• (cs)

    Holy mother of gawduh.... fucking cowboys...

    This is the best WTF ever.

  • Raw (unregistered) in reply to Steve The Cynic

    [quote user="Steve The Cynic"][quote user="Madmanguruman"](Air resistance is significant, more so as the speed increases - a baseball hit at the perfect angle so it just clears the back wall of Vacuum Park will fall short by something like 40-45 feet in normal sea-level air.) [/quote]

    When you are chucking engine blocks, you can safely (well, safely as far as chucking heavy objects go) ignore air resistance. Their weight and relatively low speed easily overcomes air resistance.

    I'm not saying that it was done, just that air resistance is a non-issue.

  • (cs) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Yet another reason why union labor is the best choice for building cars.
    This. Let's keep the innovation where it belongs - hovering a few inches above a white collar, not a blue one.
  • (cs) in reply to Madmanguruman
    Madmanguruman:
    I call 100% BS. Tossing an engine block 100'? No way. Reliably *catching* said engine block? No way. Having a robot strong enough to hurl an engine block 100'? No way. Having a robot strong enough to absorb the kinetic energy of an engine block hurled 100'? No way. Having an unqualified operator figure all this out on the fly as a correction to a broken conveyor belt problem? Not bloody likely. Sheesh.

    Definitely not strong enough to throw an automobile engine, but a lawn mower engine or an engine for a weed wacker seems doable to me. The original poster did not say what kind of engine. Having an untrained, not necessarily unqualified, operator figure out how to do this is unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

  • adam (unregistered)

    OMG. I HAVE to see this in action. YouTube video? PLEASE?

  • Jon (unregistered)

    The thrown engine was a DBMS query engine. Weighs nothing.

  • EmperorOfCanada (unregistered)

    At my factory we use quantum entanglement where we put a lump of steel into 1000 cars then we machine out one engine block that had been quantum entangled with the other 1000 and presto we don't have to toss the engine blocks at all.

    Don't call shenanigans just because you don't know how to do multiple quantum entanglement.

  • Yes (unregistered)

    It says "Engine block casings", not "engine blocks".

  • (cs)

    So many awesomes here. I'll make a list.

    1. As the article stated and LK already mentioned, these were not full engines being thrown, just casings (Would you dump an entire engine into a blast furnace if it didn't meet inspection?)
    2. There will never be a video, for the obvious reasons (Amalie wants to keep her job, I assume, and video would provide too much identifiable data) EDIT: From the HTML comments: Yes, the OP made a cellphone video. No, they weren't allowed to keep it.
    3. Having worked in robotics before, and knowing the number of sensors (and extremely high quality of said sensors) a factory inspection machine has available, there is no doubt in my mind that a skilled and experienced roboticist could do wonders like this. Plus, he could have tested with the units that needed to go to the blast furnace instead of the ones that passed inspection and manually moved the good casings in the meantime. The article mentions he had WEEKS between the breakdown and the inspection to get this working.
  • Doc Brown (unregistered) in reply to UrzaMTG
    UrzaMTG:
    The article mentions he had WEEKS between the breakdown and the inspection to get this working.

    I find it very hard to believe that the plant manager would allow the opperator WEEKS of down time to program the robots to throw anything.

    Where I work if shit isnt working and Maint cant fix it within an hour or so the engineers are called in, or outside vendor whichever makes sense depending on the equipment.

  • Chet (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi

    HAHA, Clever use of words! 'story is fabricated.'

  • Amelie the Troll Face (unregistered)
  • asdf (unregistered) in reply to Anketam

    Carnegie Science Center has a robot in a cage that shoots basketball hoops. It's not 100% and that's a basketball to a hoop 10 feet away in a closed environment.

    That said, I laughed my ass off reading this.

  • (cs) in reply to EmperorOfCanada
    EmperorOfCanada:
    At my factory we use quantum entanglement where we put a lump of steel into 1000 cars then we machine out one engine block that had been quantum entangled with the other 1000 and presto we don't have to toss the engine blocks at all.

    Don't call shenanigans just because you don't know how to do multiple quantum entanglement.

    Shenanigans. I know how to do multiple quantum entanglement. I just don't know how you multiply an atom so as to be left with two entangled atoms - nuclear fission maybe?

  • Someone (unregistered)

    Did Lorne/the submitter maybe mess up inches (") with feet (')?

  • Anketam (unregistered) in reply to UrzaMTG
    UrzaMTG:
    So many awesomes here. I'll make a list. <snip> 3. Having worked in robotics before, and knowing the number of sensors (and extremely high quality of said sensors) a factory inspection machine has available, there is no doubt in my mind that a skilled and experienced roboticist could do wonders like this. Plus, he could have tested with the units that needed to go to the blast furnace instead of the ones that passed inspection and manually moved the good casings in the meantime. The article mentions he had WEEKS between the breakdown and the inspection to get this working.
    Considering his age and weight of parts being moved I doubt he was moving them manually until he got his fix in place, or if he was he could not keep it up for very long. Also a system like this would (hopefully) have metrics being generated so if he spent weeks getting the fix in place the metrics would have been all messed up raising questions as to why the plant was not making its targets.

    Upon doing some research I found this link: http://www.sfsa.org/tutorials/eng_block/GMBlock.pdf on page 6 it shows what I would expect that it is throwing. Which I cant imagine a single robotic arm being able to catch it without assistance, there are no good handle like areas that can easily be grabbed onto.

    And since no one has said it yet... On a side note you should only throw exceptions, it is against code practices to abuse throw and catch like this, not to mention the lack of a final.

  • (cs) in reply to piskvorr
    piskvorr:
    Madmanguruman:
    Reliably *catching* said engine block? No way.
    Reliably catching said engine block without damaging the block or the robot? Quadruple no way with a cherry on top.
    It sounds like one of those ridiculous Intro to Engineering projects / hazings that sounds impossible before they make everyone in their freshman year actually do it.

    My project was to deliver a potato across a reflection pond, and to deliver it first. We were allowed to include weapon systems to destroy the other teams' vehicles.

    Then, the day of the demo, they drained the pond - without any warning. We won, because we saw that one coming and used rocket engines for propulsion.

  • (cs) in reply to Anketam
    Anketam:
    UrzaMTG:
    So many awesomes here. I'll make a list. <snip> 3. Having worked in robotics before, and knowing the number of sensors (and extremely high quality of said sensors) a factory inspection machine has available, there is no doubt in my mind that a skilled and experienced roboticist could do wonders like this. Plus, he could have tested with the units that needed to go to the blast furnace instead of the ones that passed inspection and manually moved the good casings in the meantime. The article mentions he had WEEKS between the breakdown and the inspection to get this working.
    Considering his age and weight of parts being moved I doubt he was moving them manually until he got his fix in place, or if he was he could not keep it up for very long. Also a system like this would (hopefully) have metrics being generated so if he spent weeks getting the fix in place the metrics would have been all messed up raising questions as to why the plant was not making its targets.
    Agreed on the metrics, but the article already established he has a forklift.
  • Dzov (unregistered)

    I don't know about you guys, but I'd like my aluminum engine block to be rescanned for defects after being caught with enough shock to create loud clanging noises.

  • (cs) in reply to Madmanguruman
    Madmanguruman:
    I call 100% BS. Tossing an engine block 100'? No way. Reliably *catching* said engine block? No way. Having a robot strong enough to hurl an engine block 100'? No way. Having a robot strong enough to absorb the kinetic energy of an engine block hurled 100'? No way. Having an unqualified operator figure all this out on the fly as a correction to a broken conveyor belt problem? Not bloody likely. Sheesh.

    Agreed. This doesn't pass the smell test.

  • (cs)

    What's everyone so upset about? The old greybeard followed correct procedure. The robot was part of the error checking. If you have an error, one process THROWs the error, another one does a CATCH. Duh!

    Addendum (2011-10-04 15:26): (apologies to Anketam, either your post wasn't up yet, or I messed it...)

  • Mike D (unregistered)

    Epic Win - Worse Than Fail

  • The Zune Man (unregistered) in reply to Loren Pechtel
    Loren Pechtel:
    This doesn't pass the smell test.
    That's what I said about your mom!
  • don't believe it anyway. (unregistered) in reply to Yes
    Yes:
    It says "Engine block casings", not "engine blocks".

    What is an engine block casing? I've not heard of an engine block casing. Engine block castings, yes. but not engine block casing.

  • Publius (unregistered) in reply to Madmanguruman
    Madmanguruman:
    I call 100% BS. Tossing an engine block 100'? No way. Reliably *catching* said engine block? No way. Having a robot strong enough to hurl an engine block 100'? No way. Having a robot strong enough to absorb the kinetic energy of an engine block hurled 100'? No way. Having an unqualified operator figure all this out on the fly as a correction to a broken conveyor belt problem? Not bloody likely. Sheesh.

    All you nay-sayers have obviously not been keeping up with the state of automated ballistics, as this 2006 video clearly shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QStm3ZyzgY0

  • Rick (unregistered) in reply to Doc Brown
    Doc Brown:
    I find it very hard to believe that the plant manager would allow the opperator WEEKS of down time to program the robots to throw anything.

    Where I work if shit isnt working and Maint cant fix it within an hour or so the engineers are called in, or outside vendor whichever makes sense depending on the equipment.

    This, exactly this. There is no way one man runs the entire assembly line and no one else at the company said anything.

  • (cs) in reply to Publius

    You do realize that one is CGI right?

  • (cs) in reply to Rick
    Rick:
    Doc Brown:
    I find it very hard to believe that the plant manager would allow the opperator WEEKS of down time to program the robots to throw anything.

    Where I work if shit isnt working and Maint cant fix it within an hour or so the engineers are called in, or outside vendor whichever makes sense depending on the equipment.

    This, exactly this. There is no way one man runs the entire assembly line and no one else at the company said anything.

    Unless he's running it for "Daddy".

  • Grank (unregistered)

    I could believe 10 feet underhand, though it would be quite a stretch... 100 feet overhand is utterly ridiculous. Snowball's chance in hell, especially without equipment originally designed for ballistic trajectory. And, yknow, without obliterating the robot arm on the other end nor damaging a precision part that needs to be optically inspected in the first place. Suspension of disbelief exceeded.

  • itsmo (unregistered) in reply to Nagesh
    Nagesh:
    Nagesh:
    Nagesh:
    look like how car motor factries in america are runing now-a-days
    I am just purchasing new Tata. Not being surprising amount of ratle and brakedowns for lack of OSHEA here in Hyderabad.

    Now...stop using haked acount, madderhron!

    Tata motor now own landrower and jagar car companies. Which tata are you buying?

    Tata also own Tetley tea which is so ironic..

  • Rfoxmich (unregistered)

    The real WTF is all the people willing to argue about whether this story is real or fake...who the hell cares. My hats off to the author.

  • (cs) in reply to Rfoxmich
    Rfoxmich:
    The real WTF is all the people willing to argue about whether this story is real or fake...who the hell cares. My hats off to the author.
    This. We all know (or should know by now) that each of these stories is anonymized to some degree, and it could be something simple like changing the names\locations through to changing the industry or technology. Granted the story is just a shell of it's former self (I assume), but that's where the authors step in and still manage to deliver awesome WTF stories, which in this case they did.

    Also, your right to bitch about quality when they're doing this stuff during their free time is zero, IMO. Kind of reminds me when people cry about how open-sores projects aren't supported as well as entperprise (read $$$) software packages are...

  • ted (unregistered) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    Also, your right to bitch about quality when they're doing this stuff during their free time is zero, IMO. Kind of reminds me when people cry about how open-sores projects aren't supported as well as entperprise (read $$$) software packages are...

    Yeah, I gave up bitching about Ubuntu and just bought myself a copy of Win 7 instead. Couldn't be happier.

  • (cs) in reply to GettinSadda
    GettinSadda:
    JRS:
    The Roman Rule The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAtdsDTt__s

    This video seems to disprove the article.

    • Consider that when the plant was specified only a fool would have chosen a robot significantly bigger than 'adequate' to move the items.
    • In order to throw a 12 pound or so ball 120 feet, it takes a huge robot with an extended arm to give extra radius.
    • Look at how many balls they seem to have tried to throw before getting it close to right (the ground is littered with them) - now imagine those are the engine block casings (or was that supposed to be castings)
    • Look at how accurately the robot manages to throw spheres - then consider the difficulty in getting better with irregular objects
    I don't think that they used the arm in the best way possible as far as energy transfer is concerned. When the ball releases, there's a lot of kinetic energy in the robot arm -- energy that should have went to the ball instead. Alas, I agree that the article preaches a pipe dream. There's no industrial vision system out there, deployed on a production floor, that would enable one to catch flying engine blocks without damage.
  • bar (unregistered)

    If I was in that situation, I would have made some wheeled pallets from the broken conveyor belt and a guideway, and had the robots place the casings on them and push them back and forth. But tossing them works.

  • Yaos (unregistered)

    Rodney McKay really went downhill once the Atlantis mission ended.

  • Vlad Patryshev (unregistered)

    I adore this kind of solutions (some people call them hacks).

    My deepest respect to the operator, and thanks to the publisher for the story.

  • Paul (unregistered)

    If this was true (I doubt it, though it would be bloody good fun to try) the testing/debug phase would have been quite something to watch.

    whirrr whoosh CRUNCH SMASH CRUNK Bugger! sounds of forklift starting up

    The real WTF would have been if he'd done this 100% right the first time, everyone knows that for any software more complex than "Hello World" there WILL be bugs.

  • Mouse (unregistered)

    Two pages of comments and nobody has mentioned the point of the name Amalie?

    Someone tell me I missed that comment... please

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to RichP
    RichP:
    What's everyone so upset about? The old greybeard followed correct procedure. The robot was part of the error checking. If you have an error, one process THROWs the error, another one does a CATCH. Duh!

    Except he was throwing and catching the non-errors. That would be like passing a result out of a function by throwing an exception with the result in the exception message string and wrapping the function call in a try...catch block, using the catch to parse the result out of the exception message...

    ...when there's a perfectly good "return" keyword already available and the only reason you don't use it is because the 'E' key on your keyboard stopped working two weeks ago.

  • (cs) in reply to Paul
    Paul:
    If this was true (I doubt it, though it would be bloody good fun to try) the testing/debug phase would have been quite something to watch.

    whirrr whoosh CRUNCH SMASH CRUNK Bugger! sounds of forklift starting up

    The real WTF would have been if he'd done this 100% right the first time, everyone knows that for any software more complex than "Hello World" there WILL be bugs.

    Totally untrue. My record is around 1200 lines of untested code turning out bug-free. And that was OOP code reading from and writing to files, databases, and smtp :).

  • (cs)

    Maybe this guy's robot software had an API that let you set the final force vector?

  • (cs) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    Paul:
    If this was true (I doubt it, though it would be bloody good fun to try) the testing/debug phase would have been quite something to watch.

    whirrr whoosh CRUNCH SMASH CRUNK Bugger! sounds of forklift starting up

    The real WTF would have been if he'd done this 100% right the first time, everyone knows that for any software more complex than "Hello World" there WILL be bugs.

    Totally untrue. My record is around 1200 lines of untested code turning out bug-free. And that was OOP code reading from and writing to files, databases, and smtp :).
    You totally wank to pictures of yourself, don't you?

    kidding!

  • Quicksilver (unregistered)

    Why its Bullshit:

    This is a classic story... even today you could publish papers about this achievement on scientific conferences.

    Even if the thrown object was only a ball.

  • (cs)

    A better solution would be using robotic carts like they have in hospitals to carry the parts. I saw one of these at my local medical center the other week and at first I was all :0, but then I was like 8)

  • wcw (unregistered) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    We won, because we saw that one coming and used rocket engines for propulsion.

    I thought "potato gun" before I read your gotcha.

    Gun beats rocket.

  • (cs) in reply to C-Octothorpe
    C-Octothorpe:
    hoodaticus:
    Paul:
    If this was true (I doubt it, though it would be bloody good fun to try) the testing/debug phase would have been quite something to watch.

    whirrr whoosh CRUNCH SMASH CRUNK Bugger! sounds of forklift starting up

    The real WTF would have been if he'd done this 100% right the first time, everyone knows that for any software more complex than "Hello World" there WILL be bugs.

    Totally untrue. My record is around 1200 lines of untested code turning out bug-free. And that was OOP code reading from and writing to files, databases, and smtp :).
    You totally wank to pictures of yourself, don't you?

    kidding!

    I use a mirror.

  • (cs) in reply to wcw
    wcw:
    hoodaticus:
    We won, because we saw that one coming and used rocket engines for propulsion.

    I thought "potato gun" before I read your gotcha.

    Gun beats rocket.

    Had to be a "vehicle".

    My school's engineering department was pretty much a subset of NASA; I'm guessing that's why software engineering majors had to do silly crap like that.

  • (cs)

    Real or not, we all know the next chapter. After the old guy gets sacked he disappears for a year or two, then emerges from hiding followed by a robot army built out of recycled parts.

    Wearing a jumpsuit with epaulets, a cape, a shaved head, goatee, and in all likelihood a monocle.

  • (cs) in reply to hoodaticus
    hoodaticus:
    wcw:
    hoodaticus:
    We won, because we saw that one coming and used rocket engines for propulsion.

    I thought "potato gun" before I read your gotcha.

    Gun beats rocket.

    Had to be a "vehicle".
    How did you keep that bitch stable? I'm assuming it couldn't be air born...

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