Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
I’ve been using the J5 Tactical flashlight as a “walking light” on our walks around the neighborhood, because its bright white spot has definitely caused a few drivers to look up from their phones at the last moment and swerve away.
Of late, however, it turned on with a weak light and operated erratically. Removing the lens and unscrewing the front end revealed one mmmm potential problem:
J5 Tactical Flashlight – loose LED PCB
It looks like they’re depending on the “gold” in cutaway plated-through holes to make electrical contact with the aluminum mount, then through the threads to the case. The PCB joint would work much better with consistent pressure all the way around its perimeter.
I mashed the PCB into place with a machinists vise, but, given the number of problems I’ve had with J5 flashlights (one a QC reject), they’re on my Non-Preferred Vendor list; if I’m going to get junk, I may as well pay bottom dollar.
Unsolder the strap in the middle and the B+ positive connection on the right side to remove the cells.
If cameras used bare cells, rather than glued-shut “proprietary” packs with super-secret unique ID ROMs, they’d be easier to keep running. My Sony DSC-H5 has other problems, but NiMH AA cells are easy to find.
The dotted lines show the results from late 2015 for a pair of then-new Wasabi NP-BX1 batteries, so the DOT-01 batteries look about the same. The F battery barely lasted to the halfway point of our most recent bike ride and the G battery now resides in the blinky-and-glowy pile.
I’d be unsurprised to discover all the myraid “different” NP-BX1 batteries all come from the same factory. Unlike the Wasabi batteries, these lack date codes, which seems like an extra-cost option you don’t get on the low end.
After nearly four years of dangling a bare millimeter above the nozzle, the lever on the relocated Z-Axis switch finally snagged a stray thread and got bent out of shape. I un-bent it, but finally decided it was time to get more air between the nozzle and the switch actuator.
Prying the ends outward with a thumbnail releases a pair of snaps and the cover pops off to reveal the innards:
M2 Z-Axis – microswitch interior
The spring-loaded innards will launch themselves into the far corners of your shop, so be gentle as you slide the lever out and reinstall the side plate with a pair of clicks.
I filed the screw holes in my homebrew brass angle plate into slots, so as to get some adjustability, remounted the switch on the X-axis gantry, and tuned for best clearance:
M2 Z-Axis – bare microswitch vs nozzle
It looks a bit more canted than it really is.
There’s about 1.6 mm of Z-axis distance between the nozzle and the switch, which should suffice for another few years.
The view from the front shows a slight angle, too:
M2 Z-Axis – activated
There’s a millimeter or so below the nuts holding the X-axis linear slide in place, because the original 18 mm M3 SHCS are now 16 mm long (having shotgunned the metric SHCS and BHCS situation some time ago) and the washers are gone.
They’re all nylon lock nuts except for the one just to the left of the switch, providing barely enough clearance for the Powerpole connectors on the hotrod platform:
M2 Z-Axis – platform connector clearance
With the nozzle off the platform to the far right side, Z-axis homing proceeded normally. Manually jogging to Z=+5.0 mm left 2.6 mm of air under the nozzle, so I reset the offset in EEPROM to -2.4 = (2.6 – 5.0) mm:
M206 Z-2.4
M500
The first calibration square came out at 2.91 mm, so I changed the offset to -2.3 mm, got a 2.80 mm square with a firmly squished first layer, changed it to -2.5 mm, and got a 3.00 mm square for my efforts.
An array of five squares showed the platform remains level to within +0.05 / -0.07 mm:
M2 Platform Alignment Check – 2019-02-06
I defined it to be Good Enough™ and quit while I was ahead.
The bottom two squares in the left pile have squished first layers. The rest look just fine:
M2 Z-Axis – switch offset calibration squares
The whole set-and-test process required about 45 minutes, most of which was spent waiting for the platform to reach 90 °C in the 14 °C Basement Laboratory.
Aaand this front-end loader will require more than the patch kit and CO2 inflator from my bike pack before it’s back in service:
Front-end loader with flat tire
The local yellow iron inventory spends most of the winter snoozing in shopping mall parking lots, waiting to clear the snowfall. It’s been a light year so far, which is fine with me.
The ultimate fix will likely involve a dab of epoxy, but a duct tape snippet should show me how much of a bump my fingers need to find the home keys without conscious thought:
Kinesis keyboard – tape bump
Early returns suggest one layer isn’t quite prominent enough; some iteration will be in order.
Spotted this in a mall built just before the 2008 financial implosion:
Round Lamp Post in Square Pavement Hole
Maybe the original catalog items went obsolete by the time they signed up enough tenants in that section to justify any lighting at all?
In related news, a facelift some years ago at the motel next to the decaying Red Oaks Mill dam installed square lamp posts on the existing square concrete pedestals, but replaced the original metal conduit with a plastic sheath:
Square Lamp Post with Cut Cable Shield
The cable may sit low enough in the recess to survive, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
