Category: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

Machine Shop, Oddities

Amazon Packaging: Grease Cartridge

I knew this would happen, so I made sure to not order anything that could possibly arrive at the same time:

Grease cartridge - casual packaging
Grease cartridge – casual packaging

I’ll apply the grease by hand, so the fact the cartridge cannot fit into a piston-fed gun doesn’t matter:

Grease cartridge - cap damage
Grease cartridge – cap damage

I recently placed one order for a BFW and another for four small bottles, all of which arrived in a single box with a thoroughly flattened air pillow strip. Fortunately, the bottles were plastic and survived unscathed, but I’m sure it got ugly in there.

Given that one order for multiple items has arrived in three different boxes on two different days, it’s exceedingly difficult to work around Amazon’s corporate-level indifference for safe packaging.

Machine Shop, Oddities

M2 Nozzle Clog: FOD

This happened while switching from natural to black PETG:

M2 nozzle clog - exterior
M2 nozzle clog – exterior

A closer look:

M2 nozzle clog - exterior detail
M2 nozzle clog – exterior detail

Those pix happened after trying to extract whatever-it-is with tweezers, so it’s definitely something with a higher melting point than PETG.

Removing the (warm) nozzle with the block held in a vise reveals a tuft of something:

M2 nozzle clog - interior
M2 nozzle clog – interior

The tuft accumulated several turns while unthreading the nozzle from the hot end.

Heating the nozzle a bit more released the tuft:

M2 nozzle clog - extracted tuft
M2 nozzle clog – extracted tuft

The black-to-clear transition tailing off at the bottom came from the PETG around the tuft in the cone-shaped end of the nozzle above the aperture. The 100 mil squares suggest the tuft was a distinct entity, rather than a collection of threads, and might have been over 5 mm long.

Perhaps a fragment of PTFE or another high-melting-point plastic?

Reassemble in reverse order, reset the nozzle to Z=0 on the platform, and it’s all good.

Machine Shop, Oddities

Soaker Hose Splices: End Of Life

The soaker hoses from Mary’s garden all came from someone else and have now reached their second end of life:

Soaker Hose Splices - end of life
Soaker Hose Splices – end of life

Those orange lumps kept them alive for a few more seasons:

Soaker Hose Splices - harvested
Soaker Hose Splices – harvested

In the unlikely event I ever give another in-person presentation about 3D printing and what it’s good for, I’ll have some interesting show-n-tell samples. Might have to soak the dirt off, though.

Oddities, Photography & Images, Science

Vultures Sunning

Spotted after pre-season prep at Mary’s Vassar Farms garden:

Vultures sunning
Vultures sunning

It must feel really good up there atop the old barn, even if they’re sunning themselves to kill off parasites.

Taken with the Pixel 3a zoomed all the way in at 7× from a bit over 200 feet:

Vultures sunning - photo range
Vultures sunning – photo range

Then cropped and sharpened just a smidge. Not a great picture, but good enough for practical purposes; the Good Camera + Big Glass takes better pix and is too awkward to carry in my pocket.

Administrivia, Home Ec, Oddities

Blog Impulse Response: Water Heater

Somebody posted a Reddit comment linking to my post about a sensibly implemented water heater anode rod, with predictable results:

Blog Impulse - 2021-03
Blog Impulse – 2021-03

Reddit’s New Hotness has a half-life well under a day, although a steady trickle of incoming traffic will continue forever: The Internet Never Forgets.

Protip: forcing Reddit URLs to old.reddit.com eliminates the user-hostile site layout. Manual tweaking suffices for my very few visits; you can find browser extensions for on-the-fly rewriting.