Davide Radaelli @daviderady Twitter profile

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 month

Here’s a 1 year anniversary post on my electric muscle research. I started a year ago as a for-fun project in my spare time. And now it’s grown to a full-time focus. My goal is to make the best biomimetic robots in the world. Won’t rest until I get there!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Good progress on the robotic muscle! In this clip it’s lifting 50 grams. This actuator design has never really been explored before. The theoretical cap is 10lbs/cm^2, which means I’m at 1% of the possible strength. Goal right now is to make it stronger!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Incorporating 👀

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Finally doing some microfabrication!! More updates on this project soon.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Flex PCB order finally arrived! This is the longest option available at 1400mm. Excited to assemble it and test it out!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Bet you’ve never seen an actuator that looks like this! Just assembled the actuator and ready to run some tests.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

Super great book to read. Especially for people interested in microfab. Has everything from glassblowing, to laser optics, to vacuums, etc.. But most important thing is that I can open at any page, and find it fun to read.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

I built an electrostatic actuator. Increase the voltage and you get physical movement. It’s the first step in my project on muscle fiber!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

4 months

Quick update on the actuator! Main update is I'm testing a material that gets me 10x strength compared to before. Imagine the last clip I posted, but 10x stronger. Would be wild! More details about what's new in thread.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

The most important thing for young ambitious people, is being in a high standards environment.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

WE HAVE A HEARTBEAT I can now control the waveform :D

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Assembled a third artificial muscle today! Growing my collection.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

8 months

Making progress on the electrical muscles! There’s a lot of room for improvement, but this is the bare bones V1 of what’s possible. Next I gotta - decrease the layer thickness - change up the material - fine-tune the folds - optimize the control waveform (bipolar).

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 month

Last year - went from knowing nothing in electrostatics, to being at the forefront of the field. - experimented on half a dozen variations of the electric muscle actuator. - learned a crazy amount about high voltage electronics. - incorporated my first company w/ stripe atlas.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

Ok pretty cool progress! Now it’s lifting weights at a pretty low voltage. Another 10x improvement is easily possible. Like in the next few days. Don’t be surprised when it starts lifting 1kg weights soon!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Just ran an experiment and got exactly the result I expected!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

Update on the robotic muscle project. The electrostatic actuator is running at super low power consumption (~0.1 watts) It has high frequency control, and high precision. Really excited by the progress! A lot more coming next month.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

We simply don’t have an actuator technology that’s comparable to human muscle. There is no artificial muscle that’s even close. BLDC - too heavy, not enough torque without a gear reduction. Hydraulic - hard to back drive without using leaky loose seals, and requires a pump, lots

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Actuator tech is the biggest bottleneck standing in the way of humanoid robots. There’s huge potential in getting this right.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

New video! This one shows the link between the rigorous and intuitive explanations of Group Theory. Link here:

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

9 months

A pretty dramatic increase in force! New material makes a huge difference. There’s nothing holding the copper electrodes together besides electrostatic force. I feel like Edison, sourcing all these different materials, learning by trial and error.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

You know to be honest.. I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here. Why is the alligator clip visibly lifted up, but the actuator doesn’t compress?? Really cool outcome nevertheless.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

7 months

Muscle contraction in action 👀

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

8 months

This is a macro scale micro actuator.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 month

In the coming year I want to - further improve the muscle performance. - build a robot v1 that demonstrates superior biomechanics. - have my first investors in the company. looking to raise 50k from angels.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 month

In terms of go-to-market, I think there’s a really strong case for making incredible animatronic robots for the entertainment industry (Disney et al.). Robots today move super stiff, and if the electric muscles can lead to significantly better robots, that’s a huge deal.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

Did a ton of soldering work today. Learned a lot and it was fun! It’s a HV power supply. I’ll be using it for my project on artificial muscles. Have not added the HV components yet, but was able to communicate with the microcontroller no problem.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

9 months

Ran some more experiments today! The actuator is getting better. Still running it at a really low voltage. The force output is proportional to the square of the voltage, so running it at high-voltage should be extraordinary. Let’s see if I can make that happen tomorrow!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 month

There’s still a huge way to go in terms of optimizing the muscle design and the power electronics. Lots of room for improvements. Improving by a first 10x is relatively easy, and a further 10x should be possible. That’s 2 orders of magnitude stronger than where it’s at now.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

7 months

Same prototype as the video yesterday, but now it’s hanging! I’m still facing an issue with arcing (since the copper is exposed). Next design is fully insulated, so should be able to run 3-4x higher voltage. In theory should result 9-16x the strength. But that’s just a theory..

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

7 months

New tests for a new year (!) Wish me luck as I upgrade my power supply, to avoid charge retention. Still, good progress. Also, there’s a fancy machine at Waterloo that I want to try out. Can prototype flex pcbs in a few hours, don’t have to wait 7 days for china.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

July 2022 Update: - I'm starting a new project tackling the problem @paulg describes in "The Lesson To Unlearn". - I worked at @Primer figuring out how to teach math as play. - I made a math video in the style of @3blue1brown explaining group theory.

I'm starting a new project: Digital Socrates

July 2022 Updates

davideradaelli.substack.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

I'm in a period where I'm reinventing myself, and it felt like a hard (but correct) decision. I feel like this becomes a much harder decision after one achieves more tangible success.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

Made a fun physics demo! The electrostatic force is really strong. The two strips totally stick together when there’s a voltage applied. This is due to charges accumulating at the surface.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

Vapor deposition is incredibly underrated. If I had 100$ million in grants, I would spend it all doing experiments in vapor deposition. Chemical vapor deposition. Atomic layer deposition. Laser chemical vapor deposition. Electron beam induced deposition. Focused ion beam depo--

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

Very slight compression visible. I’m having a problem that the hinges are far too rigid. Working on fixing it! For a 2g actuator lifting up a 20g weight, that’s still pretty good.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Very interesting to me that both @patrickc and @LauraDeming posts on advice start with the same thing: "Go deep on things. Become an expert." "Get obsessed with a topic"

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

9 months

Lifting a 1kg weight with electrostatic force. No adhesive between the 2 copper electrodes, just a dielectric and a voltage difference.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Pyralux samples acquired from DuPont. Soon I will be making my own Flex PCB.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

More microfabrication experiments in the making!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Learning to play the piano but I am NOT using sheet music. Doing it by ear. So far I’ve learned: - melody for Rachmaninov concerto No. 3 at 4-6 mins - Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 - Celeste Resurrections - Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

I’m back to microfabrication at TNFC. Super great facility at the University of Toronto! Doing some parylene coating for my next experiment.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Got storyboarder to work! Animated math videos, here I come.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 months

Running some backyard oven experiments. The test is: can I weld two plastic films together, and what is the weld strength? This is one option for how I’m going to manufacture the folding strips for the actuator.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

6 months

Did some laser micro-machining to prototype a new Flex PCB design for the robotic muscle project. Being able to iterate daily rather than every week will be huge.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Nov 2022 Update - I'm back in Toronto and I'm doing research into 3d printing - Looking at vibratory fluidization, which is a method for making powders behave like fluids - Designing an initial prototype to test out my hypothesis

Pivot to Additive Manufacturing

November 2022 Updates

davideradaelli.substack.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

If you're a person that does stuff without needing external approval, please consider applying to Interact. I have such a high trust in the community. Everybody I meet are people that I can just *relate* to and it's incredible.

Interact

@joininteract

3 years

Applications are now open for the 2022 Interact Fellowship! Learn more and apply here by February 15th: .

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

I’m testing the electrostatic actuator I built at 1000V. The more I shrink the design, the better it scales. Halving the distance between electrodes is 4x the force output. The next iteration is going to be much better.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

The wafer after doing photolithography step

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

Made a Timelapse for assembling the actuator I’ve been working on. It’s very manual right now, but there’s tons of ways I could automate it.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

I've been doing research into fluidization and how it could be used to make a 3d printer that's a lot faster than the ones that exist today. Ran a quick experiment to validate some research, and recorded a video to explain. Check it out!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

My curse, but also my blessing, is that I'm only interested in projects with asymmetric upside. Every time the project upside becomes capped, I lose interest. Always hunting those positive black swans.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 month

solder power supply

Davide Radaelli - @daviderady

mid day electronics

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

Right before I fall asleep, I come up with a good idea I should do. I wake up, do that thing, and get ready to fall asleep. But then I get another good idea I should do, and the cycle continues. And now it’s 3:30AM.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

I've been writing one explanation a day for 2022. Here's the details: - On average I write 700 words per day. - On Jan 7th I wrote 3000 words. - I say “tensor” 43 times. - I wrote nearly 20 000 words so far. Please check out the meta post here:

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

An update from me! - Sustainably continuing to work on "learn by explaining" - Learning basic math and making it addicting for myself - Making YouTube math video on group theory - Hosted learning retreat in Muskoka Listen to me explain it here

Continuing to Figure Out What I’m Doing With Math & Physics

An update on what I've been up to.1. I’ve confirmed that learning by explaining is a very efficient way to learn math & physics. Now I’m trying to figure out...

www.youtube.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Posted this video recently, it's got some updates on my microfabrication project. Check it out!

Microfabrication Project -- Toronto Nanofabrication Centre (TNFC)

Hello! In this video, I walk through my project where I microfabricate a dielectric elastomer actuator. It's a really fun project, and I'm looking forward to...

www.youtube.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Just had my most productive day in my life so far. Climbed that ladder really fast, but also feel pretty confident I have it in the right spot.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 months

@pronounced_kyle True. But power law means that the 1% dominates real world impact. It’s mostly non-academic. - steam engine - wireless telegraphy - vulcanized rubber - dynamite - powered flight

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Did you guys know making a chalkboard cost <25$? Wood + chalkboard paint = chalkboard. I AM GOING TO USE THIS SO MANY TIMES.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

4 months

So, that's the high level update. For those that are interested, here's a more technical explanation of what's going on. What's happened since my post last month is that I've tested lots of film materials for their electrostatic strength. The experimental set up is quite

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

December 2021 update: I'm pretty sure I'm on a good path, but I'm always anxious because of the inherent uncertainty of not knowing where I will end up. If you want to hear me explain it, feel free to listen to me talk in this video!

Figuring Things Out on an Unconventional Path

Update on what I've been up to. My goal is to make a massive impact and I'm taking an unconventional path to achieve this impact.I'm self-learning math, not ...

www.youtube.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

I always come back to this experience I had playing volleyball where for a full year, I'd been playing with intermediates players, and got slowly better. Then one day I joined the advanced group, and improved in 1 week the same amount as the whole last year.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Very interesting quote for me as I get older and think about what I’ve achieved.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Some of the math I’ve been personally investigating for the last week

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

Listen to an update from me. Tagging some friends I want to keep updated!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Stumbled on an old application from 2 years ago, and I think I was more idiosyncratic back then compared to now. I was super fixated on curing aging computationally, which was maybe naive, maybe not, I don't know. But I think the impassioned self-belief I had was a good thing.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

8 months

A really big next milestone is to replace the servo motor in this finger with the robotic muscle. That would be a really sick milestone.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

In 1 month I'm probably going to understand symplectic manifolds. Am currently struggling to understand it but I know I'll make a breakthrough soon enough. It's the same feeling I had with topology, smooth manifolds, tensors, tangent spaces, tensor fields

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

I should never let myself be spoon fed information. My instinct when I get stuck is to turn to textbooks or courses to build a "knowledge base". This passive learning is bad -- my mindset should always be asking questions and figuring things out.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

Realized that for the last week I've been focused on the wrong thing. I need to remember to do things that make sense. Very easy to forget.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

March 2023 Update - Research into 3d printing power semiconductors for electric vehicles, drones, and the electric grid - Recorded a video talking about all of my failures from the last 2 years (and some success!) - Visited Austin and Boston

Reinventing Myself Yet Again

March 2023 Updates

davideradaelli.substack.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

Listen to my monthly update below! TLDR: - Started the Quantum Mafia - Building out SkillTree - Making projects in quantum simulations of chemistry - Moving back to Toronto YouTube Link:

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

8 months

What electrostatic actuators typically look like:

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

It’s quite possible that top-down learning is currently better than bottom-up only because of arbitrage reasons. Nobody is doing top-down, everybody is doing bottom-up. Hence it’s much easier to come up with novel insights when doing top-down.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

What I'm exploring: additive manufacturing by vapor deposition. This would open up a whole new market by enabling 3D metal printing to reach serial production. I explain the main technical gaps that need to be addressed for this process to be viable:

3D Printing with Vapor Deposition

3D Printing with Vapor Deposition Metal 3D printers can manufacture parts with geometric complexity that no other process can match. But because of their tiny throughput, they are limited to produc…

daviderady.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

I feel like injection mold tooling is very underappreciated for just how big of an impact it has on manufacturing and our daily lives. Corollary to this is that I think what @aphysicist and @austinbishop are doing at Atomic Industries is super underrated.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

4 years

Self learning math. You get recommended courses and textbooks. You don't end up listening to them. That means sometimes missing out on amazing content. Here's my solution to the problem:

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

I’m fine tuning the rigidity of the actuator, and haven’t solved that fully yet. But making good progress! I’m getting all sorts of wacky results like the one in this clip. Excited to see where it goes!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

4 months

I'm assembling a working actuator with this new material ASAP. By the way, order of magnitude improvements are not surprising here, since this tech is so underexplored. Just look at my previous actuators to see the progress. I've learned a lot since 6 months ago.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

You know you're focused on the right thing when you blocked 1.5h to do research, but you've been at it for 2h and want to continue for longer.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

What if we use AI to take scientific papers and translate them down to the pure empirical results. Cut out the theory, the simulations, the models. All the fragile stuff. Leave me with just the results.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

Constant exposure > grind culture

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

This has been very consistent. I've been averaging 7-9h of *focused* research every day. Interesting things to come.. 👀

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

4 months

Looking into the future, there's this short term 10x strength increase I'm working on, and then I think I can probably 10x it again after. This would bring the actuator strength to 10lbs/cm^2, which is equivalent to human muscle.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

Understanding theoretical physics from first principles is so much fun. It goes like this: logic -> set theory -> topology -> topological manifolds -> differentiable manifolds -> bundles -> symplectic/metric geometry -> modern physics!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

4 months

@MajmudarAdam For the fastest turnaround time, it could be interesting to use the semi equipment from a local university! It’s a fun way to get trained on the machines. Access cost is typically around 50$/h for individuals.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

8 months

This whole approach to actuators using electrostatics has never really been tried before. I don’t think anyone’s brought the concepts together.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

@0interestrates @edwinwee Woah you think you can do zoning?

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

10 day retreat for your average technologist to learn all prerequisites for real theoretical physics research papers

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

@JoanneZPeng I love the way @LauraDeming describes it in her post

Transcendent Joy

I'm naturally good at two things - not giving up on projects that take more than a decade, and feeling intense, transcendent joy in response to a scientific understanding of the world. I'm...

ldeming.posthaven.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

“I certainly have a routine, but the most important thing, when I look back over my career, has been the ability to change routines” - Anne Rice From reading daily rituals!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

10 months

@AviSchiffmann totally agree. it's a barbell strategy. 1) casual reading, with no effort at all of remembering things, and letting is subconsciously load intuition 2) high energy, figure shit out, read highly technical papers and documents. challenge the concepts. etc. nothing in the middle!

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

3 years

Listen to my monthly update!

Coliving in Salt Lake City, Working on Molecular Dynamics, and How to...

Walk with me while I explain my monthly progress.Website: https://daviderady.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/davideradyFeynman Mafia: https://mafiaquantum.c...

www.youtube.com

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

2 years

@adaobiadibe_ @ftlsid I’ve been working on education for the last 2 years, but I’ve pivoted away and I’m now focused on additive manufacturing

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

What the actuator looks like. Pretty cool.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

11 months

@aphysicist Totally agree. Working on the grid is underrated.

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

1 year

Currently: I'm exploring this technique called Electron beam induced deposition, that could potentially be used to 3d print multi-material structures on a nanometer scale.

3D nanoprinting via focused electron beams

Additive manufacturing of three-dimensional objects on the nanoscale is a very relevant topic but still a highly challenging task. Among the pool of nanofabrica

pubs.aip.org

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Davide Radaelli

@daviderady

9 months

Great interview by @AlexMasmej in French. You know, French is my first language, but it's crazy how dominant English is in tech. It's a power law, but for languages. All but guarantees that English will cement itself as the new Lingua Franca.

Il Lève 10 Millions de Dollars à 24 ans - À ta Santé #7 avec Alexan...

➜ Intéressé par le business ? Prends rendez-vous pour en discuter par téléphone avec un membre de mon équipe: https://calendly.com/business-pro-1/appel-strat...

www.youtube.com

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