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: Repairs

If it used to work, it can work again

Wrights SideWinder Bobbin Winder: Laying On Of Hands

Mary attempted to wind a bobbin using the Wrights SideWinder Bobbin Winder she got from a friend:

Sidewinder bobbin winder – top

The URL in the instructions is dead, but the Sidewinder lives on as the Simplicity SideWinder Portable Bobbin Winder:

Simplicity Sidewinder Bobbin Winder

Looks kinda pallid to me, too, although hardcore BarbieCore is also most definitely not our thing.

Anyhow, the motor didn’t even twitch when pressing the button, so after I verified the two AA alkaline cells were Just Fine, I laid it on the Electronics Bench and popped the top to see what was the matter:

Sidewinder bobbin winder – interior wiring

For the record, the red and black wires at the battery compartment are exactly reversed from what you might expect based on, say, the colors of your multimeter probes. I know better, but it comes as a surprise every time.

The pushbutton switch pulls in the relay (red block in the middle), which latches on until the bobbin fills and the accumulated thread lifts the finger riding on the bobbin to rotate the white cam (under the motor), thus opening the switch (black block), releasing the relay, and shutting off the motor.

Which, of course, worked perfectly after I stuck the alkalines back in place on the bench and poked the button to watch the proceedings.

It’s all back together again and continues to run, so I’ll declare victory until the next time she fills a bobbin and, predictably, it doesn’t start.

2025-03-31
Juki TL-2010Q Bottom Cover

Mary gave her Juki TL-2010Q sewing machine a deep cleaning & oiling, deputizing me to remove & replace the covers.

For the record, standing the machine on its left end is the least-awful way to get the bottom cover off and on:

Juki TL2010Q – bottom cover on end

You must remove all six of those husky screws; the black feet remain firmly stuck in their recesses. It’s not particularly stable in that orientation, so keep a firm hand on the top to prevent an expensive fall.

I laid it down for the rest of the session:

Juki TL2010Q – interior cleaning

She was unenthusiastic about wearing my headband light. Maybe next time.

It reassembled in reverse order and, after a brief tussle with the bobbin winder finger in the upper covers, runs smoothly.

2025-03-28
TEC Drawing Kit: Reconditioned Cover

Our Young Engineer recently rebuilt the cover of a “vintage” drawing kit, with fabric pockets for protractors & scales and real leather hinges, thereby raising a long-procrastinated project to the top of my to-do list:

TEC Drawing Set – top old

I know my father used it when he took drafting after high school in 1929. His penmanship and drawing ability were up to par well before that.

The inside sports a TEC logo:

TEC Drawing Set – open old

Some searching revealed it’s a No. 718 Drafting Set from the Technical Supply Company of Scranton and appeared in their 1913 catalog:

TEC Brand Catalog p68

The printing on the inside of the flap differs, but the logo has TEC in the middle.

My father did not attend college and, in the teeth of The Great Depression, $26.50 was certainly too spendy for his family:

CPI Calculator – 1929 to 2025

When the catalog was printed in 1913, No. 718 cost the equivalent of $862.82. Nowadays, similar sets once again cost about twenty bucks on eBay, which tells you something about economics.

None of that information changes what I know.

Having recently touched a roll of Kraft-Tex while shelving some boxes, this seemed reasonable:

TEC Drawing Set – top new

It lacks pockets for the tools I’ve added:

TEC Drawing Set – scales new

In retrospect, I should have used two leather snaps, but three would be excessive.

I folded the Kraft-Tex flat across a steel scale to make the first folds around the base, then finger-crimped folds at the top of the base with subsequent crisping around the scale:

TEC Drawing Set – open new

The underside of the original case seemed stable:

TEC Drawing Set – case bottom

This may be sacrilege, but I saw no point in peeling the bottom just to cover it up,so I stuck the Kraft-Tex in place with a rectangle of adhesive sheet.

It doesn’t look the same, but it still gives me a warm feeling.

It still has the tiny wrench needed to adjust all its screws:

TEC Drawing Set – wrench

It’s on 0.1 inch graph paper and is 40 mil = 1 mm thick, should you want to make your own. The blades taper down to essentially a knife edge, which is why it’s made from hard blue steel.

I remember being fascinated by that little pig when I was a pup.

Putting some scraps to good use, I stuck a cushion in the anvil for the next time I punch down a leather snap:

Leather Snap kit – cushioned anvil

The LightBurn SVG layout as a GitHub Gist:

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view raw TEC Drafting Set cover – LightBurn layout.svg hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2025-03-21
Road Construction: New Lamp Bases
Seen in the equipment marshalling yard for the new traffic circle at the intersection of Raymond Avenue and Rt 376 / Hooker Avenue:

Street Lamp Base – excavated

The backstory:
- Road Construction: Collateral Damage
- Road Construction: Continual Damage
Apparently they excavated around the smashed bases and sawed off the conduits:

Street Lamp Base – sawed conduit

Then they yoinked the concrete cylinders, installed new bases, re-connected the conduits, cast more concrete, and installed the posts:

Street Lamp Base – Rombout House Ln – detail

I think the two “Signal” box covers flush with the surface on either side of Rombout House Lane lie just beyond the edges of what will eventually be the repaved road at the intersection.

Street Lamp Base – Rombout House Ln – overview

Given how much damage the base at that intersection encountered, my visualization of the Cosmic All says that pole will not survive the year unless they install a few well-spaced bollards.

There’s another pole on the other side of the road I expect will have a full-on collision, too.
2025-03-20
HQ Sixteen: Crud on the Tracks

Having devoted considerable effort to smoothing the HQ Sixteen’s path across the table, with commensurate improvement, Mary reported the machine suddenly developed a severe hitch in its left-to-right git-along. Given that she is moving fifty pounds of machine with fingertip pressure, anything interrupting its progress is a problem.

We found a spot where the machine abruptly and repeatably stopped rolling, but none of the four wheels had a visible problem and both tracks were smooth. The stitch regulator wheel sat directly above a table surface joint on the track base, but lifting it didn’t change the glitch. Rolling the machine while lifting the rear wheels off the track, which is significantly more difficult than it may seem, still encountered the bump.

Rolling while lifting the front wheels went smoothly, so something was wrong with one of the front wheels. I put the machine back at the worst spot, marked the bottom of both wheel rims, lifted-and-rotated the left wheel half a turn, and found the glitch happened with the right wheel’s mark downward.

I lifted the machine off the carriage, took the carriage to the Basement Shop, and discovered what we could not see in situ:

HQ Sixteen – wheel crud – detail

For scale, the wheels are 8 mm across the flanges.

That thing looks like this up close:

HQ Sixteen – wheel crud – detail

The fibers were almost invisible in my palm as I carried it upstairs to show it off.

Apparently, a few millimeters of plastic fiber dropped from space directly onto the track and got mashed into the wheel as it rolled along. Given the vast expanses of fabric & batting going into projects on a long-arm sewing machine, that crud could have come from anywhere.

As we now realize just how much trouble can come from a tiny bit of crud, finding the next hitch in the git-along will be easier.

2025-03-10
Ooma Telo2: Speaker2 Failure

After not quite six years, the replacement speaker I hacked into our Ooma Telo2 VOIP gadget failed:

Ooma Telo 2 – replacement speaker installed

Quite by coincidence, a few days earlier a friend reported the speaker in her Ooma Telo2 had failed. This seems to be a common failure mode, with the rest of the gadget continuing to work fine.

The failed speaker showed continuity through its coil and, in fact, still had the same 8 Ω DC resistance as an identical speaker pulled from the Drawer o’ Small Speakers. It did not, however, make a sound when connected to a signal generator, where the new speaker squeaked happily.

So it seems the speaker failed by a mechanical jam, rather than an electrical / wiring failure. It’s not as though we play thrash metal music through the thing, but apparently the magnet disintegrated:

Samsung speaker magnet disintegration

Yes, the coil gap is full of nicely oriented magnetic particles:

Samsung speaker magnet disintegration – detail

If Samsung (or whoever built the speaker) used a poorly sealed neodymium magnet, then it would crumble exactly as shown.

I wonder if that’s how the original speaker failed.

Installing the identical replacement speaker involved more hot melt glue and, as expected, restored the Telo2 to normal operation:

Ooma Telo – second speaker installed

I can do that repair eight more times …

2025-02-24
HQ Sixteen: Wheel Base Leveling

Trying out the Track Lock Blocks brought a long-standing puzzle to the surface: the left front wheel rode about a millimeter above its track, with the other three wheels carrying the weight of the machine. Neither that wheel nor the diagonally opposite wheel on the right rear worked well with the Blocks, because the machine rocked on the other two wheels.

I initially thought the carriage rail under the machine was warped, but some poking and prodding showed the left front wheel rode higher than the others from front to back across the entire length of the table.

So I loosened the screws holding the front wheel base plate to the machine and jacked up the front of the machine to get the wheels off their tracks:

HQ Sixteen – track lock – jacking machine

Then I jammed two strips of chipboard into the left side of the gap:

HQ Sixteen – front wheel base plate shim

I planned to use one long strip across the entire wheel base plate, but the screw holding the machine casting to the plate blocks the way, so it now has two shorter strips. Tightening the screws clamped the chipboard in place.

The chipboard tilted the base plate and lowered the left wheel, with the right wheel surely moving slightly upward. Lowering the machine showed both front wheels now carry roughly the same load and the Track Lock Blocks now work the way I expected.

After doing that, I found the recommended procedure in the official HQ Sixteen Service and Troubleshooting manual:

HQ Sixteen – Wheel base shim procedure

The only “planed surface” around here is on the surface plate in the Basement Shop, two flights of stairs away, and I am not carrying either object to meet the other.

In any event, I think the chipboard serves the same purpose as a simple washer, with advantage of a much larger bearing surface, so I’ll call it Good Enough until something else causes me to take the wheel base plate off.

2025-02-19