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

  • Relocated Sherline Tool Length Probe Switch

    Putting the tool length switch atop the tooling plate has the advantage that it’s higher than most of the workpieces, but it also soaks up a bit of precious real estate. Moving it off the plate to the table puts it nearly level with the top of the plate, but at least now I have room for clamp blocks and suchlike:

    Relocated tool length switch
    Relocated tool length switch

    It turns out that Sherline T-nuts protrude just an itsy above the top of the table (which lets them locate the tooling plate to the slot, for example), so I shortened one by filing it down to size:

    Original and shortened Sherline T-nuts
    Original and shortened Sherline T-nuts

    Now, I’d like to front as if all that happened in a rational and well-thought-out manner, but the fact of the matter is that I completely used up one 10-32 stainless socket-head cap screw while thinking it was somehow still bottoming out in the slot, before realizing that the T-nut was sticking up. Drat!

  • Soldering Third Hand Alligator Clip Improvement

    The third hand grabbers I have all put bare alligator clip ferrules in the adjustable sockets with a thumbscrew to secure them. Over time, that thumbscrew crunches the ferrule and makes the clip hard to adjust. This has become enough of an annoyance that I rummaged around in the brass tubing cutoffs to find some that fit into the ferrules:

    Alligator clip with brass tube insert
    Alligator clip with brass tube insert

    Given the sorry state of the ferrules, they required quite a bit of squeezing and shaping until that tube fit inside, but after that they rounded up nicely.

    I suppose I should solder the tubes in place, but …

  • Basement Safe Humidity: Sealing the Door

    My assumption that the basement document safe had an effective door seal turned out to be wrong, so I replaced the bagged desiccant with a tray of granules, sealed the door with masking tape, and tried again:

    Basement Safe Humidity - 2012-01-12
    Basement Safe Humidity – 2012-01-12

    The jagged black curve shows the Basement Laboratory temperature trending toward the usual mid-50s winter level. The dead-flat horizontal blue line at 15% RH shows the tray of desiccant can keep up with whatever air leakage might occur around the tape and through the floor bolts.

    I cannot find the table (that I once had and know exists somewhere) which lists various desiccants and their terminal humidity levels in a sealed container.  I’m pretty sure the low humidity means it’s one of the clay-based desiccants, not silica gel.

  • Power Supply Banana Jack Misfit

    After butchering that fancy Tektronix test lead thing for the SMD tweezers, I hung the bitter end in my cable tangle. Turns out I needed a power cord to bring up the brassboard of the Wouxun GPS interface, so I soldered it up, went to plug it in, and … the Tek plugs didn’t fit the plated supply jacks.

    Power Supply Banana Jacks
    Power Supply Banana Jacks

    Now, if I had to choose whether Tek plugs are oversized or Made In China jacks are undersized, well, you can probably guess my answer.

    Turns out that the jacks should be 4 mm ID, which is actually a 5/32 hard-inch size because banana jacks date back to the days before millimeters became a force to be reckoned with. They were actually 3.8 mm ID, which wouldn’t usually matter except for the fact that the Tek plugs have a nice solid bullet end that’s just about exactly 4 mm OD.

    So I chucked up a 5/32 inch drill, perched the power supply on a block of wood (to clear the fuse & cord in on the back panel) on the drill press table, and hand-held it while clearing out the holes with a low spindle speed. You can see the nice, shiny brass inside those jacks in the photo; they used to have lumpy silvery plating inside that was probably responsible for much of the 0.2 mm shrinkage.

    The jacks also don’t have the usual crosswise hole near the base to accept a bare wire, which is an occasional nuisance. I was tempted to drill that hole, but decided I’ll leave that project for another time.

  • Geek Accessories: Cases Therefore

    Mary made me several presents early this year: a new belt pack, a camera case for the Canon SX230HS, and a touchup for the Zire 71 case:

    Belt pack - camera case - PDA case
    Belt pack – camera case – PDA case

    The belt pack has an interior lining with many side pockets for the stuff I deem essential; it’s also large enough to hold both the camera and the PDA when I’m out biking around. The camera case includes a pocket nestling a battery against the camera’s front side, beside the lens cap. The Zire case, well, at some point I suppose I’ll be forced to get a phone, but, until then, this will suffice.

    They’re all made from coated pack cloth, not that I expect to dunk myself in water (or that it’d do any good), but it seems to never wear out.

    *hugs*

    (And, yes, it probably should be “Therefor”, but …)

  • Shower Basket Sucker Relocation

    The outer suckers on the basket in the corner of the shower didn’t line up with the tiles; either tile dimensions have changed in the last half-century or it’s a hard-metric basket. It didn’t look right when I installed it (now that is a grandiose term if I’ve ever misused one), so (when the thing fell off and landed with a clatter a few days ago) I drilled two additional holes as far away from the corner as I could, using a step drill to prevent the plastic from shattering, and it’s all good.

    Shower basket - redrilled
    Shower basket – redrilled

    Sometimes, they’re easy…

    You’ll note that I heroically resisted the urge to fire the Thing-O-Matic to print some kind of weird-ass safety-orange interposer plate, just because I could.

  • HP 50g Calculator Screen Protector

    A week or so after I got my HP 49GX calculator, I managed to drop a vernier caliper on it. Interior points downward, of course, putting a nice divot on the non-glare plastic over the LCD panel.

    A week or so after I got my HP 50g calculator, I applied a screen protector sheet harvested from the lifetime supply I bought for my original Zire 71, back in the day.

    HP 50g calculator screen protector
    HP 50g calculator screen protector

    The fact that it’s an almost perfect fit and that the calculator sports a monochrome LCD with lower resolution is a sad commentary on the state of the calculator art.

    Taking that picture in low-angle full sunlight makes the protector sheet look awful. In actual use, it’s nearly invisible. Haven’t dropped anything on it yet, either.

    And, yes, I did cut it out around the HP logo button in the upper right corner.