Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
It turns out you can get access to the extractor pump from the front of the washer, without having to take the back off and reach all the way through. If any of the problems we’ve ever had with the washer could have been fixed just by reaching into the pump, that’d be nice to know.
Remove three Torx T-20 screws at the very bottom of the lower front panel, known as the Toe Panel, and it drops right out.
If you have something jammed in the pump, you can put a tray underneath, unscrew the obvious plug, and bloosh water all over the place. I don’t know how you’d know you had something in jammed in the pump, but that’s how you get to it.
Our Kenmore HE3 washer emitted a dramatic KLONK that had all hands racing for the Cancel button. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, some Web searching, and a few hours of teardown, I determined that the washer had failed in the usual HE3 way: the cast aluminum spider connecting the back of the lah-dee-dah stainless steel drum to the shaft had corroded and fractured.
Now, class, let’s review our chemistry. What do we call a pair of dissimilar metals in an ionic solution?
Very good. Can you spell “battery”?
Bonus points: what happens to the battery electrodes as the current flows?
Excellent! I’m sure you can spell “corrosion”, too.
The stuff that looks (and feels!) like cheese is aluminum corrosion filling every nook & cranny in the back of the spider. The fact that the drum spins at 900 rpm tells you it’s rather tenacious gunk, but evidently we’ve been washing our clothes in corrosion products for several years.
If you have a Sears or Whirlpool HE washer, so are you.
Mary noticed the washer made a strange noise during the spin parts of the cycle, starting a few weeks ago, but it wasn’t anything you’d tear down the washer to diagnose. I’ll have more to say about that in a bit.
The KLONK happened when a third fracture finally disconnected the drum from the shaft and it started whacking against the outer tub. All that’s holding the shaft in place is the remaining thickness of the spider casting and the interlocking fracture pattern; I can move the shaft, but not easily.
Here are closeups of the three sections near the hub between the arms. Anything that looks like a crack really is one…
Corroded Spider – Fracture 1
The next section has a nice crack running along the circumference, too…
Corroded Spider – Fracture 2
And the third section…
Corroded Spider – Fracture 3
I hauled it to the driveway and hosed off the corrosion. There isn’t supposed to be that little hole where the sun shines through…
The new X10 controller on our dresser has a nice lid over the buttons. Unfortunately, the lid lacks any affordance to raise it: smooth edges all around, slick surface, no notches or bumps.
The obvious, albeit ugly, solution: add some black and very grippy rubber strips to the front and side edges of the lid. Now one finger suffices…
Griptivity Enhancement
Puzzle: how did the designers expect us to lift the lid?
My Sony DSC-H5 eats NiMH cells like candy, which means I must haul along a pocketful of the things. That means I often wind up with a case containing one charged pair and one uncharged pair.
Ditto for swapping cells in the blinky lights on our bikes.
Pop quiz: which pair is which?
Battery Charge State Reminder
It’s pretty easy:
Nose-to-tail = as in the camera = charge ’em
Nose-to-nose = as in the charger = ready to use
You could do some remote psychoanalysis based on that sort of behavior, but you’d be completely right.
Had the occasion to run the flexy snake through a kitchen drain that turned out to be not as plugged up as I expected, which is always good news. Replaced the cleanout plug, hosed off the snake, coiled it up, and applied the usual three nylon cable ties to keep the snake together.
It took me years to figure out that last step. None of the old-school tricks work for me; I can’t tie knots in string / twine / rope while simultaneously holding those coils together and the snake resists any attempt to weave the loose ends into the bundle.
Mercifully, I don’t use the snake all that often and I don’t feel at all bad about tossing three cable ties each time.
Mary wanted to convert some old tomato cages into flower supports and deer protectors (until the flowers get big enough), by the simple expedient of flipping the cages over with the large end down. She figured we could chop off the wire ends that normally anchor the cages to the ground, then bend them into hooks for secure ground anchors.
I deployed the linesman’s pliers, which only showed that my wire size estimation is grossly underdeveloped. The high-carbon steel wires required bolt cutters… but a few minutes of twang effort scattered two dozen really stiff wires across the patio.
I ran a marker across the pile at the bend point, grabbed two random steel rods in the vise and, in short order, bent up a stack of ground anchors.
The Walkway Over the Hudson has been a resounding success, at least measured by the number of people using it. The Parker Avenue parking lot has about 80 spaces and, during most days, is jammed full.
The NYS park system now owns the Walkway and, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the parking facilities should have a fee just like the rest of their lots: $5 / 4 hours.
Here’s what the Walkway lot looked like on the day the fee went into effect…
Walkway Parking Lot With Parking Fee In Full Effect
State officials hope there will be no decline in visitors with the new parking fee, said State Parks spokesman Kristen Davidson.
Basically, there’s enough free on-street parking in the area that most folks park nearby and hike in, which makes sense for a park consisting of about two miles of walking path. The parking fee amounts to a tax on handicapped and elderly visitors who find it difficult to navigate streets and ramps.
On the bright side, it’ll be a lot easier to bike across the bridge…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 