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?

  • Shiny Lug Nuts: Overtightening Thereof?

    Ever notice how, when you take your car in for inspection, it always comes back with the wheel lug nuts tightened beyond the ability of mere mortals? I think it’s because they have their pneumatic impact wrenches turned up to 11, just to make sure the nuts never, ever come loose and expose them to liability.

    Broken wheel lug with attached SocketLug
    Broken wheel lug with attached SocketLug

    Found this yesterday while walking back from the store with two gallons of milk. The shiny bit in the background is labeled SocketLug, which is evidently a trademark associated with Gorilla (but with no Web presence), and sports patent number 5797659. The stud in the front evidently snapped out of somebody’s wheel, probably flush with the surface. Gonna be trouble getting that out!

    The lug is a threaded 9/16-inch steel stud, with a root area of maybe 0.18 square inches. Let’s suppose the yield strength is 100 kpsi, so breaking that thing required 18 k pounds. The thread looks to be 18 TPI for a 1.8 degree helix angle; call it 3%. If they lubed the threads and lug (ha!), letting us assume 20% friction, then the wrench was applying 700 pounds at a 9/32″ moment arm: call it 2.5 k lb-in or 30 k lb-ft of torque. Pretty impressive, given that typical pneumatic wrenches weigh in at around 500 lb-ft of torque.

    Which says it really wasn’t the wrench doing the breaking, which should also be obvious because it was lying at the side of the road rather than on the shop floor. Even a 1000 lb-ft wrench would create only 5% of that yield load in the stud, so something else was wrong.

    That orange patch in the upper left looks like rust in a crack, with the gray area in the lower right revealing the final fault. Maybe the shop monkey (or owner?) managed to whack it while installing the tire, create a small crack that let in the usual NYS road salt, and after a season or two the stud failed after being cranked tight once again.

    There’s likely another four on that wheel: safety in numbers! Unlike those old Citroens with but a single nut securing each wheel…

  • Unusual Tea Additive

    Green tea is supposed to be good for you and Tazo China Green Tips is supposed to be pretty good tasting, so I’ve been sipping a cuppa or two in the morning. Teabags are a spendy way to buy tea, so I’ve been buying half a kilo at a shot from cooking.com, storing it in glass jars, and teaspooning it into a tea ball infuser over the course of the next year.

    This interesting additive appeared in one of my teaballs; fortunately I was awake enough to notice it before it wound up in hot water.

    Beetle found in Tazo Green Tea
    Beetle found in Tazo Green Tea

    It looked pretty much like the hull of a generic Asian Garden Beetle, although we haven’t seen anything quite like it in our gardens. Not a big deal, as garden beetles are fairly inoffensive critters, but not something that should make its way into a bag of lah-dee-dah tea. On the other paw, it’s hard to filter stuff like that out of the stream.

    Fought my way through the Flash-saturated Tazo site, sent a note to the Customer Service folks, eventually had a pleasant phone chat. After convincing her that I wasn’t rabidly angry and that it really was one of their beetles, she dispatched fifteen bucks worth of Starbucks gift card.

    It seems Starbucks either owns Tazo, both of ’em are controlled by the same outfit, or something like that. She was in the Starbucks Customer Service chain o’ command, anyway.

    Beetle bottom view
    Beetle bottom view

    So I picked up three boxes of Tazo tea bags at the local Starbucks: more China Green Tips and some Green Tea with Lemon Grass (which doesn’t appear on their website). Left me with three cents on the card; I’m not a regular customer, so it’s now in the pile of cards I use as measurement shims in the workshop.

    I’d been adding lemon grass from our garden to the morning cuppa for a pleasant lemon scent. The Tazo version includes Lemon Verbena, some mint, and other flavors that cranked the scent up to 11 and the taste far into my ptui range. Unpleasant, indeed.

    For what it’s worth, if you’ve tried & disliked other green teas, give Tazo China Green Tips a shot. It’s delicate and much better than the other (far cheaper) green teas I’ve tried; Salada Green Tea is particularly noxious.

    One of the China Green Tips reviewers on cooking.com comments “I found a rather long, nasty, kinky hair … I was shocked. I threw out the whole bag  … I was unable to drink tea for a week”.

    Mexican Bean Beetle on Soybeans
    Mexican Bean Beetle on Soybeans

    Now, party people, I’m here to tell you that food just doesn’t pop out of the ground in a pristine state. Maybe it’s because we eat a lot of food from our own gardens, but passengers like that, let alone the odd hair, just aren’t an issue. Consider, for example, this critter that made it all the way into the house on some soybeans: he’s likely related to the Asian Garden Beetle family and not all that far back in their family trees.

    If you want to really worry about something, ask yourself whether your tea grew downwind of, say, Zhejiang Happy Face Metal Refinery Complex Number Six. No way to tell about that, other than through a detailed chemical analysis of every cuppa.

    Bon appétit!

  • Database Troubles

    So I bought a batch of small carbide bits at Lowe’s: some Dremel burrs and a neat pointed RotoZip engraving bit. Got to the checkout and everything went swimmingly except the RotoZip, which triggered a management override.

    This caused the dreaded price check on Register 6, the only register open at the time. People are four deep behind me and the line is growing.

    Manager shows up, scans his magic power card, types in a small bit of life history, scans the package again. It calls for another management override.

    He re-scans his card, types in a (presumably different) slice of life history, re-scans the package, and the price pops up in bright green for all to see:

    89991 Point Cutting $10,000.00

    “This just isn’t going to happen” sez I. In round numbers, I think it costs 15 bux. Maybe 10, maybe 20.

    The line now extends to the paint counter. I turn to the woman behind me and observe that I don’t think I’ve ever charged a $10,000 item before and that I sure hope it comes with a free yacht.

    The manager laughs, re-scans his card, types in still more life history, re-scans the package, types in yet more life history, and a new price pops up:

    89991 Point Cutting $1.00

    I say “Thank you very much!” He sez “Have a nice day!” The cashier sez “Wow, great deal!” I say “I’m outta here!”

    Hopped on my bike and rode off into the haze.

    I strongly support the “If it doesn’t scan, it’s free” method of price determination, but this is just the second time it’s happened. The first was a clerk who made an on-the-spot decision. This one had management approval!

    I think the price in their database is $10k because of a data entry error, which triggered the first management override.

    Fairly obviously, the database didn’t get fixed today.

    But a good time was had by all!

  • Getting Smarter All The Time

    From the College Board folks who do the SAT:

    http://www.collegeboard.com/press/releases/150054.html:

    Forty-three percent of 2006 college-bound seniors reported grade averages of A+, A, or A-. Ten years ago, the figure was 36 percent, and in 1987, the first year these data were collected in the same manner, the figure was 27 percent. This year’s average grade point average was 3.33, compared with an average GPA of 3.21 in 1996 and 3.07 in 1987.

    Were we-uns really all that dumb back in the day or is something else going on here?

    I think I know the answer to that…

  • OK, I’m a Yokel

    So a while back we were in Providence, walking up the hill in search of breakfast protein (ended up at McD, but that’s another story) and saw in the three windows across the second floor of a tidy brick building:

    Adult Sex Education
    Call [number]

    I sez to my wife, I sez “Hey, we could…” and she sez “No way!” and that’s the end of that.

    Then I find this editorial in their local paper (affectionately known as the ProJo, honest):

    http://www.projo.com/opinion/editorials/content/projo_20060826_26broth.2e12f1d.html

    Providence Mayor David Cicilline is having difficulty cracking down on what some call the world’s oldest profession because state law, incredibly, makes prostitution legal in Rhode Island, as long as it takes place indoors. Only streetwalkers, their pimps, and their customers who flag them down outdoors may be charged.

    Gosh, I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t call that number for some pointers…

    Who knew?

  • Just Guessing: They’ve Never Owned a Fiat

    One of Italy's Greatest Products
    Fiat: One of Italy's Greatest Products

    This from the halls of Arlington Middle School, presumably from Social Studies or Italian Club or some such.

    Somebody needs a course in auto wrenching, methinks.

  • Patroon Parking Only

    Patroon Parking
    Patroon Parking

    Haven’t seen any patroons around here lately, so they must be keeping a low profile. Used to be a bunch of ’em in these parts.

    There were a bunch o’ cars in the lot, come to think of it… maybe they were all in the liquor store.

    Who knew?