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.
After more-or-less constant use under a cup in the bathroom, a Snowflake Coaster has reached the end of its life:
The acrylic flake is fine, but the wood has mildewed:
It’s second from the left in the bottom row:
All except the pair in the left column had a coat or two of rattlecan clear, which suggests wood-ish coasters need something much more durable, along the lines of clearcoat epoxy. No surprise there!
So. Many. Tiny. Words.:
For the record, the typeface in that block of Fine Print is 1 mm tall = 3 point, which I find barely readable without magnification and impossible to follow without a pointer.
I’ve come to realize being a “valued customer” does not mean what businesses want me to think it means.
The bushes & trees along the Dutchess Rail Trail were reaching out to touch us again, so I took some slow rides with many stops.
Maple Oak trees along Page Park Drive:
Blackthorn encroaching through the fence at Overocker:
A tree somebody tossed down the trail bank near Morgan Lake:
The slide lock on my trusty rehabilitated Fiskars bypass pruner worked loose and began sliding into the LOCK position when held overhead, then fell apart during disassembly:
The lock now consists of:
Clean the blades with alcohol and it’s ready for the rest of the season.
I should have put a wave washer in the stack for some springiness, but it works surprisingly well for what it is.
Now: discover how long acrylic lasts out there in the wild.
Update: Yeah, the lock needed a wave washer for more friction, which became apparent after the first overhead branch.
After fixing the X axis drive, the CNC-3018XL table moved properly again, so I measured its overall alignment:
The +Y side (on the left in the photo, keeping in mind I’ve rotated the axes) turned out to be 0.7 mm too low, so I made a set of riser blocks to level the tabletop:
The 10 mm height would ram the tip of a Pilot pen about 10 mm below the tabletop surface, were it not for the spring-loaded pen holder:
The 0.7 mm difference in height levels the tabletop:
The OpenSCAD code produces an SVG outline I intended to use for a foam pad, but then I found a quartet of springs that worked even better:
So it’s now aligned within ±0.3-ish mm across the surface, with the unflatness of a slab cut from a 1955-era Formica kitchen countertop accounting for most of the difference in a swale from Quadrant III across the origin to Quadrant I.
Which a check plot using an old file shows will be Flat Enough for my simple needs:
Having the camera alignment remain exactly spot on came as a pleasant surprise:
The faded cross to the left came from the table’s previous position; there’s no positive index between the countertop slab and the underlying T-slots.
Part of the motivation for these blocks was to verify PrusaSlicer automagically handles filament / color changes between two objects, as long as OpenSCAD hasn’t unioned them as part of a common transformation. Not having to cut out the socket around the text simplifies the code from what I’d been doing with previous objects.
The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:
| // CNC 3018 table riser blocks | |
| // Ed Nisley – KE4ZNU | |
| // 2025-06-29 | |
| include <BOSL2/std.scad> | |
| Layout = "Show"; // [Show,Build,Outlines] | |
| /* [Hidden] */ | |
| HoleWindage = 0.2; | |
| Protrusion = 0.1; | |
| BlockOA = [40.0,30.0,10.0]; // riser block size | |
| SlotBlock = [8.0,BlockOA.y,3.0]; // alignment in slot | |
| BoltOD = 6.0 + HoleWindage; // central bolt | |
| LogoFont = "Fira Sans Condensed:style=SemiBold"; | |
| LogoSize = 7.5; | |
| LogoColor = "Red"; | |
| LogoThick = 0.4; | |
| //———- | |
| // Define Shapes | |
| module Riser(thick=1,matl="Block") { | |
| LogoText = format_fixed(thick,1); | |
| if (matl == "Text" || matl == "All") | |
| right(BlockOA.x/4) zrot(90) | |
| color(LogoColor) | |
| up(thick + SlotBlock.z + ((matl == "All") ? 0.01 : 0)) | |
| text3d(LogoText,LogoThick + ((matl == "All") ? 0.01 : 0),LogoSize,LogoFont, | |
| anchor=TOP,atype="ycenter"); | |
| if (matl == "Block" || matl == "All") | |
| difference() { | |
| cuboid(SlotBlock,$fn=8*3,anchor=BOTTOM,rounding=2.0,except=[BOTTOM,TOP]) position(TOP) | |
| cuboid(BlockOA,$fn=8*3,anchor=BOTTOM,rounding=2.0,except=[BOTTOM,TOP]); | |
| down(Protrusion) | |
| zrot(180/6) | |
| cyl(2*BlockOA.z,d=BoltOD,$fn=6,anchor=BOTTOM,circum=true); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //———- | |
| // Build things | |
| if (Layout == "Show") | |
| down(SlotBlock.z) | |
| Riser(BlockOA.z,matl="All"); | |
| if (Layout == "Outlines") { | |
| projection(cut=false) | |
| Riser(BlockOA.z,matl="Block"); | |
| } | |
| if (Layout == "Build") { | |
| up(BlockOA.z + SlotBlock.z) xrot(180) | |
| Riser(BlockOA.z,matl="Block"); | |
| up(BlockOA.z + SlotBlock.z) xrot(180) | |
| Riser(BlockOA.z,matl="Text"); | |
| } |
A new sextet of NP-BX1 batteries for the Sony AS-30V helmet camera arrived:
The traces:
I don’t know what the bump in the middle of the new battery discharge curve means. Something weird in the chemistry, I suppose. Getting good batteries from Amazon surely remains a crapshoot and I now have four chargers.
Recharging all six batteries required 5488 mA·hr, just over 900 mA·hr apiece. Running the camera on a one-hour bike ride burns 600-ish mA·hr, so that’s comforting.
Comparing the new results with the 2022 batteries tested last month:
The upper traces appear in red in the first plot, the lower curves come from three years of use.
I’ll deploy the two best 2022 batteries (D and F) in the SJCAM M20 keeping watch from the Forester’s dashboard.
I was certain this was badly spoiled cream:
The seal was firmly affixed inside the cap, just like all the seals on all the other cartons we’ve ever bought, so this wasn’t a “broken seal”.
The bottom of the seal looked about the same:
The cream inside the carton looked & smelled fine, so it went into the morning omelette with no ill effect. Yes, I’m aware some bacterial contamination has no particular smell or taste.
Scraping off the pure-white cream showed the crud had been molded inside the plastic:
A closer look at the exterior surface of the seal:
And the interior surface:
Both of those are focused on the top surface; the blurred areas are inside the plastic.
The date & production codes sprayed onto the carton were somewhat illegible:
Getting a better angle helped:
I sent in a report, but I’m sure I’ll never know the rest of the story …
An obvious spam email blew past the filters:
You can tell it’s spam, too. Right?
Those of you running Windows should have undone whatever setting removes file extensions from the usual views, because by default Windows won’t bother you with such trivia.
But, hey, maybe an SVG file can contain an audio recording. I mean, there’s an online file converter for that, so it must be a thing.
Spoiler: Audio-in-SVG really is a thing.
Having been around this block a couple of times, though, let’s peek inside the SVG file with a text editor:
Huh. Not an audio recording, but a Javascript one-liner with a URL/URI/IRI/whatever aiming Your Default Browser at a presumably compromised server.
I didn’t go further, but surely the payload would wrestle Your Default Browser into a position allowing insertion of a remote compromise.
Well played, spammer!
Just another entry in the “Why friends don’t let friends run Windows” category, despite knowing whenever security and convenience come into conflict, convenience always wins.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 