Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The SJCAM M50 camera gasket seems unable to cope with The New Normal weather conditions around here:
SJCAM M50 – screen condensation
I think this was probably another case of diurnal pumping, given the exceedingly hot days and cool nights in late July.
Plenty of water condensed on the bottom of the battery compartment cover:
SJCAM M50 – battery lid condensation
And inside the compartment around the AA cells:
SJCAM M50 – battery compartment condensation
Unlike the previous leak, the camera lens wasn’t involved, so I did not disassemble the case. I let the opened camera (without batteries) dry out in the hot hot sun for the rest of the day and it seemed fine by evening.
Keeping it out of full sunlight during the day definitely limits the locations I can use.
The best bid on a recent tree removal project replaced most of the usual crew with a Merlo Roto telehandler:
Tree Work – Merlo setup
The orange gadget on the end of the boom is a Woodcracker manipulator with a terrifying switchblade chainsaw:
Tree Work – Merlo Woodcracker – rear
The saw has hydraulic motors, so you can hear the blade ripping through the wood.
The jaws above the saw hold the piece during the cut:
Tree Work – Merlo Woodcracker – side
Then lift it away:
Tree Work – Merlo Woodcracker – cut lift
The boom has a 115 foot vertical reach, so it can remove entire treetops:
Tree Work – Merlo Woodcracker – align
Then align the branch with the chipper’s gullet and ram it into the feed rollers, with no intervention from the ground crew:
Tree Work – Merlo – chipper feeding
The Woodcracker chainsaw isn’t quite long enough for the trunk, so the jaws stabilize the trunk during a manual cut:
Tree Work – Merlo Woodcracker – trunk support
Then haul the whole thing away:
Tree Work – Merlo Woodcracker – trunk lift
The Merlo can lift 11,000 pounds near the middle of its range, with a 1600 pound limit at the maximum horizontal reach and 5500 pounds at 115 feet vertically. As far as I can tell, nothing about this project came anywhere close to the machine’s limits.
The day arrived with a severe thunderstorm watch, but the main part of the storm passed far north of us. The local power company keeps this company on speed dial and called them for emergency work in the wake of the storm, so the Merlo left early and the remaining crew used a bucket truck to take down the last tree in old-school style.
The Merlo is staggeringly expensive, but lets one operator take down an entire tree without any climbers or riggers. I suspect the reduction in crew size (and insurance premiums) pays for the machine in short order; the crew was less than half the size involved in a neighbor’s project with another contractor.
Highly recommended!
Merlo’s promotional video has comparisons with similar machines and I’m sure you could waste an entire afternoon on such things. For sure, I didn’t get anything else done that day.
You might expect the tang to extend well into the handle, but that’s not what you get in a cheap tool:
Dandelion Weeder – ferrule detail
The Bucket o’ Rod-like Materials had a rake handle about the right diameter, so I sawed off a suitable length, set up the steady rest with a bushing, and turned the end to match the ferrule:
Dandelion Weeder – end turning
Pound the ferrule into place and drill the new handle to fit the tang:
Dandelion Weeder – drilling setup
The handle seemed a bit raw and, as it was already chucked in the lathe, got a synthetic string wrap with clear epoxy coating:
Dandelion Weeder – string epoxy
The pourable epoxy is reaching the end of its shelf life, but seemed entirely suitable for the purpose. I wrapped two layers of string around the dry handle, laid paper over the lathe bed, slathered epoxy over the whole affair, and let the lathe turn dead-slow for most of the day to even out the coat.
The next day: hammer the blade mostly straight again, smear JB QuikWeld on the tang and into the hole, gently hammer them together, chuck the blade, apply more epoxy to the ends, and let it turn:
Dandelion Weeder – end epoxy
A careful inspection reveals my casual disregard of the finer points of tool handle craftsmanship, but it came out surprisingly pretty:
Dandelion Weeder – repaired
The blade remains the finest butter-soft cheap steel and still doesn’t extend the length of the handle, but Quality Shop Time™ is not to be sniffed at.
And, hey, nary a trace of 3D printing or laser cutting!
Wearing my FitBIt Charge 5 tracker in the shower without activating its Water Lock feature occasionally produces odd results, but the most recent mishap ventured deep into the peculiar:
Jammed FitBit Charge 5
Its complete lack of buttons makes the thing completely waterproof, but also means it cannot continue when the touch / swipe interface gets horribly confused.
The recovery process requires snapping it onto its USB charging cable, then pressing the nearly invisible button embedded in the USB connector shell three times, with one second between each press: click hippopotamus click hippopotamus click.
Then it restarts / reboots and eventually all is well again.
Perhaps I can now recall the magic incantation without digging through the online help again, because I am certainly not going to suddenly remember to do the Water Lock dance before showering.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 