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.
Mechanical widgetry
There’s a good reason this was the last pneumatic tee fitting on the rack:
The center fitting should be a male 1/4 inch NPT connection, but it’s completely un-machined. Alas, I no longer have a 1/4 NPT die in my tool chest, so it’s not an easy fix.
The two female connections are fine, so it must have been one of those rare QC escapes.
Lowe’s marked it down to $0.47 on clearance and I still couldn’t justify buying the thing.
A new-to-us Fiskars scissors arrived with a loose pivot of a type I’d never seen before:
The nut fits into the slot in the upper blade, making the nut and screw turn together. Although there’s no torque between the two, the screw had no threadlock and, well, loosening happens.
The pivot parts include a thin washer between the nut and the lower blade to reduce friction between the moving parts:
With a dot of Loctite on the screw, it’s ready for reassembly:
After which, a drop of oil made it sooo smooooth.
That was easy …
After converting another fluorescent shoplight into an LED fixture, I tested its capacitors:
The ESR02 reports one as a 4.8 µF capacitor, the other as a “defective part” with a 4 kΩ resistance. Having a cap fail by turning into a resistor is surprising; I’m more surprised it didn’t simply burn up.
They’re visually indistinguishable, of course.
After not quite seven years, the acrylic caulk holding our garden dragonfly’s eyeballs in place lost its grip. Some cleaning of marbles and scuffing of copper sockets later, two rings of JB Kwik should do the trick:
It’s a family tradition, is all I can say …
So says the label on a recent Amazon package:
It contains half a dozen foam floor mat sheets weighing a bit under a pound apiece.
I don’t begrudge anyone working in an Amazon warehouse a bit of humor …
With six new 18500 lithium cells in hand, I rebuilt the three weakest NP-FM50 packs.
The Sherline CNC mill setup for sawing around the midline:
Adjust the saw to cut along the seam, set X=0 at the surface, jog to about X+0.7 mm, jog the saw along the seam, then repeat for the other three sides. No real CNC involved, but it’s much easier than sawing or breaking through the seam by hand.
These two packs came with the camera:
The cells have only lot numbers, no manufacturer ID. Wikipedia sayeth Sony Fukushima started in 2000; perhaps these were early production units with no branding.
The center strap running the length of the pack didn’t seem long enough, because I mistakenly thought I’d straightened its end while unsoldering it. As it happens, the end was straight and secured to the PCB by structural solder:
Moral of the story: pay attention, dammit!
The other end of the center strap required a snippet of tin strip to reach the tabs:
Aligning the cells that way allowed me to just bend the other tabs over the PCB pads and solder them in place:
Then a strip of Kapton tape across the kerf holds the case together well enough to survive our gentle usage:
The battery packs require a brief stay in the charger to reset the PCB’s lockout circuitry, after which they work fine:
The two oldest batteries (OEM 2003 A and OEM 2003 B) have new identities to suit their new innards: 2019 E and 2019 F. The DOA eBay battery retains its 2019 D label after the rebuild, as there’s little room for confusion.
Admittedly, it’d be easier / cheaper / faster to buy third-party NP-FM50 packs directly from eBay or Amazon, but this way I know the cells aren’t complete crap and I get some Quality Shop Time™ out of the deal.
What’s not to like?
A bit of rummaging produced a desk lamp arm, minus whatever lamp it originally held, ready to hold the second photo lamp, after a bit of epoxy on one locking knob:
The flanged nut will seat on the wrecked part of the knob, with the epoxy holding it in place and somewhat reinforcing the perimeter. I’m not sure this will last forever, but it’ll be a start.
Printing a second cold shoe, though, worked perfectly, and everything fit:
I love it when a plan comes together!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 