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: Thing-O-Matic

Using and tweaking a Makerbot Thing-O-Matic 3D printer

  • Bike Helmet Mirror: Another Spare

    Bike Helmet Mirror: Another Spare

    One of Mary’s garden neighbors recently started biking, she recommended he needed a helmet mirror, and I handed her a spare from the Bag o’ Mirrors:

    Helmet Mirror Ball Mount - on helmet
    Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – on helmet

    So I built another one:

    Helmet Mirror Ball Mount - epoxy clamping
    Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – epoxy clamping

    Fortunately, the Bag also had that (slightly rusted) mirror with a drilled ball, so all I needed was a new printed mount with two brass inserts and screws.

    Now we have two spares against future need:

    Helmet Mirror Ball Mount - ready spares
    Helmet Mirror Ball Mount – ready spares

    They’re much better than the old yellow Az-El mount, but I couldn’t have made the ball mounts without that experience.

    Both versions outlasted all the commercial versions we’ve had over the decades, so that’s a 3D printing success story right there.

  • Power Switch Mollyguards

    Power Switch Mollyguards

    It turns out that dragging a USB cable across the top of the UPS for the PC (about to be) running the Sherline mill was enough to flip its flush-mounted hairtrigger power switch. Although I can’t recess the switch, adding a mollyguard should help:

    Mollyguard - UPS power switch
    Mollyguard – UPS power switch

    The power switches on the new outlet strips also seem unduly sensitive and a preemptive strike seemed in order:

    Mollyguard - outlet strip switch
    Mollyguard – outlet strip switch

    Two layers of 3 mm acrylic just barely clear the switch, but should prevent casual trips. AFAICT, the little hexagonal shape fills the hole for an indicator LED this strip doesn’t have.

    Yellow acrylic is deliberately more conspicuous than the bike control mollyguard.

  • Punched Cards: Painted Storage Trays

    Punched Cards: Painted Storage Trays

    If you must have a stack of punched cards on your desk, a nice tray does wonders for the office decor:

    Card Storage Tray - overview
    Card Storage Tray – overview

    That’s a coat of Rustoleum Painter’s Touch 2x [many more adjectives] Kona Brown Gloss rattlecan paint atop Trocraft Eco board. I sprayed the separate parts on a sheet of newspaper, waited 20 minutes, flipped them over, sprayed the other side, gave them another 20 minutes, and got them inside out of the wind for a day of curing.

    They’re held together by cyanoacrylate adhesive dots between the tabs, with accelerator daubed on the other side of the joint to encourage prompt curing. In general I do not like cyanoacrylate, but sometimes it seems like the right hammer for the job.

    The trays are a definite step up from chipboard:

    Punched cards - storage trays
    Punched cards – storage trays

    It’s even pretty up close:

    Card Storage Tray - front
    Card Storage Tray – front

    They might be Presentation Grade.

  • End of the Thing-O-Matic

    End of the Thing-O-Matic

    After nine years, it’s come to this:

    End of the Thing-O-Matic
    End of the Thing-O-Matic

    The Thing-O-Matic got me started in 3D printing (and blogging!), provided an education in many useful subjects, and has long since outlived its usefulness.

    A view from happier times:

    Thing-O-Matic Overview
    Thing-O-Matic Overview

    Its components will live on in other projects.

    One of those bittersweet moments, fer shure …

  • Nut Socket Wrench Improvement

    Nut Socket Wrench Improvement

    The recesses in cheap 1/4-inch shank nut drivers aren’t much deeper than the nuts, which means a screw sticking out of the nut by more than a few threads defeats the entire purpose.

    Well, I can fix that:

    Drilling 5.5 mm socket
    Drilling 5.5 mm socket

    That’s a 5.5 mm socket for M3×0.5 machine screw nuts, getting a screw clearance hole drilled into it with a #28 drill (0.1405 inch = 3.5 mm). The sockets are allegedly “forged and hardened”, but an ordinary HSS drill bit cuts like they’re butter, so I’m thinking somebody skipped the hardening step.

    Turns out I had a lot of nuts to remove from black oxide M3 socket head cap screws, making a brief pause in the action totally worthwhile.

  • Bike Helmet Mirror Mount Tightening

    Almost exactly three years later, it’s time to tighten the helmet mirror mount screws:

    Helmet mirror mount - bottom view - setscrew
    Helmet mirror mount – bottom view – setscrew

    That’s a 0.035 inch = 35 mil hex wrench, of which Eks reminds me “Any time your design requires a tiny [obscene gerund] wrench, you’re doing it wrong”.

    The sequence goes like this:

    • Loosen that tiny setscrew
    • Unscrew & remove the mirror boom
    • Remove brass screw & azimuth pivot
    • Tighten screw in elevation pivot
    • Tighten tiny setscrew on elevation arc
    • Reinstall & tighten azimuth pivot
    • Reinstall mirror boom
    • Tighten tiny setscrew

    Going strong after seven years!

  • Herringbone Pinion Gears

    These herringbone gears were part of updating my old Thing-O-Matic:

    Herringbone gears with nut inserts
    Herringbone gears with nut inserts

    But, as the saying goes, that’s not a herringbone gear. This is a herringbone gear:

    Bethlehem Steel - 48 inch rolling mill gears
    Bethlehem Steel – 48 inch rolling mill gears

    We always read the signage:

    Bethlehem Steel - 48 inch rolling mill gears - description
    Bethlehem Steel – 48 inch rolling mill gears – description

    They’re parked in front of the National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, PA.