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I've seen and used farm equipment and machine tools (lathes, mills, etc.) from the 40's and 50's that are still in good serviceable condition. I think it's bee

I've seen and used farm equipment and machine tools (lathes, mills, etc.) from the 40's and 50's that are still in good serviceable condition. I think it's been a long time since farmers cultivated their own seed though, even before roundup-resistant and GM crops were commonplace. It's a very different science and skill to growing crops.

tapvt 7y ago
I still run a 1949 Ford 8N tractor. No heroic measures needed to keep it going. Just routine maintenance.
- olivermarks 7y ago
  Designed to last forever if maintained properly..
  - OldManAndTheCpp 7y ago
    A cool thing I learned from watching AvE's channel is that bearing surfaces are meant to last forever if properly lubricated. The oil in them is meant to take all the load, and the metal surfaces should never touch. If you don't replace the oil regularly, or let it get so hot it flows out of the journal, the bearing will wear and need replacing. The design is meant to last a really long time if properly serviced and not overloaded though. (I'd love to hear from a MechE if I misunderstood, I'm just a dumb programmer who watches YouTube).
    - anfilt 7y ago
      Thats pretty much right. Excluding how some types of bushings work, and other similar bearing surfaces. Side note. There also air bearings which are also pretty awesome but require tight machining tolerances. They are used in the semiconductor industry for some things. Mainly because you dont want lubricant to dirty the enviroment, but the tighter tolerances also help ensure a spindle/shaft dont wobble as much.
      - tempestn 7y ago
        I assume this means it's airtight and instead of a cushion of oil, it uses a cushion of (presumably compressed) air?
        anfilt 7y ago
        Yea pretty much. This video starts off with a nice demo of the concept. https://youtu.be/sFrVdoOhu1Q https://youtu.be/sFrVdoOhu1Q
        tempestn 7y ago
        Great, thank you. As an aside, I love listening to people with accents explain things, so the video was doubly enjoyable! Edit some time later: And then perhaps I'll go down an hours-long rabbit hole watching all his videos and learning a ton about machining...
        pathseeker 7y ago
        >I love listening to people with accents explain things Are there people without accents that explain things? Because that would be a video I want to see.
        wongarsu 7y ago
        I suppose by "without accent" you mean "with General American accent"? German or French can be spoken without accent, but English doesn't have one universally agreed "standard accent". What's without accent to the American is just an American accent to everyone else.
        shrimpx 7y ago
        I take the parent's comment to mean that everybody has an accent. There's no such thing as neutral or reference-frame speech.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      AvE makes a lot of generalizations. What he says about technical topics is generally right enough for anyone who doesn't make a living designing the things he discusses. Those people would do well to understand the underlying theory. >If you don't replace the oil regularly, or let it get so hot it flows out of the journal, the bearing will wear and need replacing. It's still going to wear out from cold starts and the entire rest of the engine that doesn't have pressurized lubrication is also going to wear out eventually so there's no point in trying to outlast all those components since you're gonna have to take it apart to deal with them when they reach EOL and you can just deal with bearings at the same time.
- bregma 7y ago
  You can still buy 9Ns from the 1930s around where I live. Also, you can still buy new parts from after-market suppliers. They might not handle 16-bottom plows or even a round baler but they're still damn good machines for basic work and they're simple enough to maintain that even I could do it.
- AngryData 7y ago
  I got a '56 Farmall 230. Not a big tractor, but it can do anything I need for myself, primarily used to feed my two cows which I grow for meat, but also for hauling wood out of the woods for heating my house. Very little maintenance really needed. Just two months ago I even got fancy and installed an electric starter! A fine addition when you need to plow the driveway in the winter and don't feel like doing a full body workout just to get the thing started.
mattgrice 7y ago
Farmers definitely still cultivate their own seed, even in the West, for cereal crops like wheat, oats, rye, and rice where hybrid and GMO variants do not exist or are not competitive. For these crops, it's not a very different skill. You just have to clean the seed and ideally test germination rates, though many farmers do not even do that.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Serviceable does not imply profitable (though profitable implies serviceable). As much as I love lugging around rotary tables and indexing heads a machine shop that makes triple digit part quantities would be stupid to run old machines (too many man hours per part) and a repair machine shop would be stupid to finance a new 5-axis. Equipment in most industries moves from low margin, high duty cycle operators to operators with either higher margins and/or lower duty cycles.
- AngryData 7y ago
  Yeah but it is great equipment to have in a garage ready to go all around the country. So much shit is thrown away because you need some new little piece machined or repaired that you can't buy. It's not worth it to a machining business, but to some individual at home with a waiting machine and time on their hands? They could make a good deal making simple replacements pieces or parts for things.
AngryData 7y ago
It is not always because farmers couldn't produce their own seed, but it is also because growing for viable seeds has a bit different finishing procedure as growing food stuff. You might end up with a loss of seed viability because your primary effort is based on selling food for the highest profit and not storing viable seed in the most pristine way. So naturally a local farm community can evolve into a large number of food producers who don't store their own seeds, and a smaller variety of seed farmers to supply the other farmers with crop seed every year.

tapvt 7y ago

I still run a 1949 Ford 8N tractor. No heroic measures needed to keep it going. Just routine maintenance.

olivermarks 7y ago
Designed to last forever if maintained properly..
- OldManAndTheCpp 7y ago
  A cool thing I learned from watching AvE's channel is that bearing surfaces are meant to last forever if properly lubricated. The oil in them is meant to take all the load, and the metal surfaces should never touch. If you don't replace the oil regularly, or let it get so hot it flows out of the journal, the bearing will wear and need replacing. The design is meant to last a really long time if properly serviced and not overloaded though. (I'd love to hear from a MechE if I misunderstood, I'm just a dumb programmer who watches YouTube).
  - anfilt 7y ago
    Thats pretty much right. Excluding how some types of bushings work, and other similar bearing surfaces. Side note. There also air bearings which are also pretty awesome but require tight machining tolerances. They are used in the semiconductor industry for some things. Mainly because you dont want lubricant to dirty the enviroment, but the tighter tolerances also help ensure a spindle/shaft dont wobble as much.
    - tempestn 7y ago
      I assume this means it's airtight and instead of a cushion of oil, it uses a cushion of (presumably compressed) air?
      - anfilt 7y ago
        Yea pretty much. This video starts off with a nice demo of the concept. https://youtu.be/sFrVdoOhu1Q https://youtu.be/sFrVdoOhu1Q
        tempestn 7y ago
        Great, thank you. As an aside, I love listening to people with accents explain things, so the video was doubly enjoyable! Edit some time later: And then perhaps I'll go down an hours-long rabbit hole watching all his videos and learning a ton about machining...
        pathseeker 7y ago
        >I love listening to people with accents explain things Are there people without accents that explain things? Because that would be a video I want to see.
        wongarsu 7y ago
        I suppose by "without accent" you mean "with General American accent"? German or French can be spoken without accent, but English doesn't have one universally agreed "standard accent". What's without accent to the American is just an American accent to everyone else.
        shrimpx 7y ago
        I take the parent's comment to mean that everybody has an accent. There's no such thing as neutral or reference-frame speech.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    AvE makes a lot of generalizations. What he says about technical topics is generally right enough for anyone who doesn't make a living designing the things he discusses. Those people would do well to understand the underlying theory. >If you don't replace the oil regularly, or let it get so hot it flows out of the journal, the bearing will wear and need replacing. It's still going to wear out from cold starts and the entire rest of the engine that doesn't have pressurized lubrication is also going to wear out eventually so there's no point in trying to outlast all those components since you're gonna have to take it apart to deal with them when they reach EOL and you can just deal with bearings at the same time.
bregma 7y ago
You can still buy 9Ns from the 1930s around where I live. Also, you can still buy new parts from after-market suppliers. They might not handle 16-bottom plows or even a round baler but they're still damn good machines for basic work and they're simple enough to maintain that even I could do it.
AngryData 7y ago
I got a '56 Farmall 230. Not a big tractor, but it can do anything I need for myself, primarily used to feed my two cows which I grow for meat, but also for hauling wood out of the woods for heating my house. Very little maintenance really needed. Just two months ago I even got fancy and installed an electric starter! A fine addition when you need to plow the driveway in the winter and don't feel like doing a full body workout just to get the thing started.

mattgrice 7y ago

Farmers definitely still cultivate their own seed, even in the West, for cereal crops like wheat, oats, rye, and rice where hybrid and GMO variants do not exist or are not competitive. For these crops, it's not a very different skill. You just have to clean the seed and ideally test germination rates, though many farmers do not even do that.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

Serviceable does not imply profitable (though profitable implies serviceable). As much as I love lugging around rotary tables and indexing heads a machine shop that makes triple digit part quantities would be stupid to run old machines (too many man hours per part) and a repair machine shop would be stupid to finance a new 5-axis. Equipment in most industries moves from low margin, high duty cycle operators to operators with either higher margins and/or lower duty cycles.

AngryData 7y ago
Yeah but it is great equipment to have in a garage ready to go all around the country. So much shit is thrown away because you need some new little piece machined or repaired that you can't buy. It's not worth it to a machining business, but to some individual at home with a waiting machine and time on their hands? They could make a good deal making simple replacements pieces or parts for things.

AngryData 7y ago

It is not always because farmers couldn't produce their own seed, but it is also because growing for viable seeds has a bit different finishing procedure as growing food stuff. You might end up with a loss of seed viability because your primary effort is based on selling food for the highest profit and not storing viable seed in the most pristine way. So naturally a local farm community can evolve into a large number of food producers who don't store their own seeds, and a smaller variety of seed farmers to supply the other farmers with crop seed every year.