Woody – Page 41 – Woody's Workshop

September 24, 2019September 24, 2019

Absence Update – French Leave

I’m sorry it has been a bit quiet of late but we had 3 gloriously hot weeks in France which were a nice mix of friends coming to stay, local visits and jobs …. always jobs.

Outstanding in the visits category was the trip to the Gouffre de Padirac which is an extensive cave system where you go by boat from one area to another. The scenery was stunning.

Job wise a new set of steps for the spa dominated along with re-work of the foss septic tank ventilation system. Just a bit smelly on this one.

The house is in a village like many other villages in France where there are few young people and young families but rather an aged population. Houses are plentiful but mostly have their shutters closed apart from a few days or weeks in summer when family visit to cut the grass and the shrubs. It is a reflection of French inheritance laws that require assets at death to not go to the surviving partner but to the children. The children then have difficulty deciding what to do with a house and any associated land so it goes on the too difficult pile and the house sits empty and shuttered up. As a result the heart slowly goes out of the villages which is only mitigated by crazy foreigners buying and renovating. While we were there this time two more elderly inhabitants passed away and two more houses closed their shutters. It is all quite sad. If a head count was made of empty houses in France it would astonish.

That aside it was a good visit and the weather made it perfect. Back to the workshop now and I am keen to install a diesel heater to give some low cost comfort over winter. Reports to follow.

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August 22, 2019

Remote WiFi and GSM Switches

I have had two IT related issues of late. Both involve devices on the house networks that have ‘locked up’ and needed a hard bounce – a complete mains power down, wait and switch on again. One of these was in our house in France and one at home.

The one in France was a lock up of the broadband router. Clearly once this is down all comms stop and we do have various monitoring systems in place that are important. Searching online came up with a GSM based mains switched outlet. This simply plugs into the a wall socket and the device to be controlled plugs into it. You need to fit a PAYG SIM into the device and then you talk to it with your standard mobile using SMS messages from anywhere there is a mobile phone signal. As the SMS usage will be very low, a GBP10 SIM will last for ages but it is important to remember that if a PAYG SIM is not used for 3 months it automatically gets cancelled. Fortunately the device does acknowledge back via SMS each command received so it is possible to maintain SIM activity remotely. The device has a number of facilities such as temperature measurement and activity scheduling. This has now sorted the French Connection and I can bounce the router anytime it misbehaves. Here is the Amazon reference.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00PKGL7YC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The home issue was on a device on the home wired network which was important to keep running. Very occasionally and usually at an inconvenient moment it would lock up and the only way to reset it was a hard bounce. The device is a pain to get at to do this and if we were away from the house even more so. Fortunately the WiFi router at home is reliable so all I needed was a WiFi equivalent of the GSM device mentioned above to give the offending device a controlled hard bounce. Amazon offer one such device which was easy to set up and works a treat. For those interested it accepts speech commands via Alexa etc

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07KXBQKXX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hopefully now we will have remote control of these two weak links in our communication backbone.

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August 19, 2019June 18, 2021

Replacing the Sindoh 3D Printer Bed Lamination Sheet

I have had my Sindoh 3D printer for quite a while and it is a lovely machine to use in conjunction with Fusion 360. I have printed all manner of items for the workshop, for projects and for friends and family.

For some time it has been a problem to print objects central on the bed. While they would print OK, they are reluctant to come away from the bed surface and then having removed them from the bed, the raft would be very reluctant to leave the printed object. I have got round this by offsetting the print position in X and Y on the table. If I have a large object to print that overlaps the problem area I sprinkle talcum powder on the bed surface to ease freeing the object from the bed but this does not help the raft removal.

The print bed is an aluminium sheet that slides in and out of the machine. This has a PTFE style laminated coating sheet held in place by adhesive. If I inspect the centre of the plate I can see the clear outline of bubbles under the lamination sheet. These have got worse as time has gone by. I imagine the bubbles create a finite air gap that upsets the temperature stability of the plate in the damaged area.

The situation had reached a frustrating peak today and lead to me totally removed the laminating sheet to leave bare aluminium. The printer could not cope with bare ally and the PLA would not stick. Some other laminating medium was going to be needed.

I had seen discussion regarding the use of what we in the UK call Masking Tape as a laminating medium. I use 3M Blue Multipurpose Builders Masking Tape for Super Glue mounting of stock on the milling machine. Having this to hand, I thought it worth a try. The tape is 48mm wide so I had to fix a number of strips across the plate to cover it completely and then trim the edges. As you can see below, I didn’t quite get them parallel and butted to each other I was keen to run a test print.

Maybe I was lucky but the job came off the tape easily and the raft pulled off straightaway with no damage to the print. The tape hasn’t bubbled or coming off in any way so it looks good.

builders tape on Sindoh 3D printer bedplate — 3M Blue Builders Tape on my Sindoh print bed

I am not sure how long the tape is going to last but I have got a full reel to keep swapping it out.

Update : 17/6/2021

I have been using the blue tape bed coating for over a year now with no problems other than an occasional replacement when it gets torn.

The other thing worth noting is that if your bed clips break there is an excellent replacement print model to download here

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4487138

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August 14, 2019August 14, 2019

Lathe Four Jaw Chuck Laser Light Centring Aid

What on earth is this weird creation ? ……..

4 jaw chuck laser centring device

One of my favourite additions to the workshop has been a laser centring tool for use on my Tormach PCNC milling machine. The tool consists of a low cost laser diode mounted on a 3D printed disc and with a 19mm steel shaft. The tool is held in the Tormach spindle power drawbar. The laser is angled inwards towards the spindle axis at approximately 20 degrees. The 3D print has facilities for a battery supply and ON/OFF switch such that when the laser disc is pulled into the power tool bar collet it switches on the diode.

In use, as the spindle is raised or lowered, the rotating diode creates a circle of light on the milling table which can be used to locate and centre the spindle on features of the item being machined. This might be to locate the centre of a hole or the centre of a block depending on need.

A full write up of the mill related item is available here.

I recently had the need to use my four jaw centring chuck on my Myford lathe. Usually I duck and dive to avoid having to use the 4 jaw as I find it frustrating to set up. This recent bout of frustration lead me to wonder if I could adapt my laser centring tool for use on the lathe such that it would give me a guide ring of light to show where the material was sitting relative to chuck centre.

On the milling version the laser rotates and the job stays fixed. On a lathe version this would be similar. The chuck would be stationary and the laser would rotate in the tailstock.

The full write up can be downloaded here. and the Fusion 360 file is here lathe_centring_device v4

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August 10, 2019

No Man’s Fort

My wife has the knack of finding some interesting and diverse places to visit for birthday treats. We have just returned from an overnight stay at No Man’s Fort which sits in the Solent between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

The Fort along with three others were constructed in the late 1800s to protect Portsmouth from the French fleet. Like our modern day government projects they overran their construction target date and budget and by the time they were finished so were the French navy. There is plenty to read about them on the Net.

The reason for this mention is the resulting respect and admiration I now have for the engineers that put these fortifications in place. You arrive by shuttle boat at the landing stage faced with a circular wall of stone blocks that are precisely cut and interfaced together and show no sign of cracking or movement. The whole construction has no deep pile foundations but simply sits on the sea bed. They had no laser positioning equipment, no JCB equivalents, no CAD. Yet here these structures sit after 150 years in the most hostile of environments and look non the worse for wear. Impressive.

If you get the chance to visit any of the Solent Forts either for afternoon tea or an overnight stay you should go and you will not fail to be impressed.

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