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

  • M5 Tee Nut: Test To Destruction

    M5 Tee Nut: Test To Destruction

    The mounting block under the electronics box for the new UPP battery has a recess for an M5 tee nut:

    UPP Battery Mount - Block 5 Show View
    UPP Battery Mount – Block 5 Show View

    As with the Terry frame mounts, I glued the modified tee nut in place with JB Plastic Bonder urethane adhesive, did a test fit on the bike, discovered the whole affair had to sit about 10 mm forward, put the new frame measurement into the OpenSCAD code, and ran off a new block.

    Which gave me the opportunity to perch the old block atop the bench vise with the tee nut aimed downward between the open jaws, run an M5 bolt into the nut, and give it a good thwack with a hammer:

    UPP Battery Mount - M5 insert adhesive test
    UPP Battery Mount – M5 insert adhesive test

    Although the urethane adhesive didn’t bond uniformly across the tee nut, it had enough grip to tear the PETG layers apart and pull chunks out of the block.

    As with the tee nuts on the Terry bike, this one will be loaded to pull into the block, so it will never endure any force tending to pull things apart, but it’s nice to know how well JB Plastic Bonder works.

    I chiseled the PETG and adhesive debris off the tee nut, cleaned it up, slathered more Bonder on the new block, and squished the nut in place. After I get the electronics box sorted out, the whole affair will never come apart again!

  • Antique Desk Chair Woodwork

    Antique Desk Chair Woodwork

    A wood desk chair that I’ve known since I was a pup finally got some much-needed attention, although not a restoration. By and large, I’m finally sorting out that corner of the basement and needed to put the chair’s parts back together so I can work on something else.

    The wood seat consists of several slabs glued along keyed joints, one of which had fractured into a rough mess. Amazingly, the two sides fit perfectly together, albeit with the bottom no longer a planar surface, and glued up just like they should:

    Wood desk chair - seat clamping
    Wood desk chair – seat clamping

    The chair isn’t up to contemporary office standards, but it has a seat elevation screw, a backrest with adjustable angle & elevation, and even a backrest tension setting:

    Wood desk chair - ironwork
    Wood desk chair – ironwork

    It was the cutting edge of desk chair technology:

    Wood desk chair - patented
    Wood desk chair – patented

    I vaguely recall it rolled on long-vanished steel-wheeled casters. Somewhat less long ago, one of the legs broke enough to lose its caster socket (about which, more later), so I set about yanking the three remaining sockets:

    Wood desk chair - caster socket removal
    Wood desk chair – caster socket removal

    During that struggle, another leg revealed a neat woodwork joint:

    Wood desk chair - leg joint
    Wood desk chair – leg joint

    It’s easy to remove a caster socket when you can bash it from the top!

    Gluing that piece back in place required Too Many Clamps™ aligning it with the leg:

    Wood desk chair - leg clamping
    Wood desk chair – leg clamping

    But the end result looks pretty good:

    Wood desk chair - leg glued
    Wood desk chair – leg glued

    They did a nice job of matching the wood grain; I hadn’t noticed that joint while attacking the socket.

    Pending restoring the broken leg’s socket, the soon-to-arrive new casters will clash horribly with the chair’s woodwork. At least it’ll roll again and its new plastic wheels won’t scar the floors.

  • IWISS SN-2549 Crimping Tool Instructions

    IWISS SN-2549 Crimping Tool Instructions

    Because I needed to know which of the four dies in the jaw of my IWISS SN-2549 crimper was the right one for 24 AWG ribbon cable:

    IWISS SN-2549 JST Crimper Manual
    IWISS SN-2549 JST Crimper Manual

    It turns out either of the two middle slots should work, but the crimps look better in the smaller one.

    Admittedly, the instructions are thin on technique, but I only wrecked four pins while retraining my crimping hand. The key trick is indexing the insulation fingers on the step inside the jaw, thus putting the socket box or the male pin outside where it won’t get smashed flat. Squishing those fingers from their normal splayed condition into a rectangular shape helps fit them into the jaw against the step.

    Living in the future where the right crimping tool doesn’t cost five Benjamins is great …

  • Squirrels Need Sleep, Too

    Squirrels Need Sleep, Too

    Spotted outside a window:

    Sleepy Squirrel
    Sleepy Squirrel

    The one on the right stayed in that pose, with eyes getting heavier and heavier, until it nodded off. The other squirrel wasn’t quite that far gone and, after a minute, turned around to see what was(n’t) happening.

    Those two squirrels have been chasing each other around the yard for several weeks, so they’re either siblings or a mated pair.

    I’ve never seen a squirrel take a nap before and it seemed like a good idea for the afternoon …

  • Terms of Use: Do Not Read

    Terms of Use: Do Not Read

    Attempting to use the guest WiFi network requires agreeing to their Terms of Use:

    Guest WiFi signon - poor color choice
    Guest WiFi signon – poor color choice

    While it may be possible to read that, I pretty much gave up.

    While one should never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity, it’s also true that any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

  • Optional Phreesia Authorization

    Optional Phreesia Authorization

    Our medical practice has been Borged by Optum, which is, through a number of corporate cutout layers, owned by UnitedHealth Group, so (despite claims to the contrary) our doctors effectively work for a health insurance company. No, they may not be paid by UHG, but following the money in reverse shows the flow of influence.

    Apparently this has slightly affected the original practice’s reliance on Phreesia for pre-visit sign-in information collection although, as before, Phreesia still really wants to scatter your precious personal bits to the far corners of the InterWebs:

    Phreesia optional authorization - 2024 version
    Phreesia optional authorization – 2024 version

    The wall o’ text is a bit shorter then the earlier version and cannot be scrolled or printed. It still admits:

    There is the potential for my health information … to be subject to redisclosure and to no longer be protected by the HIPAA Privacy Rule.

    Yes, I understand that’s the whole point of getting me to agree to release my private bits to Phreesia, so they can make money by selling it to the highest bidder(s).

    What’s new is the previous page in the sequence, of which I do not have a screenshot, presumably coming from Optum, emphasizing in bold type that I do not have to authorize Phreesia’s data collection.

    I infer this means two things:

    • Optum / UHG has had their awareness raised about this nonsense
    • Phreesia contractually requires that dark-pattern page

    Yes, I understand that I have no privacy and should get over it, but somehow this sort of behavior rankles …

  • Laser-marked Hole Drilling Spots

    Laser-marked Hole Drilling Spots

    While setting up to drill holes in the aluminum base for the running light buck converter, I wondered if laser-marking the spots directly from the solid model would work better than my usual fumbling around.

    The solid model:

    Running Light - power box - bottom view
    Running Light – power box – bottom view

    Export projections of the pieces from OpenSCAD as an SVG file:

    Running Light - power box - Projection view
    Running Light – power box – Projection view

    Import into LightBurn, set up for a very fast, very light cut and Fire The Laser:

    Laser-marked hole spots - masking tape
    Laser-marked hole spots – masking tape

    That’s in ordinary masking tape on a hard-anodized sheet of aluminum from the pile, which looked better than I expected.

    The same aluminum covered with blue tape:

    Laser-marked hole spots - blue tape - hard anodize
    Laser-marked hole spots – blue tape – hard anodize

    Which looks much better in person than it does in the photo.

    On a soft aluminum sheet from the Basement Warehouse Zone:

    Laser-marked hole spots - blue tape - sheet aluminum
    Laser-marked hole spots – blue tape – sheet aluminum

    The dark outline is a comfort mark hand-drawn around a chipboard test piece to verify the layout fit between random holes drilled in the sheet during its previous life.

    A closer look at a corner hole:

    Laser-marked hole spots - blue tape - hard anodize - detail 1
    Laser-marked hole spots – blue tape – hard anodize – detail 1

    And the center hole:

    Laser-marked hole spots - blue tape - hard anodize - detail 2
    Laser-marked hole spots – blue tape – hard anodize – detail 2

    The holes appeared in the right places after center-punching by eye, but the fragility of those four little tape leaves around the center point must be experienced to be believed.

    And, yes, those are deliberately low-polygon approximations to a circle, because I’m a low-poly kind of guy.

    I really need an optical center punch if I do more such silliness. The box with those HP plotter digitizing sights recently came to hand, so I suppose I should make something.