wed dec 6
Calculate twice. Cut twice.
Time was, I could do this stuff in my head. Today, it took me 20 minutes, and my bad trigonometry cost me a perfectly good piece of metal.
tue dec 12
Probably the only good thing about having a broken leg is that people ‘need’ to drop by and wish you a speedy recovery. There’s a bonus if it’s your birthday. So when Mary’s birthday rolled around, she had not one, not two, but three little birthday parties, along with the attendant cakes and goodies. I like goodies as much as the next guy (probably more!) but by saturday, I was sated, and a lot of good goodies went in the trash.
Cake #1
Mary bought a building for her business and needs to make a lot of changes to bring it up to code. I’m mostly trying to stay out of it, but the mixer I made a few years ago needs to be ‘explosion proof.’ Devin showed up with an old drill chuck and a clogged pump rotor and asked me to turn them into a mixer base to mount on a barrel, attaching to an explosion-proof motor. The old mixer was heavy, ugly, and unsafe. The new one is … not as heavy, not as ugly, and, hopefully, safe.
Not bad, for materials on-hand plus 2 screws.
I was taking the Kawasaki cylinder head apart and decided I needed a better valve spring compressor than the kluge I used on the Suzuki. This is my new and improved kluge.
mon dec 18
About a year ago, a blood test showed that my B12 level was waaay low, and the doctor prescribed a monthly shot in the arm. Inconvenient, but better than anemia. Six months later, my blood level was still at the low end of normal, and we were surprised, because a direct injection ought to have bypassed any problem with digestive absorption, which is how most people get into trouble. We decided to try a daily 5mg pill, and he told me that I could save some money by using plain old grocery store pills instead of a prescription. In the pill aisle, I found a bottle ‘formulated for adults with low B12 levels’ and I’ve taken 1-a-day for the last 4 months. At 50mg, it’s 10x as potent as the prescription pills, but my thinking was: as long as my stomach doesn’t absorb the stuff, I can’t OD on it. So today, I got more blood test results, and I’m 50% past the high end of normal! No harm done, though, and it means that, with an adjustment to my dose, I won’t have to have a monthly shot. Problem solved!
sun dec 24
After stripping the old paint, I wanted to run some brake calipers thru the dishwasher before re-painting them, but Mary wasn’t having it unless it was a separate load all by themselves. Sheesh.
Mary is feeling better, but still can’t walk, so I made some handicap-accessible pull-out worktops. They work pretty good.
mon dec 25
The older I get, the more of chore Christmas seems to be. It’s not going away, though, and it’s a good excuse to touch base with various branches of the family. Since Mary is house-bound, people have made an effort to bring the party to our house instead of Us to theirs. On Christmas Eve, Maggie and the girls (and Maggie’s roommate Lana) shared a lasagna dinner with us, and on Christmas, Charon and Marshall and Adam and his daughters came by. Charon brought an entire 4-course meal, and all I had to do was make a salad.
After all these years, I still thought Emma was Lilia and Lilia was Emma.
Luckily, I kept my mouth shut.
wed dec 27
After listening to me babble about C3PR for 4 years, you’ve probably written it off as “all chat and no paddle.” I don’t blame you. But after addressing all kinds of ungodly-hard programming-type problems, I find that the problem that’s risen to the top of my list is: I don’t have a robot to test it all out on. I’ve been experimenting with Autodesk’s Fusion360 for 3D CAD and I’ve gotten the hang of it enough that a mechanical design is beginning to take shape. I’ve spent the last couple of days in the shop, turning perfectly good aluminum into swarf and, so far, my skills and tools are doing better than you might expect.
Paddle clamp.
Mounts directly on a NEMA-08 stepper motor shaft
Gimbal bracket for Hand assembly.
fri dec 29
A windy cold front has moved in and our DSL connection has gone dead. Usually when you complain to the phone company, they tell you the problem is with your router or your house wiring, so I made goddam sure that wasn’t the case before calling them. They’ll be sending a service guy out … in 6 days.
Meanwhile, we’re faced with the prospect of life ‘off the grid’ for a few days, and it’s more than a little disconcerting. No web. No online ordering. No Netflix. It’s the end of life as we know it! Then Mary remembered that our phones can generate wifi hot spots, so it boils down to a little bit of inconvenience, plus paying attention to our data plan.
sat dec 30
Speaking of c3pr … I need a way to mount limit switches on a rotary axis whose range of motion exceeds a full turn. There’s a simple, but very expensive, way to do it, but I’m home-brewing a solution. I spent hours working on a prototype and almost had it done when my brain farted and I screwed it up. I yelled something to the tune of “G*d F***ing D**m!!” and Mary heard me from upstairs. Her first thought was that I’d cut off another finger, but only my pride was hurt.
If you look closely at the acme threads, you’ll see a gash running diagonally across them.
It’s not supposed to be there.
sun dec 31
When we built the house, I postponed foaming around the doors because if they’re sealed before the house has a chance to settle, it’s impossible to adjust the fit. Last summer, I finally sealed them up and a little bit of foam seeped into the deadbolt hole, so it barely locks.
Last night – the coldest, windiest night of the year – the front door blew open and, while the bedroom got cool and the furnace worked overtime, we slept right through it and the rest of the house dropped into the 40’s. This morning, I fixed the door and cussed myself out.
With all the machining I’ve been doing for c3pr lately, and with the cold-morning reminder of what happens when you ‘kick the can’ on a known problem, I decided to fix my lathe. It is a 3000# brute, and you’ve got to jiggle the switch – a lot – in order to turn it off. This baby is older than my motorcycle and is, like Gilligan’s Island, ‘primitive as can be.’
Which is good, because it means you can take it apart, find the problem, and fix it.
So I did.
See the black discoloration on the switch contacts?
It could have killed me.
New Years Eve.
Maggie had given me some ‘male enhancement products’ – hair gel and shaving goop – for Christmas, and I had no idea what to do with them. But since Mary invited Juliet (the lady with the horses) over for NYE dinner and I was looking pretty scruffy, I decided to enhance my head with a shave and a washcloth.
I have to hand it to the beauty products industry for making a lot of money on lotions that don’t do a damned bit of good.
As good as it gets.
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