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: Science

If you measure something often enough, it becomes science

Monthly Science: Motel Water Pressure vs. Height

Being a sucker for infrastructure and numbers, the fire sprinkler system pressure gauges in the motel stairwell proved irresistible.

The first floor gauge shows a nice round 100 psi:

Hotel water pressure – floor 1

Up on the second floor, it’s 90 psi:

Hotel water pressure – floor 2

With a different brand of gauge, it’s also 90 psi on the third floor:

Hotel water pressure – floor 3

Maybe 85 psi on the fourth:

Hotel water pressure – floor 4

Squinting at the parallax, call it 80 psi on the fifth:

Hotel water pressure – floor 5

At the top of the vertical pipe on the fifth, on the other side of a valve, we return to the original valve company at 78 psi:

Hotel water pressure – floor 5 – top

Water weighs just over 62 lb/ft³ at room temperature, which works out to 0.43 lb/in² per vertical foot. Not having packed my laser distance widget, I’ll guesstimate 12 feet and 5 psi per floor.

A quick graph with an eyeballometric straight-line fit:

Motel sprinkler water pressures

Call it 0.42 psi/ft, which is pretty close to the right answer.

2018-12-01
Astable Multivibrator vs. Charged NP-BX1 Lithium Battery

Hitching a charged, albeit worn, NP-BX1 lithium battery to the astable multivibrator produces a blinding flash:

NP-BX1 Holder – SMT pogo pins

The current pulse shows the wearable LED really takes a beating:

Astable – NP-BX1 4V – 100mA-div

The current trace is at 100 mA/div: the pulse starts at 400 mA, which seems excessive even to me, and tapers down to 200 mA. It’s still an order of magnitude too high at the end of the pulse.

On the other paw, maybe a 14% duty cycle helps:

Astable – NP-BX1 4V – base V – 100mA-div

The top trace shows the base drive voltage dropping slightly, although I suspect the poor little transistor can’t take the strain.

The LED really does need a ballast resistor …

2018-11-30
Squidwrench Electronics Workshop: Session 6 Whiteboards

Coverage of capacitors as charge-storage devices, rather than filters:

Session 6 – Whiteboard 1 – overview

We avoided all the calculus and derivations, taking the exponential waveform as a given for RC circuits:

Session 6 – Whiteboard 1 – exponential detail

Discussions of dielectrics, plate spacing / area, and suchlike:

Session 6 – Whiteboard 1 – dielectric permittivity

Some handwaving discussion of construction, electrolytic capacitor innards, and The Plague:

Session 6 – Whiteboard 1 – cap construction

A 1 F cap charged through a 1.8 kΩ resistor during most of the session to show what an 1800 s time constant looked like. Nope, it never quite got to the 3.5 V from the power supply, even when we all decided it was time to shut down!

2018-11-16
Monthly Image: AMP Plug Board

Around 1960, somebody my father knew at the Harrisburg AMP factory gave me a chunk of plugboard bandsawed from a scrapped computer or industrial controller, because he knew I’d enjoy it:

AMP Plug Board

He was right.

I spent months rearranging those little cubes (some with cryptic legends!) into meaningful (to me) patterns, plugging cables between vital spots, and imagining how the whole thing worked:

AMP Plug Board – detail

Long springs ran through the notches under the top of the blocks to connect the plug shells to circuit ground. The ends of the steel rails (still!) have raw bandsaw cuts, some of the blocks were sliced in two, the tip contact array behind the panel wasn’t included, and none of that mattered in the least.

Only a fraction of the original treasure trove survives. It was absolutely my favorite “toy” ever.

Quite some years ago, our Larval Engineer assembled the pattern you see; the hardware still had some attraction.

I’ve asked Mary to toss it in the hole with whatever’s left of me, when that day arrives …

2018-11-15
Bird Feeder Unbending

At some point in its history, the left rail holding the wood perch on our industrial-strength “squirrel proof” seed feeder took a hit, most likely from being dropped:

Squirrel on bird feeder

I finally got a Round Tuit and un-bent the poor thing:

Bird feeder – rail un-bending

Because the bend happened at the base of the vertical strut holding the shutter, I clamped a Genuine Vise-Grip sheet metal pliers along the straight section. The Craftsman knock-off Vise-Grip then applied torque at the bend, rather than just making things worse, and some two-axis tweakage lined up the rail pretty well.

With the bend taken care of, I clamped the rail in the bench vise with some scrap wood around the strut:

Bird feeder – warped rail

A percussive adjustment jam session flattened the top flange, leaving both sections as flat as they’re gonna get.

While I was at it, I turned a pair of stepped aluminum washers for the new wood rod:

Bird feeder – parting off washer

Which looked about like you’d expect, including a little chatter from the cut off tool:

Bird feeder – perch hardware

Yeah, I drilled the wood rod on the lathe, too; I loves me some simple lathe action.

Reassemble in reverse order and it’s all good:

Bird feeder – perch installed

We’re supposed to bleach the feeder every week to kill off the bacteria causing House Finch Eye Disease and, while I can’t promise a weekly schedule, we’ll (try to) reduce the amount of crud on the feeder this year.

If you’ve got a feeder, sign up for Project Feederwatch and do some citizen science!

2018-11-13
MPCNC: Diamond Drag Engraver vs. Acrylic

Drawn at Z=-0.1 mm on scrap acrylic with the diamond engraver in the modified collet holder:

MPCNC – Diamond point – acrylic 0.1mm

The badly rounded corner comes from a Z touch off in facepalm mode; the poor diamond must have been trying to dig a 2 mm trench through the acrylic.

Then again at Z=-0.5 mm:

MPCNC – Diamond point – acrylic 0.5mm

At half a millimeter, the holder applies well over 100 g of downforce. There’s no way to know how much lateral force the tip applies to the holder, but it’s obvious the parallel beams on the MPCNC drag knife adapter lack lateral stability:

MPCNC knife adapter mods – OpenSCAD model

Bending beams still seem much better than a linear bearing, though.

2018-11-09
Monthly Science: End of the Cheese Slicer Epoxy Coating

The corrosion growing on our long-suffering cheese slicer finally ruptured its epoxy coating:

Cheese Slicer – epoxy coating split

Most of the epoxy remains in good shape, but it’s obviously not the right hammer for this job.

Having recently spotted my tiny sandblaster, I think I can clear off the corrosion and epoxy well enough to try again with good old JB Weld epoxy. It’s not rated for underwater use, so I don’t expect long-term goodness, but it’ll be an interesting comparison.

Bonus: the slicer will start with a uniform gray surface!

2018-11-01