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The John Westlake/Lakewest MDAC/FDAC, VFET and Detox

Today's pfm banner ad. Looks like a nice place to be writing one's Phd dissertation.

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I should add I have threatened to post the likes above many times but foolishly gave him the benefit of the doubt

recent events compelled me to draw a line under this fiasco,but yet again zero empathy and ignoring of my messages on facebook

I have a feeling he is awaiting a huge blowout from the forums to finally bail out of all this , so heres my tuppence !

You could try ccing Renata, she can sometimes shame him into responding.
 
Wikipedia I guess. Although I took a look and noticed someone took the time to update it - not sure who but well done you for a) doing it, and b) not just writing FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD.

I think I would have been a bit more damning. Although if he apologised and promised to look after the VFET folks I’d probably wish him well. I can’t imagine he feels very good about what he’s done.
 
There is certainly precedent of Wikipedia detailing failed crowd-funded projects, e.g. the infamous Star Citizen computer game. It looks like a very well written page to my eyes.
 
I backed Elite and almost backed Star Citizen. Both Come from excellent nostalgic experiences of my youth and arguably both have been re-imagined pretty well - Star Citizen is pretty good these days even if it’s not V1 and may never be. Elite, in the same timeframe, seems to have come and gone as far as I can tell.
 
Mag-lev and rotation is possible - read -up on axial Halbach motors - but also their very-closely-defined requirements and limitations!

Which makes obvious @davidsrsb 's sense of humour: the 'kickstarter' link is utterly risible: it defies Earnshaw's theorem, and therefore the necessarily- active magnetic forces would utterly-swamp the cartridge, way below the incredibly-daft ride height pictured ( ...which itself is hilariously-idiotic)

(... oh, and just image you did manage to free-float a rotating LP with utterly-zero mechanical route to the cart tracking it: what then is the cart reproducing in the bass? The wander of the of the 'magic' attempting to keep the magic carpet rotating, rather than flying-off into the scenery)

It's bollox, all the way down.
 
Mag-lev and rotation is possible - read -up on axial Halbach motors - but also their very-closely-defined requirements and limitations!

Which makes obvious @davidsrsb 's sense of humour: the 'kickstarter' link is utterly risible: it defies Earnshaw's theorem, and therefore the necessarily- active magnetic forces would utterly-swamp the cartridge, way below the incredibly-daft ride height pictured ( ...which itself is hilariously-idiotic)

(... oh, and just image you did manage to free-float a rotating LP with utterly-zero mechanical route to the cart tracking it: what then is the cart reproducing in the bass? The wander of the of the 'magic' attempting to keep the magic carpet rotating, rather than flying-off into the scenery)

It's bollox, all the way down.
Agreed, it's repulsive.
 
Can it really turn? I know Newton's 3rd law, but .....
Why is the platter set so high? Magnetic field must be really huge for that...and the platter would have to have a giant magnet in it...I don't think cartridges like that.

But he did get half a million dollars...
 
I have seen videos of them working. The wobbly behaviour from record warps was just as I would expect - a very flawed idea but a fancy gimmick.
The scam was the developers selling them while not shipping to many of the fully paid sponsors.
 
Mag-lev and rotation is possible - read -up on axial Halbach motors - but also their very-closely-defined requirements and limitations!

Which makes obvious @davidsrsb 's sense of humour: the 'kickstarter' link is utterly risible: it defies Earnshaw's theorem, and therefore the necessarily- active magnetic forces would utterly-swamp the cartridge, way below the incredibly-daft ride height pictured ( ...which itself is hilariously-idiotic)

(... oh, and just image you did manage to free-float a rotating LP with utterly-zero mechanical route to the cart tracking it: what then is the cart reproducing in the bass? The wander of the of the 'magic' attempting to keep the magic carpet rotating, rather than flying-off into the scenery)

It's bollox, all the way down.

Quite. I remember all the forum chatter some years ago, with many believing/defending this as a great idea! Fools and their money....
 
Another problem with these MDAC and mag-lev type occurrences is that they make people too skeptical when a novel idea really is a giant leap forward. This has specifically influenced my reluctance to look for funding. I'm trying to deliver the real thing on time with barely any budget. It's unbelievably hard work.

I've no doubt that even with the best intentions people often fail and end up like Westlake. As Steve Jobs said, "real artists ship".
 
Another problem with these MDAC and mag-lev type occurrences is that they make people too skeptical when a novel idea really is a giant leap forward. This has specifically influenced my reluctance to look for funding. I'm trying to deliver the real thing on time with barely any budget. It's unbelievably hard work.

I've no doubt that even with the best intentions people often fail and end up like Westlake. As Steve Jobs said, "real artists ship".

I would be completely fine with John failing if it weren’t for his story telling along the way and switching interests. He was using money from investors after convincing them it would be both easier and better to do this new thing rather than upgrade existing MDACs - that’s all fine until you start doing other (commercial) stuff with their money instead and telling stories that he got picked up on and stubbornly dug his heels in, claiming victimship - he intentionally obfuscated what he doing, refused help and made stuff up in an attempt to try and win back enough progress to make it all seem credible - once his stories became impossible, he did a runner and used his exclusive group for the highly tolerant super fans that remained on Facebook.

If John fessed up, I think most people (not all) would be very forgiving. He was wonderfully generous before, but it puts me in mind of builders that you pay too much upfront for and they stop coming to your job and instead focus on other work, using all their various sources of money to keep the most important customer happy at the detriment of the less important ones.
 
Been an update on John Westlakes facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/186775815400428)
Looks like its going to be 2023 (Did say 2032, that was a typo.. sorry!) at the earliest now, as the semiconductor shortage has hit them hard.

"Leadtimes for the CM4 module extend out to 2023.. but so do so many of the MDAC2 IC's - however due to the low build numbers for MDAC2 - we will be searching the gray market for required IC's..."
 
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