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.

Category: Machine Shop

Mechanical widgetry

Magnifying Desk Light: LED-ifying & Base Refooting

My ancient fluorescent magnifying desk lamp emerged from a box and cried out to be used, but the equally ancient 22 W fluorescent ring light was long past its prime and cried out to be replaced with something from the current millennium.

So I removed the fluorescent ballast / choke from the junction box at the lamp base:

Magnifying Ring Light – ballast removed

That’s a grounded outlet in the cover plate serving as a wire termination block. The red crimp connector joins a white wire that formerly went to the ballast with the black wire going to the lamp head; you’ll note the black wire from the line cord going into the same heatstink tubing at the outlet.

The lamp head had a push-to-start switch, presumably with an internal starting capacitor or some such, but also sporting a pair of terminals behaving like a single-pole push-on / push-off switch. A bit of rewiring, of which there are no pictures, made it work perfectly with the new 13 W LED ring light:

Magnifying Ring Light – LED ring installed

It now sits on a bit of laboratory ironmongery weighing about as much as a small child:

Magnifying Ring Light – on base

Although the base has four feet, it sits perfectly flat on my (admittedly battered) surface plate because all four feet have been ground to make that happen:

Magnifying Ring Light – foot plan view

Those feet will be hostile to any table / bench top outside their intended laboratory environment. Fortunately, the geometry is simple enough to build directly in LightBurn and cut from a cork disk with PSA backing suited to become a coaster:

Magnifying Ring Light – cork foot cutting

Which fit well enough, although all four feet are just slightly different:

Magnifying Ring Light – cork foot

The new Basement Shop™ is coming together and this stuff is getting easier …

The WordPress AI came up with a plausible steampunk build:

Magnifying Ring Light – WP AI image 1

Love those flowy feet, although the vertical rod in the back seems misplaced.

Adding “one-piece base” to the prompt produces contemporary style:

Magnifying Ring Light – WP AI image 2

Dunno what the dingus on the lower arm might be (perhaps a spring?), but it’s got the right general idea.

2024-05-23
Plywood Clamp

Being in need of a dedicated clamp, I made one from Thingiverse:

Plywood clamp – overview

The original gets its clamping force from a gazillion rubber bands, but two wraps of shock cord joined by the guts of an electrical crimp connector worked for my simple needs:

Plywood clamp – shock cord crimp connector

The rounded tips work at any thickness, but introducing them to Ms Belt Sander set them for the specific purpose I have in mind:

Plywood clamp – flatted tips

The little cork pads are hand-cut from scraps, because why not.

Rubbing paraffin (wax, not kerosene) on the circular joint’s bearing surfaces makes the hinge move soooo smoothly.

The WordPress AI image generator is trying much harder:

Plywood clamp – WP AI Image

The callouts almost make sense, because they’re now ripped from the post text. For sure, I will “crustorilize” my next shop project.

Gotta love the AI evaluation:

The content shows a practical and creative approach to making a plywood clamp, supported by clear images. Consider adding a brief introduction to provide context for the project. Additionally, explaining the specific purpose for which the clamp is intended would further engage readers. The use of humor and informal language adds a personal touch, enhancing the connection with the audience. Overall, the engaging content and visual aids make it a compelling read.

2024-05-22
Laser Cutter: Streaming Camera Support

If I’m making something with the laser cutter during a Zoomed SquidWrench meeting, switching the view to a camera inside the cabinet is always a crowd-pleaser. Having tried several locations with various degrees of success, the camera now sits atop a small chipboard box holding it as high as it can get over the front left corner of the platform:

Laser camera support box – position overview

It juuuust barely kisses the head in that corner:

Laser camera support box – near collision

The box is a simple ClosedBox from boxes.py with a jawbreaker URL full of parameters, minus two holes, plus a quartet of shims, all cut from chipboard:

Camera Support box – LB layout

The holes fit a 1/4-20 button head screw for the Logitch C615 camera’s tripod mount and the hex wrench needed to tighten it:

Laser camera support box – interior

The box is held together with Genuine Scotch Tape, because I want it to fall apart if it gets hit by the laser head. It’s held to the cabinet with a finger-crushingly strong bar magnet.

The camera has a reasonably good view of the entire platform:

Laser Cutter – USB Camera view

The camera’s closest focus point sits about halfway across the platform, roughly corresponding to the typical monitor-to-face distance the camera was intended for, but it’s Good Enough™ for the purpose.

2024-05-21
Harbor Freight Bar Clamp: Plywood Handle

After only a dozen years, one of the 3D printed replacement handles for my Harbor Freight bar clamps snapped exactly where you’d expect:

HF bar clamp – plywood handle

The replacement this time around is laser-cut plywood, with a pair of 3 mm sheets glued together to just about match the original thickness:

HF bar clamp – plywood handle gluing

I hacked the OpenSCAD code to use its projection() operation to export the outline of the solid model on the XY plane, inhaled the SVG into LightBurn, replaced the original chunky hole with a Real Circle, cut a pair of them, discovered I messed up the diameter, tweaked that, cut a pair that fit perfectly, and that was that.

Flushed with success, I cut another pair to replace the (not yet failed) handle in the other HF bar clamp and restarted the failure clock.

Not as fancy as something milled on the Sherline, but way easier and, if it lasts another decade, I’ll call it a win.

The WordPress AI had fun with this post:

HF Bar Clamp Handle – WP AI image

The thing over on the left must be a 3D printer, but what’s floating in the middle? Those hand tools look downright scary.

2024-05-20
Plumb Bobs: Kevlar Lines

Having had considerable success re-stringing the seat on Mary’s Tour Easy with Kevlar line, this seemed like a good idea:

Plumb bobs – Kevlar braided line

They’re a pair of plumb bobs I’ve had forever, with ten feet of 100 pound Kevlar line in place of their original (and well-worn) string. The key parameter is the 1 mm diameter to fit the holes in the bobs, with the 20 pound working strength being grossly overqualified.

Because it’s braided line, the bobs no longer spin merrily when deployed, which is a major win.

They hibernate in pill bottles during their downtime, where the line doesn’t get nearly as tangled as you might imagine.

Admittedly, I don’t deploy plumb bobs all that often, but in recent months I have needed to know what was directly below something else often enough to remind me to get this done.

The WordPress AI image for this post is, as usual, disturbing:

Plumb Bobs – WP AI image

I like the perfectly rendered gibberish text. Is that a bizarre spade drill in the lower left? So many pills!

2024-05-17
Home Depot Glacier Faucet Re-alignment

The kitchen sink faucet came from the Home Depot Glacier line:

HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet – overview

A “FastMount” push-and-turn nut secures the central pillar to the deck, although it had worked loose since it was installed some years ago. After retightening the nut, however, the faucet spout and handle remained loose, which I eventually figured out was due to the central pillar having worked loose from the plastic body inside the spout.

The solution involved releasing the FastMount nut, pulling the whole affair out of the deck, and tightening the threaded pillar into the body. After a few false starts, I applied a pair of grippy leather gloves and a firm grasp to twist the pillar another quarter turn into the body, after which it installed properly:

HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet – realigned

The mark on the far left shows how much I twisted the pillar:

HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet – misaligned front mark

If I don’t tell anybody, they’ll never notice.

I fear this will not be permanent, in which case I must disconnect all the plumbing, take the faucet into the Basement Shop, and have my way with it. Most likely this will involve thread locking compound applied to parts that aren’t visible without a complete disassembly.

For the record, the setscrew securing the faucet handle to the valve fits a 2.5 mm hex wrench, aligned just about parallel to the handle rather than perpendicular to the rear surface:

HD Glacier Bay kitchen faucet – handle setscrew alignment

In comparison to the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned American Standard faucet in our previous kitchen, the spout does not depend on rotating O-ring seals, because the valve sends water to the integral sprayer through a flexible hose. Although the spout does have an O-ring at the bottom, it serves to keep casual splashes out, rather than pressurized water in.

With a bit of luck, this will work forevermore.

2024-05-16
Samsung Microwave Gas Sensor Replacement
The Samsung over-the-range microwave (ME18H704SFS, should you care) that Came With The House™ coughed up a C-11 error code resolving to “replace the gas / humidity sensor”. Replacement DE32-60013A sensors are readily available, although if you’re expecting a Genuine Samsung Part from Amazon, that is not the universe I live in.

You can remove the upper front bezel from the microwave to reveal the slotted front cover of the compartment containing the sensor, but you cannot replace the sensor without extracting the microwave from above the stove and removing its shell. The bottom of the microwave sits about 18 inches above the stove, so I put a 16 inch cubical moving box (of which we have a near-infinite supply) on the stove to reduce the risk of dropping the mumble thing while removing it.

A total of 20 screws, here laid out in roughly geographic order, hold the shell to the inner frame:

Samsung microwave – cabinet screws

With all the screws out, slide the shell toward the rear by more than you might think to clear the latches along both sides. The latches along the front of the right side look like this:

Samsung microwave – shell side latches

With the shell off, the sensor compartment on the top of the microwave enclosure is revealed:

Samsung microwave – TGS880 enclosure

Although you might think removing those two screws would grant access to the sensor compartment and let you replace the sensor (if you have very long fingers), that is not the case: the small tab toward the left side of the louvered front plate prevents you from sliding it and the plate is not hinged along its left side.

The sensor is held into the socket by a clip snapping into the arms that, in turn, hold the socket into the side wall:

Samsung microwave – TGS880 mount detail

A small screwdriver will assist in releasing the latches on the clip arms; squeezing them in the obvious way didn’t get the job done.

The old sensor then unplugs and the new one plugs in the obvious manner; it is not polarized and either orientation works.

For completeness, the top of the electronics bay:

Samsung microwave – top interior

The magnetron and HV transformer live on the right side:

Samsung microwave – left interior

Then you reassemble in reverse order, heave the microwave atop the 16 inch cubical box, hoist it onto the rail along the back, and install the two loooong screws from the top while holding the front upward with one knee. I took the liberty of replacing the janky steel plates pretending to be washers with actual fender washers:

Samsung microwave – mounting screw

And now it works the way it should.

Of course, the microwave’s “beverage” mode assumes you’re drinking a piddly 8 ounces, rather than sipping from a manly 20 ounce mug:

Magnetic stirrer – vinyl surface

It heats 9 ounces of milk + cocoa just fine, but those 18 ounces of water for tea become just barely tepid.

WordPress has gone full-frontal AI and suggested I use this AI creation as the Featured Image:

Samsung microwave – AI generated image

Inquiring minds want to know:
- Black tile in a kitchen makes sense because … ?
- Why does the doorless microwave have a knob?
- Who is that handsome guy?
- So. Many. Screws.
At least his hand has the right number of fingers, even if they do look a bit arthritic.

The WordPress AI generated this evaluation of my writing:

The content provides a detailed guide on replacing the gas/humidity sensor in a Samsung over-the-range microwave. Consider adding subheadings to break down the process for easier reading. Additionally, including a brief introduction and a conclusion summarizing the key points would enhance the post. The technical details and images greatly support the instructions. Great job!

Dopamine rush in full effect!
2024-05-13