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

Photo Lamp Mount: Moah Plastic!

One of the cold shoe mounts I made for the photo lamps cracked:

$Photo Lamp Mount - fractured$
Photo Lamp Mount – fractured

It’s done in PETG with my more-or-less standard two perimeter threads and 15% 3D honeycomb infill, which is Good Enough™ for most of my parts. In this case, there’s obviously not nearly enough plastic in there!

Redoing it with three perimeters and 50% infill should improve the situation, even though it looks identical on the outside:

Photo Lamp Mount – reinstalled

I didn’t replace the other mount. If it breaks, it’ll get the same 50% infill as this one. If this one breaks, I’ll try 75%.

An easy fix!

2020-01-19
Eyelet Punch Reshaping

The hollow punch included with the 5.5 mm eyelet / grommet set had a rather blunt cutting edge:

Eyelet punch – OEM taper

The rainbow colors along the tapered cut suggested at least token hardening of the edge, so I mounted it in the lathe chuck, deployed a rag over the bed ways to collect the dust, and spun it at a few hundred RPM while freehanding the edge with a Dremel heavy-duty slitting wheel resting on the compound:

Eyelet punch – reshaped

It’s not what you’d call “hollow ground”, but at least the edge doesn’t force the outside of the cut surface quite so far outward.

The Tek Circuit Computer decks get their pivot holes cut with a drag knife on the MPCNC, but I won’t be too embarrassed the next time I deploy this thing.

2020-01-18
Schwab / Symantec VIP Access vs. Yubikey
A Yubikey 5 NFC turns out to be perfectly compatible with any website using Symantec’s (no longer available) hardware key and VIP Access (definitely a misnomer) app to generate TOTP access codes, because the sites use bog-standard TOTP. The only difficulty comes from Symantec’s proprietary protocol creating the token linking an ID with a secret value to generate the TOTP codes, which is how they monetize an open standard.

Fortunately, Cyrozap reverse-engineered the Symantec protocol, dlenski mechanized it with a Python script, and it works perfectly:
```
python3 -m venv symkey-env
source symkey-env/bin/activate
pip3 install https://github.com/dlenski/python-vipaccess/archive/HEAD.zip
vipaccess provision -t SYMC
deactivate
```
That spits out a file containing the ID and secret, from which you create a QR code for the Yubikey Authenticator app:
```
qrencode -t UTF8 'otpauth://totp/VIP%20Access:SYMCidnumbers?secret=longsecretgibberish&issuer=Symantec&algorithm=SHA1&digits=6'
```
Fire up the app, wave the Yubikey behind the phone, scan the QR code, wave the Yubikey again to store it, sign in to the Schwab site, turn on 2FA, enter the ID & current TOTP value from the Yubikey Authenticator, and It Just Works™.

Of course, you can kiss Schwab’s tech support goodbye, because you’re on your own. If you ever lose the Yubikey, make sure you know the answers to your allegedly secret questions.

Equally of course, you’re downloading and running random shit from the Intertubes, but …

Now, if only all my financial institutions would get with the program.
2020-01-16
Needle Case Repair

A needle case emerged from the bottom of a drawer in need of repair:

Needle Case – unglued

The original joint used solvent glue and I suppose I could refresh it with acetone, but two blobs of hot melt glue seemed easier and, IMO, more durable.

In any event, it’s once more ready for use:

Needle Case – repaired

Hooray for another zero-dollar repair, although you can see why nobody else does them these days.

2020-01-12
Alkaline Battery Packaging

Apparently, we’ve burned enough cargo aircraft and killed enough people to require careful attention to detail in battery packages:

Amazon alkaline AAA packaging

These “Ships from and sold by Amazon” alkaline AA cells arrived by UPS. They now fall under reasonable requirements to prevent shorting and damage, although the cardboard box wasn’t sturdy enough to prevent them from breaking free laterally.

One might quibble about the “Health & Personal Care Item” description, but, yeah, better battery packaging seems like a good idea.

2020-01-11
Homage Tektronix Circuit Computer: Colored Scales

Although the original Tektronix Circuit Computer had relentlessly monochrome scales, a dash of color added a festive holiday look:

Tek CC – Pilot V5 – color test overview

Well, OK, that’s excessive.

The intent was to see how the pens behaved, with an eye toward accenting general-purpose circular slide rule scales with a few colored characters.

The green pen shows how I built the arrows by drawing a line through vertical arrow characters:

Tek CC – Pilot V5 – plain paper – letters

I like blue ink entirely too much, having used a blue pen as my daily writer for most of my adult life:

Tek CC – Pilot V5 – plain paper – red blue

Red ink for “backwards” scales and suchlike would work well, even if it’s too vivid for the tick marks:

Tek CC – Pilot V5 – plain paper – red green

Those are all on unlaminated plain paper, with plenty of room for improvement.

Seeing as how I’d be doing all the “tool changes” manually, optimizing the plotting sequence would be mandatory: one pen change per color per deck!

2020-01-09
CNC 3018XL: Pen Variations

Cheap 1 mm pens produce scratchy lines:

CNC 3018 – Cheap pen – plain paper

More expensive 0.5 mm Pilot Precise V5RT pens produce well-filled lines:

CNC 3018 – Pilot V5RT – plain paper

Both of those are on plain paper. Better paper would surely improve the results, while moving the cheap pen further into sow’s ear territory.

For reference, the cheap pens use a collet holder:

CNC3018 – Collet pen holder – assembled

The Pilot V5RT pens use a custom holder:

Pilot V5RT holder – installed

A 3D printer really simplifies making things!

2020-01-08