Tag: Improvements

Making the world a better place, one piece at a time

Sony HDR-AS30V vs. Lithium Ion 18650 Cells

These items came near enough to produce an irresistible force:

Sony HDR-AS30V vs 18650 cells – side view

How can you look at that layout and not jump to the obvious conclusion?

The front view suggests enough room for a stylin’ case:

Sony HDR-AS30V vs 18650 cells – end view

You’d need only one cell for the camera; I happened to have two in my hand when the attractive force hit.

The camera is 24.5 ⌀ x 47 tall x 71.5 overall length (67.8 front-to-door-seating-plane).

The ATK 18650 cells are 19 ⌀ x 69 long, with the overlong length due to the protection PCB stuck on the + end of the cylinder. You can get shorter unprotected cells for a bit less, which makes sense if you’re, say, Telsa Motors and building them into massive batteries; we mere mortals need all the help we can get to prevent what’s euphemistically called “venting with flame“.

Although I like the idea of sliding the cell into a tubular housing with a removable end cap, it might make more sense to park the cell over the camera in a trough with leaf-spring contacts on each end and a lid that snaps over the top. That avoids threaded fittings, figuring out how to get an amp or so out of the removable end cap contact, and similar imponderables.

I think it’s possible to drill a hole through the bottom of the camera at the rear of the battery compartment to pass a cable from a fake internal cell to the external cell. Some delicate probing will be in order.

In round numbers, those 18650 cells allegedly have three times the actual capacity of the camera’s flat battery and cost about as much as the not-so-cheap knockoff camera cells I’ve been using.

2016-12-07

Kenmore Progressive Vacuum Tool Adapters: Second Failure

Pretty much as expected, the dust brush nozzle failed again, adjacent to the epoxy repair:

Dust brush adapter - second break — Dust brush adapter – second break

A bit of rummaging turned up some ¾ inch Schedule 40 PVC pipe which, despite the fact that no plumbing measurement corresponds to any physical attribute, had about the right OD to fit inside the adapter’s ID:

Dust brush - PVC reinforcement — Dust brush – PVC reinforcement

The enlarged bore leaves just barely enough space for a few threads around the circumference. Fortunately, the pipe OD is a controlled dimension, because it must fit inside all the molded PVC elbows / tees / caps / whatever.

The pipe ID isn’t a controlled dimension and, given that the walls seemed far too thick for this purpose, I deployed the boring bar:

Dust brush adapter - reinforced tube - boring — Dust brush adapter – reinforced tube – boring

That’s probably too much sticking out of the chuck, but sissy cuts saved the day. The carriage stop keeps the boring bar 1 mm away from the whirling chuck.

Bandsaw it to length and face the ends:

Dust brush adapter - reinforcement — Dust brush adapter – reinforcement

The PVC tube extends from about halfway along the steep taper from the handle fitting out to the end, with the section closest to the handle making the most difference.

Ram it flush with the end:

Dust brush adapter - reinforced tube - detail — Dust brush adapter – reinforced tube – detail

I thought about gluing it in place, but it’s a sufficiently snug press fit that I’m sure it won’t go anywhere.

Natural PETG probably isn’t the right color:

Dust brush adapter - reinforced tube - installed — Dust brush adapter – reinforced tube – installed

Now, let’s see how long that repair lasts …

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	//——————-
	// eBay horsehair dusting brush
	// Hacked for 3/4" Schedule 40 PVC stiffening tube

	module DustBrush() {

	union() {
	translate([0,0,40.0])
	rotate([180,0,0])
	difference() {
	union() {
	cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=31.8,h=10.0);
	translate([0,0,10.0 – Protrusion])
	cylinder(d1=32.0,d2=30.0,h=30.0 + Protrusion);
	}
	translate([0,0,-Protrusion])
	cylinder(d1=26.0,d2=24.0,h=100);
	translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) // 3/4 inch Sch 40 PVC
	PolyCyl(27.0,100);
	}
	translate([0,0,40.0 – Protrusion])
	MaleFitting();
	}
	}

view raw Kenmore Wand Bushings – Reinforced Dust Brush Adapter.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2016-11-29

Cast Iron Pan Seasoning After Two Weeks of Use

After two weeks of more-or-less daily use, without any further seasoning:

Wagner skillet – two weeks of use

The seasoning in between the scuffs & scrapes remains in fine shape. Running the Scotchbrite pad around the perimeter obviously wears the coating, but, on the whole, nothing sticks anywhere.

I’ve started re-seasoning it after each use, which isn’t a big deal, and we’ll see how the scratches level out.

The lovely gray-black patina on the nubbly outside surface from the original moderate-woo oven seasoning requires no further attention.

2016-11-27
Kitchen Spatula Search: Solved!

A Flint Arrow stainless steel spatula works exactly the way a spatula should:

Flint Arrowhead Stainless Spatula – in action

That is, of course, a used spatula from eBay. It cost slightly more than the various new spatulas we’ve tried, but not by very much, and should last (at least from our perspective) forever.

Thanks to all of you for aiming us in the right direction!

2016-11-26
Mica Trimmer Capacitors

I picked up two sets of mica trimmer capacitors from eBay:

Mica trimmer capacitors

The big cap on the left goes from a bit under 1000 pF to just over 2500 pF, maybe a 50% range. I got four of the things, they can be disassembled, and I could reduce the total capacitance by maybe half; the tuning range would drop by even more, so it may not be worth it.

The smaller trimmer has different sections: 300-400 pF and 500-700 pF, with about 25% range. As nearly as I can tell, the 700 pF section has one more pair of plates than the 400 pF section.

Given that compression caps work by mashing a stack of mica sheets, I think more pressure makes them more stable and running near the high end of their range will be a Good Thing.

Soldering these New Old Stock relics may be challenging, as the stacked flat metal leads aren’t in pristine condition: properly wetting all the leaves will require plenty of flux.

Resonating the loop antenna requires an external capacitor around 1000 pF. Paralleling a 120 pF fixed cap with both sections of the dual-section cap should do the trick: 900 pF minimum, 1200 pF maximum. Putting the fixed cap on a jumper would reduce the total capacitance, which seems easy & sensible.

2016-11-21
Compose Key Sequences for Useful Unicode Characters
If you activate a Compose key on your keyboard:

Compose key selection

Then you can insert Unicode characters without memorizing their hex values. Of course, you must memorize the Compose key sequences. Fortunately, they’re more-or-less mnemonic for the ones I occasionally use, which are hereby cherrypicked from that list.

Press-and-release the Compose key (right-Win), then type the characters as shown to get the symbol in quotes:
- o c “©” copyright # COPYRIGHT SIGN
- o o “°” degree # DEGREE SIGN
- o r “®” registered # REGISTERED SIGN
- t m “™” U2122 # TRADE MARK SIGN
- s m “℠” U2120 # SERVICE MARK
- . . “…” ellipsis # HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS
- . – “·” periodcentered # MIDDLE DOT
- . = “•” enfilledcircbullet # BULLET
- + – “±” plusminus # PLUS-MINUS SIGN (∓ MINUS-PLUS is U2213)
- x x “×” multiply # MULTIPLICATION SIGN
- < < “«” guillemotleft # LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
- > > “»” guillemotright # RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK
- c / “¢” cent # CENT SIGN
- – – . “–” U2013 # EN DASH
- – – – “—” U2014 # EM DASH
- < – “←” U2190 # LEFTWARDS ARROW
- | ^ “↑” U2191 # UPWARDS ARROW
- – > “→” U2192 # RIGHTWARDS ARROW
- | v “↓” U2193 # DOWNWARDS ARROW
- = > “⇒” U21D2 # RIGHTWARDS DOUBLE ARROW
- ? ! “‽” U203D # INTERROBANG
- p o o “💩” U1F4A9 # PILE OF POO
- m u “µ” mu # MICRO SIGN
- d i “⌀” U2300 # DIAMETER SIGN
- 1 4 “¼” onequarter # VULGAR FRACTION ONE QUARTER
- 1 2 “½” onehalf # VULGAR FRACTION ONE HALF
- 3 4 “¾” threequarters # VULGAR FRACTION THREE QUARTERS
- 1 1 0 “⅒” U2152 # VULGAR FRACTION ONE TENTH (and similar)
- ^ 1 “¹” onesuperior # SUPERSCRIPT ONE (also 0 2 3 + -…)
- _ 1 “₁” U2081 # SUBSCRIPT ONE (also 0 2 3 + -…)
- e ‘ “é” eacute # LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE
- e ` “è” egrave # LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH GRAVE
Producing Greek letters requires a “dead_greek” key, so it’s easier to start with bare hex Unicode values at U0391 (Α) and U03b1 (α) and work upward until you find what you need:
- U03A3 Σ uppercase sigma
- U03a9 Ω uppercase omega
- U03C3 σ lowercase sigma
- U03c9 ω lowercase omega
- U03c4 τ lowercase tau
- U03c0 π lowercase pi
- U0394 Δ uppercase delta
- U03F4 ϴ uppercase theta
- U03B8 θ lowercase theta
- U03D5 ϕ phi math symbol
- U03A6 Φ uppercase phi
- U03C6 φ lowercase phi
Odds and ends:
- U00a0 | | non-breaking space
- U2007 | | figure space (invisible digit space)
- U202F | | narrow space
- U2011 ‑ non-breaking hyphen
- U2030 ′ prime (not quote)
- U2033 ″ double-prime (not double-quote)
- U2018 ‘ left single quote
- U2019 ’ right single quote
- U201C “ left double quote
- U201D ” right double quote
- U2245 ≅ approximately equal
- U2264 ≤ less-than or equal
- U2265 ≥ greater-than or equal
- U221A √ square root
- U221B ∛ cube root
- U221C ∜ fourth root (yeah, right)
- U221D ∝ proportional to
- U2300 ⌀ diameter
- U25CA ◊ lozenge
If you set the keyboard layout to US International With Dead Keys, maybe you (definitely not I) could remember all the dead keys.
2016-11-16
Vacuum Tube LEDs: Mogul Socket With Platters

Adding two hard drive platters draws attention away from the printed puck holding the microcontroller:

500 W Incandescent – Mogul socket with platters

Granted, it looks odd. I think it’s a step in the right direction, if there is any right direction at all.

2016-11-11