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Mike Baier

@Mike__Baier • 6,130 subscribers

Removing traffic from the world one tunnel at a time. Director of Production, Electrical, and Software Engineering at The Boring Company

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On hard-rock machines like Prufrock Main beam, the propulsion system doesn’t push off a tunnel liner — because there is no liner. The rock itself forms the walls. Instead, Prufrock Main beams grip the tunnel walls with ~4 million pounds of horizontal force. Think of bracing yourself hard against both sides of a narrow hallway and then pushing forward. That’s the principle. By gripping the rock directly, we delete entire subsystems: no liners, no erectors, no segment handling, no grout. The result is counter-intuitive: the maximum theoretical tunneling speed through hard rock is significantly higher than through soft soil. Simpler machine. Faster progress

On hard-rock machines like Prufrock Main beam, the propulsion system doesn’t push off a tunnel liner — because there is no liner. The rock itself forms the walls. Instead, Prufrock Main beams grip the tunnel walls with ~4 million pounds of horizontal force. Think of bracing yourself hard against both sides of a narrow hallway and then pushing forward. That’s the principle. By gripping the rock directly, we delete entire subsystems: no liners, no erectors, no segment handling, no grout. The result is counter-intuitive: the maximum theoretical tunneling speed through hard rock is significantly higher than through soft soil. Simpler machine. Faster progress

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Every Prufrock that leaves the factory has over 1,000 changes from the one before it. Before it ships, we put it through a full Porpoise Test (PT) in Bastrop — a short test tunnel (typically under 200 rings) that lets both the design team and the test team gather real data on the new designs and on the specific Prufrock serial number. To date, we’ve completed six of these tests and Prufrock 5 is currently 200 rings into PT7. Once complete, the tunnels are put to use: • PT4 is now a vacuum tunnel for Hyperloop testing • PT5 is a live test bench for liner trucks and new belt systems • PT6 is a pedestrian tunnel connecting SpaceX to Hyperloop Plaza With porpoise testing, our engineers get to get hands on and stress-test every one of their designs in real world environments without ever leaving Bastrop. We are currently hiring Electrical, Mechanical, Test, and Software engineers. Link to apply in the comments below 👇

Every Prufrock that leaves the factory has over 1,000 changes from the one before it. Before it ships, we put it through a full Porpoise Test (PT) in Bastrop — a short test tunnel (typically under 200 rings) that lets both the design team and the test team gather real data on the new designs and on the specific Prufrock serial number. To date, we’ve completed six of these tests and Prufrock 5 is currently 200 rings into PT7. Once complete, the tunnels are put to use: • PT4 is now a vacuum tunnel for Hyperloop testing • PT5 is a live test bench for liner trucks and new belt systems • PT6 is a pedestrian tunnel connecting SpaceX to Hyperloop Plaza With porpoise testing, our engineers get to get hands on and stress-test every one of their designs in real world environments without ever leaving Bastrop. We are currently hiring Electrical, Mechanical, Test, and Software engineers. Link to apply in the comments below 👇

81,931 views • 11 days ago

"Grok, read my x post on how we clock trapezoidal tunnel segments to make tunnels turn and make me a 3D tunnel visualizer. Add a ride through mode and make sure you use realistic textures. Also put a road in". The app was literally one shotted. "Now make a video that shows this off". Here is the one shot video result. Wild. Grok is unreal. Thanks to mu for the inspiration to do this

"Grok, read my x post on how we clock trapezoidal tunnel segments to make tunnels turn and make me a 3D tunnel visualizer. Add a ride through mode and make sure you use realistic textures. Also put a road in". The app was literally one shotted. "Now make a video that shows this off". Here is the one shot video result. Wild. Grok is unreal. Thanks to mu for the inspiration to do this

12,607 views • 15 days ago

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