistently applied. Just why the metric system is "most accurate" because of the set of revenues kept in a controlled environment in France. There is something to compare with.... hence the "reference". Just make your own meter, gram, liter and use them as references, all of the other relations should fall into place if those references are stable.
@@gene8842 thats should only work for unit less constants. π is the ratio of a circle's radius and circumference and is you assume its value is 3.1415 you will be accurate enough. (Similar story for e, but i forget the base definition for its origin so lets say e^x is it's own derivative) Avagodro's number is the same a a dozen in that it groups many individual things into easier to count groups, only its way bigger than 12. But, some constants do infact have units like ε0 which it the permittivity of free space and has units of Farads per meter and Wikipedia has its base units done out. Granted most of the time the units make up the difference of the output and input of the formula. I suppose all you really would need to figure out would be the SI base units like seconds, meters, kg, Kelvins, Amps, mols, candela. Some wouldn't matter like Candelas measuring light. And some are easy like Kelvin being °C +275ish and °C being defined with 0 and 100 to water so make those 2 lines on a thermometer and evenly space the rest. Or mols being a fixed count of something, usually Atoms or molecules, and i just realized that if you figured out mass or volume units the other could be determined by density 1g of water = 1ml. I still think getting the electrical units sorted would be the hardest if you had to start from scratch. Actually this could be a cool challenge event, remake the units from scratch in a week. You are given a list of formulas and constants to help you. (Would be searchable electronic for ease of use) and give a prize to whoever is the closest / got the most.
In college, a friend and I were discussing the progression of precision in machines. Because in order to make a precision machine, it has to be made on a less-precise machine, which itself was manufactured on an even less precise machine... Love the video.
I used to think a bunch about how much science and technology I could reproduce if I went back in time. And the amount of stuff which boils down to "I don't even know how to make the measurement tools to do this" is kind of fun.
Not really. They used the rule of three. If you create three planes and they all mate with each other then they're all flat. There's no combination of convex and concave that's going to work across three planes. Now with your perfectly flat surfaces you have the beginnings of precision. You have a reference. They did and still do it by hand too.
@@1pcfred You need abrasive between the plates to make that work. If your abrasive is not uniform, it's going to put gouges in your plates. It also needs to be super fine.
Adam is such a fantastic human! I do coding and game development, and I’ve been having tested on in the background, and there’s a level of comradeship that were both creating something (usually from nothing) that were both going back over and changing things, seeing how it looks or works, and doing it again and again until everything works and looks mostly exactly how you want it too. Thank you for moving to UA-cam, and being even more relatable! Keep on being amazing Adam! And everyone who empathizes on any level!
The next tool you should buy (or borrow) is an 'optical profilometer' so you can measure your gauge blocks. You will find that even the best ones have surface roughness and non-planar surfaces at the nanometer scale. When you start getting serious about measurement, you can obtain an optical/laser micrometer and laser scanner, from a company like Faro or Micro-Epsilon. The accuracy of optical measurement is dependent on the wavelength of light and insensitive to temperature, so they are about as absolute as one can get. I love these spontaneous videos, here's to many more in the future! Cheers!!
You'll definitely want a system like this in a temperature-controlled lab, just as he was saying with the precision and stability of the ceramic blocks, the same issue arises with optical/laser measuring systems. Typical to allow the specimen piece to soak a minimum of 24 hours at 20°C before measuring with such a system. :)
@@3nertia soak means to let the object and tools being used to acclimate in the same temperature. Soak means that the temperature is consistent all the way through to the center of the objects.
Echoing hundreds of other comments, thank you! Thank you for sharing such an amazingly simple, yet extremely complex concept. We joke in my profession that the answer to every question is "It depends." Nothing exists without a relationship to other things and everything affects the things around them. Honestly feel that this video is an amazing contribution to the education of inquiring minds everywhere, in every profession.
This is like when I'm getting "new eyes" and experience an epiphany, getting all excited talking non stop to my wife, explaining the knowledge I've just got. After almost 30 years together, this sensation never gets transmitted to her, but you totally made it through to me! I'm getting a rush-type of feeling watching this video. Love the excitement! I feel you! I'm tempted to make my wife watch this video. Maybe its just me being bad at explaining stuff or we just being nerds. Either way, thumbs up!
Adam: I learned much of this well done video while working at a Fortune 50 company, putting coatings on papers and films. The critical thickness of the material we were coating, an emulsion, depended on its viscosity (some were shear thickening, some shear thinning), temperature, velocities and the coating rolls used, measured in 0.00001 runout. It was as much an enlightening experience as you just expressed. Well done, Adam.
I just started cnc machining a few months ago, and I’m absolutely obsessed with the constant pursuit of precision. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as making something within 1/10,000th of an inch.
@@peterweller8583 funny thing, i once got to enter a vacuum room cetified by NIST while setting up a smaller version for a client (my client needed a 2x2.5 meter room, the certified one was ~40 m2 iirc) The mere idea that we can already reach the level of precision where that is needed boggles my mind.
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this Adam. I just want to say thank you. You’re a maker; and a fosterer of making in general, and a supporter of people in general, and I appreciate your point of view and sharing of knowledge.
I absolutely love this rant. I work in a clean room that makes metrology optics, so precision microrules, dot grids, reticles. One of the first things I had to learn was at what point do I stop looking for defects because as you increase your magnification you will find more and more defects. And speaking on metrology, one of my favorite measurement tools to use is a white-light interferometer that we use to measure features with down to nanometer precision. It's incredible!!
Your comment reminds me of a problem my old workplace had. We made pre-finished hardwood flooring. One day we noticed a repeating perpendicular line in the finish layer of the wood floor. It was visible if viewed from a low angle. This was happening on all of the product we were finishing. We searched the factory finishing line up and down for issues and possible causes but in the end (after 3 weeks of not producing any product) we concluded that we were looking too closely at the finish, and that the end customer would not notice such a defect unless they were lying on the floor with the light hitting it in just the right way. It was a costly mistake for the factory but it also taught me that having a good attention to detail can be both helpful and sometimes a hindrance. I believe someone said once “perfect is the enemy of good enough.”
@@Coleton33Music this is why im happy that (proper) machining plans have tolerances on all dimensions. You dont have to hit those dimensions on the micron, just in the ballpark of those numbers. Ofcourse this leads to obsessive fussing over surface finish when it is not specified
Hello Adam, thank you for making this simple explanation. My friends can understand been a quality control inspector for medical device companies for 35 years. Metrology is fun for me. And yes, the word you did not use the entire talk was tolerance. I think that's the word you were looking for. And we work within microns all day. I enjoy your shows immensely. Very entertaining and educational. Irregularly work within around 30 nanometers on a lot of parts I work with. Measuring cylinders precision cylinders high-speed pneumatic motors pneumatic motors turning 100,000 RPMs with aluminum tools where if you hold them too long, the plug gauge would either get stuck or wouldn't enter because of the change in diameter just from holding the part for too long and raising the temperature. One or two degrees temperature is a major factor in micro measurements. I find titanium to be one of the more thermal stable materials work with it a lot in the medical field. Thank you again. Enjoy your shows. Take care
Adam I just wanted to take second say that thank you for expressing your true self (ie. not masking) because at a young age I realized I was different than most of my peers. I thought different, acted different and being the odd one out can be challenging if not down right painful at times. Seeing others in the world being celebrated for being a similar type of different gives me the strength to be myself and to stand against the those who try to put me down because of it. I will leave you with a quote that is very near and dear to my heart. "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” - Andre Gide.
"Built different" is the polite term I grew up hearing for that, as I also experienced those same things to a degree (the less-polite term was "weirdo", but I learned to embrace that one too). But yea, even today as a 40 year old, I find that my perceptions of things - people, situations, problems, etc. - is somewhat off-center from my peers, which sometimes is a good thing as I can find unconventional solutions to problems someone has been beating their head against for a while, sometimes is not a good thing as trying to explain things to someone with my unusual perception can be confusing.
Your comments resonate with me. Being different can be a hard thing, but I think it makes us appreciate those connections we do make more. Each of our unique perspectives also help keep us from running with the pack, or jumping on the bandwagon. We function as anchors or provide grounding in these times of group idiocy and cruelty, understanding deeper the pain, variety, and beauty of life.
I am really really struggling to understand how this comment has anything to do with masking lmao, dude is alone in his giant workshop and fully vaccinated. I'm sure when he's out in public or at least in a small space with a lot of people he's wearing a mask like any other reasonable person. There's nothing noble or respectable about posing a needlessly greater threat to public health for the sake of feeling superior. Such a fucking weird hill to die on.
Your discussion about steel expansion reminded me of something a machinist friend told me. The 12-cylinder engine blocks in the WW2 Spitfires were so large, that the heat generated by milling caused the block to expand measurably. The blueprints had two sets of measurements on them. The set you used depended on which end of the block you started milling from. If something happened part way through that forced you to stop (e.g. a broken bit) the entire engine block had to be scrapped, and you started over with a new one.
I'm a 3rd gen machinist. My Grandfather machined parts for one of the cars that sit on the moon. He was a machinist in the Navy in WWII after that he was a machinist working for GM at the GM tech center in Warren MI. This was a great explanation of how tight temperature can effect a machined part. The last machine shop I worked at was kept at gauge room temperature. We made satellite parts. I've machined small parts that can fit in your pocket to parts 72" in dia. I loved it.
One of your best videos so far! I work with color science within the printing industry, and the more I learn the more I tend to start my answer with ”it depends” when I get a question regarding color.
My partner and I started a photography business years ago, and she was getting all hepped up about the tolerance of the gamut on the high-end monitor that we bought. From my years of lab work, and quality assurance in the printing industry, I just said, "It doesn't matter - Just work within the edges."... Or something like that. Had to dumb it down really hard. My main guage in photography was, "Does the thing on the screen look like the thing that I'm looking at." Then it was all about whether my technique/composition etc was good. I never worried about how "good it looked on the screen." I was more invested in the capturing/recording equipment.
Your enthusiasm is contagious. You reawaken the magic and wonder of discovery most of us had as small children but have lost to the grind of adult life. Watching you bounce around with excitement had me chuckling. Thanks for sharing that excitement.
I loved the truly honest enthusiasm of this video. Geeking out over a topic like this is something I would do and seeing another person do the same thing is so entertaining. The only problem is that I have found very few people in my life that see things the same way, which makes this channel extremely valuable to me. Thank you Adam for being you.
Started reading "The Beginning of Infinity" last week. In the early chapter, "Closer to Reality", it observes that "It may seem strange that scientific instruments bring us closer to reality when in purely physical terms they only ever separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation in theory laden".
I had a 22 year military career in metrology. I even had the pleasure of becoming an auditor. Excellent video. I would add the importance of documentation and its chain all the way up to NIST. Any measurement or documentation error could have bad consequences during an audit. I loved my career but I'm so done with it. 😀
NIST - 2001 - Did you self audit this situation ? ? ? Three buildings fall down ( solely due to gravity ) with increasing acceleration against stronger foundational lower levels while maintaining almost perfect symmetry and causing material destruction beyond anything ever experienced in the history of the world without the force of explosives or terrific seismic activity in the immediate vicinity . A small structural deficiency or compromise can cause the total collapse of a steel structure to fall at almost free-fall speed and pulverise 90 percent of the structure to powder .
Thank you for your service. I enjoyed this video too, but it's all new info for me. Thanks Adam and the team. I kept thinking that measurements are just examples of and proof for "fuzzy math". 😀
@@kablammy7 he probably didn’t audit it since your scenario never happened… maybe you should audit your comment because just your first sentence is almost entirely baseless and incorrect, including 4 blatant lies I found just skimming: “Solely” (they just fell out of the blue?) “Increasing acceleration” (constant acceleration?) “Almost perfect” (lol did you listen Mr. Savage at all?) “Destruction beyond.. history of the world” (not even close)
Thinking about the minimum resolution of the universe has always been a fascinating subject for me. Whether it's chunks of time, physical mass or size, luminescence etc. Some of the most amazing insights into our universe have stemmed just from trying to measure progressively smaller increments of whatever the subject matter is.
It’s all interesting stuff. For minimum resolution of the universe have a look at Planc length. Yes quarks are small as they make up protons and neutrons (once thought to be fundamental). String theory then takes this down still further by going down by about the same scale factor as people to atoms. So pretty small !
what makes this video absolutely great is that it tells us about one of the main sources of human suffering in our world today. while the amount of provided information gets bigger and bigger, most people try to construct their personal image of reality by simplifying coherences and building generalized rules to make the world fit in their mind with the least effort. instead of approaching reality we drift away from it, form our own world with simplified rules, but try to transfer those rules to real life. i see the essence of adams video in the following point: the image of reality in our heads will never be able to reach the real truth. we must accept that. but with an open mind we can make our understanding of our very complex world better and better, step by step. it is very dangerous, that many smart people are affraid to make important decisions, because they underestimate their own capabilities, recognising the deep complexity of our life, while on the other hand people with a simplified view have the self consciousness to lead. the timing for putting out this message is perfect. i really appreciate your mindset and i am looking forward to see more relevant content like this!
I experienced the same reaction when I first learned of GD&T. The entire concept of precision is relative from a bicycle chain to the size of an electron. A really cool example is how surveying equipment uses several (like 5 to 7) different wavelengths of light to give pretty precise measurements over a job sight.
Adam, for me this was the best video of yours yet! I understood exactly where you were going right away, but the journey you took to get there from the pragmatic to the philosophical, and your visible excitement for describing your epiphany, worked out just perfectly. Thank you so much! Great video!
I put the speed up to 1.5 because I noticed most of it was not presenting anything revelatory, but merely evidentiary . this video is proof positive that when you begin to get very senile : even simple elementary notions of new understandings seem to be monumental achievements which can foster euphoric propulsion for being mentally toastified for hours about your own personal incredible diadactic ingenuity .
Adam, love listening to your philosophy of "making" and "seeing" etc. I'm a hobby machinist that makes working model internal and external combustion engines, and like you and so many others mostly use the "six inch dial calipers". So far the the most accuracy I've ever needed was in getting a consistent sliding fit between valve stems and valve guides, and getting cylinder liners and piston rings that seal. I've found that if I make all the valve guides with the same reamer then I can lap a valve stem to where I like the fit and measure it with a "tenth" vernier on a micrometer and I can continue making valve stems to plus or minus one "tenth" and they will all be acceptable. Another way of reading this is that no mater what the specified size of a reamer is the hole it makes depends on that specific reamer, its cutting angles, its sharpness (HSS is sharper than carbide (when new)), the type of material it is cutting, and what cutting fluid you use, all these things have to be held constant to get repeatable holes, whose actual size will be "near" the specified size of the reamer, but your valve stems have to be lapped to the actual size which will be different from the reamer's stated size. I also have a "tenth" reading bore gauge for lapping my cylinder liners all within a "tenth" so that I can make piston rings all the same size. So those are the only two instruments I use that measure to a "tenth", and I don't machine things to a tenth, I machine to a thou over and lap to plus or minus a tenth because surface finish always matters at these dimensions. I do have a test-dial-indicator like you were using, but I only use it for centering things, like centering something in a 4-jaw chuck, or tramming the mill head and squaring the mill vise, or centering the mill Y axis between the jaws of the mill vise, or centering the mill to the rotary table, I've never used it for measuring distance (in fact I usually have a long arm on it for longer reach which throws the scale off). Lastly, the word you were searching for is "exact", as in there's no such thing as an "exact measurement", only better approximations (under more strictly specified conditions, which are subject to their own measurement accuracy issues). PS, the most accurate measurement ever made by anyone is with LIGO, the gravitational wave observatory, read up on that if you really want your mind blown, they measure down to the Heisenburg Uncertainty Level, and a little bit below using tricks.
Adam. I knew nothing of nothing about this subject. In the beginning, I was kind of lost. At the end I was AMAZED. Yes, you can always half a half, there is no “zero” in measurement. The science you explained here was so very interesting. Those blocks are INSANE. As someone who was clueless about this subject, I certainly learned something today. Thanks!
10:25 Hey Adam, you mentioned that calipers can measure in 3 ways. Actually calipers can measure in 4! Not sure whether you left out that detail on purpose as it is just another type of depth measurement, but calipers also have a "step" measuring mode. I'd try to explain it with just text, but that would probably lead to confusion. Smarter to look it up and find a diagram. The intent with the "step" measuring mode is that a makes it easier to keep the calipers perpendicular with the measured surfaces. This should reduce cosine error and make for more repeatable and accurate measurements 👍 You also mentioned that your 1/10ths gauge can be used to get sub-1/10ths accuracy. This would definitely come down to the build quality of your measuring device. Generally, if mitotoyu could get more accuracy out of that device, they would just put more markings on it and call it a 1/25ths gauge or 1/100ths gauge. The reason they don't is that they can only get reliable & certifiable repeatability down to 1/10ths. Measuring to sides of lines and such is using the tool past it's intended limits. While it would likely work fine for 1-off machining, where you can deal with the fluff for a single part, if you are doing something like machining aerospace bearings, someone else has to mass assemble the parts and they need to be certifiably in spec. For your style and use case, absolutely works. For more industrial and safety critical applications, it is better to get a more accurate measuring device that is actually certified to that precision and repeatability, such as a micron gauge (don't, they are so finicky to use).
10:25, not many people realise calipers have a 4th measuring surface on the outside edge of the jaw for measuring steps. Feels more sturdy to use than the depth stick when you have the space to use it
well this comment has been tremendously useful as I went to see a video here on youtube :D for others, the link is: ua-cam.com/video/oh4DitZuG8E/v-deo.html
For those hyped about this subject after hearing Adam's take, I highly, highly recommend Machine Thinking's video on the same subject. Soft spoken, but definitely with the same awe and enthousiasm for the small, the impact it had and where it all came from. ua-cam.com/video/gNRnrn5DE58/v-deo.html
Was pretty sure I'd watched this, and when I opened the link, it resumed from near the end, so I've definitely seen it before, and somewhat recently too, if YT still remembers my place lol.
Such an excellent video. When I started to study machining 50 years ago, I had an excellent tutor who enlightened us students. Measurement of things is an endless challenge, and continues to fascinate. Really good topic, and video. Tolerances rule !
When we had to have a piece of work inspected.. I demonstrated how temperature determined if My work passed or failed. I machined my piece to .100” over size, the work was measured and failed on over size tolerance. Living in Canada I went outside for a smoke break, and took the work with me at -20c. When my work piece was measured cold, it fell right in the middle of the specification. My teacher loved it, and it was a good lesson for all of us. For people who care about such things, the specified tolerance of machined parts takes into consideration that the part will need to function at different temperatures. All machinists know this.
Thanks a lot for sharing these thoughts. I can so relate to that. The deeper you look into topics - measurement, materials, tools, circuits - the more aspects you see that you weren't aware of before, and that is just an amazing feeling, to dive deeper and deeper into stuff. Just like endlessly zooming into a fractal image.
I've been reading a lot of Ted Chiang recently, and this felt a lot like something he would write, that mind-boggling realization when you discover that the second you understand something better is also the moment you see how much more there is you don't. The more precise you get, the more you see that precision is impossible.
And so you end up with German philosophical terms that run to hundreds-of-syllables as they try to portmanteau themselves into greater and greater accuracy. Versus, f'r'instance, the Hawai'ian word ALOHA, which, in its inexactitide, can convey much more than distinctions of like/love/regard/warmth/etc. My personal icon for this is: 1/3 > .3333333333333333333333333333333333... (number of 3's is variable) The fraction is perfect and absolute while the decimal is merely only ever an approximation.
Thank you for this one, as a Quality Worker the fascination and sheer joy you show in this video is what I have every day in my work. Which is difficult to share, most people go glassy eyed when I start talking about quality and measuring things for work. I immediately drooled over the gage blocks, I have steel but ceramic is the gold standard and while I’ve been in quality for well over a decade I still hope to be worthy of those someday.
I absolutely love this raw, uncut philosophical style content. Although it’s clear this was spontaneous, there is not enough of this deep-thinking type content in the scientific community (unless I’ve been looking in the wrong places!)
I absolutely loved this. The topic and vibe. It feels like I'm having fun conversation with my dad in his workshop or a college professor outside of class. The topic is so interesting to me too--it's something I'd never be able to discuss about extensively with anyone else and hearing just how Adam speaks about it brings me joy and increases my interest in the topic too
Since many people have already mentioned it, I am going to amplify "The Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy". Adam talks about using a surface plate; that book talks about how you make the surface plate in the first place. I've always been astounded by the idea that you can start with non-precision materials and create precision via the proper technique. Jon
A study of the topic you mention sounds much more interesting than watching someone being astounded by their discovery of incidental properties ... I put the speed up to 1.5 because I noticed most of it was not presenting anything revelatory, but merely evidentiary . this video is proof positive that when you begin to get very senile : even simple elementary notions of new understandings seem to be monumental achievements which can foster euphoric propulsion for being mentally toastified for hours about your own personal incredible diadactic ingenuity .
That's one of the kinds of realizations I love. It's like...it's somehow obvious, but also mind boggling. Because it's easy to understand how things become less precise through work and wear. And it's also self-evident that high precision tools must be, somehow, produced and calibrated from lower precision beginnings. And that those two absolutes can somehow be reconciled to get to the levels of precision needed for some of the modern conveniences the world relies on...Hard to wrap my head around, honestly, even reading and watching how it's accomplished.
As a machinist with 30 years of experience i truly enjoyed this segment. And Adam you are most definitely worthy of these tools dont sell yourself short.
Adam wasn't placing a value judgement on owning the tools, but rather on the practical necessity of them for what he does. A house builder wouldn't need anything more accurate than a standard measuring tape, and a sniper wouldn't need the James Webb Space Telescope. Sure, it also would't HURT to have this much accuracy in the job, but just not necessary.
I saw a program on British TV a decade ago called " how long is a piece of string?" which explored this very fractal accuracy of measurement. Fascinating. You did a good job there, Adam.
Metrology has always mystified me and boggled my mind when thinking about how accurately we can machine measuring devices and in turn final products. I've known about most of the common tools like calipers, gauge blocks, etc. But, a couple years ago I learned of the Coordinate Measuring Machine and those really blew me away! The fact that they are able to take the accuracy of gauge blocks and measure every geometry of a 3D object with the same detail is somehow even more astounding than 10 thou precision.
God yes! When I learned CMM working in aerospace Machining I thought I knew what I was getting into, thought trade school prepared me. Man was I wrong, and so damn happy I was! I am one of those people who obsess over things like symmetry and accuracy, just the top of the list mind you, and the CMM really blew my mind.
Thanks Adam! I was a metrologist in the USAF a million years ago for a few years and this brought me back. I was always told that if we used our bare hands to touch anything then that piece would just die, everything would blow up, and we would go straight to jail. Glad to see none of it was true.
or until he discovers the lengths EE's go to to get accurate electrical measurements and the even greater lengths metrologists go to, in order to create the primary standard
Adam I must say that you personally inspired me as a young man who stayed glued to the science and discovery channels! I believe it was your spirit of learning and testing the unknown unapologetically. From there I set up my life to aquire all the skills I would need to be a maker myself. Although my creating journey started many years ago 23 to be exact, I still find excitement in learning and trying new things. With that said, A big thank you to you from me. Please continue to learn and teach us all for the sake of comprehension of our ever changing world.
Hey Adam! When you were talking about accounting for temperature in measurement-- that such a high degree of accuracy might be necessary in some industries such as medical and nano machines. These are examples of precision industries that I, too, might have come up with six months ago. But I was recently interested to learn that high levels of accuracy are required for many industries that deal in high volume. I have learned this to be true about metal can manufacturing. You will find a temperature-controlled tooling room in nearly any beverage can plant (unless tooling is controlled off site). Similarly, great lengths are taken to ensure can making machinery operates at specific temperatures. A can bodymaker, for example, might have coolant running through it at something like 80 GPM, sending coolant to a separate assembly that regulates its temperature to +- 1.5 degrees F. When's the last time you opened a can of soda and it failed to open? Making that scoring line in a can end to hold 90+psi, but tear open, every time, at the flip of a fingernail, and thousands of them per minute... that tooling goes to millionths and beyond. I've had a realization that high accuracy is needed not where engineering is challenging- instead, it is needed mostly where specialization of machinery occurs. In medical, or aerospace for example- are those fields precise? Yes, of course. Are they millionths precise? probably not, most of the time... making something once that has to work in unpredictable, and variable environments- these are requirements that push designs by definition, relatively speaking, out of high accuracy and instead into robustness.
I have been a prototype machinist for about 15 years, and beverage can manufacturing is something that still boggles my mind. I work for a certain tech company and work in microns daily and it feels like I'm doing rough carpentry compared to that stuff.
Thank you Adam for bringing attention to the science of metrology. We hope you’re able to visit us and tour our facility one day. I’m pretty sure you’d enjoy the calibration lab!
If he does, make sure to show him optical flats and block calibration by interferometry.
Thanks for everything you guys do!
Mitutoyo team, Thanks for being the inspiration here and supporting the channel. We all learn so much from Adam's passion.
Your facility in Illinois is incredible, I really hope he gets to visit some day and see your calibration lab!
mitutoyo, i would so dearly love to use your calipers, but you STILL do not make any left handed versions.
we are 12% of the general population, and much greater in the creative community. please help us achieve our best results.
thank you.
Adam, thank you for not editing out any goofs, repetitions or dead air. Being able to listen along at a human pace makes these tool tips unusually watchable amongst the breathless TikTok madness that is most of UA-cam.
I wish I could give this comment more then 1 like!
I really dont think most of youtube is tiktok madness most of it is reviews on various forms of media,tools and entertainment followed by music, reactions and the tiktok crap.
@@amartinez97 I remember hearing there is something like 500 hrs of video uploaded every minute. Theres no need to be watching something you don't like. Shorts(rebranded tiki toks) have there place, and sponsored tool reviews are a joke. That being said, I wish yt wouldn't recommend that garbage so much.
Especially for those of us who play it at x1.5 speed.
Tom Porter , well said!!
I can not add anything more .
From my time in a Cal lab I'll never forget this: "a man with a watch knows what time it is. Give him another watch and he's not so sure anymore."
It's great to see a person as enthusiastic as Adam.
My PC uses NTP so I'm good with the time it keeps. I was watching the USNO master clock webpage New Years eve and my PC clock was bang on.
That's attributed to Einstein. Since your two clocks aren't in the exact same place, gravity pulls just a little bit different on them, and their velocity is a little bit different, so relativity warps the passage of time for the two clocks.
@@2993LP time is not going to dilate so much locally to matter to me. Now when they launched the first satellites they didn't know if it'd matter then. So they built the first satellites with a switch in them. If it mattered they'd flip the switch. It turns out it did matter too.
@@1pcfred It might matter if you were really accurately measuring time. Since you're not, yeah, it doesn't matter.
@@2993LP I'm accurately measuring time. I usually know what day it is. That's accurate enough.
I love how unscripted this is. It feels like a really good conversation with a professor at the end of the day after class.
I found myself flipping it off because I have to go make dinner.
@@petermgruhnCool story.
I feel like he actually repeated a section in there which he did twice and forgot he put it in both times
@@ruolbuI think that he filmed it twice to give two view options and the editor just included both to give the full explanation and demonstration.
Adam at 37:34, "I am like a bull in a china shop."
I'm surprised Adam still uses this phrase since he knows that bulls avoid knocking over china while in a china shop since he tested this on Mythbusters!
You can also see the panic in his heart as he realizes he could have tipped the box over. Butt clench for sure.
I think the video's point applies here - they measured that myth, and found it to be incorrect and inaccurate for their specific purposes, but for a quick throwaway metaphor to counter a bit of clumsiness with humour, it still fits our general understanding of the world well enough to fill in the gap.
Very true!
I too had to make this same comment. Found it funny how he referenced a myth they did and it is also kind of a fitting how you can't really measure anything precisely. Like how destructive is a bull in a china shop really?
Oooh, this is a neat bit of history actually! "Bull in a China shop" is a fossil phrase. The use of the phrase lasted longer than the collective memory of its meaning! It originally referred to John Bull, who was kind of like England's Uncle Sam and first appeared as a newspaper comic satirizing English interference in Chinese markets.
I'm a metrologist and I'm making this video required viewing for all the engineers I have to work with. My favorite measurement tool is a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM).
After almost 20 years of Adam teaching me new stuff, I finally know a little more about the subject than he did. Yet he still managed to explain it better than I could. Thanks, as always.
And that he did it mostly from the top of his head. Is what I find aweinspiring.
This. This is exactly how I feel as well about this video. First time ever I knew more, but Adam still understands better.
now to start a debate between machinists and cal techs about the often dreaded micro-inch!
It is granite though right?
@@Alavashus I don't have a week for that!
I'm a QC Inspector for the aerospace, defense, nuclear/powe-gen, and med device industry. I routinely inspect things that are measured to the micron and less, mostly spinal medical implants and parts used to perform angioplasty...on infants.
I get small.
In my 20 years of working small, I have never seen anyone so passionate and enamored of process as myself, until now. Also, your quote "All measurement is a compromise or circumstances." Is beautiful and I will be printing and framing it for my office (quoting you of course), come Monday.
Thank you for shedding a little light on something I take very seriously. I could tell you some really cool stories and circumstances surrounding the processes and environments required to make measurements even smaller than those you discussed.
Also, Mitutoyo, accept no substitutes.
This video is the perfect example is why I idolize Adam.
100% The guy just dives in to so many things.
I love how when faced with the decision, he opts to go less into how neat gauge block ringing is or about how useful it is to heat parts when fitting them, and more into the philosophical ideas behind what is knowable. It tickles a certain part of my brain which I enjoy a lot, and it takes a special kind of person to make the jump from these superficial facts to the abstract layers that lie beneath.
I couldn’t agree with you more, King Kyle
Completely agreed Kyle, which is why I love your channel as well! You both are incredible people that I hope to always have a part of me
the add??
If there’s one thing that I like about this channel is just how improvised everything is. Most large channels are all well prepared and everything when it comes to making videos but Adam here goes out on the fly and takes it all in one take, even when it comes to asking Alexa something and then telling her to shut up or reading paperwork while the camera’s rolling. He’s a mad scientist and I love it
100% Script and dancing have ruined UA-cam lol
It's rare to have someone knowledgeable and charismatic enough to be able to pull that off. For most people they would come off as awkward and rambling.
@@Shogunersash depends on how much time you have on your hands.
Long live the people who possess this level of enthusiasm, for geeky things.
I’d recommend watching the PBS show called “Fractals - hunting the hidden dimension “. It very much relates to what you’re talking about.
Luckily 5.5 million people subscribe
The Geek shall inherit the earth!🤘🤘
Anything is geeky if someone has this much enthusiasm for it! :)
Yes
I'm as of recently a Quality Analyst at an engine factory. I don't get to use it yet, but the measurement labs and equipment are terrifying and awe-inspiring. Terrifying in how unbelievably difficult it is to measure things this accurately, and we're doing it. I see lots of Mitutoyo's stuff as well as Starrett, lots of granite everywhere, and the really fancy stuff like the gauge blocks are locked up in a special lab that's squeaky clean, in stark contrast to the common filth of the factory. It just sparks a sense of reverence, Quality is the field where the philosophical and abstract are blended with the physical and concrete, that's why I love it so much.
What I love about this is that even in those squeaky clean environments it’s still only accurate up to a point I assume.
@@galaga00 They are indeed. The ones at my work get sent off for external recalibration yearly to make sure surface wear hasn't taken them below the accepted tolerance
oh man....that sounds like my kind of field
@@peteg22397 Every plant that has an ISO-compliant management system have regular calibrations that are traceable to NIST standards. Great initial portion of study (where does precision truly come from!?) in the field of Quality. Metrology is awesome, but I do prefer the people side of the field.
It's important to know that it doesn't stay that way through anything but hard work. When the rest of the plant is filthy, the lab is the place that MUST always inspire us to do better. Metrologists have a heavy burden, and not all live up to the title.
I love the “im like a bull in a china shop” line from Adam & then the silent pause & realization that he has already Busted that myth. Still one of my favorite episodes ever & biggest surprises from the show.
I haven’t seen that episode, what’s it about and what did they find out?
@@imnoblueberry8502
They tested the myth of the phrase "Like a bull in a china shop." which implies one is clumsy as much as a bull would tear through a china shop and destroy everything. They got an actual bull and set up a mock china shop and had the bull chase rodeo clowns or an equivalent through the "shop" or if that wasn't the case and I'm just having a Mandela Effect moment, at the very least they had the bull run through the mock shop. To everyone's surprise the animal did not knock over a single shelf and none of the test china was broken, completely busting the myth.
The reality is that the animal didn't want to collide with any obstacles as much as you would not want to collide with any tree while running through a forest.
@@freekthecat oh wow that’s pretty cool and makes a lot of sense when u put it like that. Still crazy tho that a big bull can move quickly through rows with china and still not hit anything😮
Thank u for the response and clarification man😄👍
@@imnoblueberry8502I love how your comment is perfectly angular!
I was listening to this and as soon as he said it, I paused too and was like, "heeeeey, wait...." and I immediately stopped what I was doing just to see if anyone else had caught that and found your comment. 😊
I work in a metrology lab and I can say that I absolutely love my job! Waking up and going to work brings me joy! I also love how excited Adam is about metrology!!!
It is an interesting and satisfying profession, even though it's a severely underpaid one, at least for field technicians.
That's frickin awesome, but what does the weather have to do with it....
Sorry, I couldn't help myself lmao.
What do you do? CMMs?
@@Jaywin228 mainly physical dimensional. We do have a PMM but that is not my responsibility at this time.
The Pursuit of Precision is such a fascinating tale of human endeavor. The development of zero, base ten math, calculators (both the people and then development of machines), engineering tolerances, manufacturing tolerances... the advent of the ruler which brought on the sliderule. Surveying using gunter chains and now GPS with accuracy down to micometers. Machinist chasing zeros. Mathematicians chasing zeros. Engineers chasing zeros. It's so intertwined with human history and development that we are at a point where precision can speak the tale of human development.
This video was foundational for me in understanding precision
ua-cam.com/video/gNRnrn5DE58/v-deo.html
There’s a book called The Perfectionists, which is just an incredible telling of this tale.
@@brentoconnor6127 I only wish Machine Thinking would release more content
@@scottcassidy8471 You took my answer. 🍻
And precision is the reason humans are no longer part of a lot of manufacturing. Humans just cannot achieve repeatable, high precision results. That takes machinery.
A modern high end CNC machine can outperform a master machinist and do it faster and more reliability. Now, it still takes a master machinist to do the setup and configuration of said CNC machine, but it only takes one time. Instead of having to hire an entire team of master machinists to make things, you hire one once to set up your machines, and then you're done.
And there is no going back.
I've been a metrologist for 31 years, absolutely LOVE how much Adam brings to our science and career. Every day, tens of thousands of calibrations are done so that everything you use as a consumer is measured to the millionth of 'whatever'. Love this channel!
Do you know of any other good UA-cam content on this subject?
@@MrMcSwiftfaceThere's only one Adam Savage.
Just started a job as a (lab) metrologist - seeing him fumble through certificates is already familiar...
Really cool to learn about Guage blocks and ringing
Probably the best Tested video I have watched. Thank you Adam! “All models are wrong, but some are useful” - British statistician George Box
Now that is the rabbit hole from which there is no escape. Some are useful in some contexts, etc. I was able to get my head around it for scientific theories (them being the latest greatest approximation that was useful) but when this principle is extended to something like "truth" (where it is absolutely valid) one realizes every understanding we can have is relative, based on an imaginary model in our heads. That one can never know every single factor involved (no reductionist truth). I worked with some great physicists and learned to think in probabilities and that if something was 90% probable to them it was more certain that most people could be about anything in their lives. And of course that it's much easier to know when something is wrong though that's not the end of the story because even though someone's facts or thinking might be wrong their perception (e.g., of how something is interacting) might hold value. My picture of reality supplied by Hubble is still just a picture in my head and to pretend to myself that I understand it would be as crazy as someone's picture of a bearded god giving them their daily bread. That brings us to the "useful" part that I interpret as something that clicks with everything else and leads to greater understanding and ability to do things. People with too many imaginary false beliefs (lets say astrology and faeries) aren't usually able to fix their own washing machine.
When I first started machining. My biggest epiphany was wrapping my head around not only measuring but thinking of things in life you think are square. But in the machining world making blocks square is a whole different world.
Best comment. Square, parallels are hard. How do you set up your first perpendicular face on a milling machine?
@@fassay I do it by putting the first milled face against the fixed vise jaw and putting a one-inch ball between the workpiece and the movable jaw.
@@fassay I guess it really just depends on how bad the saw cut is on the block and if I can get two sides parallel first. If the block is bad enough I usually just use the "pin method" ( not sure if it's actually got a name) on my movable jaw.
@@BerzerkaDurk you must be milling some good size pieces to be using a 1 inch ball
@@jbuchans331 ha. true, ya know, I almost said use a ball or a dowel pin of a size depending on the workpiece, but I figured I'd keep it simple.
My favorite class in engineering school was uncertainty analysis... confidence and the degree of confidence, the certainty of certainty, is an amazingly useful subject, applicable in almost every imaginable area of study or thought. Not only can you calculate the things you know you're certain of, but also the things you can't be certain about, it's math-magical. Great show man 👏
Even a theology course I took was called the sin of certainty.
Been a Metrologist for 23 years. You cant imagine how awesome it is knowing that more people will know how cool and amazing the field is from this. We define reality lol.
I thought you said "meteorologist" and I wondered how that would relate to the video. I'm dumb.
Same here ;-)
Just think of medieval times or even 50-100 years back when there were no gauge blocks. People measured with sticks and copied from reference objects. It's even more a mystery now how they built the great pyramids with those big heavy stone blocks.
@@lavalampex they had this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_rope aka the rope with 13 knots
Metrology doesn't define reality.
My dad was a carpenter from the age of 13 (he quit school to support his siblings) until he died at 67. In my teens (i'm mid-50s now) I worked with him off and on. When calling out measurements he used to say "cut the line" or "leave the line" it wasn't until recently that I internalized what he was telling the saw-man with that phrase. My favorite measuring tool: the foldable wooden ruler. There's just something about it that I enjoy.
very important...."kerf" = the width of the saw blade.....usually 1/64 inch....a box is usually 3 cuts, 3 kerfs off and now your 1/16 inch wrong!!!
My current favorite measuring instrument is my oscilloscope! A little peek into the world of quite short time periods! It turns "I push the button and it closes the circuit" into "I push the button and apparently it actually kind of rattles as it settles into being firmly connected over the course of 60 microseconds".
It lets you move from measuring only steady states of electronic circuits to understanding how they change over time.
The oscilloscope makes noise and uncertainty very visible.
I can't remember a better video on a combination of Physics, Philosophy, an appreciation of the natural world and our understanding of it, I have watched in years. The sheer excitement and enthusiasm Adam conveys spews out of the screen and envelops you. Tolerance and uncertainty are the cornerstones of every measurement as the late, great Walter Lewin used to insist. We do not get to appreciate the nuance of that in our daily lives until a great educator like Adam comes along to make you think about it. This man is a national treasure.
We agree. Adam has a wonderful ability to speak to the masses regarding complex topics. Wounded video Adam!
Adam, I was a U.S. Army Metrologist for over 8 years. It is an unappreciated and often unknown science. Thanks for bringing this to light.
I love how Adam goes “About the thickness of a rolling paper” to talking about measuring fractals on a coastline. You need a podcast!
They had one for a while! Sadly, it's ended now. But, there's a bunch of backlog if you want to look up "still untitled: the adam savage project"
First time?
🔥
I mean, Tested still has the "This is Only a Test" podcast. No Adam, though.
Just wanted to transmit the surreal experience of watching the video normally then scrolling to the comments and reading the OP quote the video as it was being said.
"Any measurement without the knowledge of uncertainty is meaningless" - Walter Lewin
My favorite quote when it comes to accuracy
Measure twice, never make a cut
@@codyeakinsbradley cut twice, then measure your mistakes
Or as my detail design professor in engineering school said thirty years ago,
Design it with a computer
Draw it with a pencil
Mark it with a crayon
Cut it with an axe
It isn't as bad as that but dealing with everything from the designers to the assemblers I can tell you it is a very rare designer who understands the limits of the ability to make or measure the features they are designing.
"Why do you have the tolerance for that feature at +/- 0.0001""
"Because that is what the program is set to..."
@@kennethfharkin Also, there are two kinds of manufacturers, the ones that make the part to spec and bill you accordingly, and the ones that call you to tell you that you're an idiot. I greatly prefer the second kind.
@@cloudbloom 😁😁😁
Also, a favorite of mine (forgot who, only my husband told me): "The shorter the ruler, the longer the shoreline"
For over two decades I have worked as an engineer closely with the machinists, metrologists, customer manufacturing, design and production engineers, quality departments and customer inspection. Before that I worked in a metrology lab. Almost all the machinists I deal with are literally Swiss machinists. Our normal tolerances we work with are +/- 0.001" (25 microns) with the smallest PRODUCTION tolerance I have had to work with for a multimode fiberoptic ferrule +/- 0.00025 MILLIMETERS!
Accuracy and Precision are an incredibly complex subject which get exponentially more complex when you begin discussing Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility (GR&R). It is one thing to make an item once or twice for your own use but now try making 10,000+ of them for assembly and use by your customer in something like an implantable cardiac device or minimally invasive surgical component. Now you need to be able to measure not just the part but study the variations from operator to operator when making such measurements along with the variations in the measurement devices used just to determine if all parties can effectively measure the features in question. Then you can start discussing such things as gage tolerances where both you and the customer have certified Go and No Go Gages yet the product is conforming with your gage and non-conforming with the customer's simply because of variation within the allowed tolerance the gages are made to... These are the things which put me on planes to production sites and customers and keep me up at night.
I had a professor working on nanoproduction. His precisions were incredible, on the order of hundreds of atoms. At the same school, I had engineering students who told me that they calculated that they needed the precision of their senior project (often go-cart sized) to within a micron (sometimes a lot less). They just used formulas blindly, no effort to understand the numbers.
I find that a significant issue in most all gauging, especially tapered thread gauges. The tolerance stack up combined with uncertainty narrows the effective manufacturing tolerances by a notable margin to conform to the gauge.
It gets right out of hand at times.
Metrology and expectations of accuracy and/or precision are challenging items to fully account for.
I've literally solved non conformance by requesting the receiving facility double check the temperature at which the measurement was made.
Never thought a video about measurement would make me tear up, but here I am! This inspired a pure sense of awe and fascination about the world that we think we understand. One of my favorite quotes is, "The more I learn, the less I know." What seems like a simple question and answer becomes a constellation of variability. I find that amazing.
The way Adam pull back and says "with in reason..." and just look at the camera like a stern father , pure gold. please never leave us Adam.
Adam is literally the kind of father figure I want
I put the speed up to 1.5 because I noticed most of it was not presenting anything revelatory, but merely evidentiary .
this video is proof positive that when you begin to get very senile :
even simple elementary notions of new understandings seem to be monumental achievements
which can foster euphoric propulsion for being mentally toastified for hours about your own personal incredible diadactic ingenuity .
@@kablammy7 I thot he was having an organism
Hearing Adam talk about learning guitar really hit home for me. So true, I love this channel and your work Adam!
Hey Rhett, found you here just before jumping over to your channel, yes Adam is a hero for a lot of people and has a great channel.
The last suit build is crazy good. Helps me out nursing a cracked rib after crashing my bike the day before xmas, only four weeks to go? Ughh
See you on the other side!
Hey! UA-camrs I like who like other UA-camrs I like is my favorite thing in the world.
Oh shit it’s Rhett! Fancy seeing you here man this is like a crossover episode for me lol
Will you guys be talking about the guitar player/effects builder equivalents on the podcast? My first thought was tuning with harmonics instead of only fretted notes, or knowing and using more than one vibrato technique? I feel like you two would have great thoughts on the subject.
Dude, totally same. I've noticed a lot of patterns of "learning the next level of how something works" between making and playing... Always cool to have Mr. Savage corroborate our experiences.
Adam, I love they way you don’t just explain things per point, you have a great story telling ability you marry with you explanations. It’s so much fun listening along to your journey to your main point.
Adam I've been in fabricating and machine my entire working life, and am currently a quality manager at a machine shop. Thank you for being passionate about something that so many take for granted. As I was showing my wife portions of this video, and I was geeking out over it, she looked at me like she had to hurry up and go change the cats litter boxes and I was keeping her from that. I appreciate it more than you know!!! Have a fabulous day!
Adam, you are pointing out such important things, as you so often do. New eyes in the case of Impressionism was not merely practice in an existing field - it was adjusting the critic’s (and the western world’s) whole concept of what painting was meant to accomplish. That it wasn’t to spend countless hours hours drawing and painting create a polished representation of a traditional idea of figures in space as it had been worked out over centuries. The impressionists worked quickly to catch a momentary glimpse of how humans actually perceived the modern world. Originally, impressionist paintings looked careless, clumsy, untutored, unfinished - bad. But it wasn’t bad - it was a new kind of good. Grasping that demanded an incredible level of new learning, seeing, and understanding. Our world keeps changing and our tools change with it - we all need to continually change how we see and understand. You and your gauge blocks are helping us to understand that. Thank you! (And yeah, I’m an art historian.)
I've been working in a building with a lot of impressionist paintings on the wall and my favorite part is how your mind fills in the blanks and from across the room they look incredibly realistic
@@sheyannev2757 The mind is a wonderful thing. What we actually see is heavily processed by our brains to create the image we “see” in our mind’s eye. It’s a fascinating process that most of us don’t even consider.
Love it when you do these “explainer” videos. Epic. Packed with valuable lessons for not just measurement but life itself.
i was not, nor am i still particularly interested in metrology, but Adam's energy is intoxicating. He has a way of sharing ideas, concepts, stories etc that is extremely captivating and entertaining. A true pleasure to watch. That was really cool of Mitutoyo. It's always great to see/hear about companies that aren't just faceless entities
Very well done class Mr. Savage. I have been a QC inspector and manager for 32 years ,before retiring and helped build our companies inspection standards to today's quality. This would be a very good class for any starting inspector to watch. Good show.
Adam, I love, love, love that you were hit by this wonderful epiphany. I’m a practicing statistician, and I can happily tell you that the whole point of statistical methodologies isn’t to measure a thing…it’s to tell you how much to trust/believe/discount/exult your measurement! Precision is relative and is endlessly battered by exogenous factors. Great episode!
Adam needs to investigate statistical tolerancing!
Endorphin rush received. Through the first 90% of the video, I was screaming "this needs a reshoot with a proper script with cutaways and tidy editing". But toward the end, I realized that Adam's pure energy and delight in the topic comes through *because of* the stream of consciousness style. So for some, a clean linear presentation might be more effective, while others will grok better with this scattershot approach. In any event, thanks for the deep dive into the philosophy of metrology!
I absolutely love this!
The first part reminds me of something I learnt some time back on the stages of competence - when learning a new skill we all fall into one of four categories of increasing competence. It starts with being unconsciously incompetent, where you don't know what you don't know. You then move to being consciously incompetent, where you gain an understanding of what is involved and can start to do the thing, albeit poorly, and with constant attention to what you are doing. Next you become consciously competent, where you can now do the thing well as long as you pay particular attention to what you are doing. And then lastly you become unconsciously competent, and can now perform at a high level and have an intrinsic understanding of what is involved and no longer have to consciously think through what you are doing.
The second part of the discussion reminded me of something that blew my mind - the engine of a Formula 1 car is seized solid at room temperature! All of the components in the engine are machined to be within tolerance only at the operating temperature of the engine, so the entire engine is heated before it can be started! And, as you mentioned with the different coefficients of thermal expansion with your gauge blocks, there are many dissimilar materials that make up the various parts of the engine and they all have to be machined for their own particular rate of expansion to work when the engine is hot - this absolutely amazes me and I'm in awe of the engineers that design and build them!
Yeah l was blown away as well when l found out the F1 are seized when cold
Adam, I am a Journeyman Millwright for the last 15 years. Your description of the art and science of measuring things was golden. Most people don't realize how everything expands and contracts with heat or the lack thereof. A great tool for calculating this is the Coefficient of Thermal expansion which can be found in the Machinery's Handbook. A teacher I once had said that with that book alone, you could teach yourself to build most anything you wanted. Thank you for your passion and honesty with all your projects.
I had kind of an epiphany when you said, “the closer you look at stuff, the harder it is to measure” and I kept thinking back to modern physics and the uncertainty principle. That concept is so unbelievably hard to have an intuition for. However, at least for me, you gave an intuition for that principle on the limits of the smallest things in the universe. It’s simply just a scaled down version of what you’re describing. The uncertainty is larger than the measurement itself.
Indeed, doing engineering in university I did a course that included the concepts of accuracy and precision, plus the accumulation of error. There's a specific process to combining measurements and the uncertainty in them, allowing you to ignore some (if they're substantially smaller than another, more massive error), and sometimes the results - the accumulation of tiny, tiny errors - can be rather surprising. This applied equally all the way from my quantum computing class up to literally measuring dots on ticker tape with a ruler in a physics lab.
Something that I find equally amusing and unintuitive is that color doesn't exist at the smallest scales, as the wavelength of light is larger than some of the smallest particles/objects. The fact that our measuring devices are limited by physics in this way is really strange but cool.
So true. The problem is fundemental yo nature itself.
As an electrical engineer my intuition for why you can't measure at the smallest level is that to see something you must shoot it which will deflect it. Normally the "bullet" is a photon but when we need a smaller wavelength of the bullet we use electrons.
I also know that my chemistry professor explained the uncertainty principle once as not being quantum, it was just a part of the base equations where you could only know one variable to a certain range of the other.
I also accept quantum is just black magic, electrons can jump through voltage barriers and respond to stimuli a few milliseconds before the stimulus happens (again black magic).
Indeed, if there is a "smallest particle", then there is a limit to how accurately you can measure it, because your tools cannot be more precise than the size of the particles they are made of.
As a high school science teacher and maker, I loved this dive into the weeds! The thought process of “knowing” is fascinating and using measurements is so necessary. My students have not developed the needed “eyes” to properly understand or appreciate measurements at your levels, and, honestly, to the precision that a meter stick provides.
Yardstick. :-)
I love this! I'm a CNC operator, and I'm going to share this with my machinist friends. One of whom is the retired inspector from where I work.
Oh! Adam! Watching you is such happiness! Seeing a person exhibit such awe, excitement, and sheer pleasure from having and sharing knowledge makes me feel all warm inside! It brings me memories of my childhood in 1950's, learning about ancient cultures & history with my father -- and again, listening to my grandson info-dump about the pharaohs & pyramids. Knowledge is power, is wonder, is joy!
Keep bringing joy to our world Adam!
For most of this video I sat on the edge of my seat watching in horror at the UNLOCKED box of ceramic gauge blocks on the bench. Thankfully they remained there the whole video and didn't end up on the floor. I kept shouting at the screen to lock the box then Adam notices the steel block box is open and closed it but leaves the ceramics open. Oh the humanity!
I truly believe Adam Savage is the only person that can say "I woke up this morning thinking about gauge blocks" and no one bats an eye.
Na, I could see Destin from Smarter Every Day or Alec Steele doing that too.
My wife would vehemently disagree.
Wait. Don't you wake up thinking about fine measurements? I thought we all did 😅
My work deals with them so I tend to wake up with them on my mind as well.
this old tony also...
This was like a master class on philosophy of measurement, I super-enjoyed it!
I quite enjoyed this. In my own career as a glass artist and working with kilns I found that the amount a given material will move when it is heated up. Generally, I was working with temperatures ranging from room temp up to around 1650 F. With glass you can fuse different sheets of glass together and they will bond, but if they have different rates of expansion then, if that difference is great enough the piece will not survive over time. If the expansion is greatly different then the piece will break on cooling down. If it is slight then it may last hours, days or months before it breaks.
Then you went on to mention the expansion of the cables of the Golden Gate bridge at noon vs. dead of night. This brings me to another thing I learned early on in my kiln work. If you put a piece of steel in the kiln and take it up to 1500 F it will be just fine. It will heat up and then cool down and be pretty much the same-aside from the spalling on the surface. However, if you have it constrained, then it will bend and twist and be deformed when it cools down. The understanding I gained from my kilns and trying to build metal forms to shape glass gave me a great insight into why the Twin Towers collapsed. The burning jet fuel heated up the steel supports but because they were supporting hundreds of thousands of tons they could not expand so they buckled and once they buckled they could no longer support that vast weight. A digression from what I intended to say, which was to thank you for this discussion of measurement.
Exactly right. The fireproofing was blasted off by the aircrafts entry into the interior of the building. It was only a matter of time before the support structures buckled, stretched, and broke. There was even a documentary showing that. Had it been just the fire, the fireproofing would have given firefighters time to put it out.
The Empire State Building survived a crash by a B-25 in the late 30’ early 40’s. The Empire had massive steel girders in its structure. You might say it was overbuilt!
@@dflo4165 aircraft's
@@NoName-zn1sb 😂 really?
@Joseph Roach Hardly surprising, in demolition they break out the supporting walls with sledgehammers or mechanical means then use explosives to remove the supporting pillars.
Once the lower support is gone the building drops in its own footrprint.
The plane and the fire just repeated that on a slower timescale.
A curious thought is that the WTC had an unusual structure, instead of being a frame it had a central spine, once the supports in the spine were weakened the building dropped straight down because all the centre supports raeched their failure point at about the same time.
If it had a frame construction would the supports have only failed at the point where the fire was worst and then the top hundred floors would have toppled at the failure point.
That might have saved a lot of lives below but would it have killed more people inthe surrounding area?
Ah, leave it to Adam Savage's fans to have me going back to watch Jonathan Cole, PE's videos experimenting on cutting structural steel with homemade jig tools and thermate over 10 years after their original posting and over 20 years after the events took place. So many answers to questions the government doesn't care about.
I would _LOVE_ Adam Savage to get to experience seeing a Scanning Electron Microscope look at something on the nanometer scale if it's not something he's had the opportunity to before - because I will never forget the first time I did, and how it gives you an understanding of just how intertwined everything is.
The sample we looked as was held in a vacuum sealed chamber, in another stabilized container, and those containers all have various forms of other insulation to help remove the sample from interaction with the outside environment. This allows it to be stabilized to the device and apart from as many other surfaces as possible to act as insulation against energy transfer disrupting the focus and visible output.
Despite that, if you talked at all while you were in the room with that device _even just at a whisper,_ the tiny vibrations from your voice would cause movement on the display, because that miniscule audible sound energy is transferring into and through all of the interconnected solid materials, and past all of the multiple forms of insulation and stabilization, and reaching the sample you are looking at.
Then the more you understand about the tolerances and just how much all of those stabilization and insulation measures reduce the amount of anything from reaching that sample, the more monumentally impressive the scale of just how tiny and interconnected everything is.
In the years since, that's made learning about things like cold welding in space even more impressive because of helping me to wrap my head around details that I'd never been able to grasp before.
I love SEMs, we have a few where I work. I remember when in our old office, if a tram was driving four blocks away, you could see the vibrations in the image.
Yeah, those things are cool. Very similar to the width of the line on the tape measurer at that scale the wavelength of light itself isn’t small enough to interact.
@@jonwallace6204 Yeah, there are _crazy_ techniques that they have to do with photolithography to be able to make some types of modern electronics because of that. That's the kind of stuff that blows your mind and helps underscore how much those in that field really understand the science behind those things.
"The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" is such a great book and is in my top 5 books all time.
Top 5 in my list absolutely.
An old machinist gave me the best advice when measuring engine parts. He said " the difference between a micrometer and a fancy clamp is the standard". This statement has fundamentally changed the way I view measurements and my tools.
Someone need to link me to that pic of a guy using a micrometer as a welding clamp.
What do you mean with "standard"?
@@schwarzerritter5724 the standard is the rod, manufactured to a precise length, which you use to calibrate the micrometer. Without it you have a fancy clamp.
I had a similar epiphany when I saw a BBC interview of Richard Feynman. When the reporter asks him "why" (for magnets) he gives an absolutely beautiful answer.
Adam, thank you for this excellent introduction to metrology. This video is a mandatory watch for the students. Even the non edited confusion about what is a nanometer is a valuable lesson: it’s a great skill to have a feeling for when something is wrong, even if one does not know how to fix it yet, then take the necessary steps to learn, then come back and get it right. Love it all 45min.
This was something that bothered me from a young age. Whenever I was asked to measure things I always tried my best to minimise inaccuracy. I'm a mechanical engineer now and after studying metrology my questions were finally answered. I feel like you did a very good job explaining all of this!
Something that bugged me in highschool was that even if i could memorize every formula, if stranded in say ancient Greece (ignore htf the timetravel happened) i could never build anything remotely advanced because how could i replicate our units. Sure i could declare some bar of metal to be a pound mass based on feel but it wouldn't be perfect so all our carefully discovered univeral constants won't apply.
Now i am an electrical engineer so I'm doubly incapable of close enough units because how do i make a multi meter and get reasonably close to what a volt or amp is without a reference/calibration device?
Now obviously a mech E could make functional machines and i could probably get reasonably acceptable electric lighting or something without proper measurements but that's not the point.
I guess my point is the existential crisis of how do you remake units from scratch, especially without having to recalculate all the universal constants.
Same!
@@jasonreed7522 It's quite doable, but you have to dive deep into some history of science, foundations of your discipline sorta stuff. There's a standard definition of the volt that's a thing that can be measured using a fascinating little apparatus, but of course you'd have to build your way up to it. The 3-plate method of getting something really flat is a good place to start. The second thing is that you'd just need to put up with a little bit of slop at first. Go with a historical definition of something until you can measure cesium atoms pulsing to get a proper second and measure the speed of light. The rest follows from there, though machining precision will be the core of your ladder when it comes to building the apparati needed to nail down each.
@@jasonreed7522 well just like any other frame of reference, all of the constants like pi or eulers number, they are all comparative measurements. Absent the existing measurement reference, the formulas should work with ANY measurement as long as that metric is consistently applied. Just why the metric system is "most accurate" because of the set of revenues kept in a controlled environment in France. There is something to compare with.... hence the "reference". Just make your own meter, gram, liter and use them as references, all of the other relations should fall into place if those references are stable.
@@gene8842 thats should only work for unit less constants.
π is the ratio of a circle's radius and circumference and is you assume its value is 3.1415 you will be accurate enough. (Similar story for e, but i forget the base definition for its origin so lets say e^x is it's own derivative)
Avagodro's number is the same a a dozen in that it groups many individual things into easier to count groups, only its way bigger than 12.
But, some constants do infact have units like ε0 which it the permittivity of free space and has units of Farads per meter and Wikipedia has its base units done out. Granted most of the time the units make up the difference of the output and input of the formula.
I suppose all you really would need to figure out would be the SI base units like seconds, meters, kg, Kelvins, Amps, mols, candela.
Some wouldn't matter like Candelas measuring light.
And some are easy like Kelvin being °C +275ish and °C being defined with 0 and 100 to water so make those 2 lines on a thermometer and evenly space the rest.
Or mols being a fixed count of something, usually Atoms or molecules, and i just realized that if you figured out mass or volume units the other could be determined by density 1g of water = 1ml.
I still think getting the electrical units sorted would be the hardest if you had to start from scratch.
Actually this could be a cool challenge event, remake the units from scratch in a week. You are given a list of formulas and constants to help you. (Would be searchable electronic for ease of use) and give a prize to whoever is the closest / got the most.
In college, a friend and I were discussing the progression of precision in machines. Because in order to make a precision machine, it has to be made on a less-precise machine, which itself was manufactured on an even less precise machine...
Love the video.
Levers, man!
You need to look into the technique of hand lapping to understand this.
I used to think a bunch about how much science and technology I could reproduce if I went back in time. And the amount of stuff which boils down to "I don't even know how to make the measurement tools to do this" is kind of fun.
Not really. They used the rule of three. If you create three planes and they all mate with each other then they're all flat. There's no combination of convex and concave that's going to work across three planes. Now with your perfectly flat surfaces you have the beginnings of precision. You have a reference. They did and still do it by hand too.
@@1pcfred You need abrasive between the plates to make that work. If your abrasive is not uniform, it's going to put gouges in your plates. It also needs to be super fine.
Adam is such a fantastic human! I do coding and game development, and I’ve been having tested on in the background, and there’s a level of comradeship that were both creating something (usually from nothing) that were both going back over and changing things, seeing how it looks or works, and doing it again and again until everything works and looks mostly exactly how you want it too. Thank you for moving to UA-cam, and being even more relatable! Keep on being amazing Adam! And everyone who empathizes on any level!
The next tool you should buy (or borrow) is an 'optical profilometer' so you can measure your gauge blocks. You will find that even the best ones have surface roughness and non-planar surfaces at the nanometer scale. When you start getting serious about measurement, you can obtain an optical/laser micrometer and laser scanner, from a company like Faro or Micro-Epsilon. The accuracy of optical measurement is dependent on the wavelength of light and insensitive to temperature, so they are about as absolute as one can get. I love these spontaneous videos, here's to many more in the future! Cheers!!
You'll definitely want a system like this in a temperature-controlled lab, just as he was saying with the precision and stability of the ceramic blocks, the same issue arises with optical/laser measuring systems. Typical to allow the specimen piece to soak a minimum of 24 hours at 20°C before measuring with such a system. :)
@@msbrickkitten6882 Soak, in what?
@@3nertia soak means to let the object and tools being used to acclimate in the same temperature. Soak means that the temperature is consistent all the way through to the center of the objects.
To bad the cave isn’t large enough for a MiSTAR CMM. It includes thermal compensation for shop floor applications like Adam was describing.
I blame the cockeyed nature of the spice rack I built in shop class half a century ago on the absence of an optical profilometer.
Echoing hundreds of other comments, thank you! Thank you for sharing such an amazingly simple, yet extremely complex concept. We joke in my profession that the answer to every question is "It depends." Nothing exists without a relationship to other things and everything affects the things around them. Honestly feel that this video is an amazing contribution to the education of inquiring minds everywhere, in every profession.
This is like when I'm getting "new eyes" and experience an epiphany, getting all excited talking non stop to my wife, explaining the knowledge I've just got. After almost 30 years together, this sensation never gets transmitted to her, but you totally made it through to me! I'm getting a rush-type of feeling watching this video. Love the excitement! I feel you! I'm tempted to make my wife watch this video. Maybe its just me being bad at explaining stuff or we just being nerds. Either way, thumbs up!
Adam: I learned much of this well done video while working at a Fortune 50 company, putting coatings on papers and films. The critical thickness of the material we were coating, an emulsion, depended on its viscosity (some were shear thickening, some shear thinning), temperature, velocities and the coating rolls used, measured in 0.00001 runout. It was as much an enlightening experience as you just expressed. Well done, Adam.
I just started cnc machining a few months ago, and I’m absolutely obsessed with the constant pursuit of precision. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as making something within 1/10,000th of an inch.
that is sub micron already😁
@@andrewferguson6901 then to an angstrom but at what temperature?
@@peterweller8583 i have special hvac in the measuring room :)
@@angrydragonslayer just like Uncle NIST
@@peterweller8583 funny thing, i once got to enter a vacuum room cetified by NIST while setting up a smaller version for a client (my client needed a 2x2.5 meter room, the certified one was ~40 m2 iirc)
The mere idea that we can already reach the level of precision where that is needed boggles my mind.
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this Adam. I just want to say thank you. You’re a maker; and a fosterer of making in general, and a supporter of people in general, and I appreciate your point of view and sharing of knowledge.
I absolutely love this rant. I work in a clean room that makes metrology optics, so precision microrules, dot grids, reticles. One of the first things I had to learn was at what point do I stop looking for defects because as you increase your magnification you will find more and more defects.
And speaking on metrology, one of my favorite measurement tools to use is a white-light interferometer that we use to measure features with down to nanometer precision. It's incredible!!
Your comment reminds me of a problem my old workplace had. We made pre-finished hardwood flooring.
One day we noticed a repeating perpendicular line in the finish layer of the wood floor. It was visible if viewed from a low angle. This was happening on all of the product we were finishing.
We searched the factory finishing line up and down for issues and possible causes but in the end (after 3 weeks of not producing any product) we concluded that we were looking too closely at the finish, and that the end customer would not notice such a defect unless they were lying on the floor with the light hitting it in just the right way.
It was a costly mistake for the factory but it also taught me that having a good attention to detail can be both helpful and sometimes a hindrance.
I believe someone said once “perfect is the enemy of good enough.”
@@Coleton33Music this is why im happy that (proper) machining plans have tolerances on all dimensions. You dont have to hit those dimensions on the micron, just in the ballpark of those numbers.
Ofcourse this leads to obsessive fussing over surface finish when it is not specified
Hello Adam, thank you for making this simple explanation. My friends can understand been a quality control inspector for medical device companies for 35 years. Metrology is fun for me. And yes, the word you did not use the entire talk was tolerance. I think that's the word you were looking for. And we work within microns all day. I enjoy your shows immensely. Very entertaining and educational. Irregularly work within around 30 nanometers on a lot of parts I work with. Measuring cylinders precision cylinders high-speed pneumatic motors pneumatic motors turning 100,000 RPMs with aluminum tools where if you hold them too long, the plug gauge would either get stuck or wouldn't enter because of the change in diameter just from holding the part for too long and raising the temperature. One or two degrees temperature is a major factor in micro measurements. I find titanium to be one of the more thermal stable materials work with it a lot in the medical field. Thank you again. Enjoy your shows. Take care
Adam I just wanted to take second say that thank you for expressing your true self (ie. not masking) because at a young age I realized I was different than most of my peers. I thought different, acted different and being the odd one out can be challenging if not down right painful at times. Seeing others in the world being celebrated for being a similar type of different gives me the strength to be myself and to stand against the those who try to put me down because of it. I will leave you with a quote that is very near and dear to my heart.
"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.” - Andre Gide.
"Built different" is the polite term I grew up hearing for that, as I also experienced those same things to a degree (the less-polite term was "weirdo", but I learned to embrace that one too). But yea, even today as a 40 year old, I find that my perceptions of things - people, situations, problems, etc. - is somewhat off-center from my peers, which sometimes is a good thing as I can find unconventional solutions to problems someone has been beating their head against for a while, sometimes is not a good thing as trying to explain things to someone with my unusual perception can be confusing.
Your comments resonate with me. Being different can be a hard thing, but I think it makes us appreciate those connections we do make more.
Each of our unique perspectives also help keep us from running with the pack, or jumping on the bandwagon. We function as anchors or provide grounding in these times of group idiocy and cruelty, understanding deeper the pain, variety, and beauty of life.
I am really really struggling to understand how this comment has anything to do with masking lmao, dude is alone in his giant workshop and fully vaccinated. I'm sure when he's out in public or at least in a small space with a lot of people he's wearing a mask like any other reasonable person. There's nothing noble or respectable about posing a needlessly greater threat to public health for the sake of feeling superior. Such a fucking weird hill to die on.
Your discussion about steel expansion reminded me of something a machinist friend told me. The 12-cylinder engine blocks in the WW2 Spitfires were so large, that the heat generated by milling caused the block to expand measurably. The blueprints had two sets of measurements on them. The set you used depended on which end of the block you started milling from. If something happened part way through that forced you to stop (e.g. a broken bit) the entire engine block had to be scrapped, and you started over with a new one.
I'm a 3rd gen machinist. My Grandfather machined parts for one of the cars that sit on the moon. He was a machinist in the Navy in WWII after that he was a machinist working for GM at the GM tech center in Warren MI. This was a great explanation of how tight temperature can effect a machined part. The last machine shop I worked at was kept at gauge room temperature. We made satellite parts. I've machined small parts that can fit in your pocket to parts 72" in dia. I loved it.
One of your best videos so far! I work with color science within the printing industry, and the more I learn the more I tend to start my answer with ”it depends” when I get a question regarding color.
My partner and I started a photography business years ago, and she was getting all hepped up about the tolerance of the gamut on the high-end monitor that we bought. From my years of lab work, and quality assurance in the printing industry, I just said, "It doesn't matter - Just work within the edges."... Or something like that. Had to dumb it down really hard.
My main guage in photography was, "Does the thing on the screen look like the thing that I'm looking at." Then it was all about whether my technique/composition etc was good. I never worried about how "good it looked on the screen." I was more invested in the capturing/recording equipment.
I used to work with a Print Lab mixing ink I know what yousay
Your enthusiasm is contagious. You reawaken the magic and wonder of discovery most of us had as small children but have lost to the grind of adult life. Watching you bounce around with excitement had me chuckling. Thanks for sharing that excitement.
I loved the truly honest enthusiasm of this video. Geeking out over a topic like this is something I would do and seeing another person do the same thing is so entertaining. The only problem is that I have found very few people in my life that see things the same way, which makes this channel extremely valuable to me. Thank you Adam for being you.
Started reading "The Beginning of Infinity" last week. In the early chapter, "Closer to Reality", it observes that "It may seem strange that scientific instruments bring us closer to reality when in purely physical terms they only ever separate us further from it. But we observe nothing directly anyway. All observation in theory laden".
Wild that I just sat here and listened to 45 mins of measurement discussion. Adam's a great teacher.
I had a 22 year military career in metrology. I even had the pleasure of becoming an auditor. Excellent video. I would add the importance of documentation and its chain all the way up to NIST. Any measurement or documentation error could have bad consequences during an audit. I loved my career but I'm so done with it. 😀
NIST - 2001 - Did you self audit this situation ? ? ?
Three buildings fall down ( solely due to gravity ) with increasing acceleration against stronger foundational lower levels while maintaining almost perfect symmetry and causing material destruction beyond anything ever experienced in the history of the world without the force of explosives or terrific seismic activity in the immediate vicinity .
A small structural deficiency or compromise can cause the total collapse of a steel structure to fall at almost free-fall speed and pulverise 90 percent of the structure to powder .
@@kablammy7 👀
@@overpay7473
I think I owe you .
Thank you for your
service. I enjoyed this video too, but it's all new info for me. Thanks Adam and the team. I kept thinking that measurements are just examples of and proof for "fuzzy math". 😀
@@kablammy7 he probably didn’t audit it since your scenario never happened… maybe you should audit your comment because just your first sentence is almost entirely baseless and incorrect, including 4 blatant lies I found just skimming:
“Solely” (they just fell out of the blue?)
“Increasing acceleration” (constant acceleration?)
“Almost perfect” (lol did you listen Mr. Savage at all?)
“Destruction beyond.. history of the world” (not even close)
Thinking about the minimum resolution of the universe has always been a fascinating subject for me. Whether it's chunks of time, physical mass or size, luminescence etc. Some of the most amazing insights into our universe have stemmed just from trying to measure progressively smaller increments of whatever the subject matter is.
I can't wait to "see" what they find next. From cells to, I think qorks is smallest now, in what, 140 years? Not bad.
It’s all interesting stuff. For minimum resolution of the universe have a look at Planc length. Yes quarks are small as they make up protons and neutrons (once thought to be fundamental). String theory then takes this down still further by going down by about the same scale factor as people to atoms. So pretty small !
what makes this video absolutely great is that it tells us about one of the main sources of human suffering in our world today. while the amount of provided information gets bigger and bigger, most people try to construct their personal image of reality by simplifying coherences and building generalized rules to make the world fit in their mind with the least effort. instead of approaching reality we drift away from it, form our own world with simplified rules, but try to transfer those rules to real life. i see the essence of adams video in the following point: the image of reality in our heads will never be able to reach the real truth. we must accept that. but with an open mind we can make our understanding of our very complex world better and better, step by step. it is very dangerous, that many smart people are affraid to make important decisions, because they underestimate their own capabilities, recognising the deep complexity of our life, while on the other hand people with a simplified view have the self consciousness to lead. the timing for putting out this message is perfect. i really appreciate your mindset and i am looking forward to see more relevant content like this!
I'm genuinely envious of people that call Adam friend. Having someone this passionate about anything is such a wonderful trait .
I experienced the same reaction when I first learned of GD&T. The entire concept of precision is relative from a bicycle chain to the size of an electron.
A really cool example is how surveying equipment uses several (like 5 to 7) different wavelengths of light to give pretty precise measurements over a job sight.
Adam, for me this was the best video of yours yet! I understood exactly where you were going right away, but the journey you took to get there from the pragmatic to the philosophical, and your visible excitement for describing your epiphany, worked out just perfectly. Thank you so much! Great video!
I put the speed up to 1.5 because I noticed most of it was not presenting anything revelatory, but merely evidentiary .
this video is proof positive that when you begin to get very senile :
even simple elementary notions of new understandings seem to be monumental achievements
which can foster euphoric propulsion for being mentally toastified for hours about your own personal incredible diadactic ingenuity .
Adam, love listening to your philosophy of "making" and "seeing" etc. I'm a hobby machinist that makes working model internal and external combustion engines, and like you and so many others mostly use the "six inch dial calipers". So far the the most accuracy I've ever needed was in getting a consistent sliding fit between valve stems and valve guides, and getting cylinder liners and piston rings that seal. I've found that if I make all the valve guides with the same reamer then I can lap a valve stem to where I like the fit and measure it with a "tenth" vernier on a micrometer and I can continue making valve stems to plus or minus one "tenth" and they will all be acceptable. Another way of reading this is that no mater what the specified size of a reamer is the hole it makes depends on that specific reamer, its cutting angles, its sharpness (HSS is sharper than carbide (when new)), the type of material it is cutting, and what cutting fluid you use, all these things have to be held constant to get repeatable holes, whose actual size will be "near" the specified size of the reamer, but your valve stems have to be lapped to the actual size which will be different from the reamer's stated size. I also have a "tenth" reading bore gauge for lapping my cylinder liners all within a "tenth" so that I can make piston rings all the same size. So those are the only two instruments I use that measure to a "tenth", and I don't machine things to a tenth, I machine to a thou over and lap to plus or minus a tenth because surface finish always matters at these dimensions. I do have a test-dial-indicator like you were using, but I only use it for centering things, like centering something in a 4-jaw chuck, or tramming the mill head and squaring the mill vise, or centering the mill Y axis between the jaws of the mill vise, or centering the mill to the rotary table, I've never used it for measuring distance (in fact I usually have a long arm on it for longer reach which throws the scale off). Lastly, the word you were searching for is "exact", as in there's no such thing as an "exact measurement", only better approximations (under more strictly specified conditions, which are subject to their own measurement accuracy issues). PS, the most accurate measurement ever made by anyone is with LIGO, the gravitational wave observatory, read up on that if you really want your mind blown, they measure down to the Heisenburg Uncertainty Level, and a little bit below using tricks.
Adam. I knew nothing of nothing about this subject. In the beginning, I was kind of lost. At the end I was AMAZED. Yes, you can always half a half, there is no “zero” in measurement. The science you explained here was so very interesting. Those blocks are INSANE. As someone who was clueless about this subject, I certainly learned something today. Thanks!
10:25
Hey Adam, you mentioned that calipers can measure in 3 ways. Actually calipers can measure in 4!
Not sure whether you left out that detail on purpose as it is just another type of depth measurement, but calipers also have a "step" measuring mode.
I'd try to explain it with just text, but that would probably lead to confusion. Smarter to look it up and find a diagram.
The intent with the "step" measuring mode is that a makes it easier to keep the calipers perpendicular with the measured surfaces. This should reduce cosine error and make for more repeatable and accurate measurements 👍
You also mentioned that your 1/10ths gauge can be used to get sub-1/10ths accuracy. This would definitely come down to the build quality of your measuring device. Generally, if mitotoyu could get more accuracy out of that device, they would just put more markings on it and call it a 1/25ths gauge or 1/100ths gauge. The reason they don't is that they can only get reliable & certifiable repeatability down to 1/10ths. Measuring to sides of lines and such is using the tool past it's intended limits. While it would likely work fine for 1-off machining, where you can deal with the fluff for a single part, if you are doing something like machining aerospace bearings, someone else has to mass assemble the parts and they need to be certifiably in spec. For your style and use case, absolutely works. For more industrial and safety critical applications, it is better to get a more accurate measuring device that is actually certified to that precision and repeatability, such as a micron gauge (don't, they are so finicky to use).
I caught the calipers right away! 4 ways he missed the step!
I was surprised he didn't mention the step measurement. Most likely an oversight but it is a common one!
@@MrZigzter I’ll forgive him dudes going a mile a minute lol
@@kochevar99 Oh absolutely. I will never envy anything as much as I do his workshop 😆
True, most do incorporate the step function but I have owned some that do not have that feature. They quickly became bartering fodder.
10:25, not many people realise calipers have a 4th measuring surface on the outside edge of the jaw for measuring steps. Feels more sturdy to use than the depth stick when you have the space to use it
As a carpenter, that's the one I prefer to use. Only if I'm measuring the depth of a hole do I use the end stick.
With a digitale caliper first reset the zero if you change the way of measuring.
well this comment has been tremendously useful as I went to see a video here on youtube :D for others, the link is: ua-cam.com/video/oh4DitZuG8E/v-deo.html
Using the 4th measuring option works great for layout work.
Not all of them do. I have a Brown & Sharpe 577 vernier caliper and, despite being the same general design, it does not have the jaw-side depth gauge.
For those hyped about this subject after hearing Adam's take, I highly, highly recommend Machine Thinking's video on the same subject. Soft spoken, but definitely with the same awe and enthousiasm for the small, the impact it had and where it all came from. ua-cam.com/video/gNRnrn5DE58/v-deo.html
Yes! The Origins of Precision. Came here to tout it, too - 4 years old and still so great.
I love that video! It's been a LONG time since I've viewed it; it's about time I give it another look.
That guy makes some really good videos
I saw this a while ago and have been looking for it again for a while. Thanks!
Was pretty sure I'd watched this, and when I opened the link, it resumed from near the end, so I've definitely seen it before, and somewhat recently too, if YT still remembers my place lol.
Such an excellent video. When I started to study machining 50 years ago, I had an excellent tutor who enlightened us students.
Measurement of things is an endless challenge, and continues to fascinate.
Really good topic, and video.
Tolerances rule !
When we had to have a piece of work inspected.. I demonstrated how temperature determined if My work passed or failed.
I machined my piece to .100” over size, the work was measured and failed on over size tolerance. Living in Canada I went outside for a smoke break, and took the work with me at -20c. When my work piece was measured cold, it fell right in the middle of the specification. My teacher loved it, and it was a good lesson for all of us. For people who care about such things, the specified tolerance of machined parts takes into consideration that the part will need to function at different temperatures.
All machinists know this.
Thanks a lot for sharing these thoughts. I can so relate to that. The deeper you look into topics - measurement, materials, tools, circuits - the more aspects you see that you weren't aware of before, and that is just an amazing feeling, to dive deeper and deeper into stuff. Just like endlessly zooming into a fractal image.
Whenever I sit down and watch one of these videos, your sheer enthusiasm for the topic at hand never fails to put a smile on my face!
I've been reading a lot of Ted Chiang recently, and this felt a lot like something he would write, that mind-boggling realization when you discover that the second you understand something better is also the moment you see how much more there is you don't. The more precise you get, the more you see that precision is impossible.
May I alter this, precision to perfection. somewhat ironic perhaps
And so you end up with German philosophical terms that run to hundreds-of-syllables as they try to portmanteau themselves into greater and greater accuracy. Versus, f'r'instance, the Hawai'ian word ALOHA, which, in its inexactitide, can convey much more than distinctions of like/love/regard/warmth/etc.
My personal icon for this is: 1/3 > .3333333333333333333333333333333333... (number of 3's is variable)
The fraction is perfect and absolute while the decimal is merely only ever an approximation.
Thank you for this one, as a Quality Worker the fascination and sheer joy you show in this video is what I have every day in my work. Which is difficult to share, most people go glassy eyed when I start talking about quality and measuring things for work. I immediately drooled over the gage blocks, I have steel but ceramic is the gold standard and while I’ve been in quality for well over a decade I still hope to be worthy of those someday.
I could listen to Adam talk about measurements for hours and hours, please do a follow up! Loved it
I absolutely love this raw, uncut philosophical style content. Although it’s clear this was spontaneous, there is not enough of this deep-thinking type content in the scientific community (unless I’ve been looking in the wrong places!)
Unscripted yes, spontaneous no as he did do research for it.
😶
@@marvindebot3264 I live in Karachi Pakistan I like your comments
I could listen to Adam talk about stuff like this for hours
He’s definitely passionate about measuring things, never ever would I ever think about this
I absolutely loved this. The topic and vibe. It feels like I'm having fun conversation with my dad in his workshop or a college professor outside of class. The topic is so interesting to me too--it's something I'd never be able to discuss about extensively with anyone else and hearing just how Adam speaks about it brings me joy and increases my interest in the topic too
Since many people have already mentioned it, I am going to amplify "The Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy".
Adam talks about using a surface plate; that book talks about how you make the surface plate in the first place. I've always been astounded by the idea that you can start with non-precision materials and create precision via the proper technique.
Jon
A study of the topic you mention sounds much more interesting than watching someone being astounded by their discovery of incidental properties ...
I put the speed up to 1.5 because I noticed most of it was not presenting anything revelatory, but merely evidentiary .
this video is proof positive that when you begin to get very senile :
even simple elementary notions of new understandings seem to be monumental achievements
which can foster euphoric propulsion for being mentally toastified for hours about your own personal incredible diadactic ingenuity .
@@kablammy7 it's not senility. He's just later to a very specific party than perhaps you were and perhaps more excited than you.
@@kablammy7 your commitment to the utilization of extended vocabulary exudes a rather exorbitant degree of arrogance.
@@FernandoGYanesH
indubitably
thank you
thank you very much
That's one of the kinds of realizations I love. It's like...it's somehow obvious, but also mind boggling. Because it's easy to understand how things become less precise through work and wear. And it's also self-evident that high precision tools must be, somehow, produced and calibrated from lower precision beginnings. And that those two absolutes can somehow be reconciled to get to the levels of precision needed for some of the modern conveniences the world relies on...Hard to wrap my head around, honestly, even reading and watching how it's accomplished.
I love to see, and am always inspired by Adam's wild passion for things like this. Learning, discovery, and curiosity is truly magical.
As a machinist with 30 years of experience i truly enjoyed this segment. And Adam you are most definitely worthy of these tools dont sell yourself short.
Worthy of sexually gratifying himself with them? 💦💦
@@aceman0000099 uhhhhhh....... Ok
Adam wasn't placing a value judgement on owning the tools, but rather on the practical necessity of them for what he does. A house builder wouldn't need anything more accurate than a standard measuring tape, and a sniper wouldn't need the James Webb Space Telescope. Sure, it also would't HURT to have this much accuracy in the job, but just not necessary.
I saw a program on British TV a decade ago called " how long is a piece of string?"
which explored this very fractal accuracy of measurement. Fascinating.
You did a good job there, Adam.
Metrology has always mystified me and boggled my mind when thinking about how accurately we can machine measuring devices and in turn final products. I've known about most of the common tools like calipers, gauge blocks, etc. But, a couple years ago I learned of the Coordinate Measuring Machine and those really blew me away! The fact that they are able to take the accuracy of gauge blocks and measure every geometry of a 3D object with the same detail is somehow even more astounding than 10 thou precision.
Faro Gage arms are SO cool. 3D micrometer accuracy over a HUGE working area but CMM-level precision.
Check out mechanical thinking you'll be blown away
God yes! When I learned CMM working in aerospace Machining I thought I knew what I was getting into, thought trade school prepared me. Man was I wrong, and so damn happy I was! I am one of those people who obsess over things like symmetry and accuracy, just the top of the list mind you, and the CMM really blew my mind.
Thanks Adam! I was a metrologist in the USAF a million years ago for a few years and this brought me back. I was always told that if we used our bare hands to touch anything then that piece would just die, everything would blow up, and we would go straight to jail. Glad to see none of it was true.
Wait until Adam discovers the concepts of Measurement Traceability and Measurement Confidence.
Oh no not another rabbit hole to look forward to? Oh Hey hi
or until he discovers the lengths EE's go to to get accurate electrical measurements and the even greater lengths metrologists go to, in order to create the primary standard
YEP.
Precisely! (Pun intended)
Or the different kinds of infinities!
Adam I must say that you personally inspired me as a young man who stayed glued to the science and discovery channels! I believe it was your spirit of learning and testing the unknown unapologetically. From there I set up my life to aquire all the skills I would need to be a maker myself. Although my creating journey started many years ago 23 to be exact, I still find excitement in learning and trying new things. With that said, A big thank you to you from me. Please continue to learn and teach us all for the sake of comprehension of our ever changing world.
Hey Adam! When you were talking about accounting for temperature in measurement-- that such a high degree of accuracy might be necessary in some industries such as medical and nano machines. These are examples of precision industries that I, too, might have come up with six months ago. But I was recently interested to learn that high levels of accuracy are required for many industries that deal in high volume. I have learned this to be true about metal can manufacturing. You will find a temperature-controlled tooling room in nearly any beverage can plant (unless tooling is controlled off site). Similarly, great lengths are taken to ensure can making machinery operates at specific temperatures. A can bodymaker, for example, might have coolant running through it at something like 80 GPM, sending coolant to a separate assembly that regulates its temperature to +- 1.5 degrees F. When's the last time you opened a can of soda and it failed to open? Making that scoring line in a can end to hold 90+psi, but tear open, every time, at the flip of a fingernail, and thousands of them per minute... that tooling goes to millionths and beyond. I've had a realization that high accuracy is needed not where engineering is challenging- instead, it is needed mostly where specialization of machinery occurs. In medical, or aerospace for example- are those fields precise? Yes, of course. Are they millionths precise? probably not, most of the time... making something once that has to work in unpredictable, and variable environments- these are requirements that push designs by definition, relatively speaking, out of high accuracy and instead into robustness.
I have been a prototype machinist for about 15 years, and beverage can manufacturing is something that still boggles my mind. I work for a certain tech company and work in microns daily and it feels like I'm doing rough carpentry compared to that stuff.