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20+ year old farm equipment. They are easy to use, simple to maintain, often repairable by the farmer on-site (with perhaps a trip to the store to buy a small p
by OccamsRazr 5y ago
20+ year old farm equipment. They are easy to use, simple to maintain, often repairable by the farmer on-site (with perhaps a trip to the store to buy a small part). I often found myself marvelling at the complex things that could be achieved by an arrangement of gears, such as the contraption on a square baler that wraps the bale with two pieces of twine and ties two perfectly tensioned knots that will hold the hay together in that shape for years.
- dendrite9 5y agoIs this still true, or is it 20 years from when you started thinking about how good things used to be? I ask because somewhere in there I assume there is a period where ICs were introduced but all the kinks might not have been worked out. It maybe that I have the time scales wrong myself though.
- pvillano 5y agoperhaps it takes 20 years to determine if something will last forever
- OccamsRazr 5y agoI cannot speak to whether this is still true for modern farm equipment for two reasons. First, my family ran a small livestock operation and older machinery was more affordable to buy/run/repair and fulfilled our needs. Second, the farm has since been sold and now I'm a mere city boy. Does IC mean integrated chips? I have certainly read that modern farm equipment is less repairable, and I would not be surprised if they played a role. But I don't claim any knowledge about that. I may also have the time scales wrong. But damn, those machines were a marvel sometimes. Here is a particularly fun one, the square bale picker/stacker. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUWrNZaLttQ&ab_channel=ThomasGregory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUWrNZaLttQ&ab_channel=Thoma...