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.
Taking & making images.
Found behind a store in Red Oaks Mill, overlooking the Mighty Wappingers Creek:
The old rail fell off its (long gone) post before the tree grew around it and the newer rail (upper right) definitely isn’t fresh from the factory, so this tableau has been on display for quite a while.
The tree’s growth rings have pretty much weathered away.
We’re bicycling on Collegeview Avenue, approaching the eastern traffic circle (of three) along Raymond Avenue. I’m in the lead, hauling a trailer with the week’s groceries:
The four digit frame numbers tick along at 60 fps for my helmet camera and 30 fps for the rear cameras.
Note the “splitter” (a.k.a. “pedestrian refuge”) on the left, intended to separate Collegeview’s incoming and outgoing traffic. It formerly had one non-reflective black bollard on each side of the ladder crosswalk, but errant drivers destroyed so many bollards along Raymond that they’re now WONTFIX remnants. The flush concrete disk in the lower left of this picture will become relevant in a few seconds of real time:
Collegeview has the same deteriorating pavement as found along Raymond Avenue, so we must maneuver beside the potholes:
The potholes make maintaining a safe-ish distance from the parked cars somewhat difficult:
All of us are slowing to stop at the traffic circle, with Mary behind the car that will eventually stop beside me:
Mary could see the car behind her in her helmet mirror, but she’s slowing to stall speed with no time for sightseeing and no room for maneuvering. The view from the camera on the seat frame behind her left shoulder:
Two seconds later:
One second:
Two more seconds:
Mary has stopped, as shown by the parked car’s unchanging position in the frame over on the left in the next images. The driver, however, continues creeping slowly forward; there can be no doubt she sees Mary at this distance.
After three more seconds:
One second later, the front wheel is exactly at Mary’s left foot:
The same events, viewed from the camera on my bike, start less than one second from the 1522 image above. I’m stopped, while the driver next to me continues to roll forward.
Mary is extending her left leg in preparation for a complete stop, at about the same time as the 1078 image:
Three seconds later her toe touches the pavement, while both she and the driver continue moving forward very slowly:
Five seconds later, she is stopped with her foot firmly planted:
And the driver continues moving:
Another five seconds and the sidewall bulge of the car’s radial tire is pressing her foot to the pavement:
A closer look:
She yanks her foot away:
While the driver continues to creep forward:
Sometimes, it’s the only way to get some attention:
Mary is now off-balance, leaning on the car door, explaining what just happened:
Mary regains her balance as the driver backs cautiously away:
Were the bollard still atop that sad concrete foundation, the driver might not have driven up on the splitter to get around Mary, if only to avoid scuffing a fender:
Compare this clearance with what you saw earlier in the 0957 image:
Mary can’t get far enough away, but this must suffice:
Now the driver can pass her again with more clearance:
I pointed to the car, then to the circle, and shouted “GO!” because neither of us wanted to be in front of that particular driver:
We’ll surely meet her again, ideally with more clearance.
Henceforth, we will take the middle of the lane into splitters, as cyclists should do on a “shared” roadway. I was assured by the DOT engineer who designed Raymond Avenue that it’s all “standards compliant”, so this is what NYS DOT regards as “making their highway systems safe and functional for all users”.
Having amateur radio HTs on the bikes lets us talk with each other in real time, which is a definite asset when stuff like this happens.
Not to mention having cameras here, there, and everywhere.
Elapsed time from the first to the last picture: 33 s.
For the record: blue Ford (although the ersatz fender vents seem reminiscent of an old Buick), license ANC-4273.
The remnants of Hurricane Ida dropped half a foot of rain in our area, so we walked to the remains of the Red Oaks Mill Dam to see the water:
The white water crests stand in place over rocks in the stream bed, with hypnotic flowlines.
The concrete abutment over on the left is now completely submerged. It was more conspicuous in May:
Surprisingly, most of the tree trunks and debris collecting over on the right remain jammed in place, as seen in March:
For completeness, the scene in February:
The USGS has a hydrology station just downstream that reported about 10 feet of water, the “moderate” flood stage, around the time I took the first picture. The normal level is 3 feet.
The “major” flood stage is 14 feet and, back in 2007, this is what it looked like at 15 feet:
Our reference point is a drain pipe on the retaining wall behind the hotel: when the Mighty Wappingers Creek covers the pipe, it’s well and truly flooding.
Searching for “red oaks mill dam” will surface more pix and stories.
The butterfly bush attracted another Hummingbird Moth:
As always, those gadgets are a wonder to behold!
Photo from the Pixel 3a, zoomed all the way, and showing why digital zooming isn’t the way to get nice pictures. On the other paw, it’s the camera I always have with me.
With the Bafang BBS02 and all its gimcrackery on the Terry Symmetry buttoned up and ready to go, I took a few closeout pictures for future reference.
The motor has a sheaf of wires sticking out of the bottom crying out for a protective covering:
Although cameras tell only the truth they’re allowed to see and can be made to lie by omission, sometimes their latent truth was completely invisible to eyewitnesses in real time.
I only noticed the mis-routed shift cable when I looked through the last set of pictures.
It should pass through the plastic channel under the metal tab holding the cable guide to the bottom bracket shell:
Normally, aiming the cable into the channel is no big deal. In this case, I had to undo the shift cable, remove the left crank, loosen the motor and rotate it out of the way, nudge the cable with a small screwdriver, then reinstall in reverse order.
Dang, that was close …
Rebuilding the XYZ stage positioner with MakerBeam aluminum struts, but without the steel brackets, produce a much more rigid result:
This requires drilling holes through the extrusions:
Running the center drill down until it just nicks the sides produces enough of a pilot hole through the center section to capture the 3 mm drill. If I had to drill enough holes to make a fixture worthwhile, I could probably eliminate the divots.
Two more holes + epoxied M3 brass inserts attached the 60 mm beam directly to the Z Axis stage, thereby eliminating the vertical beam and a steel bracket:
The M3 SHCS attaching the 100 mm beam goes through both beams. I think you could get the same result with a Tee Nut or a 12 mm Square Head bolt, should you have those lying around and don’t want to drill another hole. The Corner Cube screwed into both beams prevents rotation and helps ensure perpendicularity.
The Y stage now attaches directly to the beam, rather than through a pair of Corner Cubes, because I realized I wasn’t ever going to adjust its position.
The Z Axis stage stands on the plastic plate through a hellish mixture of metric and USA-ian screws. Basically, the 6-40 screws into the stage were long enough, the 6-32 screws through the plate fit the existing holes, and M3 screws are for MakerBeam:
To my utter astonishment, the threads in the end of the vertical beam had the proper alignment to let a Square Head bolt snug the beam against the 40 mm beam on the plate. As a result, the L Bracket just prevents the vertical beam from turning on the screw and the combination is as rigid as you (well, I) could want.
The 40 mm beam has two spurious holes, because I thought I could avoid drilling another hole in the baseplate. Nobody will ever notice.
After squaring and tightening everything, the 100 mm beam along the Y Axis is now horizontal within 0.2 mm and the X Axis is horizontal to better than I can measure.
It’s definitely Good Enough™ for me:
Remember, nothing exceeds like excess …
Over the course of half a decade (!), the 3D printed arm on the XYZ positioner I use with the stereo zoom microscope sagged:
It’s about what you’d expect from a plastic beam carrying a big lump of brass and steel:
The near side of that arm (the -Y end) drooped about 5 mm below than the side nearest the Z axis slide, so it was time for an update.
Having some MakerBeam ready to hand, this didn’t take long:
Protip: before dismantling a fitted slide, mark one end so you know how to put it back together. Bonus points for taking a picture:
Double bonus points for writing a blog post.
Rather than fight with the existing fine-pitch USA-ian screws, I drilled out their threaded holes:
And epoxied 3 mm brass inserts in their place:
Those holes match up with a pair of corner cubes normally appearing on the end of the beams:
It turns out M3 button head cap screws will slide into the beams if you file the slightest angle on opposite sides of the button, although a small bag of tiny tee nuts should arrive in a while.
Then a variety of brackets spliced everything together:
Although it looks strictly from industrial, it actually wasn’t much better than the plastic edition and, in fact, the beam supporting the XY slides sagged about the same 5 mm. The plastic upright post also contributed a bit of wobble.
It turns out that the extruded aluminum beams have plenty of longitudinal and torsional stiffness, but all those flat steel fittings don’t.
There’s a way to work with the beam strengths, rather than against them, but that’s a story for another day …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 