Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Trace the outlines and lay smooth curves around them with Inkscape:
Remote profiles – Inkscape curves
They needed a slight lengthening to account for the gauge pin diameter & deflection, but this isn’t a precision project.
Do the same with a scan of the front face, import the curves into OpenSCAD, extrude them, create a solid model of the remote from their mutual intersection, then add a cylinder to punch the depression for the steel plate:
Floor Lamp Remote Holder – solid model – bottom
The chonky model corners stick out too far compared to the stylin’ curves on the real remote, but I made the holder shorter than the remote specifically to avoid fussing with such details.
Floor Lamp Remote Holder – solid model – Show view
I briefly considered a circumferential clamp around the pipe before coming to my senses and making the pipe diameter 2 mm larger to accommodate a strip of double-sided foam tape.
The magnet gets a ferocious grip on the plate and I defined the result to be All Good™.
The OpenSCAD source code and SVG paths as a GitHub Gist:
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Looks kinda pallid to me, too, although hardcore BarbieCore is also most definitely not our thing.
Anyhow, the motor didn’t even twitch when pressing the button, so after I verified the two AA alkaline cells were Just Fine, I laid it on the Electronics Bench and popped the top to see what was the matter:
Sidewinder bobbin winder – interior wiring
For the record, the red and black wires at the battery compartment are exactly reversed from what you might expect based on, say, the colors of your multimeter probes. I know better, but it comes as a surprise every time.
The pushbutton switch pulls in the relay (red block in the middle), which latches on until the bobbin fills and the accumulated thread lifts the finger riding on the bobbin to rotate the white cam (under the motor), thus opening the switch (black block), releasing the relay, and shutting off the motor.
Which, of course, worked perfectly after I stuck the alkalines back in place on the bench and poked the button to watch the proceedings.
It’s all back together again and continues to run, so I’ll declare victory until the next time she fills a bobbin and, predictably, it doesn’t start.
Mary gave her Juki TL-2010Q sewing machine a deep cleaning & oiling, deputizing me to remove & replace the covers.
For the record, standing the machine on its left end is the least-awful way to get the bottom cover off and on:
Juki TL2010Q – bottom cover on end
You must remove all six of those husky screws; the black feet remain firmly stuck in their recesses. It’s not particularly stable in that orientation, so keep a firm hand on the top to prevent an expensive fall.
I laid it down for the rest of the session:
Juki TL2010Q – interior cleaning
She was unenthusiastic about wearing my headband light. Maybe next time.
It reassembled in reverse order and, after a brief tussle with the bobbin winder finger in the upper covers, runs smoothly.
Our Young Engineer recently rebuilt the cover of a “vintage” drawing kit, with fabric pockets for protractors & scales and real leather hinges, thereby raising a long-procrastinated project to the top of my to-do list:
TEC Drawing Set – top old
I know my father used it when he took drafting after high school in 1929. His penmanship and drawing ability were up to par well before that.
The inside sports a TEC logo:
TEC Drawing Set – open old
Some searching revealed it’s a No. 718 Drafting Set from the Technical Supply Company of Scranton and appeared in their 1913 catalog:
TEC Brand Catalog p68
The printing on the inside of the flap differs, but the logo has TEC in the middle.
My father did not attend college and, in the teeth of The Great Depression, $26.50 was certainly too spendy for his family:
CPI Calculator – 1929 to 2025
When the catalog was printed in 1913, No. 718 cost the equivalent of $862.82. Nowadays, similar sets once again cost about twenty bucks on eBay, which tells you something about economics.
In retrospect, I should have used two leather snaps, but three would be excessive.
I folded the Kraft-Tex flat across a steel scale to make the first folds around the base, then finger-crimped folds at the top of the base with subsequent crisping around the scale:
TEC Drawing Set – open new
The underside of the original case seemed stable:
TEC Drawing Set – case bottom
This may be sacrilege, but I saw no point in peeling the bottom just to cover it up,so I stuck the Kraft-Tex in place with a rectangle of adhesive sheet.
It doesn’t look the same, but it still gives me a warm feeling.
It still has the tiny wrench needed to adjust all its screws:
TEC Drawing Set – wrench
It’s on 0.1 inch graph paper and is 40 mil = 1 mm thick, should you want to make your own. The blades taper down to essentially a knife edge, which is why it’s made from hard blue steel.
I remember being fascinated by that little pig when I was a pup.
Putting some scraps to good use, I stuck a cushion in the anvil for the next time I punch down a leather snap:
This is a quick-and-ugly test to see how well aluminized Mylar will work as a reflective shade for some LED light bars eventually washing the Living / Sewing room ceiling with enough light to brighten the Sewing Table:
LED strip light – Mylar reflector – ugly fit
The key question: how well adhesive adheres Mylar to the pleasantly warm aluminum extrusion serving as the heatsink for 40 W of LEDs:
LED strip light – Mylar reflector – adhesive strips
Perhaps surprisingly, those ½ inch strips come from an A4 sheet by way of a paper cutter.
The LED bars will be directly visible, so bouncing the direct light against the wall reduces glare and puts it to good use.
The Mylar strips are 1 inch wide, cut with a utility knife against a straightedge, although ⅞ inch seems adequate. The last LED over on the right sits at the endcap, so I will (try to) tuck the Mylar ends under the caps for a cleaner fit.
The bars have two 4 foot strips of LEDs in series, with a lump of circuitry buried in the aluminum extrusion that seems be a bridge rectifier and a small electrolytic capacitor. There’s not nearly enough capacitance to knock down the 120 Hz flicker and I have an uneasy expectation of stroboscopic effects on the sewing machines.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
