Andrew McCalip
@andrewmccalip
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Building spacecraft @vardaspace. Circumnavigating world @ https://t.co/hLM2DEHrnx. Art @ https://t.co/Cze338MBMi Former: Co-Founder Cosine Additive, acquired by GE
Joined November 2013
We have a existential manufacturing problem in America. Why aren't there Amazon/Tesla-scale gigafactory warehouses filled with CNC machines? Will we ever be able to make our own products again? How do we accelerate the turnaround of American manufacturing?. I asked this question.
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Meissner effect or bust: Day 8.5. We made the rocks
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I was terribly disappointed to learn at an early age that nuclear power plants just boiled water, nothing more magical. I think this is a common story.
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Meissner effect or bust. Day 1. Made good progress on the list of to-dos. I'm doing this all after-hours, so it's been a long day. Since we're gated by the delivery of the PbO + Pb(SO4), which should be tomorrow, we're working on infrastructure first.
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Meissner effect or bust: day 1.5. Unbelievable outpouring of support. The most positive trend I’ve ever seen on Twitter. It feels like the entire world is shouting, GO!. Sigma package arrived! First thermal synth (PbO + PbSO4) might start tonight. Potential partnerships with
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Meissner Effect or Bust: Day 12. It might be a bust… we may be over. Positives first! I had one of the very first syntheses in the United States and produced a Pb-apatite structure that demonstrated lattice contraction along with an anomalous magnetic effect. The sample was
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Meissner effect or bust. Day 2. An absolute emotional rollercoaster. We've been back so many times, I've lost count. The first reaction to make Lanarkite (PbO + PbSO4) is running in the furnace! We opted to do 80% in an open air alumina crucible and 20% in a sealed quartz tube
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Meissner effect or bust: Day 8. TLDR: I’m cracking open the first LK99 sample about 11pm PDT. I’ll be posting pictures and videos as we go. Probably not live, but nearly live.
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Bruh. From a mechanical perspective, robotics/actuators/automation has been solved for decades. Software is the 95% of the bottleneck. The tech stack of putting a 500lb arm joint at a given angle in a 6DOF time synchronized trajectory planned 100millisecond move is table
@andrewmccalip do you not realize that coding is solved? this is exactly why i'm getting into manufacturing/robotics . like i literally saw this coming and started grinding out the skills immediately.
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Twenty years ago, 15-year-old me, building CNC machines. Say No to SAAS, kids.
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Big milestone happened today, which represents the original goal of the project! Today I delivered the rocks to @USCMatCon. Proper scientists will now perform MPMS, XRD, SEM to get to a quantitative measure of if we’re back, or it’s over. It’s more likely that we made novel (?)
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Contrarian take? Most engineering now moves slower than half a century ago—every boost in efficiency got bartered for risk reduction.
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Seems like a straightforward error. We'll do both. Team should have the PbO + Pb(SO4) Lanarkite in the furnace tonight. We'll do photo dump later. PSA. This is all for fun. We're a few enthusiastic engineers doing this as a hobby project, we just want to see the rocks float.
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Meissner effect or bust. Day 2.5. Twitch live stream taken down by engineer that needed his laptop back. Will turn it back on at 6pm when day job (spacecraft) is done. Our colleagues hope to have Cu+P reaction done and delivered as soon as Monday, which means final bake could.
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T minus 36 hours. Why my coworker had this absolutely terrifying magnet in his garage, I have no idea. 😬😬😬. Floating rock evaluation tool - ready
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This is an emotional rollercoaster. I translated the original Korean paper. Are we back??? .
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Meissner effect or bust: Day 4. All quiet on the western front. Furnaces are cooking, and there is nothing to do but wait and enjoy the show. Update on analysis. There was a huge outpouring of support from local and abroad, thank you everyone. We’ve got a world-class materials
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It has been a long path of glass-eating, punctuated by the occasional success. • Read a cool book about Edison at 7. Decided on path. • Built a telegraph at 8.• Built a bunch of RC cars at 10.• Starting importing brushless motors from Germany at 12.• Began CAD at 12.5.•.
@andrewmccalip how did you get into this?.
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If you're not reading about modified-lead apatite crystals tonight, what are you even doing???
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Man makes the rocks. Still does not know how the rocks work. Feels like he knows less than before. This sample is impossibly small. Must be micrograms.
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I absolutely, positively love the reaction that Twitter has had to LK99. Never seen anything so positively received on Twitter. If this can be replicated, the authors will be the next Einstein or Bohr. I hope I can help play a small part in moving humanity forward.
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Since we're talking manufacturing this week. I think a lot about the price of cheese vs vehicles per pound
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Sums up my feelings on excessive degrees of freedom in automation. I really dislike seeing the 6DOF arms deployed in these type applications. It’s the worst of both worlds. It lacks the intelligence of a human, it’s more expensive when the programmer is considered, and it’s
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Why don't we have Amazon scale gigafactory warehouses full of CNC machines?. •Don't do anything fancy. •Don't invent any new technology. •Don't over automate. •Don't start with 5 axis aerospace, do 2 and 3 axis commodity level parts. •Just execute insanely well on the.
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Pinned Status:. ✅ Done! Equipment (furances, vac, torches) .✅ Done! Reaction 1 (Lanarkite) batch 1.✅ Done! Reaction 1 (Lanarkite) batch 2.🟡 Thurs morning ETA - Cu3P (phosphide) Poland batch .🟡 Thurs morning ETA - Cu3P (phosphide) 3rd party lab.☐ Thurs evening -.
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✅ Done! Equipment (furnaces, vac, torches).✅ Done! Reaction 1 (Lanarkite) batch 1.✅ Done! Reaction 1 (Lanarkite) batch 2.✅ Done! - Cu3P (phosphide) Poland batch.✅ Done! - Reaction 3 (LK99). 2pm start, 11pm finish. 🟡 Thurs evening ETA - Cu3P (phosphide) 3rd party lab.🟡.
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Have to take a breather for 24 hours. We made the rocks, got to a super interesting result, an epic video, now I've got to catch up on the rest of life for a day. Let's take the weekend to regroup, catch up on the flood of papers, and figure out how this will be studied over the.
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First we made the rocks think, now we'll make the rocks float.
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I'm not emotionally ready for round two, but the gauge says we are indeed back.
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@DaltonDEmery Wild to think how long those photons have been traveling, just to land in your eyeballs.
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Very exciting!.
🔥🔬 Exciting moment! We're taking the samples out of the furnace after 6 hours at 925°C. 🌡️✨ Check out our video capturing our first try to get #LK99 substance. 🔍 #ResearchUpdate #SampleAnalysis
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Meissner effect or bust. What a way to spend my birthday
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First claimed successful replication of LK-99. Accomplished by a team at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and posted 30 minutes ago. Why this is evidence:.The LK-99 flake slightly levitates for both orientations of the magnetic field, meaning it is not simply a
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Ya'll might not like this. but the impeller is really nice.
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I'm going to try to get a video late tomorrow night that steps through some of the effects I was referring to in previous comments. Have to sneak in some social obligations, can't be all rock all the time. In the meantime, here is a quick clip from my phone, shot through the.
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Alex performing a public service here! Thanks for putting together all these takes. I'm honored to be the guy mixing the rocks together. We know it's not likely to yield anything, but we'll put all our experiments into the hands of the experts. It's like the entire world.
Welcome to LK-99 superconductor twitX corner, new here? Here are a few folks to pay attention to (or follow the list) :. @alexkaplan0 - broke the story w/ 29M views, the king of "we're so back, it's over, we're back? " rollercoaster.
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I was totally spellbound by this video. The galaxy rotating into view is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Huge inspiration to make my own version.
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If this doesn't elicit a polarizing emotional response, I don't know what will. The aesthetics of it are perfection. The damage speaks volumes.
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The world's most boring Twitch stream is back. Let's bring Twitch to it's knees. We're going to have a beer after this very long week and watch these numbers slowly tick down to room temperature. #LK99. #MiessnerEffectOrBust.
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We’re going to circumnavigate the world with a droneship. Andrew’s next hobby project is here. The goal is to complete an around the world ocean trip, autonomously navigating 25,000 miles over the course of one year. The droneship will be streaming to X
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X and I have had quite a week together; now it's breaking into the mainstream. Shout out to @GregoryJBarber @WIRED for being early. People's responses, both public and private, have been amazing. This has been the most wholesome global trend we've seen in years. Please keep it
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Turns out the UI couldn't parse the negative RPM value to slow it down 😂
It's a beautiful day. Hitting the water for the first time with hull #2 for Project Bob. Goals for the day:. Don't sink.Test out launching / transport cart.Evaluate weight distribution .Test thruster pod. Get speed/power data.Evaluate rudder size / control authority .Test drive
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Numbers that belong on WallStreetBets. This isn't a lab, This is a Wendys
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Safely in the oven. As requested, we're doing a live stream. It's bring your own audio.
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@nomanautomata That's literally my exact job right now. 5 hours of 5 axis CNC programming in the morning, 5 hours of mind melting boredom/terror of running the machines in the afternoon.
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@pronounced_kyle It's wild, a few hundred years ago we were dependent on visiting a nitrogen rich guano island for the world's staple crops. Technology CAN help.
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For 5 minutes before the wifi went down, we were top ten on Twitch with 16,000 viewers.
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An entire generation, nerd sniped into creating cathedrals that could have been stampings and sheet metal.
Can't wait to take this over the inside edge of some half-collapsed mountain asphalt hairpin entry at 25 over the limit & produce a corpse the likes of which hasn't been seen since the medieval age
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Getting the DAQ set up. Will do multi channel thermocouple probes in furnace to ensure best control. We verified 930°C with our small 6"x6"x6" furnace. All data logged to Influx so we can verify ramp rates.
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Any Los Angeles based labs want to collaborate on XRD analysis? Obviously, it would be great to fully characterize all the intermediate synthesis products. We're going to be receiving Copper Phosphide from both local and overseas labs early next, and the Lanarkite is ready to go.
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Interesting how one brand can be the absolute standard by which everything is judged.
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An arms race between OpenAI, Xai, Meta, Google, and Anthropic sounds like how we get to AGI in less than 18 months.
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This is peak capitalism: pay more, get it faster. Crystal clear pricing and lead times.
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Alright Twitter, do your thing. Find me a Los Angeles based lab (academic or commercial) that can help on the solid state synthesis of Cu3P. We need that P, but must follow the rules.
Problem! Sigma-Aldrich has kindly pointed out that it is illegal for me to purchase red phosphorus without a DEA license. Apparently it's used in other less interesting stuff like drugs. This is a big problem. The paper calls for the synthesis of Copper Phosphide from copper.
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The magnetic responsive material is such a tiny fraction. Only a few shards per tube. Not what it is, it looks quite shiny and metallic. The rest of the material is not the homogenous brick I was expecting to see. A bit confused about what I have.
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So many comments to read through. I really just need to know what Iris thinks?.
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1000c annealing furnace - check.Oxy-Acetyl torch - check.Quartz ampules - check .High vacuum pumps - check .Glass working skills - check . Red phosphorus - not check.
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Spicy take. You’re all doing it wrong, stop being so clever. There’s no hope of spreading to the stars with the first approach. Build launch infrastructure that allows high mass, high margin parts. Be more like oilfield and less like aerospace. Starship is the big brain move.
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@mattparlmer We need better job titles in manufacturing. Leveling, or something. It's imperative to sort the button pushers from the master machinist programmers.
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The cheap labor reasoning is so mid. I've had to show this exact video so many times.
china isnt ahead because their labor is cheap. china is ahead because they have built incredibly technologically advanced factories . lets build this here
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I did a little experiment this morning. CNC processes can be ridiculously quick. Most people don’t have exposure to what an efficient process can do. Just because it takes a shop 4-10 days to get you the part, doesn’t mean there are days of labor in your part. When I was
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@SizeMichael We wanted to do rock surgery, but I was scared we would shatter our biggest piece. It definitely has a piece that isn't contributing lift.
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This looks nearly identical to how mine is behaving .
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@altryne @alexkaplan0 @DanielleFong . The world has felt so much smaller this week. This just happened. Just in time for our final reaction!
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This is the right ratio of engine to wing.
“No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had 1 strategy: to accelerate” .- Elon. Innovate faster than your competitors.
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We need to practice one of the critical steps, vacuum sealed quartz tubes. I've done tons of glass working, but never in quartz. It took a bit of tuning, but we achieved a fairly nice tube end after a few tries. This will be tight well below 1e-5torr.
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After they're cooled off, WE'LL SEE IF THE ROCKS FLOAT! We'll test the bulk ingots, then gradually reduce them in size, using a magnet to sort out any grains that exhibit any response. It seems like all the ones online were <1mm.
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Thomas working the torch. We grabbed the weldment rotary table positioner and turned it into a tubing fixture. It's quite nice to have the pedal control to flip the tube over. We're amateurs, but this feels like it could work.
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If you're in your early 20s, get to America. Go into debt if you have to. .
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@Hontas_Farmer When the magnet is placed parallel and flat to the bottom of the beaker, the sample stands at a 90deg angle to the field.
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T minus 30 minutes until our spacecraft leaves earth!!!
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I built a thing to fulfill a meme. Bluetooth smooth scrolling wheel. Please don’t buy one. I can’t make very many. But if you must….
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The longer you do this, the more you realize it's all just execution. Intelligence can actually hold you back in some circumstances. Stop overthinking the tail risks and deal with the center of the bell curve risks. Cut the metal, ship product, make revenue, iterate.
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I really don't know. It has some of the same responses as the paper, but the appearance makes me think it's less based? Doesn't it look too shiny?.
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There’s a quiet, undeniable joy in manufacturing. When you shape and build with your hands, you create something tangible—and in that process, find a kind of fulfillment that no screen can offer.
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Now we need an equivalent project for Manufacturing.
🚨NEW: Trump announces "Project Stargate," a plan for the US to invest $500B in American AI infrastructure. It will be a Joint Venture with OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank, and other investors will come later. They're starting with a data center in Texas. More details to come soon.
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Oxy torch. Notice the tube collapses and pinches off due to internal vacuum.
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