Tag: Repairs

If it used to work, it can work again

Kenmore Progressive Vacuum Tool Adapters: Second Failure

Pretty much as expected, the dust brush nozzle failed again, adjacent to the epoxy repair:

Dust brush adapter - second break — Dust brush adapter – second break

A bit of rummaging turned up some ¾ inch Schedule 40 PVC pipe which, despite the fact that no plumbing measurement corresponds to any physical attribute, had about the right OD to fit inside the adapter’s ID:

Dust brush - PVC reinforcement — Dust brush – PVC reinforcement

The enlarged bore leaves just barely enough space for a few threads around the circumference. Fortunately, the pipe OD is a controlled dimension, because it must fit inside all the molded PVC elbows / tees / caps / whatever.

The pipe ID isn’t a controlled dimension and, given that the walls seemed far too thick for this purpose, I deployed the boring bar:

Dust brush adapter - reinforced tube - boring — Dust brush adapter – reinforced tube – boring

That’s probably too much sticking out of the chuck, but sissy cuts saved the day. The carriage stop keeps the boring bar 1 mm away from the whirling chuck.

Bandsaw it to length and face the ends:

Dust brush adapter - reinforcement — Dust brush adapter – reinforcement

The PVC tube extends from about halfway along the steep taper from the handle fitting out to the end, with the section closest to the handle making the most difference.

Ram it flush with the end:

Dust brush adapter - reinforced tube - detail — Dust brush adapter – reinforced tube – detail

I thought about gluing it in place, but it’s a sufficiently snug press fit that I’m sure it won’t go anywhere.

Natural PETG probably isn’t the right color:

Dust brush adapter - reinforced tube - installed — Dust brush adapter – reinforced tube – installed

Now, let’s see how long that repair lasts …

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	//——————-
	// eBay horsehair dusting brush
	// Hacked for 3/4" Schedule 40 PVC stiffening tube

	module DustBrush() {

	union() {
	translate([0,0,40.0])
	rotate([180,0,0])
	difference() {
	union() {
	cylinder(d1=EndStop[OD1],d2=31.8,h=10.0);
	translate([0,0,10.0 – Protrusion])
	cylinder(d1=32.0,d2=30.0,h=30.0 + Protrusion);
	}
	translate([0,0,-Protrusion])
	cylinder(d1=26.0,d2=24.0,h=100);
	translate([0,0,-Protrusion]) // 3/4 inch Sch 40 PVC
	PolyCyl(27.0,100);
	}
	translate([0,0,40.0 – Protrusion])
	MaleFitting();
	}
	}

view raw Kenmore Wand Bushings – Reinforced Dust Brush Adapter.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2016-11-29

Gilmour Garden Hose Y Valve: FAIL

Mary couldn’t unscrew either of the two outlet hoses emerging from one of the (many) Y valves in her Vassar Farms plot. After deploying the Lesser Vise-Grip from my bike toolkit to no avail, I brought a Greater Vise-Grip from the shop and applied brute force. During that process, the plastic inlet hose fitting ripped off the valve and sprayed all but one of its latching teeth across the plot:

Gilmour hose Y valve – inlet fitting

As it turns out, the male outlet hose fittings on all the metal-body Gilmour Y valves in the plot have corroded:

Gilmour hose Y valve – thread corrosion

The scarred knurls show the force required to break the brass hose ring loose and unscrew it:

Gilmour hose Y valve – hose interior

Some of that crud may be hard water deposits, but the destruction of the male threads seems like a galvanic reaction among all the various metals in play.

The male fitting began rotating in the valve body, so I crushed it in the bench vise to make more headway. While I had the victim clamped down, I hacksawed a slit through the housing, pried back the edges, and freed the parts for one leg of the Y:

Gilmour hose Y valve – parts

You’d think “not corroding” would be high on the list of attributes for a garden hose valve…

2016-11-25
Kitchen Chair Leg Glide

A stick in the ground marking a repair:

Kitchen chair leg glide

The white plastic glide / slide / foot / cap / whatever is molded around a simple nail that broke a divot out of the foot. Fortunately, I caught it before the nail gouged the kitchen floor.

Under normal conditions, I’d replace the foot from my heap, but, my heap having become somewhat depleted, I swapped in another chair, chipped out the broken plastic, undercut the divot, filled it with JB Kwik epoxy, gooshed the foot in place, and taped it until it cured.

We’ll see how long this lasts …

2016-11-23
Hair Dryer Fuzz

Mary reported that her hair dryer didn’t have nearly as much oomph as in the Good Old Days. After a struggle to remove the rear cover (with no affordance to turn in the direction required to release the hidden latches), this appeared:

Hair dryer inlet fuzz

One snort from the shop vacuum returned it to the Good Old Days.

That was easy…

2016-11-19
Cropping Images in a PDF
For reasons not relevant here, I had a PDF made from scanned page images with far too much whitespace around the Good Stuff. As with all scanned pages, the margins contain random artifacts that inhibit automagic cropping, so manual intervention was required.

Extract the images as sequentially numbered JPG files:
```
pdfimages -j mumble.pdf mumble
```
Experimentally determine how much whitespace to remove, then:
```
for f in mumble-0??.jpg ; do convert -verbose $f -shave 225x150 ${f%%.*}a.jpg ; done
```
You could use mogrify to shave the images in-place. However, not modifying the files simplifies the iteration process by always starting with the original images.

Stuff the cropped images back into a PDF:
```
convert mumble-0??a.jpg mumble-shaved.pdf
```
Profit!
2016-11-18
Scale Cover Repair

You can only drop a small kitchen scale so many times before the plastic cover / weighing tray breaks:

Magnum scale cover – glued and clamped

The trick was to anchor the cover to the glass plate with the big clamp so that the smaller clamps could exert force straight down on the edge, without flipping the lid due to the bevel. With that all set up: apply IPS #4 to the broken edges, insert pieces, apply clamps, wait overnight.

For the record, my morning mug o’ green tea starts with 4 (-0.0 +0.4) g of leaves…

2016-11-17
More Kickstand Plates

Having recently left the last of the kickstand plates somewhere along our route, I bandsawed, belt-sanded, and Forstner-drilled a new set:

Kickstand plates

The slightly rectangular shape extracted four plates from of a scrap of 3/8 inch plywood, with almost nothing left over. The fourth plate had already found its way into the under-seat bag by the time I thought of a picture.

My can of fluorescent red paint having lost its mojo since the most recent application, these shall remain unpainted forever more; as even forget-me-not red seems to have little effect, that may not matter.

2016-11-08