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?

New Jeep, Reckless Driver

Some drivers give us absurd amounts of clearance, which is what we thought the driver of the white Jeep was doing:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – Jeep passing

Some drivers give us very little clearance, either deliberately or though negligence, which is what I thought the driver of the silver Subaru was doing:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – Subaru close pass

Reviewing the videos revealed a different story that could have ended very badly for everyone involved.

Moving back in time, we crossed the bridge over the Wappingers creek, which has two southbound lanes. The left lane is dedicated to left turns onto Red Oaks Mill Road and the right lane is for through traffic southbound on Rt 376:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – Red Oaks Mill bridge

I had noticed oncoming drivers in the northbound lane were moving far over to the fog line, but (unseen by me) they were definitely swerving off the road:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – swerve 1

It seems the Jeep driver crossed the bridge in the left lane and continued straight through, passing the solid line of vehicles in the right lane behind us. You can see the top of the Jeep’s windshield peeking out behind the Subaru, with minimal clearance to the black car swerving out of the way:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – swerve 1 clearance

There’s not much shoulder on that side of the road, but the driver of the white Honda is using it all:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – swerve 2

With all the oncoming traffic out of the way, the Jeep driver now accelerates in the wrong lane:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – passing 1

And passes the Subaru just behind us:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – passing 2

The license plate looks like JAE-7751, early in the “J” plate series, so that’s a shiny new Jeep.

Being passed at close range in an obviously no-passing zone caused the Subaru driver to flinch in our direction:

New Jeep Reckless Driving – Subaru clearance

Unsurprisingly, the Jeep driver ran the red light at the top of the hill, presumably to avoid being stopped directly in front of us.

Never a dull moment out there on the road …

2023-05-16
Air Conditioner Lightning Protection

Spotted outside a second-floor window:

Air conditioner lightning rods

Each air conditioning unit has a pair of lightning rods atop it, with their aluminum grounding cables securely clamped to the steel frame underneath.

The rod reclining on its side caught my eye. Perhaps its fat cable wasn’t relaxed enough during installation, although I thought those wide bases would be firmly screwed to the unit’s steel top. Of course, that could be the only one without screws.

The building extends another three stories upward from that roof, but our experience suggests lightning strikes where it will.

2023-05-15
MaxLite Candelabra CFL: FAIL

The bathroom ceiling fixture has a nightlight position that we use occasionally, but eventually the little 7 W Christmas Tree bulb failed and I installed this hulk from a box of CFL bulbs a friend scrapped out after switching to LED bulbs:

MaxLite CFL – overview

I never tested whether it actually drew 3 W, but, hey I could feel good. Right? Right?

Anyhow, this one failed after a few years, too. The “bulb” envelope looked like it might make an attractive blinkie or glowie, so I decided to harvest it.

The candelabra screw base felt loose and popped off with a push:

MaxLite CFL – overflow cap

Perhaps they chose the envelope before finalizing the circuitry?

This is why you need a lathe in your shop:

MaxLite CFL – lathe cutting

It wasn’t particularly well centered, so that was done dead slow and finished with a few hand turns of the chuck. Obviously, I need a crank for the spindle.

The rest of the circuitry is pretty well packed under that tall cap:

MaxLite CFL – circuitry

Pulling the PCB out revealed the tube wiring:

MaxLite CFL – tube wires

Cut the wires and chuck it up again:

MaxLite CFL – envelope turning setup

Turn dead slow again until it breaks through:

MaxLite CFL – envelope breakthrough

Then finish by hand:

MaxLite CFL – tube and envelope

It’s too cute to throw out, but … sheesh you can see why recycling this stuff is so difficult.

For whatever it’s worth, I replaced it with a 3 W LED candelabra bulb that is way too bright.

2023-05-12
Signs of the Times

One of the problems of a kiosk display using a browser is having things on the far end of the connection go sideways:

Your connection is not private

A closer look:

Your connection is not private – detail

The base URL seems gone from consensus reality, although they might be using a private DNS to resolve in-house servers. In any event, a casual search suggests Osborn VS is an ad-tech company recently Borged by (or into) something else.

Sometimes the connection itself goes sideways:

Missing Internet Connection

Just like the sign-in kiosks in the lobby, I soooo wanted to tap that big button, but this was not a touch-screen display.

Yes, that’s the same display. Apparently Lifeshare is another part of the same Borganism.

I read these reassuring instructions in the elevator of a different building:

Elevator power failure instructions

I’d be mildly unsurprised to discover the elevator controls also handle the interior lighting, invariably putting me in the dark while the thing reboots. At least the paper would remain readable, because phones can become flashlights under duress.

At least we were not riding a rocket …

2023-05-10
Laser Cutter Z-Axis: Hitch in the Git-Along

My OMTech 60 W laser cutter has a stepper motor Z axis drive that has worked flawlessly since it arrived. However, it recently developed a periodic klonk during autofocusing and manual jogging, loud enough to shake the platform and rattle the cabinet’s bottom plate.

A few minutes of poking around revealed the klonk happened on each turn of the Z axis leadscrews, which quickly led to finding the cause:

Craft Stick – swarf in belt drive

It’s a rectangular wood chip, perfectly sized to jam into the Z axis motor pulley driving the belt: a belt tooth lifts up on the chip as the pulley turns, then klonks as it slips off the other side. The motor pulley and all four leadscrew pinons have the same number of teeth, so they’re all at the same point in their rotation when the belt slams down onto the pulley.

Where might such a thing come from? Well, I recently finished a batch of plant markers and hadn’t yet cleaned out the “chip tray” which is also just the bottom plate of the cabinet:

Craft Stick – swarf

I briefly considered building a guard for the motor pulley, but the belt most likely carried it from elsewhere. The leadscrews have an ample coating of grease that was also smeared elsewhere on the cabinet, making the belt sticky enough to catch such things.

The chip tray is once again pretty clean and the platform behaves normally again.

That was easy …

2023-05-01
Provide Drivers License Info

You know how we’re constantly reminded not to click on links in emails from “people we don’t know” and never provide personal information?

I’m certain this email came from a physician I’m about to see, but, with a concealed URL like that, somehow I just can’t bring myself to Get started like this:

Provide Drivers License

Remember, I’m in the US and *.co links are typically “foreign”, so they are going out of their way to look sketchy. I replaced several characters in the URL to make it invalid, but it closely resembles the original.

Of course, everything is outsourced these days, so the physician and her staff have nothing to do with the scheduling and patient information group, so they will have no idea what’s going on or be able to do anything about it.

2023-04-28
Trail Camera: Skunk

We’ve never seen a skunk by day, so this was a bit of a surprise:

Skunk by night

We occasionally smell a skunk by night, but this critter seems peaceable enough:

Skunk by night – detail

Skunks usually have a striped back, so this one’s pure white fur will be easy to identify should we meet again, ideally at a mutually respectful distance.

2023-04-24