Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
When I was in high school, I was a big fan of Heathkits, building a couple SW radios, a tube-tester, VTVM and after college, our first Color-TV set (I've still got the tube-tester and VTVM, both in good working condition). In fact, I started engineering school as a EE, but later switched to ME. Perhaps it was the influence of many of the other items on the above list as I covered most everything, with the exception of model rockets, since we lived in a heavily forested area in Northern Michigan where anything that could be 'shot' into the air was likely to land where there was lots of 'firewood'

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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
My introduction to "mechatronics" was making electric bells with Meccano and then running them off the 18V transformer that came with my Scalextric set.
- Steve
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
> Siren -- drove my mom nuts
> Plastic Tiger audio amp -- but didn't work, and we didn't have enough tools in the class to debug it, nor the skill set
> Blinky Owl
College:
> A different audio amp -- damping resistor burst into flames; pretty exciting for a frosh
> Color organ -- you can pretty much guess my age with that. Exploding 741 due to grounding the scope on a hot chassis
TTFN

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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
PE, SE
Eastern United States
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Erector Set, Balsa Planes, Lionel Trains (American Flyer too), and the Slot cars.
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
I had - and probably still have - an old Heathkit 50V power supply. It had multiple ranges with transformer taps and about 5V of variation within each step. Good bit of design from when semiconductors were expensive and wound components were cheap. Today's switchmode stuff beats it hands down in every respect but I would likely use it if I knew its whereabouts; I have a sentimental attachment to some of the old gear I used when I was a kid. Many times I reach for the 20MHz Hameg scope my parents bought me for my 18th birthday or the little ICL8038-based function generator I built at college rather than the massively more capable 400MHz Tektronix scope and the 200MHz synthesised generator I've acquired in later years. Holding on to memories of happier times I guess.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
I Forget the name. Sent many hours with that...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
I haven't seen those things in probably a half century (or close to it)...
rp
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
or Lego makes Lego Duplo, which is 2x the footprint of regular Legos, but can be used together. There was a Lego brick that's roughly double the footprint of Duplo, which can be used by pre-toddlers, supposedly called Quatro, but I don't recall that as the name, or perhaps, I'm thinking of a knockoff.
TTFN

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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
It was a real good learning tool for me at the time.
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
The windows and doors must have not been as durable as the blocks, as I didn't get to play with those. There were the footing strips, maybe 6 or 8 circles long, and the singles. I used to think these were for making Greek and Roman buildings, you know, the ones without a roof, doors, or windows? Just openings for the doors and windows and open roofs (also know as ruins).
Ahh, memories.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Block-City-Plastic...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
7 out of 10 for me (sort of). Aurora slot cars, HO trains not Lionel, Gilbert chemistry set, erector set, balsa wood planes ( I forgot the brand name. When I was about 9 my father & I built a bi-plane with a 3-foot wingspan. A few years later I built a Spitfire. After a while my brother & I set it on fire and flew it out our bedroom window), Lincoln Logs, and last but not least the Girder & Panel. I had several - the basic small building, a larger building set that had a working conveyor belt and elevator, bridge & turnpike, the residential set, hydrodynamic, and skyrail.
I also had the red bricks and the white "cmu" blocks in the cardboard tube. Mike- did your cmu bricks come with green and red doors & windows.
My HO trains really annoyed my father. I hardly ran them. He could never understand that I enjoyed rebuilding my layout every few days far more than running the trains.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Yes.
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
There were also window sills and door frames, and roof members.
You plugged the metal rods into the base then slid bricks down the rods to make your house added the roof formers and Voila a house.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
http://www.dalefield.com/nzfmm/welg01/Images/Mecca...
after that we built robots to fight each other with levers and winches and grabs, but we had to be very patient as all the winding of string onto drums etc was slow. We sometimes used rubber bands to trigger motions.
Of course being the eldest I generally built both machines and decided which I was going to drive, but my next brother was used to that, probably relieved that I wasn't building some sort of torture device.
Here's the steam engine I built from a kit of castings
http://www.stuartmodels.com/images/stuartno1.jpg
It never ran on steam, it does run on compressed air, about 25 psi due to some alignment issues in the main bearings.
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
http://www.mike-willis.com/ml7.htm
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
That lathe brings back some serious memories.
We had an ML 7 and a ML6 in our school metal shop, I think I was 12 years old when I was first allowed to touch either one of them.
My first project on it was to make a sprocket extractor, this involved cutting a 6" long by 3/8" diameter screw thread using single point tooling. The teacher made us calculate the gearing then select the gear train for the thread form. We then put the anchor bar onto a 4 jaw chuck, centered the hole in it with the tailstock then tapped that hole using the tailstock to hold the tap square.
An exercise that came in handy many years later when I had to use a lathe in real life.
This teacher was the man who persuaded to go into metalworking rather than electronics.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
- Steve
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Cheers
Greg Locock
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RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
The best toy of the lot was the farm we lived on - tractors, stationary engines, farm machinery and the livestock - never thought any of that was dangerous though!
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
But yes, the ones they always go back to are the Legos, Erector set, etc. Figuring out and building your own idea is always more interesting, no matter what the age.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
Was a time when people used to throw out old TV's, picture tube gone... I showed the neighbourhood kids how to tear the high voltage circut out of them... a relatively safe source of 15,000 to 20,000 volts... just what kids need... I still remember the first time I got bit by the anode...
Dik
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
I had a lot of the Kenner Girder and Panel sets. Buildings, highway intercahnge and even a chemical plant one.
Didn't do rockets, but my kids did for a while. Had friends who built one and sent a mouse up in it.
Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs and Erector sets were in use for many years. My kids got some of them.
Chemistry sets were fun. I had a hugs supply of chemicals and used to mix and play to see what they would do.
Balsa airplanes were bought by the dozen for $0.10 each.
American flyer trains were on a table, made from 3 sheets of 4'x8' plywood in a 'U' shape with a raised conductor control panel with switch controls and dual power supplies. It was in the attic, until lightning hit the house and burned that part of the attic. little damage to the train set, but didn't play with them much after that. The fire was the day that Johnny Miller won the US Open at Baltusrol. We were going to a meeting to hear him speak, but the win meant that he had to change his plans. We were on the way back after finding it was cancelled and the car broke down and my dad tried to call mom and could not get through since the fire dept had disconnected the phones.
Slot cars were hand built and run down at the lcal track with races and all. Fun customizing the cars and making them go faster.
I had those red bricks before my brother started gettintg into Lego. I have a partially assemblied 1/2 scale Lego Ferrari F1 car that my kids got me for Christmas a few years ago.
"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."
Ben Loosli
RE: Were you influenced by any of these as a kid...
He said " In 2000 Meccano bought the Erector brand, which had been sold in the United States since 1913, and unified its presence on all continents. Even today, Meccano is sold under the Erector brand in the United States. "
They had the big tower crane and a locomotive built of meccano .
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.