forteh

Can't offer any advice on suitable laptops but I set up my photographer mother in law with a new machine (windows desktop) with a 250gb SSD and a 2tb HDD which was sufficient for her needs at the time. I set her up with both drives as locations in lightroom, imported and edited on the SSD then moved the location to the HDD once the job was finished. Unfortunately she got all in a fluster because she read somewhere on the internet that she needed to make backups (ignoring the external drives she was already backing up to) and randomly made multiple duplicate copies of everything. Suddenly realised that she was out of space and found a local computer expert to put some more drives in. Cue a 4.5ghz machine running windows on an SSD trying to edit data saved on stupendously slow, 4tb 5400rpm low power drives and she consequently starts complaining that the machine is slow broken.... Cleared the machine out, deleted over 6tb of duplicate files and relinked the whole lightroom catalogue to the right files. Ripped the two drives out of the box, got her a 2 bay synology NAS drive and set that to mirror the data across both drives. She is now back to the original machine design of working on the SSD and dumping the files to the NAS for storage. When the NAS drives are full she takes them out, puts them into storage and plugs a new pair in, that way she has duplicates and can go back to old catalogues by putting the drives back in. I reckon a 250gb SSD will fine when used in conjunction with the NAS, the beauty of the system is you can set up a VPN to the NAS so you can remotely access and work on your files as long as your network is good enough.

A noisy tappet is a happy tappet If it's noisy (within reason) then the valve is closing fully, if the clearances are too tight and the valve isn't fully seating then it will burn the seats out. The 604 rotax engine (aircooled 598cc single) is rather agricultural and heavy but very simple to work on, I wouldn't expect the newer lumps to be much more difficult. Doing tappet clearances shouldn't be too much hassle or is it buckets which need a selection of shims to get them right?

I don't know, I presumed it was a scaled up version of the sxv550 motor which was a complete aprilla design. They kept destroying valvetrain as well if I recall correctly Got the rotax motor in my ccm, tuned to over 150% output it's still bombproof on good service intervals (I did oil at 1000 miles). In standard tune I reckon you could lubricate it with toothpaste and fuel it with rancid butter and it would still work

Why is it killing injectors? Might be worthwhile asking jody@midlandvw if it's a common issue or if there's a workaround.

That's because it's a rotax motor

The solidworks 2019 beta test I went to back in the summer? I was 7th in the beta1 exterminator contest and 1st in the beta3 overall exterminator, bagged me $150 prize for breaking the software

If they're anything like the yellows that they're based on then they should be excellent

Spoke too soon!

I bought a linear potentiometer from america, arrived next day with free postage

Thanks all for the inputs, I think in reality the practicality of the design given the application and environment is preventing it from being a realistic proposition. The adjustment is only to allow for wear in the polyurethane wheels, if the coil could be such designed so as to be able to provide the force across a range of positions then that could work. Even if a suitable coil could be wound to supply the force required I suspect the power requirements would be far higher than our current electromechanical solution (a small stallable electric geared motor that drives a cam and linkage; it works very well but we're having some issues with supplier capacity and investigating possible alternatives). Given that the design life of this unit is 20+ years, the less power used the better. I do actually have access to a coil winding machine, my dad was a mechatronic engineer/inventor/instrument maker and built himself one but unfortunately he's deep in the grip of alzheimers so couldn't help with the design.

A normal electromagnet in effect, we have tested with solenoids in the past but they only produce sufficient force at 100% stroke. Because this is actuating a pair of wearing pinch wheels a solenoids would need to be constantly adjusted which isn't going to happen. We need a constant applied force across a range of positions not just at one point.

The weight isn't really an issue is it? I mean not really, want your bike lighter? Put smaller tyres on and smaller forks, then it'll be lighter, it's not like you're competing xc at Olympic level The only play in a dropper post is a tiny amount of rotation around the post axis, talking about 2mm side to side movement on the nose of the saddle, it's not noticeable in any way shape or form when sat on it. People complain about the hydraulic line on the reverb but I've had zero issues with it and it's definitely less maintenance than a cable and doesn't suffer with kinks like a cable will. With regards to the cable nipple, I believe it's easiest to have it at the base of the post with internal routing, that way all adjustments are at the handlebars. If I were to buy one new now I would probably go for the bikeyoke revive or the one up components, both seem to get excellent reviews. Bikeyoke do a coupler for the reverb stealth that converts it to cable.

My reverb has been spot on for the 6 years I've had it. I've carried out one service at which point I replaced the top DU bush with a delrin one and the original ifp with the latest version from sram. I've also replaced the top seal with a decent wiper as the original one had worn out. I've not really had any of the major complaints that you read about on the interwebs, the original ifp burped air a couple of times but rebuilding and servicing is pretty straightforward albeit messy. You can pick them up for about 100 quid second hand, give it a quick service for 15 quid and jobs a good un

Having picked up the wife's cargo trike for very little cash we had some monies left over to allow for electrification of needed. Went to the cycle show last Friday and got speaking to the guys on the swytchbike stand, they do a drop in conversion kit which is nicely put together and within budget. Mrs wife got an email from them offering up to 50% discount if we preorder the kit we were going to get. Bargain 26" rear wheel kit for 500 quid, bringing the total cost so far to 1600 for a Dutch electric trike

But they don't need cables?

I know there are some clever people on here (in one form or another) but is anyone familiar with designing electromagnetic coils? Basically I want to know if it's feasible to produce an electromagnet that can apply a constant force of around 3.5-4kN to a steel rod (think of it as a linear accelerator in a stalled condition); power available is 415v 3ph although that could be passed through a transformer if lower voltages are needed. Who is really, really clever?

Quite often it's to give enough stiffness to lower suspension linkages nestling around the BB. With the lengthening of frame front centres and shortening of chainstays, added to the increase in tyre widths more space has had to be found in the BB area. I'm not too sure as to why the downtube is often kinked to horizontal just before the BB, I guess it's too reduce stresses at that tube junction.

Time to make a sexy hardwood frame, glaze it and increase the value by at least 9000%! He didn't actually win anything this year did he? Still the goat though!

Photoshop!

I hadn't worn a watch in about 20 years, then splashed out on ebay to the tune of 6 quid for one of these bad boys I only needed it for a stopwatch to referee games of rugby

You're going to smash it! Good luck, it's a brilliant day

Congrats Mr and Mrs Bird welcome to the rest of your life

Wait, is that what's causing it? Who knew!

Well it's a mystery to me Perhaps I'll ask @Luke Rainbird how it happened to him?

Blame the nhs for the date accuracy, we're expecting around the 10-11th, all of the others have been at least 4 days late Going to fill the last seat in the s-max, knew we bought a bus for a reason!