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Re:Hand Scraping a Truly Flat Plane (1908) [pdf] by jhallenworld on Thursday April 16, 2020 @10:06PM (#22895566)
Even today modern precision work is cheaper for round things than other shapes. This is why you will not see internal combustion engines with square pistons / cylinders.
Re:Hand Scraping a Truly Flat Plane (1908) [pdf] by TheSpiceIsLife on Thursday April 16, 2020 @11:06PM (#22895853)
Worth noting that modern pistons have ovality!

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piston

And a this one I found via DuckDuckGo

https://blog.wiseco.com/pistons-arent-round-profile-and-oval...

Re:Hand Scraping a Truly Flat Plane (1908) [pdf] by jhallenworld on Friday April 17, 2020 @10:08AM (#22899082)
Interesting! My statement was based on what I read in the Museum of Retro Tech:

http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/museum.htm

Many designs have been tried over the years, but suffer from oil leaks, low compression or high manufacturing costs.

Re:Hand Scraping a Truly Flat Plane (1908) [pdf] by analog31 on Friday April 17, 2020 @12:30AM (#22896209)
Something I've discovered by accident is that the lathe sits idle in most machine shops these days. If you can design something that can be made on the lathe, you can often get it done with virtually no waiting time.