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

Numeric Keypad Repair

Having set up a cheap wireless numeric keypad as a simple macro pad at my left hand, I eventually knocked it off the desk, whereupon the screw compressing the back of the case against the membrane switches ripped through the plastic:

Numeric Keypad – compression screw pullout

The symptoms came down to erratic operation of a few keys that became worse as I continued tapping on the thing. Finally, with nothing to lose, I took it apart and, upon seeing the hole in the case, realized I didn’t have to cut the usual label to find the hidden screw.

Slathering the little donut with acetone and clamping things together might work for a while, but I’m sure the keypad will hit the floor again with similar results.

Instead, recruit some candidates from the Box o’ Random Screws:

Numeric Keypad – screw selection

Pick the screw big enough to grip the undamaged boss on the front of the case, yet short enough to compress the back again, add a small washer spanning the hole, and it’s all good again:

Numeric Keypad – screw installed

This only works because the keypad sits at enough of an angle to hold the screw off the desk.

That was easy …

2022-11-25
Tree Frog Marquetry: FAIL

I thought this critter would look great in marquetry:

Tree frog – on trash can lid

Posterizing the colors to represent a few shades in my Little Box o’ Veneers simplified the problem:

Tree frog – posterized

Applying LightBurn’s Trace tool to the various shades produced vector outlines, which I then collected together based on the veneer they should come from:

Tree Frog vector patterns

Which seemed similar to my hand-drawn doodles on a larger image:

Tree frog – sketch vs chipboard

Before committing to actual veneers, though, I cut the shapes from spraypainted chipboard on a small scale, which showed why this wasn’t going to work:

Tree Frog – auto-trace chipboard

It’s facing the other way because I cut the chipboard from the back side, so as to keep the colors reasonably clean and bright.

Contrary to what I initially thought, the automagic tracing routine generates different nodes along a boundary between two colors depending on which side is selected by the color range. Because the nodes (and control points) don’t match exactly, adjacent pieces will have different border shapes and won’t quite match up. The missing pieces at the frog’s rump simply did not fit after the other parts soaked up all the tolerances in between.

So (I think) a better way to do this requires carefully hand-tracing the borders, then using the same path (all the nodes) for adjoining pieces. This mean duplicating the borders for each of the pieces: tedious bookkeeping and layer manipulation.

More study is needed …

2022-11-24
Rodent-Approved Carrot Crop

The final garden harvest included several carrots minus their leafy tops:

Rodent-approved Carrot

I sliced that top from a rather rotund carrot and the broad tooth marks suggest a large rodent. Mary found and blocked a tunnel under the fence, so we think it was a groundhog, rather than a rabbit, but we’ll never know the rest of the story.

The rest of the carrot was fine, so the unknown critter had mmmm good taste. Unfortunately, it sampled far too many root crops as it toured the buffet, leaving Mary’s root-cellared stockpile unusually low for our winter meals.

2022-11-23
Epson ET-3830 Duplexer Paper Jam

For the record, it is possible to get a piece of paper jammed so far inside the duplexer rollers in the back of an Epson ET-3830 Multifunction Printer / Scanner that it is not only completely invisible from the inside, but that it cannot be removed without disassembling the duplexer:

Epson ET-3830 duplexer jam

It jammed while attempting to print another batch of Geek Scratch Paper with a semilog grid, without actually duplexing the sheets. The specs say the printer can handle 4×6 paper, so I assumed 4.24×5.5 paper would be Close Enough. Apparently not.

Print ’em two-up, chop the sheets down the middle, pad and glue, and it’s all good:

OMTech CO2 laser power supply – bandwidth tests – semilog graph

2022-11-22
Step2 Garden Seat: Seat3

Another tray becomes a replacement for the plywood on the Step2 rolling seat in the Vassar Farms plot:

Step2 Garden Seat – weathered plywood

I reused the old hinges, as this tray seems to be slightly thicker than the one on the home garden seat. The straight edges show it’s also somewhat smaller, but it’ll work just fine.

The bottom of the tray with its Silite logo now faces upward, because the top surface has eroded to a matte finish while supporting a bunch of plants outdoors during several summers:

Step2 Garden Seat – tray top

So you can get two or three years from a painted plywood slab out in a garden, depending on how fussy you are about looks.

After two seasons, the first tray doesn’t look any the worse for wear: Silite trays really will survive the Apocalypse and be ready to serve breakfast the next day.

2022-11-21
Leaf Bag Flagwashing

The data plate at the bottom of the the leaf bags we get from the town seems intended to set expectations at a certain level:

Dano Leaf Bag – data plate

Which is immediately belied by the situation at the other end of the bag:

Dano Leaf Bag – crimp line typo

OK, it’s just a typo that could happen to anyone, but it first appeared last year and seems to be continuing. Possibly the Town of Poughkeepsie bought a lot of bags and we’re working through the stack.

However, the built-in gashes along the sides of some bags were a new feature this year:

Dano Leaf Bag – side gashes

Perhaps a misalignment in the folder or stacker:

Dano Leaf Bag – side gash detail

Enough bags had slices, perhaps four in some ten-packs, to justify keeping the packing tape dispenser at hand while we were shredding up a storm:

Dano Leaf Bag – side gash detail

Which frosted Mary pretty severely, as she recycles the used bags as garden path pavers after distributing their contents as mulch, so she’ll be stripping plenty of tape next year.

Although I’m not privy to the Town’s dealings, Dano’s chart suggests the bags cost about 40¢ in truckload lots, about as much as Lowe’s charges for similar bags in retail five-packs. Surprisingly, you can also buy the same Lowe’s bags from Amazon for a lot more, suggesting some folks live much further from a Lowe’s than we do.

2022-11-18
Pixel 6a Camera Protector vs. Leaf Shredder Chaff

Much of my exercise of late has come from blowing leaves into piles and shredding them:

Leaf Shredding – GPS track

My GPS drawing hand is weak.

I wear 30 dB over-the-ear protectors with a pair of Bluetooth earbuds tucked inside for a rhythm track. I had been carrying my Pixel 6a in a side pocket, until I noticed a remarkable amount of crud inside the glass protector over the camera lens:

Pixel 6a camera protector dirt

How crud could get inside (what I thought should be) a sealed compartment inside the phone’s armor case became obvious after peeling the protector off:

Pixel 6a camera protector dirt – overview

Come to find out the protector’s adhesive layer has an opening near the edge of the camera, leaving a slot allowing the howling chaff storm onto the camera glass. Random pocket fuzz certainly contributed some particles, but the entire phone case had a surprising amount of yellow-brown dust tucked inside.

So I left the protector off, dumped the music files into my old Pixel 3a (which never had a camera protector), and will henceforth leave the 6a indoors during similar adventures.

The bagged leaves will become next year’s garden veggies, so the whole project isn’t a total waste of time.

2022-11-17