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.
Making the world a better place, one piece at a time
These days, removing senescent trees and clearing out deadwood requires a combination of high-tech machinery:
And good old manual labor:
One of the guys observed that they get a good deal of amusement from Youtube videos of amateur tree cutting incidents.
They worked hard all day, pacing themselves well, finished cutting in a driving rainstorm, then returned the next day for cleanup.
I felt a nap comin’ on strong…
Starting with a blank 120 GB SSD, I had to disable the “Plug-n-Play OS” BIOS option to get the Lenovo Q150 to boot from a System Rescue CD USB stick. While the hood was up, I told the BIOS to ignore keyboard errors so it can boot headless.
Partitioning:
Booting & installing Mint Linux 17.2 XFCE from another USB stick went smoothly, after which it inhaled the usual gazillion updates. Rather than wait for the auto-updater to wake up and smell the repositories, I generally get it done thusly:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade apt-get autoremove
Add my user to the dialout group, so I have access to the USB serial converter on /dev/ttyUSB0 that will drive the plotter.
Configure a static IP address that appears in the appropriate /etc/hosts files.
Install some useful packages:
Set up ssh for public key authentication, rather than passwords, on an unusual port, so everything else can happen from the Comfy Chair upstairs.
Install packages that Chiplotle will need:
I think some of those would be auto-installed as dependencies by the next step, but now I can remember what they are for the next time around this action loop:
sudo easy_install -U chiplotle ... blank line to show underscore above ...
Plug the old hard drive into a USB-SATA adapter to copy:
~/.bashrc — my familiar colorful promptbaseplotter.py — works properly with hardwired handshaking~/.chiplotle/config.py — set up to use rtscts handshakingPlotterShapes.py — the demo programThen chuck up some paper and pens to let it grind out art:
It’s good clean fun…
A pre-Christmas sale brought a cheap SSD that rendered my oath not to install one in the Lenovo Q150 inoperative, so I had to figure out how to open the case. Removing the visible screws didn’t release the cover, but some exploratory prying eventually popped the internal snap latches. Knowing the latch & screw locations will simplify harvesting the SSD when that time comes…
Front (with USB & SPDIF jacks):
Rear (with all the other jacks):
Top (with the heatsink outlet):
Bottom (with the mounting boss):
With the cover off, the inside looks like this:
The two rubber blocks glued to the hard drive bracket (carrier / sled / whatever) conceal the screws holding that side to the chassis. However, removing the blocks and the screws didn’t release the bracket, because it had what looked like a black adhesive layer below the screw flanges:
Gentle prying from the edge of the bracket eventually released it, showing that the black plastic was just an insulating layer. Below that, two thin foam strips had firmly affixed themselves to the PCB, despite not having any adhesive on that side:
With the bracket on the bench, installing the SSD went exactly as you’d expect and reinstalling the cover was, quite literally, a snap.
After the 5 mm white LEDs failed on the original desk lamp rebuild, I picked up some chip-on-board LED lamps from the usual eBay supplier:
The LED’s aluminum baseplate (perhaps there’s an actual “board” inside the yellow silicone fill) is firmly epoxied to a small heatsink from the Big Box o’ Heatsinks, chosen on the basis of being the right size and not being too battered.
The rather limited specs say the LED supply voltage can range from 9 to 12 V, suggesting a bit of slack, with a maximum dissipation of 3 W, which definitely requires a heatsink.
The First Light test looked promising:
That’s driven from the same 12 VDC 200 mA wall wart that I used for the failed ring light version. Measuring the results shows that the supply now runs at the ragged edge of its current rating, with the output voltage around 10.5 V with plenty of ripple:
The 260 mA current (bottom, trace 1 at 100 mA/div) varies from 200 to 300 mA as the voltage (top, trace 2 at 2 V/div) varies between 10 V and a bit under 11 V. If you believe the RMS values, it’s dissipating 2.7 W and the heatsink runs at a pleasant 105 °F in an ordinary room. The wall wart gets about as warm as you’d expect; it contains an old heavy-iron transformer and rectifier, not a trendy switcher.
The heatsink mount looks nice, in a geeky way:
The left side must be that long to anchor the gooseneck; I thought about tapering the slab a bit, but, really, it’s OK the way it is. Dabs of epoxy hold the gooseneck and heatsink in place.
The heatsink rests on a small ledge at the bottom of the slab that’s as tall as the COB LED is thick, with a wire channel from the gooseneck socket:
The Hilbert Curve infill on the top produces a textured finish; I’m a sucker for that pattern.
The old lamp base isn’t particularly stylin’, but the new head lights up my desk below the big monitors without any glare:
Now, let’s see how long this one lasts…
The OpenSCAD source code as a Github gist:
| // Chip-on-board LED light heatsink mount for desk lamp | |
| // Ed Nisley KE4ZNU December 2015 | |
| Layout = "Show"; // Show Build | |
| //- Extrusion parameters must match reality! | |
| ThreadThick = 0.25; | |
| ThreadWidth = 0.40; | |
| HoleWindage = 0.2; | |
| Protrusion = 0.1; // make holes end cleanly | |
| inch = 25.4; | |
| function IntegerMultiple(Size,Unit) = Unit * ceil(Size / Unit); | |
| //———————- | |
| // Dimensions | |
| ID = 0; // for round things | |
| OD = 1; | |
| LENGTH = 2; | |
| Gooseneck = [3.0,5.0,15.0]; // anchor for end of gooseneck | |
| COB = [25.0,23.0,2.5]; // Chip-on-board LED module | |
| Heatsink = [35.5,31.5,4.0]; // height is solid base bottom | |
| HSWire = [23.0,28.0,53.3]; // anchor width OC, width OAL, length OC | |
| HSWireDia = 1.4; | |
| HSLip = 1.0; // width of lip under heatsink | |
| BaseMargin = 2*2*ThreadWidth; | |
| BaseRadius = Gooseneck[OD]; // 2 x gooseneck = enough anchor, sets slab thickness | |
| BaseSides = 2*4; | |
| Base = [(Gooseneck[LENGTH] + Gooseneck[OD] + Heatsink[0] + 2*BaseRadius + BaseMargin), | |
| (Heatsink[1] + 2*BaseRadius + 2*BaseMargin), | |
| 2*BaseRadius]; | |
| //———————- | |
| // Useful routines | |
| module PolyCyl(Dia,Height,ForceSides=0) { // based on nophead's polyholes | |
| Sides = (ForceSides != 0) ? ForceSides : (ceil(Dia) + 2); | |
| FixDia = Dia / cos(180/Sides); | |
| cylinder(r=(FixDia + HoleWindage)/2, | |
| h=Height, | |
| $fn=Sides); | |
| } | |
| //– Lamp heatsink mount | |
| module Lamp() { | |
| difference() { | |
| translate([(Base[0]/2 – BaseRadius – Gooseneck[LENGTH]),0,0]) | |
| hull() | |
| for (i=[-1,1], j=[-1,1]) | |
| translate([i*(Base[0]/2 – BaseRadius),j*(Base[1]/2 – BaseRadius),Base[2]/2]) | |
| sphere(r=BaseRadius/cos(180/BaseSides),$fn=BaseSides); | |
| translate([(Heatsink[0]/2 + Gooseneck[OD]),0,Heatsink[2] + COB[2]]) // main heatsink recess | |
| scale([1,1,2]) | |
| cube((Heatsink + [HoleWindage,HoleWindage,0.0]),center=true); | |
| translate([(Heatsink[0]/2 + Gooseneck[OD]),0,Heatsink[2] – Protrusion]) // lower lip to shade lamp module | |
| scale([1,1,2]) | |
| cube(Heatsink – [2*HSLip,2*HSLip,0],center=true); | |
| translate([0,0,Base[2]/2]) // goooseneck insertion | |
| rotate([0,-90,0]) rotate(180/8) | |
| PolyCyl(Gooseneck[OD],Base[0],8); | |
| translate([0,0,Base[2]/2 + Gooseneck[ID]/2]) // wire exit | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| PolyCyl(Gooseneck[ID],Base[2],6); | |
| translate([Gooseneck[OD],0,(COB[2] – Protrusion)/2]) // wire slot | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| cube([2*Gooseneck[OD],Gooseneck[ID],(COB[2] + Protrusion)],center=true); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //———————- | |
| // Build it | |
| if (Layout == "Show") { | |
| Lamp(); | |
| } | |
| if (Layout == "Build") { | |
| } |
The Suction Control slider on the handle of our shiny new Kenmore Progressive vacuum cleaner varies the speed of the howling motor in the base unit, rather than venting more or less air into the pipe. We like that, but it’s all too easy to inadvertently slide the control and never notice it, sooo I marked the default condition:
Although every vacuum cleaner we’ve ever owned has touted its “quiet operation”, we always wear 30 dB ear muffs and it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between full throttle and not quite so fast…
A recent and rather battered book-on-CD posed more than the usual problems for Asunder, so I finally broke down and fiddled around with cdparanoia and lame. This has obviously been done many times before, but breaking it into two simple steps per CD makes the inevitable errors easier to find and work around.
Invoke cdparanoia thusly to rip an entire CD into separate tracks:
cdparanoia -B -v
The files pop out sporting names like track01.cdda.wav, but they won’t be around long enough for you to develop a deep emotional attachment.
Throw a handful of parameters at lame to convert the WAV files into tagged MP3 files:
d=7
for t in {01..18} ; do lame --preset tape --tt "D${d}:T${t}" --ta "Author Name" --tl "Book title" --tn "${t}/18" --tg "Audio Book" --add-id3v2 track${t}.cdda.wav D${d}-${t}.mp3 ; done
rm track*
There’s surely a way to make a double substitution work in the track sequence, but the syntax, ah, escapes me at the moment.
You might want to not delete the WAV files until you’re happy with the MP3 results.
In any event, that produces a sequence of MP3 files imaginatively named along the lines of D1-01.mp3, which fits neatly into the cramped LCD space available on an MP3 player.
Your quality preferences may differ…
Vacuum cleaner dust brushes, separated by millimeters and decades:
The bulky one on the left came with our new Kenmore Progressive vacuum cleaner. It’s fine for dust on a flat horizontal or vertical surface and totally useless for dust on actual objects. It’s supposed to snap around the handle at the end of the cleaner’s flexy hose, where it helps make the entire assembly too large and too clumsy, or on the end of the “wand”, where it’s at the wrong angle. The bonus outer shell slides around the stubby bristles in the unlikely event they’re too long for the flat surface at hand.
The brush on the right emerged from the Box o’ Electrolux Parts that Came With The House™, must be half a century old, and consists of a cast aluminum lump with various holes milled into it, adorned with luxuriously long and flexible horsehair. Suffice it to say they don’t make ’em like that any more. Heck, they probably don’t make horses with hair like that any more, either.
The blue plastic adapter atop the aluminum ball looks like you’d expect by now:
The short snout fits neatly into the space available inside the ball. The abrupt ledge at the top of the snout, of course, didn’t work well; I rushed the design for a show-n-tell.
The OpenSCAD source code (as a Github gist) bevels that ledge and tweaks the interior air channel a bit:
| // Kenmore vacuum cleaner nozzle adapters | |
| // Ed Nisley KE4ZNU December 2015 | |
| // Layout options | |
| Layout = "LuxBrush"; // MaleFitting CoilWand FloorBrush CreviceTool ScrubbyTool LuxBrush | |
| //- Extrusion parameters must match reality! | |
| // Print with +1 shells and 3 solid layers | |
| ThreadThick = 0.25; | |
| ThreadWidth = 0.40; | |
| HoleWindage = 0.2; | |
| function IntegerMultiple(Size,Unit) = Unit * ceil(Size / Unit); | |
| Protrusion = 0.1; // make holes end cleanly | |
| //———————- | |
| // Dimensions | |
| ID1 = 0; // for tapered tubes | |
| ID2 = 1; | |
| OD1 = 2; | |
| OD2 = 3; | |
| LENGTH = 4; | |
| OEMTube = [35.0,35.0,41.7,40.5,30.0]; // main fitting tube | |
| EndStop = [OEMTube[ID1],OEMTube[ID2],47.5,47.5,6.5]; // flange at end of main tube | |
| FittingOAL = OEMTube[LENGTH] + EndStop[LENGTH]; | |
| $fn = 12*4; | |
| //———————- | |
| // Useful routines | |
| module PolyCyl(Dia,Height,ForceSides=0) { // based on nophead's polyholes | |
| Sides = (ForceSides != 0) ? ForceSides : (ceil(Dia) + 2); | |
| FixDia = Dia / cos(180/Sides); | |
| cylinder(r=(FixDia + HoleWindage)/2, | |
| h=Height, | |
| $fn=Sides); | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Male fitting on end of Kenmore tools | |
| // This slides into the end of the handle or wand and latches firmly in place | |
| module MaleFitting() { | |
| Latch = [40,11.5,5.0]; // rectangle latch opening | |
| EntryAngle = 45; // latch entry ramp | |
| EntrySides = 16; | |
| EntryHeight = 15.0; // lower edge on *inside* of fitting | |
| KeyRadius = 1.0; | |
| translate([0,0,6.5]) | |
| difference() { | |
| union() { | |
| cylinder(d1=OEMTube[OD1],d2=OEMTube[OD2],h=OEMTube[LENGTH]); // main tube | |
| hull() // insertion guide | |
| for (i=[-(6.0/2 – KeyRadius),(6.0/2 – KeyRadius)], | |
| j=[-(28.0/2 – KeyRadius),(28.0/2 – KeyRadius)], | |
| k=[-(26.0/2 – KeyRadius),(26.0/2 – KeyRadius)]) | |
| translate([(i – (OEMTube[ID1]/2 + OEMTube[OD1]/2)/2 + 6.0/2),j,(k + 26.0/2 – 1.0)]) | |
| sphere(r=KeyRadius,$fn=8); | |
| translate([0,0,-EndStop[LENGTH]]) // wand tube butts against this | |
| cylinder(d=EndStop[OD1],h=EndStop[LENGTH] + Protrusion); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,-OEMTube[LENGTH]]) // main bore | |
| cylinder(d=OEMTube[ID1],h=2*OEMTube[LENGTH] + 2*Protrusion); | |
| translate([0,-11.5/2,23.0 – 5.0]) // latch opening | |
| cube(Latch); | |
| translate([OEMTube[ID1]/2 + EntryHeight/tan(90-EntryAngle),0,0]) // latch ramp | |
| translate([(Latch[1]/cos(180/EntrySides))*cos(EntryAngle)/2,0,(Latch[1]/cos(180/EntrySides))*sin(EntryAngle)/2]) | |
| rotate([0,-EntryAngle,0]) | |
| intersection() { | |
| rotate(180/EntrySides) | |
| PolyCyl(Latch[1],Latch[0],EntrySides); | |
| translate([-(2*Latch[0])/2,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cube(2*Latch[0],center=true); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Refrigerator evaporator coil wand | |
| module CoilWand() { | |
| union() { | |
| translate([0,0,50.0]) | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| difference() { | |
| cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=42.0,h=50.0); | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=35.0,d2=35.8,h=100); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,50.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| MaleFitting(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Refrigerator evaporator coil wand | |
| module FloorBrush() { | |
| union() { | |
| translate([0,0,60.0]) | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| difference() { | |
| union() { | |
| cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=32.4,h=10.0); | |
| translate([0,0,10.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=32.4,d2=30.7,h=50.0 + Protrusion); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=28.0,d2=24.0,h=100); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,60.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| MaleFitting(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Crevice tool | |
| module CreviceTool() { | |
| union() { | |
| translate([0,0,60.0]) | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| difference() { | |
| union() { | |
| cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=32.0,h=10.0); | |
| translate([0,0,10.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=32.0,d2=30.4,h=50.0 + Protrusion); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=28.0,d2=24.0,h=100); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,60.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| MaleFitting(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Mystery brush | |
| module ScrubbyTool() { | |
| union() { | |
| translate([0,0,60.0]) | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| difference() { | |
| union() { | |
| cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=31.8,h=10.0); | |
| translate([0,0,10.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=31.8,d2=31.0,h=50.0 + Protrusion); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=26.0,d2=24.0,h=100); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,60.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| MaleFitting(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //——————- | |
| // Electrolux brush ball | |
| module LuxBrush() { | |
| union() { | |
| translate([0,0,30.0]) | |
| rotate([180,0,0]) | |
| difference() { | |
| union() { | |
| cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=30.8,h=10.0); | |
| translate([0,0,10.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=30.8,d2=30.0,h=20.0 + Protrusion); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) | |
| cylinder(d1=25.0,d2=23.0,h=30 + 2*Protrusion); | |
| } | |
| translate([0,0,30.0 – Protrusion]) | |
| MaleFitting(); | |
| } | |
| } | |
| //———————- | |
| // Build it! | |
| if (Layout == "MaleFitting") | |
| MaleFitting(); | |
| if (Layout == "CoilWand") | |
| CoilWand(); | |
| if (Layout == "FloorBrush") | |
| FloorBrush(); | |
| if (Layout == "CreviceTool") | |
| CreviceTool(); | |
| if (Layout == "ScrubbyTool") | |
| ScrubbyTool(); | |
| if (Layout == "LuxBrush") | |
| LuxBrush(); |
That’s supposed to prevent the WordPress post editors from destroying the formatting…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 