Make Stuff Log

[Sclass]

Yeah I’m not exactly a shining example of what to do with yourself after you reach financial independence.

I used to watch the HP retirees in my old neighborhood work on their little steam engines in their garages. It seemed so ridiculous that these old guys worked their entire careers just to spend their golden years hunched over their lathe turning brass pistons. That’s how it ended? Years of study, years of work for the man, just to sit alone in the garage making toy trains?

I unhitched early thinking I’d avoid this death spiral. But here I am. I’m kind of the current variant of the old guys I used to see machining toys in their engineer’s hats. I just had a little longer to do it.

Reminds me of this Abner Dean book I was given by an old timer. The book is a gem that is long forgotten.

[candide]

Sclass,
I think you are being too hard on those old-timers and yourself. Making stuff is fun and not the problem... Making stuff, plus being able to set your own hours doing so, that's the dream.

[Ego]

I'm having a difficult time reconciling my adoration and profound respect with my feelings of electrostatic revulsion. Help! Are we Father McKenzie or Lao-Tze?

I used to watch the HP retirees in my old neighborhood work on their little steam engines in their garages. It seemed so ridiculous that these old guys worked their entire careers just to spend their golden years hunched over their lathe turning brass pistons. That’s how it ended? Years of study, years of work for the man, just to sit alone in the garage making toy trains?[/img]

Did each year of study and each additional year of doing a particular job for the man make it incrementally more difficult for them to do something different? Did their characters become so ingrained from all those years of repetition that they became calcified and incapable anything out of character?

Father McKenzie
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near
Look at him working
Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

No one comes near.

This weekend we went to an event at a nearby museum with a small group of friends and invited them to an after-party at our place. We told them to bring anyone they believed to be interesting enough that they would add character to the gathering. People started trickling in to our apartment and they just kept coming and coming until we overflowed into the hallway and down into the lobby of our building. Amongst the chaos, a friend grabbed me by the arm and she yelled in my ear, "This is like the best party every from Breakfast at Tiffany's".

Diligently darning socks is a good thing, but is it a sustainable, evolving, self-replicating reason to go on living?*

The fact is, other people - and the hell that they bring with them - produce a sustainable, constantly evolving, self-replicating solution.

*Someone is going to try to bury the point under a sermon of acronyms and color charts that no one but the choir will hear.

[jacob]

Those who are blessed with a childlike curiosity in exploring how the world works and an interesting in inventing and constructing things often end up as engineers and scientists, where they get a bum deal spending 30-40 years of their life working for WhoCares Inc optimizing component-part #5512B-A in exchange for money, an important sounding title, and a manager telling them how #5512B-A is contributes to a state-of-the-art widget that will be helpful to the "blerb" consumer demographic and make a real difference in Q4. Retiring allows them to do what they always wanted which was to explore how the world works and/or build things.

Not everybody is born with that level of curiosity. Also some lose it along the way, perhaps burning it out to retain a sense of sanity in their important-yet-stultifying jobs. Those are the ones often not knowing what to do in retirement when you take their deadlines and #5512B-A forms away from them. Those w/o sparks can try to find the spark in others---some people have no end of ideas, others have none at all---but internally generated sparks are more exciting than those from other people.

[grundomatic]

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/phot ... ck-brinson

I *think* this was linked on the forum in the past, maybe not. In any case, I remember reading it and thinking "77 years on this earth and 'prom' is what you've come up with?"

The "party and prom" crowd doesn't understand the "garage engineer" crowd, and neither understands the "abstract model-loving bookworm" crowd. Some people are "well-rounded" and can connect with all the crowds, but others double down and focus on their own scene.

Ultimately, I hope everyone finds or returns to something they love doing. In the meantime, I hope to become less judgmental about what others choose to do, in their retirement or otherwise.

[Sclass]

I just listened to my copy of Give My Regards to Broad Street. I didn’t quite get the Father McKenzie reference at first. Yeah not quite. I didn’t tell the entire story behind the project.

I should clarify the work on the HP emblems wasn’t done completely for one calculator that I happen to own. There was a bigger plan. I’m not that irrational a creature.

I sold off all those HP emblems on the HP calculator forums shortly after I made them. They address a common flaw on the voyager line of calculators. The adhesive fails with age and they fall off and get lost. So there are a lot of desperate collectors out there searching for a replica emblem. A missing emblem kind of defeats the collecting process.

I know it sounds crazy but there are a whole bunch of people who collect these old HP calculators. They have that element like old Mercedes cars where old guys want to revisit their youth by keeping their old one or buying one at an online auction. Because they were quite expensive when new (hundreds of dollars in the 1970s and 1980s) the supply is much smaller than used Casios or Texas Instruments calculators. I was a little too young and a little too poor to afford a 15C as a young student. So I recently bought one at an online auction.

I had planned to sell to these people when I made these things. There are a lot of frustrated collectors out there with missing emblems.

I sold all the ones I made for $20 each. I still get requests to run more batches but it’s a little too much hassle even on a CNC. So I’ve mothballed the project. There are still buyers but the machine maintenance and setup are a little too much work for $20 chits. The fine aluminum shavings make a mess of my shop which doubles as my electronics business. (Aluminum dust + PCB manufacturing = disaster). So rather than risk my successful micro business for another micro business I just stopped after I mastered the process.

[J_]

I used to watch the HP retirees in my old neighborhood work on their little steam engines in their garages. It seemed so ridiculous that these old guys worked their entire careers just to spend their golden years hunched over their lathe turning brass pistons. That’s how it ended? Years of study, years of work for the man, just to sit alone in the garage making toy trains?

I unhitched early thinking I’d avoid this death spiral. But here I am. I’m kind of the current variant of the old guys I used to see machining toys in their engineer’s hats. I just had a little longer to do it.

No Sclass. Together with this and the fixit topic you are a big inspiration for me (and others of the forum I suppose). Although I am not on your level of electronics and 3d printing. The way you present your solutions with photos and description gives a good idea how to repair or make things myself. Thanks a lot for all your contributions.

[loutfard]

Sclass, your making and fixing log entries is very much inspiring me too. Even without inspiring anyone/the environmental impact/creating value for the needy/..., finding meaning in tinkering for the pleasure of it is a Good Thing™! Meaningful in a way a bit closer to art.

[thef0x]

Making stuff that keeps you alive, extra good. Using it to see incredible places, even better.



MYOG pack and quilt in this photo

30* quilt [520g]



40L pack [297g]



I've enjoyed the top flush pockets a lot on this pack.



Bottom pocket (invented by a friend) that is the absolute best way to walk and eat for long trail days

[AxelHeyst]

@thef0x, I love your myog, that is a clean looking pack. I hope to make one myself soon. Also, good job reppin grossout in the backcountry.
---
I made a thermal energy storage system for my studio.

The problem statement:

(aka it's too cold inside my studio at night and in particular early mornings, when I like to write. However, it is often sunny.)

The Idea:


The Existing Infrastructure:

(primary function: shade. Panels are salvaged from a neighbor, total cost $0.)

The Build:


The Data:


Does it work?
Yes, BUT, I'm only getting 170watts while my array is capable of outputting 480w. The issue is that I'm a dum-dum. My array is configured for max current of 18a. Mr. Ohm has this to say: V=IR, and since the resistance of the heating element is 0.64ohm, this table represents the system dynamic:


So to get better power I need to either configure the array for higher current or find an appropriate buck converter.

However, even at one third power, the system totally works. It really takes the edge off and the number of mornings that it's warm enough inside to write are vastly increased.

Also, the relay doesn't work. Not sure if I got a bad unit or am screwing something else up, but it remains closed no matter what signal the temp controller is sending it.

[Slevin]

Seems like a cool build. When life gives you excess salvaged solar panels, use it for thermoresistive heating .

What drove the decision for your setup versus using the panels to run a small electric resistance heater converted to run off solar, given that you are going for thermal comfort? A 500 watt heater would heat that room up pretty fast, right? And an electric blanket should get you all day heating in just a couple hours (but obvs that would involve conversion and a battery).

[AxelHeyst]

A 500w heater would heat the space up very quickly, but I don't need heat when the sun is out. Even if I got the space quite warm by the time the sun goes down, at solstice that is 3pm. That's a long stretch of no heat till ~10a the next morning when the sun is up an at em again.

Water is a much cheaper storage medium than electric batteries+charge controller.

[loutfard]

Water is a much cheaper storage medium than electric batteries+charge controller.

There are a few setups, mostly in Europe, that took this line of thinking to the next stage with wind energy as a source. The wind energy is directly converted into heat by stirring a water storage medium. A bit like solar thermal really, except that it also works in winter. [ur=https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ ... 040802.pdf]article[/url].

[jacob]

The wind energy is directly converted into heat by stirring a water storage medium.

IIRC, this was done on US farms using actual windmills (not turbines). The squeaky mill, sitting next to the barn, would mechanically drive an agitator in a tank of water to keep the critters warm. Not sure what the most common usage of those things were. Drive a water pump ... or more generically, a powershaft for various tools.

[loutfard]

I suddenly remember discovering wind thermal through the wonderful lowtechmagazine: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/ ... -windmill/ .

[Slevin]

(aka it's too cold inside my studio at night and in particular early mornings, when I like to write. However, it is often sunny.)

Agreed. Heating water is the classic thermal battery (fantastic until it leaks). I had just read the above bit incorrectly that in the mornings when you wanted to write, it was sunny in there.

In my proto passive solar house, I tried using some black water barrels in the same vein, but it never actually was a large contributor to the heat (obvs needed more water). It stopped when one started leaking and caused an enormous mess. There was also a concrete slab floor, but unfortunately not a highly insulated one, so it always acted like a 50-55 degree cooling mass (great in the summer but horrific in the winter).

[jacob]

It stopped when one started leaking and caused an enormous mess.

A good solution would be to expect this to happen eventually and install the tank over a drainage channel going to the drain as opposed to across the floor.

[Slevin]

Definitely, I just didn't have the ability at the time to put one in without causing horrible destruction (brick walls on two sides and enormous glass windows on the third south facing side to harvest the sun) that wouldn't get approved. Good implementations should account for spillage and use it in a positive way though. You should be able to add a south facing greenhouse with rainwater tanks on the inside to store the sun in the winter (and then use shade cloth in the summer or empty the tanks to minimize summer gains) to improve basically any house with lots of winter sun. This is my eventual plan, but haven't yet formalized it and run numbers to see what the results end up like.

[Lemur]

I cleaned a clogged bathroom sink with two pencils hooked by tape…and at the end of the stick was a metal paperclip coiled around the pencil tightly with a hook bent at the end. I did not have a wire hanger on hand. Put stick in sink and slowly rotate to pull out all gunk and hair.

8 year old now thinks I am a genius lol.

Barely worthy of a post until I remember that some people will not hesitate to phone in a plumber for a similar job…

[Sclass]

35mm slide scanner

I am going through my dad’s things and realized I should digitize some of his many 35mm slides. What to do with a dead persons photos? Good question. It’s like I’m throwing away a life but I don’t know half of the people in these old photos. Anyhow I decided to digitize them in case somebody wants to see them. In the meanwhile I’ll dump the physical images in the trash.

So I printed this out. It’s from Thingiverse. Works very well. I used a discarded lens from a broken digital camera. Just removed the front element and it slips right between the phone and slide. It gives a nice full frame image in the slide. I used an old iPhone 5 and I’m ready to fill its memory with old photos. It has all the sw I need and a camera and viewer + screen sharing in case I want to do a slide show. Much better than piles of 35mm carousels and a bulky old projector. Maybe I should make one for negatives too. I have boxes and boxes of negatives. I wonder if I really even need to do this. Maybe I should just grit my teeth and throw it all in a dumpster.

3D files.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:30728