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

Sandisk 64 GB High Endurance MicroSD Card: End of Life

After about 7.5 years (!) the 64 GB card in my Sony HDR-AS30V helmet camera breathed its last:

SanDisk 64 GB MicroSD card – end of life

Over the course of several rides I noticed many video files ended prematurely or would not play. I gave up attempting to reformat the card in overwrite mode using the Official SD Card formatter after four hours, which says the wear leveler in the card has no spare capacity.

In round numbers, I ride 1700 miles a year at 12 mph, so the card recorded 1000 hours of 1920×1080 video at 60 frame/s, storing one 4.3 GB file every 22.75 minutes for a grand total of 12 TB of data.

Although that’s 188 times the capacity of the card, it rarely held more than an hour or two of data at any one time, because I copy the camera video files to a 3 TB USB hard drive after each ride. I don’t know how the exFAT file system interacts with the card’s wear leveling, but overall it’s much better than the non-high-endurance cards I’d been using way back when.

A new Sandisk 128 GB High Endurance card cost a third of what the 64 GB card did and, after setting the partition label to AS30V, it’s off to a good start:

Street Lamp Pole – Rombout House Ln – 2025-05-07

That’s the street lamp pole installed on the replaced base at the corner of Rt 376 and Rombout House Lane, with the barrels gradually being pushed closer and closer to the pole by turning traffic on the newly paved lane.

That pole is not going to see the end of this year.

Update: The barrels vanished this morning:

Street Lamp Pole – Rombout House Ln – 2025-05-08

Definitely the triumph of hope over experience.

2025-05-08
Power Outage

This housing development was the second in Poughkeepsie to have underground utilities and, to put it mildly, a lot has rotted out over the last 70 years.

Over the weekend, one phase of the AC power flickered and eventually failed completely, with the other phase supplying a steady 120 VAC. Central Hudson (Gas & Electric) crews located long-lost buried boxes in places not matching their maps:

Power Outage – flooded box

Then they pumped / bailed enough water to repair / lengthen the wires:

Power Outage – corroded wiring

I’ve never before seen anybody work on live wires underwater.

They installed above-ground boxes to simplify The Next Time.

Some improvisation was required:

Power Outage – improvised cocoa stirring

Gotta say, cold Fireball Cocoa tastes different than hot Fireball Cocoa.

2025-04-28
Tour Easy: Broken Seat Parts

So hardened socket head cap screws survive fifteen years of hard service on my Tour Easy’s seat stay:

Tour Easy – broken seat stay screw

I replaced both screws with stainless steel 1-½ 10-32 socket head screws, with a reshaped head on the drive side, and we’ll see how long these last.

A few days later the continuing creak led to finding a broken gear clamp on the left side of the seat back:

Tour Easy – replacement seat frame clamp

Apart from the atypical lack of grime, you couldn’t tell that’s the replacement clamp, because the broken one looked exactly the same way. The clamp strap broke where it bent around the bottom edge of the seat pan bracket, probably due to the flexing caused by the broken seat stay screw.

Riding season is in full effect!

2025-04-24
HQ Sixteen: Bobbin Winder Split Shaft Tweak
The HQ Sixteen has much larger bobbins than Mary’s Kenmore and Juki sewing machines. It also came with a dedicated bobbin winder:

HQ Sixteen bobbin winder – overview

That thing has a distinct Industrial Revolution aspect compared to the BarbieCore bobbin winder I laid hands on a while ago.

Out of the photo on the right:
- The thread cone and guide tower
- The thread tension disks
Mary had been having trouble winding the bobbins, as the tension seemed entirely too low and the thread did not lay smoothly across the bobbin, so she asked me to take a look.

The motor shaft has an O-ring for friction drive against the large wheel driving the shaft with the bobbin on the other end. The small silver lever over on the left flips an over-center lock pressing the wheel against the O-ring and tripping the microswitch in the aluminum housing, thus turning the motor on. The bobbin fills until a small finger monitoring the thread level flips the lock back over center, the wheel disengages, the switch turns the motor off, and a spring drives the wheel against the rubber rod in the upper left.

Which worked well, but all the bobbins had a loose-to-sloppy fit on the shaft, to the extent that the shaft really couldn’t drive them against any thread tension.

Loosening the screw holding the drive wheel on the shaft lets it slip off and the shaft slides out to the front:

HQ Sixteen bobbin winder – split shaft

The sides of the split shaft should press firmly against the bobbin core, but that just wasn’t happening.

Measuring a dozen bobbins showed most had an ID of 6.04 mm, with a few around 6.01 mm; unsurprisingly, the latter had the best, albeit still loose, fit. Conversely, the split shaft had two isolated points 6.01 mm apart across a diameter, with the remainder around 5.95 mm. Those are not large differences, but it was obvious why the bobbins didn’t wind correctly.

I filed some graunch off the split edges, then gently pushed the Designated Prydriver into the end of the split to spread the sides juuuust a little bit, until all the bobbins pushed on firmly and fit snugly:

HQ Sixteen bobbin winder – split shaft test fit

It reassembled in reverse order and we’ll see how it behaves during the next marathon bobbin-filling session.
2025-04-15
Champion Hose Nozzle: Refreshed Seal Attempt

The battered Champion hose nozzle came into play last fall, leaked profusely when turned off, went to a Safe Place for the winter, and recently emerged:

Champion hose nozzle – disassembled

The conical surface (to the right of the tip) must make perfect contact with the edge of a perfect cylindrical hole in the outer shell to shut off the water, which was obviously no longer happening.

There is no reason why that hole should still be concentric with the outside of the shell, but centering the latter in the four-jaw chuck put the hole within about 0.2 mm of where it should be:

Champion hose nozzle – lathe centering

I defined that to be Close Enough™ and made the hole smooth & concentric with a teeny boring bar and sissy cuts. A drill would likely have worked well enough, too.

Gently filing the nastiness off the cone showed it wouldn’t suffice, so center it while noting the irregular diameter all around:

Champion hose nozzle – lathe centering cone

A skim cut revealed the need for more attention:

Champion hose nozzle – scarred cone

Another tenth of a millimeter improved its disposition:

Champion hose nozzle – improved cone

Gentle touchup with a fine file reserved for special occasions may have been a further improvement:

Champion hose nozzle – finish filed

Add a dollop of silicone grease to encourage the shell to turn much more easily on the O-ring, reassemble in reverse order, and top it off with a new hose washer.

A quick test on a reasonably warm day showed the cone met the cylinder poorly enough to consign this nozzle to the brass recycling box.

It was fun trying, though …

2025-04-14
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