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?

  • Whirlpool Refrigerator Fan Noise: Final Fix Redux

    Well, using a PC case fan as a freezer blower seemed like a good idea at the time: it worked, moved an adequate amount of air, and was pretty nearly silent. Until, that is, frost built up on the blades, water froze inside the frame, and the thing began sounding like a stick running along a picket fence:

    Frosted PC case fan in freezer
    Frosted PC case fan in freezer

    I replaced the first fan with another having slightly more clearance between the blade tips and the frame, but to no avail.

    So I dug the OEM fan (a.k.a., the Freezer Dog) from the heap, dismantled it, and discovered why it was howling. Turns out that the shaft nearest the fan blades was scored inside that bearing:

    Freezer motor - scored shaft
    Freezer motor – scored shaft

    A closer look:

    Freezer motor - scored shaft detail
    Freezer motor – scored shaft detail

    The rest of the shaft looked fine to me, so I put some green Loctite on rotor at the shaft and shoved the long end of the shaft (using the drill press as an arbor press) to put the scored section inside the rotor:

    Freezer motor - relocated rotor
    Freezer motor – relocated rotor

    Yes, that’s the same Loctite ridge you saw there…

    The shaft has several small grooves that probably held lubricant or acted as alignment guides or something useful, but I’m hoping none of that matters. The rotor is turning backwards now, too, which shouldn’t make much difference: it’s pretty much symmetrical.

    While I had the motor apart, I whacked the bearings with a rod to shrink them a bit:

    Freezer fan bearings
    Freezer fan bearings

    Slobbered more STP on the bronze bearings, reassembled everything again, and it’s been quiet for nearly a week.

    Perhaps the combination of new shaft surfaces and tweaked bearings will run for a few more years. I still have the “new” replacement fan in a box…

  • Ouch!

    Got one of those painful, bloodless slices:

    Split thumbprint
    Split thumbprint

    From, believe it or not, the razor-sharp edge of a fillet of cured green Loctite:

    Freezer motor shaft - Loctite fillet
    Freezer motor shaft – Loctite fillet

    Of course, it didn’t stay bloodless for long: every time I put pressure on the ball of my thumb, the split gets longer.

    I hate it when there’s blood all over the workpiece…

  • The Perils of Ubiquitous WiFi

    The main aisle at the Trinity contest is a busy place, but that didn’t seem to matter. This guy came ambling along, tapping on the keyboard, walking slower and slower, until he just dropped to a dead stop(*) in the middle of the lane:

    Distracted Walking
    Distracted Walking

    Everyone gave him plenty of clearance until he eventually rejoined consensus reality and moved on…

    (*) There’s a song about that, but you’re gonna have to find it yourself.

  • Bald Cardinal: Continuing Feather Loss

    Bald Cardinal - left side
    Bald Cardinal – left side

    The bald cardinal still stops by the feeder in the evening. He’s now losing the smaller red feathers around his eye and above his beak. The black feathers bordering his beak seem unaffected, although it’s hard to tell through the window glass blur.

    This image is a tight crop from the Sony DSC-H5, which has a lens about two stops faster than my Canon SX230HS pocket camera and is much better suited for evening photography. I’ll add the tele adapter to the stack and try to get a better picture from the door; I think the autofocus assist light spooks the poor bird.

  • Northern Cardinal With Tumor

    That missing leg surely involves an accident, those missing feathers may be mites, but now we have a male Northern Cardinal with what looks like a tumor on his head:

    Cardinal with tumor
    Cardinal with tumor

    It’s not obvious in that picture, but the black patch seems to be the rubbed-raw top of a growth.

    Prior to these birds, in all the years we’ve been birdwatching we’ve never seen any damaged cardinals…

  • Why I Don’t Like Hotel Networks

    Perhaps this indicates most folks can’t configure network encryption with known parameters, but advising everybody to just turn that pesky WEP stuff off seems, well, misguided:

    Disable WEP
    Disable WEP

    Sniffing a guest’s private bits from an unencrypted link doesn’t pose any challenge at all and, given the hotel’s location in Hartford’s hot urban core, I’d expect absolutely no security-by-obscurity whatsoever.

    On the other paw, Dragorn of Kismet points out the triviality of a man-in-the-middle WiFi attack no matter what encryption you might (think you) have in effect. So maybe it doesn’t make much difference.

    And if you think the wired network is inherently more secure, that should change your mind.

  • Panic Button Variations

    Those panic buttons in the high school cafeteria still beg the question: who thought panic buttons would be a Good Idea? I recently served as a judge for the Science Fair qualification show and found some variations on the theme.

    One seems in good shape, although I don’t know if it’s been repaired:

    Intact panic button
    Intact panic button

    Several have missing buttons, but the innards seem intact:

    Buttonless panic button
    Buttonless panic button

    In the event of an actual panic, I suppose you simply yank the cage off the wall:

    Up-armored panic button
    Up-armored panic button

    I cannot imagine what logic justified protecting one button and leaving the others to the tender mercies of the student population.

    Our tax dollars at work, for sure…