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Comment by ilamont | Hacker News Reader

That's a great interview. I saw Anthrax when he was still in the band many years ago, when they toured with Public Enemy. I have the sense that not many top pop/rock/rap musicians are able to recognize the impact of touring on family and leave that career. The late singer of Talk Talk, Mark Hollis, was the same.

And I had always wondered about this:

Watchmaking is an ergonomically horrible job, you are hunched over, your arms are falling asleep, and you are just asking for carpal tunnel syndrome. The first thing new watchmakers should save for is not tools, but a really good bench.

The pictures still show people hunched over tables, though, squinting at tiny parts. How much can a good bench do?

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I think by (work)bench he means the work table as a whole - one of the photographs shows his table with ergonomic cutouts and pads.

I saw them on the Persistsnce if Time tour, opening for Maiden. Of course they had a giant clock on stage, probably influenced by the watches.

Speaking of ergonomics, why do they hunch over with eye loupes when inspection microscopes with over 12” of working distance are available? I have hand placed 01005 parts, so why don’t they use them for watch making?

If you have a proper hand rest under the inspection scope, you can do very fine movements while sitting upright.

I was wondering the same thing. Most jewelers don't work this way anymore either.

It could be a matter of depth of field and viewing angle. I build tiny things - boards with parts down to 0406 and also 3D assemblies of small parts. I use a long range digital magnifier for PCBs but it's necessary to use a head mounted loupe for 3D assembly due to depth of field and the need to view from different directions.

I would have thought they'd address that by having a movable stand/holder for the part - so they could easily spin/tip it around while keeping it in the optimum place for viewing (rather than moving your head/eye around to look at the right place). Of course I know nothing about any of this, but it seems like it would be easier for the user. Maybe I'm missing something about the hands not being available for that movement (pedals then?). Just interesting to think about.

The digital magnifier is the problem here. Try a decent stereo vision optical scope some time, it's crazy handy for PCB work.

>I have hand placed 01005 parts

Any more details you'd care to share? I was thinking of a project to use some 0402 LEDs in a pattern, and I've been balking at it.

0402s are much easier. the key is to keep your tweezers clean so that parts don't stick to them, which will happen if you have flux residue buildup. also, make sure you have a good set of tweezers.

you can use cheap reading glasses from walgreens if you need some magnification. I found that it was much easier for me pre-LASIK when my vision was -3.5.

00 stainless tweezers and 2x-40x stero microscope will be fine down to 0201. Eventually you’ll need a demagnetizer for the tweezers. For 01005 you’ll need ceramic tweezers.

"I have the sense that not many top pop/rock/rap musicians are able to recognize the impact of touring on family and leave that career."

There's a great doc called 'The other F word' where a bunch of famous and semi-famous hard touring musicians talk about the impact of their career choices on having a family. It's quite hard to watch at times. I appreciate this is totally off the watch making topic, but worth viewing if you're interested.

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