Saturday, October 20, 2012

Catching Up

Yes, I’ve gone through one of my posting dry spells lately. We’ve had a number of projects going and I just haven’t had the time or inclination. Here are some random pics that barely convey what’s been done.

a1Hippy handyman Alec cutting some formica for our kitchen counter. A long awaited improvement.

a2
I did the window casing. It took me about 6 hours, which is why we hired Alec to do the countertop – would have taken me several weeks…

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Inspired by the EEVblog, I tore down a Samsung monitor that had stopped working.

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Two bad caps on the right.

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One other bad cap. The monitor works now that I’ve replaced them.

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We decided to hire Nathan to pour a concrete deck/patio to replace our dangerous rotten wood deck. This involved having a plumber reroute our old, installed by the previous alcoholic owners, gray water system. Unfortunately he discovered our septic was backed up…caused by several collapsed sections of Bermico pipe. So we had to get the excavator out here and have some work done. May have to get more work done…

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That solved the concrete got poured. It’s the length of our house and about 15’ wide.

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Henry wanted to paint his and Max’s room. That resulted in large amounts of paint everywhere.

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We received a large wholesale order from Made in Oregon, but they specified earring cards different from those we use. So I had to make a die to punch holes in about 100.

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Nothing fancy, hand operated. The right hand posts align the card. in concert with the hanger affixed to the back.

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Perfect holes.

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A pile of cards.

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I started hacking some cheap digital calipers but I haven’t gotten far on that yet.

pcrmcb
I’ve been playing with milling PCBs, wrote up a short post on my Taig blog. The above is a PCB for another PC remote control.

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It came out well and was compact enough that I could mount it in an unused bay in the new living room HTPC with just a hole in the bay cover for the IR detector.