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: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

  • Subaru Forester: Human Factors

    Our Forester has three knobs that control air direction / speed / temperature. Knobs are much better than buttons, because you can adjust them without looking. At least, that’s the ideal situation.

    Here’s the setting for airflow to the footwell:

    Subaru Forester - Airflow knob - feet - daylight
    Subaru Forester – Airflow knob – feet – daylight

    Here’s what it looks like with airflow to the cabin:

    Subaru Forester - Airflow knob - face - daylight
    Subaru Forester – Airflow knob – face – daylight

    The knob has no tactile position indicator. That greenish rectangle, located in one of seven symmetric dimples that camouflage its position, is barely visible in normal light, invisible with sunglasses, and not apparent to the touch.

    Well, if conspicuous is what you want, I can fix that:

    Subaru Forester - knobs - highlighted
    Subaru Forester – knobs – highlighted

    Fluorescent tape will fade quickly, but it’ll last until something better comes along. Perhaps a small pointer epoxied onto the knurled surface, extending around to the indicator?

  • Subaru Forester: Speed Demon!

    I finally figured out why the Forester feels so slow:

    Subaru Forester - speedometer
    Subaru Forester – speedometer

    Here in the Northeast US, the maximum legal speed anywhere is 65 mph, less than half-scale, and typical around-town speeds hit 40 mph, barely 1/4 of full scale.

    For all practical purposes, that needle barely moves during our usual trips.

    I like analog gauges to represent smoothly varying quantities that you must read at a glance, but a big digital display would actually be more useful than that thing.

    A 150 mph speedometer scale makes no sense in what’s basically a shrunken all-wheel-drive SUV, even with minimal off-road capabilities. Yes, perhaps the Forester could hit 150 mph, but why not have the scale top out around, say, 100 mph? Above that, you shouldn’t be paying much attention to the speedo, anyway.

    The Sienna’s speedo went to 110 and, to the best of my knowledge, that needle never passed 85 mph, tops. However, ordinary (and legal) driving speeds filled the lower half of the scale, with the highest useful speeds in the next quadrant beyond vertical.

    Yes, I know why the speedos sport such absurd numbers. I don’t have to like it.

    There’s a servo motor (or some such) driving the needle; calibration has been a simple matter of software for a long, long time.

    For whatever it’s worth, the Forester and the Sienna have both tachometers and automatic transmissions, a combination that converts shifting into a spectator sport. The Forester’s continuously variable transmission moves the tach needle in smooth glides, rather than abrupt jumps.

  • Power Screen Trommel

    This monster appeared near Mary’s Vassar Farms plot:

    Power Screen Trommel - right
    Power Screen Trommel – right

    I had to look up trommel, too.

    Apparently suffering a breakdown, it spent the next two weeks idle with all its covers open. The can of WD-40 makes a nice touch, but the condition of the central lubrication panel suggested the last grease went through those Zerk fittings quite a while ago:

    Power Screen Trommel - lube panel
    Power Screen Trommel – lube panel

    The manufacturer’s information label, tucked in a protected position, remains pristine:

    Power Screen Trommel - mfg plate
    Power Screen Trommel – mfg plate

    Scrawled notes near the control panel noted that someone installed new oil and fuel filters in late 2004, with 4103 hours on the running time meter:

    Power Screen Trommel - controls
    Power Screen Trommel – controls

    Then, one day, it vanished, perhaps back into the mysterious universe from whence it came …

  • Rochester NY Railroad Station: The Merits of Overbuilding

    Back when the New York Central Railroad built the overpass at North Clinton Avenue, likely around the late 1800s, they had no idea the I-beams under the tracks would eventually look like this:

    Rusted I beam - Rochester RR station
    Rusted I beam – Rochester RR station

    The longitudinal I beams have more iron and haven’t corroded through:

    Rusted beams - Rochester RR station
    Rusted beams – Rochester RR station

    But the footing under that beam doesn’t look very good at all:

    Rusted beam base - Rochester RR station
    Rusted beam base – Rochester RR station

    I think that Lego brick is a nice touch …

    We drove the van along I-90 to Rochester and passed many bridge repair operations. The NY Thruway isn’t all that old and the rebar has been corroding out of the concrete pylons for years.

    Nowadays, we use exactly enough material to carry the anticipated loads and not one gram more; fast forward a century and our structures won’t be around.

    Those pictures were taken from the platform just west of the covered section.

  • Dry Water

    My first thought was that you can’t make this stuff up:

    Dry Water - Pok RR Station
    Dry Water – Pok RR Station

    That’s taken through one of the windows over Track 3 at the Poughkeepsie railroad station, so it’s a bit blurrier than usual.

    It turns out a “Dry Water” pipe delivers ordinary water, but normally contains pressurized air to prevent freezing. An intricate valve in a heated room balances air pressure in the pipe against the supply water pressure; when the air pressure drops, water flows through the valve to the outlet.

    Normally, you’d use a Dry Water pipe in a fire suppression system, but it makes perfect sense for an outdoor hose bib (or whatever you call that quick disconnect fitting) on the top level of the Poughkeepsie Railroad Station.

    There’s (almost certainly) an automatic drain valve that removes water from the dry pipe: otherwise, it’d remain full after use and pop the pipe during the next freeze.

  • Business Proposal

    This must be the season for scams, as WordPress recently forwarded this message through the Contact form:

    My name is Mary. I was just reading Personal 3D Printing: 2014 Status Report – I’m doing some private research on 3D printing and the article is great! I loved images! Great sense of humor and amazing taste in choosing images! :D

    But that is not the only reason why I’m writing.

    I’m actually writing on behalf of San Francisco Circuits, a PCB solutions provider in Northern California. I came across your site, read some interesting stuff and thought I’d come to you directly and ask if you’re interested in guest posting on Softsolder.com?

    We have writers on staff that write articles on circuit design, fabrication, assembly, and everything else PCB related.

    Let me know if you are interested!

    Thanks!

    You may recall that post:

    • The images came from stock photographs
    • It had nothing to do with PCB fabrication

    In fact, very little of what you read here has to do with PCB fabrication. Yes, I home-brew PCBs, but that’s about as non-mainstream as you can get.

    Some interesting bits of metadata:

    • San Francisco Circuits actually exists
    • The reply-to domain is in Australia: go8.com.au
    • The message came from a Croatian IP address: 212.92.194.119

    The go8 domain has a placeholder web page. The Petrovic Family Trust probably runs an email server that we’re not privy to; I’d lay long odds they’re blissfully unaware of her account.

    SF Circuits probably doesn’t know anything about her, either, and I’m absolutely certain those “staff” writers she touts know exactly squat about “everything else PCB related”.

    Should I ask her for writing samples or pointers to their work elsewhere on the Intertubes? How much would they pay to write posts for me? If I had nothing better to do, I’d string her along for a while…

    In fact, given how this spam stuff works, I suspect “Mary” isn’t her name and she’s not even female, but I’m never going to know the rest of the story.

    One point in her favor, though: she has figured out how to get paid for doing stuff on the Intertubes.

  • Subaru Forester Manual: Oddities

    Our shiny new Subaru Forester came with a 540 page user manual and, being that type of guy, I’ve been reading through it. I suspect warnings like this come from a lawsuit in the not-too-far-distant past:

    Camera Disassembly Warning
    Camera Disassembly Warning

    They seem to be very, very worried about small animals:

    Check for Small Animals
    Check for Small Animals

    In this situation, I’d hope the engine would fare better than, say, a squirrel:

    Trapping Small Animals
    Trapping Small Animals

    Unlike the Toyota Sienna’s enclosed belt, I could actually replace this one, so I suppose a squirrel could take up residence somewhere in there:

    Subaru Forester - belt and oil filter
    Subaru Forester – belt and oil filter

    And look at that oil filter: right up top, inside a bowl! The never-sufficiently-to-be-damned Toyota engineers mounted the Sienna’s filter horizontally, halfway up the side of the transverse V6 engine, where it slobbers oil down the block and over the front exhaust manifold.

    So far, so good…