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
Over the winter, my Prusa MK4 printer occasionally coughed up a MINTEMP error when its platform heater cannot maintain the 90 °C called for by PETG. I finally added a cardboard insulating layer under the PCB heater:
Prusa MK4 Headbed – cardboard insulation
Yes, the blue tool layer rectangle marking the centers of the corner cutouts is offset 2.5 mm to the left:
Heatbed Insulation – LightBurn layout
The layout is not symmetric, because Prusa wanted to prevent you from installing the PCB incorrectly, so I needed three tries to get it right.
The alert reader will note the lack of the front-corner chamfers in the picture letting your fingers get under the corners to remove the steel sheet. I cut ’em off with a utility knife and you get the benefit of hindsight.
Whether this minimal insulation will solve the problem shall remain unknown until the coldest days of next winter, but eliminating drafts around the thermistor taped to the bottom of the PCB can’t possibly be a Bad Thing™.
The LightBurn layout exported to an SVG image as a GitHub Gist:
The entrance hole was 1-½ inch ⌀, a bit larger than the 1 inch ⌀ preferred by wrens and entirely suitable for the pair of House Sparrrows who also took an interest in the property:
Bird House – sparrow inside
This led to considerable discussion and displays of outright hostility:
Bird House entrance reducer – wren vs sparrow
Sparrows and wrens disagree on nestbuilding materials, with the wrens hauling twigs into the box and sparrows hauling them back out again.
Because wrens have better PR agents than sparrows, I intervened by taking the box apart:
Bird House – nest base sticks
Although I realize that’s a lot of work for a small bird, I dumped the contents off the patio and set about reducing the entrance hole:
Bird House – interior cleared
Because birds aren’t too fussy about looks, I sawed off half an inch of 1 inch (ID) CPVC pipe and glued it in the hole:
Bird House entrance reducer – interior glue
The outside looks marginally better:
Bird House entrance reducer – exterior glue
The sparrows continued to approach the hole at full throttle, deploying landing gear and speed brakes at the last possible moment:
Bird House entrance reducer – sparrow approach
But they no longer fit through the hole and eventually gave up trying. The wrens resumed hauling twigs, although we’re not certain they’ll finish the project, as birds tend to build several partial nests before selecting the final one.
An end-of-life roll of parchment paper contributed its serrated cutter bar as raw material for the Gridfinity Tape Dispenser:
Gridfinity Tape Dispenser – razor vs serrated blades
Those teeth look exactly like a tape cutter should look:
Gridfinity Tape Dispenser – serrated blade
It turns out that book repair tape bounces right off the pointy-but-not-keen edges, to the extent the tape did not cut at all, no matter how hard I tugged at any angle. Perhaps filing one side to make the teeth thinner would improve the results; given the cutter’s provenance it seems like putting lipstick on a pig.
The original razor blade continues to work fine, so I dropped the serrated cutter into the hollow under the tape roll against future need.
Mary starts her garden plants at home, then hauls the trays to the garden in a plastic drawer strapped to the rack on her Tour Easy to avoid crushing the plants in the packs. I finally learned enough to make an adapter mating the drawer to the rack:
Bike Rack Tray Holder – in use
It’s made from four layers of laser-cut cardboard glued together with crossed corrugations for stiffness. I intended make a final version from glued-up plywood sheets, but it works surprisingly well as-is and I may just make another when this one wears out.
The rear view:
Bike Rack Tray Holder – rear view
The front has a cutout for the battery powering the rear camera, with the base height allowing enough meat above the battery:
Bike Rack Tray Holder – overview
The upright posts cradling the drawer may be too skinny for durability, which is why this is a prototype. The inner edges of the posts angle outward by a few millimeters to match the drawer’s mold draft.
Four feet locate the holder on the rack rails just ahead of the Ortlieb pack clips:
Bike Rack Tray Holder – rail detail
The rails are 8 mm ⌀ and the cutouts are 9 mm, because a little tolerance goes a long way. Similarly the tab widths just fit the available spaces beside the rail.
The two flat plates support the drawer and space the uprights to match the Ortlieb clips. I intended to mortise the plates into the uprights, but hot melt glue is wonderful stuff and the joint may outlast the cardboard. In retrospect, the outer edges of the plates should align with the inner sides of the uprights for maximum tidiness.
You don’t have that drawer and likely not the racks, so a picture of the LightBurn layout will give you the general idea for your hardware:
Bike Rack Tray Holder – LightBurn layout
Cut four copies of the uprights in two different orientations, glue them together, then do the obvious thing with the plates.
Although the blade clamp is a snug fit in its socket, it has enough stick-out cantilever to move slightly even under minimal force from the diamond tools.
I added a thin cardboard shim, cut with a utility knife (!) and stuck on with a craft adhesive sheet, as the block was about half a millimeter upward with the clamp turned this-a-way and half a millimeter downward the other way. Your mileage / setup will certainly differ.
I like the sharpener, but it’s much fiddlier than I expected.
Work Sharp Precision Sharpener – Blade Clamp operation
What’s not obvious is that the socket can rotate only 180°, which means you (well, I) must remember which way to turn it based on the presence or absence of the small white mark. I get it wrong somewhat more than half the time while sharpening a small symmetric blade, rather than a knife with a handle, so I added arrows to the socket.
With the white mark upward, turn 180° counterclockwise:
A correspondent (you know who you are: thanks!) pointed out the Thermal Cutoff can trip should the 240 V heater coil sag enough to contact the grounded steel air duct surrounding it. Think of a connection from the heater in the lower right corner of the wiring diagram to the neutral wire:
Whirlpool dryer – wiring diagram – detail
If the short is close to the middle of the heating element, the right half the heater will remain active even when all of the normal thermostats cut off the left half. The two half-elements will see about their usual 120 V and won’t burn out, but the right half will continue to heat the air until the Thermal Cutoff trips at 350 °F.
A short near either end of the heating element will subject that section to a higher voltage than usual and promptly burn it out, in which case the dryer will fail to heat due to the much lower power dissipated in the remaining section.
So I took the dryer apart after a (successful!) washing day to see if that had happened.
A spring clip holds the top of the heater duct in place:
Whirlpool Clothes Dryer – bulkhead parts – heater duct clip
AFAICT the clip cannot be disengaged from the duct in situ without removing the hex-head sheet metal screw holding it to the bulkhead, which requires inserting a 5/16 inch socket on the end of a 6 inch extension through a hole in the non-removable upper back cover. You (well, I) cannot see the screw from any position, so the process requires reaching up over the duct to position the socket by feel.
This view looking up inside the dryer with the duct removed shows the clip on the bulkhead:
Whirlpool Clothes Dryer – heater duct clip
The heating element looked to be in fine shape, with no sags or distortions:
Whirlpool Clothes Dryer – heater top view
A side view:
Whirlpool Clothes Dryer – heater side view
Taking a picture of the duct’s interior is impossible, but an eyeballometric inspection shows no burns / scorches / pits from contact with the coils:
Whirlpool Clothes Dryer – heater duct interior
So AFAICT the Thermal Cutoff tripped due to Inherent Defect, rather than an overly high temperature.
Reinstalling the duct requires fitting the spring clip into its slot in the duct, maneuvering the duct onto its lower bulkhead brackets without dropping the clip, persuading the top of the duct with the clip into position, getting the screw into the clip and the hole, then aligning the socket with the screw. If I were doing this for a living, I would definitely charge you extra; newer dryers have an easily removable heating element for well and good reason.
So the dryer is, once again, back together again and, once again, works as well as it ever did, with another set of thermostats / cutoffs in the box of dryer and washer parts against future need.
For reference, the heater seems to be a WP4391960.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
