The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Author: Ed

Car vs. Mailbox

Things remained rather quiet at the end of the driveway for a few months, then this happened just before breakfast:

Mailbox killer – driveway view

Rt 376 had accumulated some sleet overnight and freezing rain was still falling. The driver apparently lost control around the curve, missed the fire hydrant behind me, and went up the embankment sideways at a pretty good clip.

As far as I can make out, the left front door took out the mailbox post, which was the stump of a utility pole installed long before we bought the property:

Mailbox killer – snapped post

Admittedly, the post was rotten around its base, but remained a substantial chunk of wood. The black plastic curl is the air deflector formerly sealing the front of the car’s undercarriage.

Seen from the far end of the debris field, the car smashed dead center into the mighty honeysuckle bush, shed a variety of small parts, recoiled backwards, and tagged the tree as it rolled down the embankment:

Mailbox killer – yard view

The mailboxes sit on the shoulder to the right of the car.

No serious injuries to the driver or passengers, although they got an ambulance ride to the ER to make sure.

Those dents just ain’t gonna buff out:

Mailbox killer – flatbed

I did get three years out of the repaired mailbox hinges and perhaps I should preemptively transfer the hardware to the new mailbox.

There’s never a dull moment around here.

2023-01-24
Bobbin Rock

Mary handed me a bobbin with a trouble report: it fit into the bobbin holder either way, but would go into the sewing machine either poorly or not at all.

Based on past experience with this lot of bobbins (*), I expected to find a burr inside the steel hub left behind by the saw cut creating the drive dog slot, so this came as a surprise:

Bobbin Rock – overview

A closer look:

Bobbin Rock – detail

That pebble was jammed in place so firmly I needed a pin punch: a small screwdriver wasn’t enough.

It came new from the factory like that, which makes one wonder just exactly what the factory floor looks like.

More likely, the bobbins spend their last few hours in a vibratory polisher and that little rock just crept with all the walnut shell kibble.

Works fine now, so we’ll call it a win.

(*) I gave her a lot of 100 to ensure she never had to unload a bobbin to keep her new Juki well-fed.

2023-01-23
Dunkin’ Drive-Through: Brace for Impact

A new Dunkin’ opened up about a week ago, whereupon this happened in the right-angled drive-thru lane:

Dunkin drive-through corner bollard – overview

A closer look shows they need more concrete down there:

Dunkin drive-through corner bollard – detail

If that were my gas service, I might have put up two ineffective bollards.

2023-01-20
Ersatz Library Card: Fixed

Sharper eyes than mine pointed out I misspelled Poughkeepsie, so I took advantage of the opportunity to make the whole thing look better:

Library card tag – revised front

It turns out the low-surface-energy tape stuck like glue to the acrylic tag (because that’s what it’s designed for) and peeled right off the laminating film on the printed paper. So I stuck some ordinary adhesive film to the back of the new paper label, left its protective paper on the other side, cold laminated the film+paper, laser-cut the outline, peeled off the back side of the laminating film with the protective paper, and stuck the new adhesive to the LSE tape still on the tag.

I have no idea how well this will work out in the long term, what with two adhesive layers bonded to each other, but this whole thing is in the nature of an experiment.

2023-01-19
Eyeglass Spring Temple: Screw Hole Tweak

A screws in one of Mary’s eyeglasses unscrewed itself, but, miraculously, we found it and I retired to the shop.

Because the glasses have spring temples, the screw would not align no matter what force I applied to it:

Eyeglass spring temple – screw misalignment

So I just embiggened the hole until the available force did the trick:

Eyeglass spring temple – hole filing

Dots of Loctite worked into the threads should prevent that from happening again, but I’ve learned to never say never.

In retrospect, the temple pivots have an exposed slot that I think would allow jamming a block in place after pulling the spring-loaded pivot outward. Temple springs are impossibly stiff and I have previously failed to budge them in glasses without the slots, so I don’t know how well that might work.

Verily: If brute force isn’t working for you, then you’re not using enough of it.

2023-01-18
Kitchen Under-sink Cabinet Fan Incident

During the course of diagnosing and fixing the latest oven igniter failure, an unrelated series of events produced a flood under the kitchen sink and across the floor. After cleaning up the mess and determining the floor under the cabinet was merely damp, rather than wet, I drilled a hole suitable for another PC cooling fan from the Box o’ MostlyFans, installed the fan to pull air upward, and let it run for a couple of days while watching the humidity drop.

Fortunately, I had a hole saw exactly the right size for an 80 mm case fan:

Kitchen sink – fan cover plate

I will lay big money on a bet saying your kitchen cabinets don’t have Real Wood like that, nor are the interiors painted bold Chinese Red. This place really is a time capsule from 1955.

While the drying happened, I made a hole cover from 1.5 mm black acrylic and, there being no style points involved, rounded up a quartet of black-oxide self-drilling sheet metal screws to hold it in place.

Although it’s not obvious, there’s a layer of transparent plastic “shelf paper” in there. It covers the fan hole under the cover, so any future spills will have approximately the same difficulty reaching the floor as this one did.

The LightBurn layout produces both the fan cover and a template to mark the four screw holes around the fan opening:

Kitchen Sink Fan – LB layout

The blue tool layer lines serve as a guide for the rest of the cover layout; the matching orange square on the right marks the fan outline on the drill template as a quick size check.

No need for an SVG version, because now that you have the general idea, it’s easy to recreate it for your own fan.

2023-01-17
Kenmore 362.75581890 Oven: Another Igniter Bites The Dust
Our story so far:
- We installed a Kenmore gas range around the turn of the millennium
- 2006 – Oven burner tube & igniter replaced
- 2014 – Igniter replaced
Apparently igniters last about eight years, regardless of provenance, because the igniter just failed, with the usual symptoms of low current draw (about 2 A), failed ignition, and a faint smell of propane (well, mercaptan) before the safety valve kicked in:

Oven igniter – location

The new igniter, another low-buck Amazon offering, came with half a green plastic connector block that mated neatly with the existing half under the oven. Unfortunately, the new wires had female pins crimped on their ends, rather than the male pins required by the existing connector and the ceramic wire nuts I’d used to join the previous igniter to the OEM connector were non-removable.

So I trimmed the old wires to a usable length and applied the new ceramic wire nuts to the stubs:

Oven igniter – connector rewiring

Also as before, the new igniter measures 3 A, definitely below the low end of the valve’s 3.3 to 3.6 A range:

Oven igniter – current test

If this one lasts eight years, I won’t be the guy replacing it …
2023-01-16