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xkcd #3047: Rotary Tool (xkcd.com)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/xkcd

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It was great until my thumb slipped and I accidentally launched my telescope into the air at Mach 8.

https://explainxkcd.com/3047/

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[–] Wogi 1 points 5 days ago

I occasionally run a lathe at work. The big CNC one says it will do 10,000 rpm

If you ever run it that fast, the jaws will start to separate and the part will come flying out at Mach 4, bounce around the inside of the machine for several minutes, destroying the chuck, all the tooling, and the chip conveyor in the process.

Another fun fact, these machines go from 5000 rpm (the fastest you're assuredly safe to run it) to 10 at the snap of a finger and back up again. All of that energy has to go somewhere. So there's a heat coil, pretty much identical to the one in your oven, that takes all that extra energy. It doesn't normally get all that hot, but if you're running a lot of parts with a lot of diameter changes, it can get hot enough to glow.