Category: Home Ec

Things around the home & hearth

Amazon Product Puzzlement
Amazon’s top three offerings for American Standard 023529-0070A:

Amazon – American Standard Faucet Valves

They’re all “by American Standard”, but you must check each item to discover where it’s coming from:
- “Ships from and sold by Amazon.com”
- “Ships from and sold by Gatzies“
- “Ships from and sold by moneyworldstore“
Although I’ve done my fair share of repairs to this faucet, I don’t need a cartridge every month and, in any event, signing up for Subscribe & Save doesn’t promise much in the way of savings.

The second listing has the best price by a small margin. I’m content to pay half a buck more to have Amazon handle the entire transaction, rather than deal with some random Amazon Marketplace vendor.

The third listing seems to be a bizarre algorithmically priced corner case, a no-stock placeholder, or a money-laundering scheme. Judging from the pricing of other “moneyworldstore” offerings, their business model doesn’t include retail sales.

So much weirdness from one simple item …
2018-09-14

Fireball Island Figures

A cousin asked if my 3D printer could replace some figures gone missing from their old Fireball Island game board, a classic apparently coming out in a new & improved version.

Fortunately, solid models exist on Thingiverse:

Fireball Island figure - Thingiverse 536867 — Fireball Island figure – Thingiverse 536867

Unfortunately, the left arm requires support, which Slic3r supplies with great exuberance:

Fireball Island figure - Slic3r support — Fireball Island figure – Slic3r support

The vast tower on the figure’s right side (our left) seemed completely unnecessary, not to mention I have no enthusiasm for the peril inherent in chopping away so much plastic, so I replaced it with a simple in-model pillar:

The pillar leans from an adhesion-enhancing lily pad and ends one layer below the left hand, with all dimensions and angles chosen on the fly to make the answer come out right.

Works like a champ:

Fireball Island Figures - orange - on platform — Fireball Island Figures – orange – on platform

The dark band down the middle comes from the Pixel’s shutter.

They emerged with some PETG hair, the removal of which I left as an end-user experience.

I mailed a small box containing figures printed in my (limited!) palette of four colors, some spares Just In Case™, and a few QC rejects showing the necessity of lily pads.

Game on!

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	// Adding support under Fireball Island figure arm

	import("/mnt/bulkdata/Project Files/Thing-O-Matic/Fireball Island/Fireball Island figure – 100k.stl", convexity=5);

	translate([6.5,-4.0,0]) {
	intersection(){
	translate([-10/2,-10/2,0])
	cube([10,10,11.6],center=false);
	rotate([0,-5.0,0])
	rotate(180/6)
	cylinder(d=4.0,h=30,$fn=6,center=true);
	}

	translate([8/4,0,0])
	rotate(180/6)
	cylinder(d=8,h=0.2,$fn=6);
	}

view raw Figure Support Mods.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2018-09-11

Frayed Power Drop

The neutral conductor is down to its last three strands:

Damaged neutral – over Redondo near pole 62859

Perhaps the power drop got snagged twice, because there’s a splice only a few feet away:

Damaged neutral and splice – over Redondo near pole 62859

Spotted overhead on Redondo near Rt 376 during an evening walk. I reported it using Central Hudson’s dead streetlight page, because there seems no other way to get their attention. It may be the homeowner’s responsibility, in which case a second splice will surely appear after the next power outage.

2018-09-06
Headless Garden Bunny

A small rabbit, occasionally seen about the back yard and within the garden, met an untimely end:

Dismantled Garden Bunny

We credit one of the neighborhood hawks or owls.

Over the course of the next few days, the corpse lost more of its stuffings and eventually vanished.

Perhaps a similar event produced the bunnyless head we saw a while ago.

Go, birds, go!

2018-09-02
Tour Easy Daytime Running Light: First Fracture

A wind gust pushed Mary’s bike over with the daytime running light on the downward side:

Fairing Flashlight Mount – Fracture

Frankly, it’s better to have a cheap and easily replaceable plastic widget break, instead of something expensive and hard to find.

Because we live in the future, a replacement part was just a few hours away:

M2 – Nozzle Z Offset Recal – DRL Clamp

Well, a few hours after installing a replacement thermistor and recalibrating the M2, but nested repairs happen every now and again.

To the road!

2018-08-27
Amazon Packaging: Bottles

One of the two air pockets in the token padding had popped:

Amazon Package – Bottles

Fortunately, they were plastic bottles with rugged contents, so I suppose the packaging was up to the task.

2018-08-26
Kenmore Model 158 Pedal: Graphite Disk Refill

The pedal on one of Mary’s Kenmore Model 158 sewing machines lost most of its speed control abilities, which past experience has shown indicates its carbon / graphite disks have deteriorated. Fortunately, I still have a supply of disks from the Crash Test Dummy machine and have gotten pretty good at dismantling the pedal housing.

While I had the pedal apart, I filed the brass contact plates smooth again:

Kenmore 158 Pedal – graphite disk contact

Most of the deterioration happens within half a dozen disks snuggled up against those contacts, a few more on the other end of the stack against the graphite button applying the pressure, and an occasional grimy disk in the middle of the stack.

I filled both stacks flush to the top of the ceramic housing, then removed one disk from each to let the brass contacts slightly compress the stacks:

Kenmore 158 Pedal – graphite disk refill

A quick test showed the control range started a bit too fast, so I removed one more disk from the stacks, buttoned it up, and it’s all good again: a slow start with a good range.

2018-08-21