Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Having used a nail for far too long, this is a definite step up for my machinist vises:
Tommy Bar – machinist vise
The vise knob has a hole just barely passing a length of 3.4 mm = 9/64 inch mild steel rod from the Small Box o’ Cutoffs.
While I was at it, I made a handle for the parallel jaw clamps:
Tommy Bar – parallel jaw clamp
Those knobs pass a 3.0 mm = 1/8 inch rod, similarly sourced. Inexplicably, one clamp expected no more than a 7/64 inch rod; a brief introduction to Mr Drill Press persuaded it concerning the error of its ways.
I should have made the handles distinctively different, because they’ll get mixed up in the box of vises & clamps. Next time, fer shure!
The Tommy Bar handles use the same solid model as the Sherline Tommy Bars, with hole diameters as noted. Cyan PETG is definitely easier on the eye than red PLA, although it does fade into the background clutter around here.
After 4.5 years, one of the silicone tubes on the Epson R380’s continuous ink supply system broke:
Epson R380 – broken CISS tube
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:
Epson R38 – CISS tubes
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.
I’d done an unusually good job of epoxying the ersatz heatsink in place:
Reflector floodlight – finned LED holder
I wrapped the bulb in a towel with only the heatsink sticking out, whacked the side of the heatsinkparallel to the glass with a plastic-face hammer, and it popped right off:
Epoxy vs glass – divot
The missing piece of the epoxy ring turned out to be a divot ripped out of the glass, which I didn’t notice until I’d chipped the fragment off the aluminum, so no pictures.
Given the relative strengths of epoxy and glass, pulling a divot seems impossible, but folks doing 3D printing on glass platforms have been reporting exactly that failure for years. The prevailing theory seems to involve small scratches and defects in the glass surface, with subsequent weakening, and stresses applied to the epoxy perpendicular to the glass surface pulling the cracks apart.
Replacing the RGB LED will require drilling it out and probably a complete rewiring, because I seem to have made liberal use of epoxy inside the heatsink and brass tube.
The best way to get a pure, non-reflective black uses optics, not pigments:
Matte black blade edges
The shiny steel blades reflect light just fine, but the reflections have no way back out of the gap between adjacent edges: the angle of reflection always points away from you and the incoming light.
I always admire the blackness when I open that box.
Yes, I’m a member of the Society of the Easily Amused.
For reasons not relevant here, I was called upon to open a bulletin-board lock with a complete lack of keys:
Bulletin Board Lock – locked
It’s obviously not the highest security lock you’ve ever seen. Armed with a small screwdriver and an old darning needle, this took the better part of 30 seconds:
Bulletin Board Lock – opened
Actually, I devoted a few minutes to verify none of my collection of random keys would suffice.
Replacing the lock not being within my remit, I improvised a simple retainer from available materials:
Bulletin Board Lock – improvised strap retainer – front
Yes, the nylon cable tie will surely pull out of the latch:
Bulletin Board Lock – improvised strap retainer
And I admit the installation’s security has taken a definite downward step:
Bulletin Board Lock – push pin security
Some day, I’ll tote a wrench to the site, remove the lock, and improve the improvisation.
Replacing the lock seems mired in an intractable budgetary wrangle. Similar locks being five bucks on Amazon, I’m tempted to just make it happen, but doing so would apparently roil the decision-making stratum. I’m perfectly happy to remain an on-call techie devoid of political ambition.
We have, as you might expect, a Favorite Cheese Slicer of no particular provenance. Being made of cheap pot metal, it left black smudges wherever it went and, decades ago, I coated it with bright red rubbery grip material. Recently, the coating became lumpy and peeling off the loose sections revealed a definite problem:
Cheese slicer – aluminum corrosion
Vigorous scrubbing with a foam sanding block and a Scotchbrite pad, interspersed with rotary wire brushing, removed the corrosion and left a slightly pitted metal frame. Protip: scrub under water and wire-brush with a vacuum hose to keep the dust under control.
A pair of 6-32 screws, nuts, and brass sleeves, with two oil dots protecting the frame threads, provided hand grips while I wiped it down with denatured alcohol and coated it with XTC-3D epoxy:
Cheese slicer – epoxy curing
Turns out the mixing stick worked quite well to cover the entire thing, as the epoxy does a great job of leveling itself. I suppose wasting a tiny brush would be more professional, but …
It quietly dripped excess epoxy into a strategically placed trash can for about ten minutes. I wiped off the final drip before the epoxy solidified, leaving a smooth layer over the end of the handle:
Cheese slicer – reassembled
It’s back in service and works as well as ever, with a handle now smooth to the touch. I suppose I could have tinted the epoxy to hide the metal, but we regard those corrosion pits as beausage.
I’ve slathered XTC-3D on some3D printed parts, but have no idea how durable it is; this should serve as an accelerated survival test under rather harsh usage.
The instruction sheet says XTC-3D isn’t the most transparent epoxy they make and, indeed, the layer left in the mixing pan came out more hazy than I expected:
XTC-3D Epoxy – thin cured layer
They point out the haze doesn’t matter for thin surface coatings, which is certainly true.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 