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
An overhead light in the Basement Laboratory went dark:
One end of the twisty tube got really really hot as it failed!
The Lab didn’t smell of electrical death, so the bulb must have failed while I was elsewhere. Metal enclosures with actual UL ratings suddenly seem like a Good Idea …
A friend gave me a New Old Stock IBM Model M keyboard, built by Lexmark on 1/30/96. Although I intended to try it out, I first showed it to Mary and it immediately ended up at her desk:
I favor off-lease Dell boxes intended for office use, so the PS/2 plug on the end of the (permanently attached) cable slid right into the PS/2 jack on the back panel. Gotta love it.
She’d been hammering out testcases and doc on Model M keyboards basically forever, so her fingers snapped into position and the room sounds like her old IBM office.
The “101 key” layout predates frippery along the lines of multimedia keys, so I gimmicked the top row of the numeric pad to control the mixer volume and muting toggle:
amixer sset 'Master' 10%-amixer sset 'Master' 10%+amixer sset 'Master' toggleWhile doing that, I found the semicolon key fired at the slightest touch, so I popped the keycap to see if I could frighten it into compliance:
Huh.
It seems Lexmark replaced the classic buckling spring mechanism with less clicky rubber dome switches, even back in 1996, perhaps for use in libraries & suchlike. Come to think of it, this place is more like a library than an office, so muted clickiness seems appropriate.
For completeness:
Hickory trees run on a triennial cycle and 2017 produced a huge crop of nuts. My trusty Vise-Grip makes short work of the otherwise impenetrable shells:
A nut pick extracts the good stuff:
In round numbers, you get twice as much shell as you do nut meat, so there’s plenty of shells left over.
I wrapped 10 ounces of shells in a double layer of aluminum foil, poked two rows of air holes along the package, dropped it holes-up atop the “flavorizer” bars in the propane barbie, and smoked 5 pounds of cured pork belly into some of the finest bacon we’ve ever eaten.
Heated and starved for air inside the aluminum wrapper, the shells became charcoal:
Yum!
Small wipes made from worn-out cotton t-shirts absorb most shop liquids, don’t overstay their welcome after short projects, and prevent the deep emotional attachment leaving swarf in the clothes washer. Scissors cutting gets tedious, so mooch a rotary cutter and slash away:
Synthetic fabrics don’t work nearly as well as cotton, so pay attention to the labels.
After swapping the corroded steel rod end-for-end twice, I expected this would happen:
So now we know a chrome-plated steel rod will survive 16 years in a bathroom drain, at least if you’re willing to coddle the fool thing far more than seems reasonable.
I eased a slug of epoxy into the brass tube to seal the wet end. Given how little use the stopper gets, I hope it lasts forever …
After 4.5 years, one of the silicone tubes on the Epson R380’s continuous ink supply system broke:
The yellow smudges in front of the tubing clamp and across the top suggest the total mess lying in wait between the cartridges. Donning my shop apron and wielding damp paper towels cleaned things up well enough.
I cut through all the tubes a few inches back from the clamp, pulled the stubs off the elbow connectors, reinstalled the fresh ends, and re-repaired the clamp with a new cable tie:
Although the failing yellow supply surely contributed to the problem, the printhead seems to be on its last legs after nearly nine years. IIRC, I got the printer for $15 after rebate, spent maybe four times that on CISS tanks, and perhaps $200 on good-quality ink in pint bottles, it doesn’t owe me much.
Maybe I shouldn’t buy ink in pint bottles any more.
Mary doesn’t like wearing the wrap-around-her-head earpieces found on sunglasses these days under her bicycle helmet, so I must trim them to fit:
Perhaps I won’t need an old pair to prepare the next set: a scant four inches from the hinge.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 