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: Sewing

Fabric arts and machines

LED Strip Lights: Shade Adhesive

This is a quick-and-ugly test to see how well aluminized Mylar will work as a reflective shade for some LED light bars eventually washing the Living / Sewing room ceiling with enough light to brighten the Sewing Table:

LED strip light – Mylar reflector – ugly fit

The key question: how well adhesive adheres Mylar to the pleasantly warm aluminum extrusion serving as the heatsink for 40 W of LEDs:

LED strip light – Mylar reflector – adhesive strips

Perhaps surprisingly, those ½ inch strips come from an A4 sheet by way of a paper cutter.

As with the Mylar shades over the COB LED strips in the laser, the LEDs remain through the aluminized layer:

LED strip light – Mylar reflector – overexposed

The LED bars will be directly visible, so bouncing the direct light against the wall reduces glare and puts it to good use.

The Mylar strips are 1 inch wide, cut with a utility knife against a straightedge, although ⅞ inch seems adequate. The last LED over on the right sits at the endcap, so I will (try to) tuck the Mylar ends under the caps for a cleaner fit.

The bars have two 4 foot strips of LEDs in series, with a lump of circuitry buried in the aluminum extrusion that seems be a bridge rectifier and a small electrolytic capacitor. There’s not nearly enough capacitance to knock down the 120 Hz flicker and I have an uneasy expectation of stroboscopic effects on the sewing machines.

This is a test. […] This is only a test.

Now, to model angle brackets fitting the strips to the window moulding.

2025-03-17
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
Trivial Laser Projects

A nubbly knob on the M4 screws securing the honeycomb to the laser’s platform:

Honeycomb screw knob

Leveling feet for the HQ Sixteen long-arm machine’s table for the high side of the floor:

HQ Sixteen – table leg leveler – short

And 12 mm taller on the low side:

HQ Sixteen – table leg leveler – tall

Both of those “projects”, which may be too grand a term, went from “I need a thing” to having one in hand over the course of a few minutes yesterday. Neither required a great deal of thought, having previously worked out the proper speed / power settings to cut 3 mm MDF and 1 mm cork.

Other folks may lead you to believe lasers are all about fancy artwork and elaborate finished products. Being the type of guy who mostly fixes things, I’d say lasers are all about making small and generally simple parts, when and where they’re needed, to solve a problem nobody else has.

Perhaps I should devote more attention to using fancy wood with a hand-rubbed wax finish, but MDF fills my simple needs.

With a laser and a 3D printer, shop tools have definitely improved since the Bad Old Days!

2025-03-06

HQ Sixteen: Table Leveling Blocks

The Handi-Quilter HQ Sixteen rides on two tracks along the 11 foot length of the table, with an unsupported 8 foot span between the legs on each end:

HQ Sixteen - remounted handlebars in use — HQ Sixteen – remounted handlebars in use

Contemporary versions of the table have support struts in the middle that our OG version lacks and, as a result, our table had a distinct sag in the middle. During the course of aligning the table top into a plane surface with tapered wood shims, I discovered the floor was half an inch out of level between the table legs.

Now that the whole thing has settled into place, I measured the shim thicknesses and made tidy blocks to replace them:

HQ Sixteen - table shims - finished — HQ Sixteen – table shims – finished

The OpenSCAD code has an array with the thickness and the number of blocks:

SHIM_THICK = 0;
SHIM_COUNT = 1;

Shims = [
    [3.5,1],
    [5.0,3],
    [6.0,2],
    [6.5,1],
    [7.0,1]
];

Yes, I call them “blocks” here and wrote “shims” in the code. A foolish consistency, etc.

The model is a chamfered block with a chunk removed to leave a tongue of the appropriate thickness:

HQ Sixteen - table shims - solid model - single — HQ Sixteen – table shims – solid model

Building them with the label against the platform produces a nice nubbly surface:

HQ Sixteen - table shims - solid model — HQ Sixteen – table shims – PrusaSlicer – bottom

The labels print first and look lonely out there by themselves:

HQ Sixteen - table shims - legends — HQ Sixteen – table shims – legends

The rest of the first layer fills in around the labels:

HQ Sixteen - table shims - first layer — HQ Sixteen – table shims – first layer

Putting the labels on the bottom makes the wipe tower only two layers tall and eliminates filament changes above those layers. Those eight blocks still took a little over three hours, because there’s a lot of perimeter wrapped around not much interior.

Having had the foresight to draw a sketch showing where each block would go, I slid one next to its wood shim, yanked the shim out, and declared victory:

HQ Sixteen - table shims - installed — HQ Sixteen – table shims – installed

The tension rod welded under the table rail prevents even more sag, but the struts under the new version of the table show other folks were unhappy with the sag of this one. Another leg or two seems appropriate.

With the table leveled and the surface aligned, the HQ Sixteen glides easily in all directions. The result isn’t perfect and Mary keeps the anchor block at hand, but the machine now displays much less enthusiasm for rolling toward the middle of the table.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	// HQ Sixteen – table shims
	// Ed Nisley – KE4ZNU
	// 2025-02-27

	include <BOSL2/std.scad>

	Layout = "Show"; // [Show,Build]

	/* [Hidden] */

	SHIM_THICK = 0;
	SHIM_COUNT = 1;

	Shims = [
	[3.5,1],
	[5.0,3],
	[6.0,2],
	[6.5,1],
	[7.0,1]
	];

	Block = [40.0,20.0,15.0]; // overall shim size
	Grip = 10.0; // … handle length

	BlockRadius = 1.0; // corner rounding / chamfer

	LabelThick = 0.4;
	LabelSize = 5.5;
	LabelFont = "Arial:style:Bold";
	LabelColor = "Red";

	Protrusion = 0.1;
	Gap = 5.0;

	//———-
	// Define shim shape

	module ShimBlock(Height = Shims[0][SHIM_THICK],Part="All") {

	if (Part == "Block" \|\| Part == "All")
	difference() {
	left(Grip)
	cuboid(Block,anchor=BOTTOM + LEFT,chamfer=BlockRadius);
	up(Height)
	cube(Block + 2*[Protrusion,Protrusion,0],anchor=BOTTOM + LEFT);

	left(Grip/2 – BlockRadius/2) fwd(Block.y/2 – LabelThick) up(Block.z/2)
	xrot(90) zrot(-90)
	linear_extrude(height=LabelThick + Protrusion,convexity=20)
	text(text=format_fixed(Height,1),size=LabelSize,spacing=1.00,
	font=LabelFont,halign="center",valign="center");
	}

	if (Part == "Text" \|\| Part == "All")
	color(LabelColor)
	left(Grip/2 – BlockRadius/2) fwd(Block.y/2 – LabelThick) up(Block.z/2)
	xrot(90) zrot(-90)
	linear_extrude(height=LabelThick,convexity=20)
	text(text=format_fixed(Height,1),size=LabelSize,spacing=1.00,
	font=LabelFont,halign="center",valign="center");

	}




	//———-
	// Build them all

	if (Layout == "Show")
	ShimBlock();

	if (Layout == "Build") {
	for (j=[0:len(Shims)-1])
	back(j*(Block.z + Gap))
	for (i=[0:(Shims[j][SHIM_COUNT] – 1)])
	right(i*(Block.x + Gap))
	up(Block.y/2) xrot(90)
	ShimBlock(Shims[j][SHIM_THICK],Part="Block");
	for (j=[0:len(Shims)-1])
	back(j*(Block.z + Gap))
	for (i=[0:(Shims[j][SHIM_COUNT] – 1)])
	right(i*(Block.x + Gap))
	up(Block.y/2) xrot(90)
	ShimBlock(Shims[j][SHIM_THICK],Part="Text");
	}

view raw HQ Sixteen – table shims.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2025-03-04

HQ Sixteen: Ball-mounted Stylus Laser
Installing the new ball-mount laser stylus on the HQ Sixteen’s electronics pod required nothing more than two strips of good foam tape:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – installed – overview

In actual use, you would:
- Lay down a “pantograph” pattern on a paper strip along the rear track under the machine’s carriage
- Position the needle at the appropriate spot on the quilt
- Aim the laser at the corresponding point on the pattern
- Start the machine!
- Move the laser spot along the pattern while the machine stitches that pattern in the quilt
Mary thinks free-motion quilting is easier and I’m not in a position to argue the point.

Anyhow, the key feature of my ball mount is that it’s completely out of the way:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – installed – front

Which looks comfortingly like the original solid model:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser Mount – solid model – show

Minus the vivid red death ray and pew! pew! pew!

Power comes from a barrel jack in the back intended for the original stylus laser; all small lasers, unless otherwise noted, run from 5 VDC. The jack is 3.5×1.3 mm, but the Drawer o’ Weird Barrel Plugs disgorged a matching right-angle plug. Unsurprisingly, such things are readily available these days.

Splice the laser leads to the plug and cover the evidence with a braided loom + heatshrink tubing:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – installed – rear

I considered a switch, but the anticipated low duty cycle suggested just unplugging it, so that’s that.

And It Just Worked™.

The backstory begins There and continues to now.
2025-03-03
HQ Sixteen: Stylus Laser Ball Drilling
With the ball mount in hand:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – ball clamp test fit

The next step is to drill a 12 mm hole for the red-dot laser module right through the middle of the 1 inch = 25.4 mm polypropylene ball.

I decided to use a more-or-less standard laser module, rather than the Genuine Handi-Quilter laser, because:
- Cheap & readily available
- Identical spares on hand
- Two decades of red laser diode progress
Start by conjuring a lathe chuck fixture for a 1 inch ball from my OpenSCAD model and printing it in PETG-CF:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – center drilling

Run a few drills through the ball up to 15/32 inch = 0.469 inch = 11.9 mm:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – final drilling

Which looks terrifying and was no big deal.

The laser module didn’t quite fit until I peeled off the label, as setting up a boring bar seemed like too much hassle for too little gain. The ball is slick polypropylene and the laser module is chromed plastic, which means there’s not much friction involved and a stiff fit is a Good Thing™.

I did not realize the hazy white patches barely visible inside the ball were voids / bubbles:

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – drilled ball

Next time I’ll (try to) orient the patches toward the tailstock in hopes of simply drilling through them to leave solid plastic around the rim.

Ramming the laser in place makes it look like it grew there;

HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – laser test fit

The alert reader will note the lens projects a line, due to my not ordering any dot modules back when I got a bunch of these things. After all, who wants a plain dot when you can light up a line or even a crosshair?

Next, wire it up and stick it on the machine …
2025-02-28

HQ Sixteen: Stylus Laser Ball Mount

My version of a mount for the HQ Sixteen’s “stylus laser” clamps a 1 inch polypropylene ball between two plates:

HQ Sixteen - Stylus Laser - ball clamp test fit — HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – ball clamp test fit

The plates have a sphere subtracted from them and a kerf sliced across the sphere’s equator for clamping room:

HQ Sixteen - Stylus Laser Mount - solid model — HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser Mount – solid model

Given that this is a relatively low-stress situation, I embedded BOSL2 nuts to produce threads in the plate rather than use brass inserts.

The side plates start as simple rectangles:

HQ Sixteen - Stylus Laser Mount - solid model - mount sides — HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser Mount – solid model – mount sides

Subtracting the electronics pod shape from those slabs matches them exactly to the curvalicious corner:

HQ Sixteen - Stylus Laser Mount - solid model - mount shaping — HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser Mount – solid model – mount shaping

The weird angle comes from tilting the mount to aim the laser in roughly the right direction when perpendicular to the plates:

HQ Sixteen - Stylus Laser Mount - solid model - show — HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser Mount – solid model – show

That angle can be 0° to 30°, although 25° seems about right. The slab sides neither stick out the top nor leave gaps in the corner over that range, after some cut-and-try ~~tinkering~~ sizing.

One of the M3 screws just did not want to go into its hole:

HQ Sixteen - Stylus Laser - threadless M3 screw — HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser – threadless M3 screw

A bad day in the screw factory, I suppose.

The OpenSCAD source code as a GitHub Gist:

	// Handiquilter HQ Sixteen Stylus Laser Mount
	// Ed Nisley – KE4ZNU
	// 2025-02-23

	include <BOSL2/std.scad>
	include <BOSL2/threading.scad>

	Layout = "Pod"; // [Show,Build,Pod,Mount]

	/* [Hidden] */

	PodWidth = 110.0; // overall width of pod
	PodScrewClear = 50.0; // clear distance between pod screws
	PodRecenter = [0,0]; // pod trace upper corner to origin if not done in Inkscape

	BaseAngle = -25; // laser neutral angle

	BallOD = 25.4 + 0.2; // bearing ball + easy fit clearance
	BallOffset = [70.0,0,-35.0]; // upper corner to ball center

	LaserOD = 12.2; // laser module
	LaserLength = 38.0;

	Kerf = 1.0; // clamp gap
	Plate = [35.0,35.0,8.0 + Kerf]; // basic mount plate

	WallThick = 5.0; // upright walls: plate to pod

	WasherOD = 7.0;

	ScrewPitch = 0.5;
	ScrewNomOD = 3.0;
	ScrewNomID = ScrewNomOD – ScrewPitch;

	ScrewOC = Plate – [WasherOD,WasherOD,0];

	Gap = 5.0; // build spacing

	//———-
	// HQ Sixteen electronics pod

	module Pod() {

	xrot(90)
	down(PodWidth/2)
	linear_extrude(height=PodWidth,convexity=5)
	translate(PodRecenter)
	import("HQ Sixteeen – pod profile.svg",
	layer="Pod Profile");
	}

	module LaserPointer() {
	cylinder(d=LaserOD,h=LaserLength,center=true);
	}

	module Ball() {

	union() {
	sphere(d=BallOD,$fn=4*12);
	down(0.25*LaserLength)
	LaserPointer();
	}
	}

	module Mount() {

	union() {
	difference() {
	union() {
	cuboid(Plate,anchor=CENTER);
	for (j=[-1,1])
	translate([-(BallOffset.x – Plate.x)/2,j*(Plate.y + WallThick)/2,Kerf/2])
	cuboid([BallOffset.x,WallThick,-0.75*BallOffset.z],anchor=BOTTOM);
	}
	cuboid([4Plate.x,4Plate.y,Kerf],anchor=CENTER);
	Ball();
	for (i=[-1,1], j=[-1,1])
	translate([iScrewOC.x/2,jScrewOC.y/2,0])
	cylinder(d=1.2ScrewNomOD,h=2Plate.z,anchor=CENTER,$fn=6);

	yrot(-BaseAngle)
	translate(-BallOffset)
	Pod();

	}


	for (i=[-1,1], j=[-1,1])
	translate([iScrewOC.x/2,jScrewOC.y/2,Kerf/2])
	// flat size root dia height pitch
	threaded_nut(1.5*ScrewNomOD,ScrewNomID,(Plate.z – Kerf)/2,ScrewPitch,$slop=0.10,
	bevel=false,ibevel=false,anchor=BOTTOM);
	}
	}

	//———-
	// Build things

	if (Layout == "Pod")
	Pod();

	if (Layout == "Mount")
	Mount();


	if (Layout == "Show") {
	yrot(BaseAngle) {
	color("SteelBlue")
	Mount();
	color("Magenta",0.5)
	Ball();
	color("Red")
	yrot(180)
	cylinder(d=2,h=-2*BallOffset.z,$fn=12);

	}
	translate(-BallOffset)
	color("Silver",0.8)
	Pod();
	}

	if (Layout == "Build") {
	left(Plate.x/2 + Gap/2)
	intersection() {
	cuboid([4Plate.x,4Plate.y,-BallOffset.z],anchor=DOWN);
	down(Kerf/2)
	Mount();
	}

	right(Plate.x/2 + Gap/2)
	intersection() {
	cuboid([4Plate.x,4Plate.y,Plate.z/2],anchor=DOWN);
	up(Plate.z/2)
	Mount();
	}
	}

view raw HQ Sixteen – Stylus Laser Mount.scad hosted with ❤ by GitHub

2025-02-27

Tag: Sewing

LED Strip Lights: Shade Adhesive

HQ Sixteen: Crud on the Tracks

Trivial Laser Projects

HQ Sixteen: Table Leveling Blocks

HQ Sixteen: Ball-mounted Stylus Laser

HQ Sixteen: Stylus Laser Ball Drilling

HQ Sixteen: Stylus Laser Ball Mount