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.
Things around the home & hearth
Spiders know how to handle much larger prey:
Apparently the stink bug’s armor doesn’t count for much when the spider has the luxury of attacking through a weak spot in the underbelly after the critter stops struggling.
Stink bugs cause considerable damage to crops (notably apples) in the Hudson Valley, but they haven’t been the existential catastrophe we all expected when they first arrived.
Having recently emptied the OXO pepper grinder we (mistakenly?) bought as a salt mill, I took it apart for a deep rinsing and cleanup:
It turns out the somewhat corroded square shaft is aluminum, neither the cheap steel I expected nor the stainless steel it should be. Perhaps OXO cost-reduced the shaft, discovered aluminum is a poor choice in a saline environment, and changed the packaging to compensate?
Removing / installing the Jesus clip requires careful whacking with a hollow-tip punch against the shaft, with the whole affair laid flat on shop towels, the handle held down to prevent rotation, and the wrap-around body capturing the escaping clip.
Shaft corrosion as of Summer 2020:
Soaking the body in hot water got rid of salt crusts and filled the shell with water. There being no way to completely dry the thing, I parked it in the sun for a day, refilled it, and was unsurprised when the (dried) salt turned into an assortment of moist crystals.
We obviously need a real salt mill …
Being the domain expert for adapters between a new vacuum cleaner and old tools, this made sense (even though it’s not our vacuum):
The notch snaps into a Dirt Devil Power Stick vacuum cleaner and the tapered end fits a variety of old tools for other vacuum cleaners:
Having some experience breaking thin-walled adapters, these have reinforcement from a PVC tube:
A smear of epoxy around the interior holds the tube in place:
Building the critical dimensions with a 3D printed part simplified the project, because I could (and did!) tweak the OpenSCAD code to match the tapers to the tools. Turning four of those tubes from a chunk of PVC conduit, however, makes a story for another day.
The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:
| // Dirt Devil nozzle adapter | |
| // Ed Nisley KE4ZNU 2021-10 | |
| // Tool taper shift | |
| Finesse = -0.1; // [-0.5:0.1:0.5] | |
| // PVC pipe liner | |
| PipeOD = 28.5; | |
| /* [Hidden] */ | |
| //- Extrusion parameters | |
| ThreadThick = 0.25; | |
| ThreadWidth = 0.40; | |
| HoleWindage = 0.2; | |
| function IntegerMultiple(Size,Unit) = Unit * ceil(Size / Unit); | |
| Protrusion = 0.1; // make holes end cleanly | |
| //———————- | |
| // Dimensions | |
| TAPER_MIN = 0; | |
| TAPER_MAX = 1; | |
| TAPER_LENGTH = 2; | |
| Socket = [36.0,37.0,40.0]; | |
| LockringDia = 33.5; | |
| LockringWidth = 4.5; | |
| LockringOffset = 2.5; | |
| Tool = [Finesse,Finesse,0] + [30.0,31.1,30.0]; | |
| AdapterOAL = Socket[TAPER_LENGTH] + Tool[TAPER_LENGTH]; | |
| NumSides = 36; | |
| $fn = NumSides; | |
| //———————- | |
| // Useful routines | |
| module PolyCyl(Dia,Height,ForceSides=0) { // based on nophead's polyholes | |
| Sides = (ForceSides != 0) ? ForceSides : (ceil(Dia) + 2); | |
| FixDia = Dia / cos(180/Sides); | |
| cylinder(r=(FixDia + HoleWindage)/2,h=Height,$fn=Sides); | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Define it! | |
| module Adapter() { | |
| difference() { | |
| union() { | |
| difference() { | |
| cylinder(d1=Socket[TAPER_MIN],d2=Socket[TAPER_MAX],h=Socket[TAPER_LENGTH]); | |
| translate([0,0,LockringOffset]) | |
| cylinder(d=2*Socket[TAPER_MAX],h=LockringWidth); | |
| } | |
| cylinder(d=LockringDia,h=Socket[TAPER_LENGTH]); | |
| translate([0,0,LockringOffset + 0.75*LockringWidth]) | |
| cylinder(d1=LockringDia,d2=Socket[TAPER_MIN],h=0.25*LockringWidth); | |
| translate([0,0,Socket[TAPER_LENGTH]]) | |
| cylinder(d1=Tool[TAPER_MAX],d2=Tool[TAPER_MIN],h=Tool[TAPER_LENGTH]); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| PolyCyl(PipeOD,AdapterOAL + 2*Protrusion,NumSides); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //———————- | |
| // Build it! | |
| Adapter(); | |
The taper in the code almost certainly won’t fit whatever tool you have: measure thrice, print twice, and maybe fit once …
An approaching cyclist warned to watch out for the snapping turtle:
This one claims the pond near Page Industrial Park along the Dutchess Rail Trail:
We’ll not dispute any snapper’s territory!
I’m hauling PYO apples from Prospect Hill Orchards in the hills on the west side of the Hudson; it was a lovely fall day for a 25 mile ride!
The Bondhus Lifetime Guarantee works, as a replacement wrench just arrived:
A close look at the aligned tips suggests the defective wrench blank was mis-chucked in the machine cutting the ball end:
All’s well that ends well: thank you, Bondhus!
The same lathe fixture and double-sided duct tape trick I used for the amber running light’s end cap should have worked for this one, but only after I re-learned the lesson about taking sissy cuts:
Yet another snippet of tape and sissy cuts produced a better result:
Protip: when you affix an aluminum disk bandsawed from a scrap of nonstick griddle to a lathe fixture, the adhesive will grip the disk in only one orientation.
The lesser kitchen faucet began dribbling and required replacement, as there are no user serviceable parts within. One of the 3D printed adapters I built during the previous iteration had disintegrated:
The new faucet came with a somewhat different baseplate and I managed to conjure a firm, sealed mount from the various parts without further construction.
The nicely curved brass snout is the third in my collection. Surely they’ll come in handy for something!
While I was in a plumbing state of mind, I again replaced the spout O-rings in the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned American Standard Elite (hah!) faucet, as it was also dribbling.
This time, I used oxalic acid to remove the assorted scale and crud inside the spout. It seemed to be more effective than the usual white vinegar, although nothing seems to preserve the O-rings.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 