Just Seen This in an Advert

[Marnee]

Absolutely but they won’t pay for that or issue a full refund until the wrong items are back with them. Right load of b’s!

 

[Blackswanwood]

Growing up in the '50s I remember drapers' shops having a similar thing - non digital, of course, all clock work - to run cloth out on the counter.
Just remembered the pneumatic accounts system, too. The money went off to an office somewhere on a pressure/vacuum system. That wasn't novel, either. Brunel built a railway on the same principle in Devon.

I remember the school uniform shop having one of those vacuum systems in the late 1970’s and being intrigued by it. Not sure I could have imagined the concept of self scanning trolleys and contactless payment then!

 

[artie]

Absolutely but they won’t pay for that or issue a full refund until the wrong items are back with them. Right load of b’s!

Did you explain to them that the item in question was sent to you unsolicited, so you have no obligation to send it back.
If they want it, it is up to them to retrieve it, but you are such a nice guy if they would send you a prepaid label, you will go out of your way to post it back.
Then onto the matter of the item you paid for but did not receive, a clear breach of trading standards and a crime.
The price of doing business in the UK is being bound by UK rules.

 

[LBCarpentry]

Looks fun!

Also reminds me that I must purchase the Bosch GCM 12 GDL to replace my woefully crap RAS saw!

 

[AES]

Brunel built a railway on the same principle in Devon.

Yeah, originally called the South Devon Railway. And it didn't work very well (rats kept eating the leather strip sealing the below track traction/vacuum pipe). For that reason, still today, train sizes/lengths/weights/speeds are limited through the section more or less along the coast starting from roughly between Buckfast Leigh and South Brent. It's a few years back now but there WAS one of the original Brunel pumping stations at a place called Star Cross, just outside Exeter.

But I don't really see what that's got to do with said device because as far as I can see from a quick look at the link given, the M+1 is (mainly) a rubber wheel running (presumably by friction) along the timber to be cut, rotation of said wheel being linked to a digi readout.

Brunel's "atmospheric railway" (he wasn't the first by the way, he "pinched" the idea from a railway in Ireland, and I think someone else fiddled with the idea in London even earlier) worked by having a series of stationary steam engines spread out at points along the track pumping the air out of a pipe beneath the track. The "locomotive" (which wasn't of course, it was "just" a passenger carriage) was connected to a piston inside the under track pipe, and as the stationary steam engines sucked the air out ahead of the carriage/piston set up, so atmospheric pressure behind the piston forced the train along - hence the name. Silent (for the passengers) and no smoke, fire, and ashes.

Brunel was IMO really great (as you may have gathered, purely out of interest I've read a lot about him and especially his railways), but even he dropped a real clanger now and then, and the atmospheric railway was one. If I recall it lasted less than about 5 years in service, by which time all the under track pipes had been ripped out and the "carriages with a piston" were all replaced by "proper" steam locos.

As said, I see little to no connection with that M+ thingy - but I bet there's more in the above than you really wished to know anyway!

 

[Argus]

..........the connection, if I can repeat it, was through a personal recollection of drapers shops here in the UK during the 1950s and earlier, being equipped with both a forerunner of the running measure for cloth that the OP mentioned and many of them having central accounts offices handling all the cash that used to transport the cash and receipts around the buildings in a vacuum-canister system that worked on the same principle as Brunels atmospheric railway - just scaled down a bit and with out the hungry rats.

I see that they are experimenting with a similar maglev/vacuum railway system again..........

 

[Jelly]

The technology isn't new, although it's a neat package.

In the late 1970s my father designed a commercially successful controller for a cardboard box cutting machine - bespoke cutting, notching and folding. It had an accuracy of 0.1mm over about 2m, which was considerably better than the cardboard sheets supplied as raw material. That used an optical shaft encoder of his own design, and it probably worked a lot faster than that prototype has to. It was innovative for its time.

I'm sure existing manufacturers, such as Bosch and Makita, who have a lot of complementary tech in other divisions, could make something similar as an add-on to their saws. The fact they don't suggests there is no demand.

Speaking to both of your points I remember working on a door casings and linings line in a sawmill which used a CNC crosscut saw, operating along the same principles of your father's design for cardboard.

That was a great bit of kit, and saved masses of time compared to cutting even using stop blocks, for the £5k or so it cost, worth every penny.

Makita, Bosch, Festool, et. al. all know that the people with a use case for this kind of thing will absolutely be willing to go buy a dedicated machine which can far outperform an expensive add-on, and the people who make up the bulk of their market are commercial users who won't buy anything which won't obviously pay for itself.

The caliper is a neat idea, but I can't see a serious use case which isn't already catered for better elsewhere.

 

[Marnee]

Did you explain to them that the item in question was sent to you unsolicited, so you have no obligation to send it back.
If they want it, it is up to them to retrieve it, but you are such a nice guy if they would send you a prepaid label, you will go out of your way to post it back.
Then onto the matter of the item you paid for but did not receive, a clear breach of trading standards and a crime.
The price of doing business in the UK is being bound by UK rules.

Thanks, not in those words so I’ll maybe give them one last chance but can’t see them paying me back! Will then report to trading standards etc but the ad isn’t online now so can’t send copy. Ggrrrr!

 

[Awac]

As above, anyone actually got it or used it and what sazy you?

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/...vEixbWAxBeItBflUK0AJy_wx99pGRUaAmGNEALw_wcB#/

I have a Woodrat which I made a measure for, (steel rule and twin pointer, so you can split a line) which I find really accurate, but I can see how it could be used on the slide mechanism. Yes it has been done before on other machines, but if the price came down I could see lots of different applications.
For site work, different people have different levels of measuring ability and then some can't work in imperial, some can't work in metric. So on site, if imperial asks metric to cut something, a flick of a button they should be close.
Personally I am going more analogue in my advancing age, it gives me pleasure. I like my steel rule and pointer, but even that was "cutting edge" in the past...

 

[artie]

Thanks, not in those words so I’ll maybe give them one last chance but can’t see them paying me back! Will then report to trading standards etc but the ad isn’t online now so can’t send copy. Ggrrrr!

Pardon me, as I sometimes get accused of flogging things to death, but if you paid with a credit card, you can do a chargeback, whether they, the vendor, agree or not.