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.

Tag: Improvements

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

HQ Sixteen: Under-arm Lights

With the nose ring lights in place, I soldered up eight more 24 V LED strips to light the quilt under the HQ Sixteen’s arm:

HQ Sixteen – under-arm lights – bottom view

A simple fixture aligned the strips for soldering:

HQ Sixteen – under-arm lights – soldering fixture

I intended to peel the masking tape off the glossy cardboard, then use it to keep the strips aligned while I pressed the PSA adhesive on the back of the strips to the machine. The silicone molded over the LEDS turned out to be supremely un-stick-able to the tape and the strips got far more handling than I planned, but I think the adhesive will work.

The cable from the power supply now has a pair of JST SM connectors on the end. Although crimping two conductors into the same pin is not good practice, all 14 of the LED strips draw an aggregate of maybe 130 mA, so I think it’ll suffice.

The JST connectors hide behind the ribbon cable going to the machine’s front panel, so there’s not a lot of basis for arguing they’re unsightly:

HQ Sixteen – under-arm lights – side view

The finished part of the quilt passes under the bottom bar on the left (the rear of the machine table) and forms an ever-increasing roll around the top bar; the white fabric leader attaches to the edge of the quilt. The LED strips illuminate the in-progress part of the quilt under the arm and should be far enough forward to not snag on the rolled-up finished part.

I think there’s now enough light to work with:

HQ Sixteen – under-arm lights – top view

We recently decided the motor stall Heisenbug has vanished, perhaps due to my re-soldering the motor power supply components on the PCB. It’s hard to tell with Heisenbugs, but sometimes they decohere into a desirable state.

After the better part of a year, Mary’s vintage HQ Sixteen runs better than new!

A blog search unearths an extensive project in reverse chronologic order.

2025-06-20
PolyDryer: Noctua Fan Upgrade
The OEM fan inside the PolyDryer is annoyingly loud, even to my deflicted hearing, so I printed a Noctua NF-A4x10 fan adapter and installed a much quieter fan:

PolyDryer – Noctua fan installed

The adapter is upside-down from the suggested orientation, I didn’t bother screwing it to the fan because it has sleeves fitting into the fan screw holes, the slot holds everything together, the vivid green EVA foam sheet sits atop a craft adhesive sheet (both cut with scissors!) ensuring they don’t part company, and it works just fine.

Of course, the OEM fan has a three-wire cable and the Noctua has a four-wire cable:

PolyDryer – OEM vs Noctua fan cables

Although you can’t quite make it out on the white plastic, both connectors have their Pin 1 marks adjacent to each other. I oriented them like that to put the pin release latches on top; a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

Fortunately, Noctua documents their pinout, a bit of probing verified the OEM fan pinout (which does not match the Noctua 3-wire pinout), and the Basement Warehouse Wing emitted an assortment of matching JST XHP connectors. Chop off the black connector and rewire it in a 3-pin XHP connector:
- Pin 1 = OEM Red → Noctua Yellow = +24 V
- Pin 2 = OEM Yellow → Noctua Green = Tachometer
- Pin 3 = OEM Black → Noctua Black = Ground / Common
- unused = Noctua Blue = PWM Speed Control
Which is barely visible plugged into the control PCB on the left:

PolyDryer – Noctua fan wiring

The brown thermocouple wire in the upper right didn’t start out in the notch intended to pass it out of the air flow downwind of the heater:

PolyDryer – crunched thermocouple wire

The wire is exceedingly stiff and requires some persuasion, but it will eventually stay in that slot.

One of the PolyDryer modifications (which I can no longer find) suggested improving the vent openings, because the default slats block more than half of the surface area:

PolyDryer – molded vent slats

I chopped out all but three of the slats and stuffed an arch of aluminum window screen into each recess:

PolyDryer – vent screens installed

Admittedly, it looks a bit raggedy:

PolyDryer – vent screen – detail

As far as I can tell without actually measuring anything, the air flow has increased.

Now, to see how whether all that makes any difference.
2025-06-17
Garden Hose Valve Wrench: Decommissioning

Mary found the wrench I made five years ago in the bottom of her tool bucket:

Hose Valve Knob – five years later

Having moved away from the garden with all the valves that wrench turned, it can now go into the 3D Printed Sample Box for use in the unlikely event I ever give another talk on the subject.

I’d design it differently these days, what with BOSL2 in my sails, but it got the job done.

Some things last long enough!

2025-06-16
HQ Sixteen: Nose Ring Lights Power Supply

With the quilt off the HQ Sixteen, I could install the 24 V power supply for the Nose Ring Lights:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply installed

IMO, black nylon screws look spiffier than brass.

The solid model shows the covers have a 2 mm overlap with the power supply case to keep them lined up:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply cover – solid model

I managed to reuse three of the five holes from the previous 12 V power supply and drill only three more:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply detail

The tops of the power supply ears aren’t quite flat, giving the standoffs a slight tilt that the covers mostly drag back into alignment.

The M4 brass standoffs screw into holes tapped in the thick plastic, thus eliminating nuts inside the power pod:

HQ Sixteen Nose Ring Lights – power supply wiring

The yellow silicone tape wraps two pairs of Wago connectors that dramatically simplify electrical connections in anything with enough space for their chonky bodies.

In the unlikely event you need such things, the original post links the OpenSCAD source code.

With the power supply in place, I think I can put some LED strips under the arm of the machine to light up more of the quilt than the nose lights can reach. More pondering is in order.

2025-06-13

WS-5000 Anemometer Bird Spike Ring

A critter made off with our battered plastic rain gauge, so I set up an Ambient Weather WS-5000 station to tell Mary how much rain her garden was getting. I added the Official Bird Spike Ring around the rain gauge to keep birds off, but robins began perching atop the anemometer while surveying the yard and crapping on the insolation photocell.

After a few false starts, the anemometer now has its own spikes:

It’s a snugly fitting TPU ring:

Weather Station Spikes - build test piece — Weather Station Spikes – build test piece

The spikes are Chromel A themocouple wire, because a spool of the stuff didn’t scamper out of the way when I opened the Big Box o’ Specialty Wire. As you can tell from the picture, it’s very stiff (which is good for spikes) and hard to straighten (which is bad for looking cool).

The shape in the middle is a hole diameter test piece. Next time around, I’ll use thicker 14 AWG copper wire:

Weather station spikes - test piece — Weather station spikes – test piece

The test piece showed I lack good control over the TPU extrusion parameters on the Makergear M2, as holes smaller than about 2 mm vanish, even though the block’s outside dimensions are spot on. This application wasn’t too critical, so I sharpened the wire ends and stabbed them into the middle of the perimeter threads encircling the hole.

Now we’ll discover how TPU survives weather.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	// Ambient Weather – Ambient Weather WS-5000 anemometer bird spike ring
	// Ed Nisley – KE4ZNU
	// 2025-06-09

	include <BOSL2/std.scad>

	Layout = "Show"; // [Show,Build,Slice]

	/* [Hidden] */

	HoleWindage = 0.2;
	Protrusion = 0.1;

	ID = 0;
	OD = 1;
	LENGTH = 2;

	SpikeOC = 30.0; // straight-line distance between spikes, OEM = 35

	WallThick = 4.0;

	BandID = 3.5*INCH – 0.5; // = OD of weather station
	BandOD = BandID + 2*WallThick;

	BandHeight = 8.0;

	SpikeOD = 1.7 + HoleWindage; // wire diameter
	SpikeWall = 2.0; // around wires

	SpikeBCD = BandOD;

	MountOD = SpikeOD + 2*SpikeWall;

	NumSpikes = ceil(PI*BandOD/SpikeOC); // need integral number of spikes
	SpikeAngle = 360/NumSpikes;
	NumSides = 3*NumSpikes;

	echo(SpikeAngle=SpikeAngle);
	echo(NumSpikes=NumSpikes);


	//———-
	// Define Shapes

	module Slice() {

	difference() {
	hull() {
	pie_slice(h=BandHeight,d=BandOD,$fn=NumSides,ang=SpikeAngle,spin=-SpikeAngle/2,anchor=BOTTOM);
	right(SpikeBCD/2 – MountOD/2)
	cyl(h=BandHeight,d=MountOD,realign=true,anchor=LEFT+BOTTOM,$fn=2*6);
	}
	down(Protrusion) {
	cyl(h=BandHeight + 2*Protrusion,d=BandID,$fn=NumSides,circum=true,realign=true,anchor=BOTTOM);
	right(SpikeBCD/2)
	cyl(h=BandHeight + 2*Protrusion,d=SpikeOD,$fn=6,circum=true,realign=true,anchor=BOTTOM);
	}
	}

	}

	module SpikeRing() {

	for (i=[0:NumSpikes-1])
	zrot(i*SpikeAngle)
	Slice();


	}

	//———-
	// Build things

	if (Layout == "Slice") {
	Slice();
	}


	if (Layout == "Show") {
	left(SpikeBCD/2)
	Slice();
	SpikeRing();
	}

	if (Layout == "Build") {
	SpikeRing();
	}

view raw Weather Station Spikes.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2025-06-12

PolyDryer Internal Fan Puzzle

With the humidity inside the PolyDryer boxes being roughly proportional to the amount of filament on the spool, I printed a slightly modified airlock plate and a TPU seal ring, then stuck a tiny fan on it:

PolyDryer airlock plate – tiny fan

It just barely clears the curved air guide inside:

PolyDryer airlock plate – tiny fan installed

The tea bags full of desiccant allow some wind between them and the filament in the spool, but I obviously must re-think that setup. There’s enough clearance for what should be reasonable circulation, so i defined it to be good enough for now.

The box of TPU started at 25 %RH, dropped to 22 %RH overnight, then returned to 25 %RH the next day:

PolyDryer TPU – 25 pct RH

Now that I’m watching more often, I’ve seen the meter glitch to 10% for a few seconds:

PolyDryer TPU – 10 pct RH glitch

A humidity indicator card suggests the air is under 20 %RH:

PolyDryer TPU – humidity indicator card

It may be the filament can outgas water vapor as rapidly as the desiccant can remove it, but I expected the fan to make at least a little difference.

I have no idea what’s going on in those boxes.

2025-06-10
Shower Head Hose Clamp

The new shower head’s hose dangled directly in front of the faucet knob, so I conjured a simple clamp to pull the down-going half over to the side of the stall and keep the up-going half away from the faucet:

Shower head hose clamp – installed

The black nylon M6 screw goes into a hole tapped in the plastic cap atop the aluminum extrusion; I was mildly surprised that worked as well as I hoped. It’s basically invisible from outside the shower stall.

Stipulated: laser-cut 3 mm acrylic probably isn’t the right material for the job, but it’s a quick & easy way to discover if that’s the right place to clamp the hose.

While installing those two pieces, it occurred to me the result would be much stronger if the two “jaws” overlapped and had a pair of screws holding them together, so the LightBurn layout includes that idea for the next time:

Shower Head Hose Clamp – LightBurn layout

The Hole Template simplified getting the hole dead center in the plastic cap, because drilling it required an awkward reach across the end of the vanity.

There is zero chance this will fit your shower & hose, but now you have the general idea.

2025-06-03