cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32524920
I watched several videos on a Combine Harvester’s inner workings and I still don’t understand how this thing works.
They continuously improved on every single step in the process. What you see now are the descendants of many generations of harvesters.
Farmers are always looking to make their job easier and they have a few months during the winter to build stuff.
Combines ain’t that complex. But they are fussy to run. Growing up on a farm you learn to fix them at a pretty young age. I’ve even owned one myself, a well used Case I bought from an Uncle. I can close my eyes and "see’ every stinking moving part on any of the combines we owned. And I can still remember how access the parts and fix them.
Personally, I hate balers far more.
Don’t worry, John Deere will find a way to fuck it up.
I’ve gone down this rabbit hole, combine harvesters might be the most advanced piece of technology ever created, they’re fucking insane. Space travel seems simpler than the engineering that goes into those mother fuckers, a computer is child play in comparison.
They’re very cool and intricate indeed. But, as someone who grew up on a farm and is pretty familiar with combines: you’re drastically underestimating the engineering challenges in computers and space travel.
The thing is, I understand computers and space travel, it’s all stuff that makes sense when it’s explained to me properly. I’ve watched like six long form documentaries/explanations of combine harvesters and as far as I’m concerned it’s fucking wizard shit. It’s too complicated to actually work properly, it’s doing way too many entirely different things at once. There are entire multi stage manufacturing plants with less complex engineering requirements, it should jam up or break down two seconds after starting, it spits in the face of Ockham.
A computer is many orders of magnitude more intricate, technologically advanced, etc. A modern computer chip requires incredibly complex 3D labyrinths of different materials that have walls that are nanometers thick.