Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
The admin pages for this blog have a “sparkle bar” along the top that shows the hourly hit rate, which is usually a simple diurnal cycle: most activity happens during the Western Hemisphere daylight hours.
Yesterday was different:
Blog Hourly Hits – 2012-05-19
In the space of about 10 minutes, my sleepy post about a bicycle saddle advertisement received 207 hits from “bike riding” at Yahoo! image search. For the last two and a half years, it’s been ticking along at about 1 hit/day, so I think that spike represents a nice example of a Dirac Delta Function in action.
The Plumbing Treasure Chest started life as a first-aid box designed to hang on a wall. Inside the drop-down lid appears this list of Instructions For First Aid:
Well, using a PC case fan as a freezer blowerseemed 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
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
A closer look:
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:
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
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…
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
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.
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.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 