tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38553015995554503942024-03-29T01:00:33.144+11:00PrawnTech3Dteddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-66856883977747007802024-03-29T01:00:00.005+11:002024-03-29T01:00:00.134+11:00Making Web Toys I Can Use<!--All Blogs except ZE--><h4>Bear with me. It's not often I get to brag about stuff I've designed. I say "designed" because I figured it out, then got some AI help to fix the most esoteric (<i>to me at any rate</i>) problems that came up.</h4>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">The widget at the foot of these articles.</h2><p>You know it, this one: </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOp7qa0iQMHEUdKlNMbo1ZLQ23B4WVY8AXaL6dUgiK3USTgXpEs1wjwtTq6D_AE462kOr7AiTiuU_ExtPgYb2HEoK0ObyRqSxnCW06-wGCDFsEakKHr9nlSMEMhQWQN9JjA3kEJOrQ6UUiu5hoSuo7s5H7KX1PnMuqYvPaoDVpJ9OcaSilwSfZlZHdpjsX/s320/BittyBottomBox001.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="162" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOp7qa0iQMHEUdKlNMbo1ZLQ23B4WVY8AXaL6dUgiK3USTgXpEs1wjwtTq6D_AE462kOr7AiTiuU_ExtPgYb2HEoK0ObyRqSxnCW06-wGCDFsEakKHr9nlSMEMhQWQN9JjA3kEJOrQ6UUiu5hoSuo7s5H7KX1PnMuqYvPaoDVpJ9OcaSilwSfZlZHdpjsX/s1600/BittyBottomBox001.png" width="162" /></a></div><p>Google didn't just give me a widget like that. I think maybe they just aren't the "Do No Evil" company they started out as ... 😸 But (<i>and this is part of the reason why I pay so many online fees</i>) I have a virtual server at <a href="https://www.digitalpacific.com.au/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Digital Pacific</a>. I host one blog on there because I sometimes worry that Google will just close Blogger/Blogspot down as it has so many other of its properties. </p><p>First - Digital Pacific aren't giving me anything for this testimonial. I started with them almost twenty years ago, to host a small static website. Yes, they've been around for a long time. I also put several people onto one of their servers and set them up with websites. And when my old site wasn't needed any more, I closed it down and didn't use DP for a year or two, but then another use case came along, and I signed on again. And then again with the current site, <a href="https://ohaicorona.com" target="_blank">O Hai Corona!</a></p><p>I've never had a problem that either I couldn't solve fairly easily or one that DP considered too trivial to give me their full support. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">So Anyway.</h3><p>As the site has a perfectly good webserver, I can use it to serve out content - and chunks of web code. That whole image above is a mini web page that (<i>thanks to ChatGPT3.5 looking up the variables for me</i>) grabs the URL of the blog post and puts it into the buttons so that you can share/copy/bookmark, it contains a whole little Universe of code and stuff, and that you can use to do whatever with.</p><p>To bung it into a blog article here, I have a little HTML template I just copy over an existing page, and that creates that little graphic up at the top of the page, and adds the code to display the Bitty Little Box down at the bottom of the page. </p><p>What's the beauty of that? </p><p>I can add the piece of HTML to display the BLB on the bottom of any post or web page and it'll consistently display the same way. And if something stops working or I want to add a new feature, I do it once in my DP server and it reflects in ALL the pages the code is in. So even old posts that had it in, can now see my "Contact Details" link I added at the bottom. If I use a different service to display the links, I only have to change it once on the DP server, and not have to worry about editing 900+ instances manually.</p><p>And it only took me a few weeks of refining and experimenting for n hour here and there to get it up and runnimg. </p><p>One other feature I like about it is that if I have an older post (<i>which may not have had a BLB in the past</i>) I can edit and update it with just that one piece of HTML and bongo - it now has the BLB and all that it contains.</p><p>Short post, I know, but now the BLB contains a contact details link so if you're interested you can contact me. </p><div align="center"><iframe allow="fullscreen" frameborder="no" height="400px" id="shareButtonsIframe" scrolling="no" style="border: 1px #FFFFFF none;" width="154px"></iframe><script>document.getElementById('shareButtonsIframe').src ='https://ohaicorona.com/ShareButtBanner01.html?parentUrl=' + encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);</script>
<p>Enjoy!</p>
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teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-65019598195490402102024-03-26T01:00:00.004+11:002024-03-26T01:00:00.249+11:00Automation Project: Shed<!--All Blogs except ZE template--><h4 style="text-align: left;">Starting shed automation. I know, it seems to be ass-backward to not be finished with physical moving-in stuff and already planning the improvements, but I have to plan, and also it was a bad bones day so hard physical exertion was out. </h4><p style="text-align: left;">A propos of drawing circuits, I need a Windows app that I can use to easily draw up circuit diagrams to post in here, does anyone know of something that's free, able to have components added without needing a degree in CAD / CAM / Ballyhoo BS? </p><p style="text-align: left;">I'd just like to be able to quickly draw a box, add a few terminals to it and label the box and terminals, then use that in multiple drawings along with common components. (<i>Or tell me one that isn't free and then help me out with a donation?</i>) </p><p style="text-align: left;">Anyhow. The thing I want to turn into a black box is this <a href="https://electropeak.com/learn/interfacing-zmct103c-5a-ac-current-transformer-module-with-arduino/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">AC current sensor thingie</a>. You can find them on AliExpress for a few bucks and a five-week wait, and they're a bit super-easy, just power them from the same 5V as the board you're using to monitor (<i>in the case of that link, an Arduino Uno but I have a few others in mind</i>) and measure the Out voltage on an analog pin. If I was a smart-ass I'd add voltage sensing, then work out the total power draw of the workshop but I'm a dumb-ass and all I want is to trigger an action if more than an amp or two is drawn on the monitored line.</p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Why Automation? </h1><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxs2EJDNuad97WqzZv18yGgkMo0Q627Xg1TgxQwI1hVAI_vjGN7fEcoQYIR4dOo8f564BPYTNxMex8hUyxKEu-sSC3KPqEW7hZ2PpnTWoWfb0zEIgLy1UgPRjrdYZR29whew8-WIq0BUnjXoOXVN4OCse7Xb3a4NyOmzq_e4f6muQ63S82vzE90K5lItA/s492/ZMCT103C.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img align="left" border="0" data-original-height="473" data-original-width="492" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWxs2EJDNuad97WqzZv18yGgkMo0Q627Xg1TgxQwI1hVAI_vjGN7fEcoQYIR4dOo8f564BPYTNxMex8hUyxKEu-sSC3KPqEW7hZ2PpnTWoWfb0zEIgLy1UgPRjrdYZR29whew8-WIq0BUnjXoOXVN4OCse7Xb3a4NyOmzq_e4f6muQ63S82vzE90K5lItA/w200-h193/ZMCT103C.png" width="200" /></a></div><p style="text-align: left;">This is the little gizmo in question, the ZMCT103C which will sense 5A, which I think is reasonable given the 700W - 1600W range of mains-powered tools I have. I'm not sure what the gizmo does with more current but I'm hoping it just silently maxes out and doesn't get blown up by a larger input voltage. We'll see. If desperate, I can actually wind myself a transformer and just make a circuit to switch at some predefined current.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you want a ZMCT103C of your very own, a quic search of AliExpress will get you around a dozen hits, FSM knows how many more if you just type it into DuckDuckGo. (<i>Or Google, not my recommended option though.</i>)</p><p style="text-align: left;">But that doesn't get you to the "why" of the whole thing does it? Basically, it's simple. If a large enough device draws current and there's no voltage on the dust extraction, I want it to shut down until someone presses Reset. Dust extraction is paramount for me, wood dust from power sawing and routing is fine enough to go through a normal dust mask and play hell-high havoc with my respiratory issues. And when I turn on any such machine and the control board realises that there's power on the air/light circuit, then it should turn the dust extractor on. I'll try and arrange it so that all the dirtiest power tools have a suction hose on them, and a blast-gate that I can open to allow dust to be whooshed away and filtered so that I can get away with a relatively simple respirator.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Most workshops have these auto-on systems but they're built into the superduper shop vacs they buy, you have to plug the power tools into the shop vac and then it switches on when the tool is powered up. That's great for many smaller shops and hobby setups like mine, but as I said, my needs dictate something a bit better. Shop vacs produce a huge plume of 2u dust and that's just a limitation they have. They run high speed air, and that puts a lot of pressure on filters. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I want a lower-speed, high volume setup and I'm building it. Also, those shop vacs are <i style="font-weight: bold;">inside </i>the workshop so that means that whole dust plume is going right back into the air I'd be breathing. You can (<i>sometimes...</i>) run a vent hose outside from the shop vac but it costs because it reduces the overall efficiency and so you get less dust extraction. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Some of the low-speed high-volume dust extractor systems people use, also vent back inside the shop. Some have huge cylindrical folded-paper filters atop them but those filters only catch some of the dust in that dangerous size range, and even then, those filters cost a bomb, need cleaning (<i>which need regular cleaning, generally with an air hose nozzle, and then there you are, shifting the dust out of the filter and into the air around you. Ya just can't win.</i>)</p><p style="text-align: left;">The only thing you can do is take the best tips from it all and put the extractor outside - with all the filtering you can get - and be prepared for a few efficiency losses along the way. Because of course even the scenario where the machine is outside has drawbacks. For a start, it creates a vacuum inside the shop, and if the wind's in the right direction you can cop the dust right back. On cold days, the extractor system will cause that vacuum and then cold air will creep in through every gap. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And THAT is why I want automation. To be able to make the shop as clean as possible for my lungs' sake. </p><p style="text-align: left;">So some of the programming has just been sorted out:</p><p style="text-align: left;">If power tool on and no power to light / air circuit, emergency stop power to the tools.<br />If power tool on and power exists to light / air then activate dust extraction.<br />If dust extraction is on as per above, and pwer tool turns off, countdown 30 seconds and turn extraction off. (<i>You want time for the dust in the lines to get to the cyclone, also sometimes you're just moving a length of wood along to make the next cut, so turning the extraction system on then off then on again is wasteful.</i>)</p><p style="text-align: left;">The other thing is that I want to run the dust extraction off solar and an inverter, because even though it seems a negligible current, with the mitre saw turning on and the extraction system turning on, that could trip the circuit breaker for the garage. There's only a single 16A circuit into the place, meaning that in practice it's limited to 10A per outlet which means that two motors kicking in at the same time could easily exceed the 16A rating. </p><p style="text-align: left;">For the moment I'll have to chance it - or power the extraction system from the laundry which is on a different circuit and circuit breaker. A new battery for the solar panel and a chunky 4000W inverter are outside the budget for now. But I want to allow for it in future. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Anyway - just a progress report. As always, please share the link to this page, consider making a donation, and come back soon for the next article!</p>
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<p style="text-align: center;">As always, be awesome, stay awesome!</p>
teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-69455084695894293082024-03-19T01:00:00.005+11:002024-03-19T01:00:00.334+11:00AliExpress - An Improvement to Orders Page?<img align="left" height="48" src="https://ohaicorona.com/images/PTEC3D_Icon_sml.png" width="48" />
<p style="text-align: left;">Firstly, I'm trying out a "drop cap" style graphic at the head of each article that'll allow you to tell which blog the repost came from when it's announced on social media. If you find this annoying let me know, but give it a few days to see how it goes...</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Now on with the show. I see that AliExpress has made order tracking that little bit better, I've never seen:</h4><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Zb4QvT9toNyZJHPBhyphenhyphenMxfzL3XY-tJfSE6Dbhyp_9T1lgZNTi4q9gYBNeGZvDuKqpTPxwlDngiCXFMUO_5Qo3Dk8nHyEAOZtFjTL5fx1AaDVTc2Czi-Psy8YWsU_UdnGZF5tQZAlvA-jUIF5HzP1WvNTkQiJb4OUcMdqI24d5zmUFxAc5aI5ZRUvO5giM/s952/AEOrderFormNowWCourier.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="952" height="127" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6Zb4QvT9toNyZJHPBhyphenhyphenMxfzL3XY-tJfSE6Dbhyp_9T1lgZNTi4q9gYBNeGZvDuKqpTPxwlDngiCXFMUO_5Qo3Dk8nHyEAOZtFjTL5fx1AaDVTc2Czi-Psy8YWsU_UdnGZF5tQZAlvA-jUIF5HzP1WvNTkQiJb4OUcMdqI24d5zmUFxAc5aI5ZRUvO5giM/s320/AEOrderFormNowWCourier.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p style="text-align: left;">. . . tracking info start with "Collected by courier" on any of my other orders, there's always been a longish hiatus where the order was packed but - invisible - just not tackable. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Sometimes that Cloak Of Invisibility lasted right up to the day the item was received here in Australia, sometimes I'd get a grudging email after two weeks that the order was in the system with China Post or something. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Anyone else noticed this as a new thing or have I just never had a seller that bothers to use the feature? </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><div align="center"><iframe allow="fullscreen" frameborder="no" height="400px" id="shareButtonsIframe" scrolling="no" style="border: 1px #FFFFFF none;" width="154px"></iframe><script>document.getElementById('shareButtonsIframe').src ='https://ohaicorona.com/ShareButtBanner01.html?parentUrl=' + encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);</script></div>
<p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-17111662037955418402024-03-06T01:00:00.012+11:002024-03-09T19:08:58.959+11:00Garage Shed Sched<img align="left" height="48" src="https://ohaicorona.com/images/PTEC3D_Icon_sml.png" width="48" />
<p style="text-align: left;">Firstly, I'm trying out a "drop cap" style graphic at the head of each article that'll allow you to tell which blog the repost came from when it's announced on social media. If you find this annoying let me know, but give it a few days to see how it goes...</p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">So you may have gathered across all my blogs (check them all at <a href="https://ohaicorona.com/teds-news-stand" target="_blank">Ted's News Stand</a>) that real life has reared its head in our life here, but it's also started settling into a new routine so besides having more time to be indoors and writing, I also have more time to go back to making a garage into a workshop.</h4><p style="text-align: left;">To complicate matters, it's coming up on our hottest months and the garage is a 6m by 6m steel sheeted and roofed structure without a tree in sight to shade it. When temperatures outside hits 26C the interior (<i>with a door open and fans blowing cooler outside air in</i>) hits 33-34C. And we're heading for the middle of summer, when temperatures outside will hit 34C - 38C quite often...</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><u>UPDATE: </u></b>Thanks to the skylight blinds the difference between inside and out is now only 6C with door open and 4C with door open and intake fan on... </p><p style="text-align: left;">I guess I could open the garage roller door. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;">.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;">But no. I can't. </p><p><span style="color: white;">.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;">Our cats are confined to the house and yard - and that means they can get into the garage by its side door. Which they do all the time because they're all of them my apprentices and like to be around when I'm working on projects. (<i>At least, right up until I make those big noises with the machines, then they sensibly go outside and observe from a safe distance...</i>)</p><p style="text-align: left;">Eventually, I'll make a folding screen to stop them running out and onto the highway, but that will take time and frankly, after the most recent bit of work I've completed, I can't see myself doing a large folding screen this summer. Thanks to what I've done the garage is already a little cooler inside, but if I'm going to lose another couple of kilos in the "tin sauna" I'll use that energy to finish moving in rather than improving the airflow. It'll be cooler again soon enough, and then too cold without a heater Also, besides hot work, it's hard going with respiratory and mobility issues. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I do okay, I just do okay slower than most others would...</p><p style="text-align: left;">For now, I might have to be content with the goals I've already scored:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Sunshades covering the wall-to-wall set of skylight panels. </li><li>Tool trolley (<i>almost</i>) finished.</li><li>Shopvac turned into a cyclone dust collector.</li></ul><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Sunshades</h4><p style="text-align: left;">I noticed early on that the skylight panels (<i>just a 40cm wide strip of translucent corrugated panels in the roof, but provide great light - and unfortunately, heat</i>) made the place uncomfortably warm in spring, and put an old cloth gazebo wall panel up temporarily over the western side, as I figured the afternoon heat would be the worst. Then Pickle. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">So what happened? I had the panel clipped up with spring clips, Pickle found his way up onto the shelving, decided that he was going to use the canvas for a hammock, walked out onto it and - took an almost 1.7m drop to the concrete below... Luckily the clips only let go on one side and the cloth wrapped around him and slowed his fall, because I could only watch as he came down, it was all so quick. The tube chute he ended up sliding through was enough to reduce his fall from a possible thump to a mild bump, and he's okay. </span></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">But that meant that I had to take time off the main setting-up jobs to make sure that Pickle didn't get to the top of the rack shelving again. (<i>Closing any direct climbways above the first shelf, a minor engineering miracle.</i>) And put up the canvas again because otherwise it was uncomfortably hot inside. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVKc_HaVdWsiDX79DGVrNFf0sI0wde2jzQC-Wg8Rli9gMoilhM_w01OHWDWmHGaYeQbB7sCudpalx1SejcIG0toaKG5HZXlt5JHI9F9b1dL5-ozVdJu_F-zutcCwj5cs9KgyPTWHTQpTk6CwmeX1K964HyjWfa297T_1YyLSTiXvBrRcfj9b4HSopFYRY/s4080/20240126_122708.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVKc_HaVdWsiDX79DGVrNFf0sI0wde2jzQC-Wg8Rli9gMoilhM_w01OHWDWmHGaYeQbB7sCudpalx1SejcIG0toaKG5HZXlt5JHI9F9b1dL5-ozVdJu_F-zutcCwj5cs9KgyPTWHTQpTk6CwmeX1K964HyjWfa297T_1YyLSTiXvBrRcfj9b4HSopFYRY/s320/20240126_122708.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The old...</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2qj9NcaWMlehExXbmrgtYiC5RtT5g2ZXrfOqPr15q-De1qY-mWIHhZfy5IASSsQf2oL5NONcJKM9eJJPSGeowPtkG05-9fCAypQzDYDWU5b5JqFMYuo4PYsL8Apq1pJkYJ3A4OJE6vxczvGrl4A4Zv1atiKWdgfnfo8f_BVtzVXkMIPszhOuxOY-307f/s4080/20240204_182726.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4080" data-original-width="2296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2qj9NcaWMlehExXbmrgtYiC5RtT5g2ZXrfOqPr15q-De1qY-mWIHhZfy5IASSsQf2oL5NONcJKM9eJJPSGeowPtkG05-9fCAypQzDYDWU5b5JqFMYuo4PYsL8Apq1pJkYJ3A4OJE6vxczvGrl4A4Zv1atiKWdgfnfo8f_BVtzVXkMIPszhOuxOY-307f/s320/20240204_182726.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Halfway to the "new, improved" shades...</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: center;">... <i>and I don't have a photo yet of the whole new setup. </i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Then just a week or two ago I took the gazebo canvas down, cut two correctly sized panels from it, and covered a bit more than a metre of the skylights either side of the ridge. They're designed to more or less stay there all the time but can be furled up towards the c entre to let more light and warmth in, in winter.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I installed two support wires that go from side to side over the ridge rafter spaced about 900mm apart, used a few steel tubes from another gazebo structure to make spreaders for the canvas, and fixed the panels in place on the support wires. Because I had a pack of tarpaulin grommets, I added two to each canvas panel so I can also support the middle of each panel. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I'd earlier bought a 1.8m x 1.8m 70% shadecloth swatch of a similar sandy tan colour that I could cut in half for two 900mm x 1.8m panels, put four grommets per side on those, made similar spreader bars, and ran them from the end of the tarp to the walls. That gives about 90% shade over the apex of the roof and 75% for the ends, and I can slide the spreader bars up to open it all up for winter, slide them back down for hotter days. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Tool trolley</h4><p style="text-align: left;">This was my hardware cart in the smaller shed, but I've made it the storage for power tools, hand tools, and a few other bits n bobs. I need to extend a pair of steadying bars and move the rear caster wheels outwards for a bit of extra stability, but most of the tools are on it somewhere. It ain't pretty but it's functional. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Shopvac cyclone</h4><p style="text-align: left;">I've had an 80litre olive drum on a cart made from an old pram frame for months, and a spot to sit the Shopvac at the front. But I hadn't yet had time to make the plumbing and set up a drum cyclone. </p><p style="text-align: left;">But then I had a half day to mess around, got things halfway to a prototype that I thought would work, and when I had another half day, I put it together. It too ain't pretty but it does keep all the dust out of the shopvac, meaning I can use it to dust-collect on the power tool tables and also vac up the floor, without needing to buy filter after filter for the Homelite shopvac. It has one downside though, I managed to block the end of the hose while it was running and was treated to the sight of the olive barrel just imploding like a bad science experiment. And it was loud, decisive, and FAST! I changed my underwear and continued.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Luckily the decades-old plastic didn't split, but I'm now looking for a much more sturdy barrel... Meanwhile, I have a smaller shopvac style machine that I use for floors or anywhere there's a chance of water or something that could block the hose and cause another implosion, and just the cyclone for the dust ports on the mitre saw, drill press, table saw, and any other power tools with a port. Being on the trolley I can move the dust collector to wherever it's needed. </p><p style="text-align: left;">There's also a continually running air cleaner filter, and I wear a mask when using the machines as well. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><b><u><span style="background-color: red;"><span style="color: white;">NE</span></span><span style="background-color: #fcff01;">WS</span><span style="background-color: red;"><span style="color: white;">!:</span></span> </u></b>I found a large extractor vent/motor combo. Backstory: </p><p style="text-align: left;">Now, people who make their own dust extraction systems often make the turbine rotor turbine for it out of plywood and attach a motor and build a spiral exhaust chamber etc... The idea of such a turbine is that it moves a large volume of air at a lower pressure. </p><p style="text-align: left;">But it's a LOT of fiddly work that could explode on you if anything lets go and unbalances it at 5,000 or 10,000RPM or whatever. Good turbine or squirrelcage blowers are kinda expensive on my budget. And I saw this vent motor combo in the opp shop for twenty bucks and thought "Well, this'll save me making and balancing a fiddly turbine, and I have several old mains motors that' spin this up to the speed I'll need..."</p><p style="text-align: left;">Then I cleaned it up a bit, and on a whim, sorted the wiring out, hooked it up to an RCB and gave the "ole Beige Mario Mushroom" a quick test to see if the turbine impeller was balanced before investing much time in adapting it to a more powerful motor. I needn't have worried...</p><p style="text-align: left;">My wife took the first video of it but I had to take a second one because she was --- shall we say very VERY surprised by the speed and volume of air it shifted and let out a few unladylike words... Quite frankly, so did I, because the amount of air it shifted for such a small power consumption took me by surprise. So here's Take#2:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eWm6B4iVEqE" width="320" youtube-src-id="eWm6B4iVEqE"></iframe></div><p style="text-align: center;"><i>The dome is about 420mm across, enjoy the rush!</i></p><p style="text-align: center;">You can find my other videos at <a href="https://youtube.com/@PTEC3D" target="_blank">https://youtube.com/@PTEC3D</a>. Warning, I don't edit my snippets (<i>yet</i>) so it's all raw footage. And a bonus, boring, non-trained voice.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Bonus: The mitre saw</h4><p style="text-align: left;">You might recall that I bought the 254mm compound mitre saw a few months back at a garage sale, and put it into service as soon as I lowered the height of the plinth it was on, and I've been using it for the soft woods of pallets and the pine lumber I have and it was fine. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Then I tried a piece of harder wood and noticed that the blade was getting smoking hot. Not good, so I checked a few things. Including the blade. - Wow... - The blade that had 13 of the 40 carbide tipped points broken off, chipped, or otherwise damaged... </p><p style="text-align: left;">(<i>Not by me, I might add. I knowingly used it to cut aluminium T track but the saw blades are made for that, just use a slow feed rate and a mitre saw will rip through anything aluminium, plexiglass and many plastics. Nope - I was just a dope and didn't check the blade when I found it at the garage sale and so missed an chance to maybe whittle the price down a bit more... Lesson learned.</i>)</p><p style="text-align: left;">I had a bit of money put aside and luckily it was enough for me to go to the hardware store and buy another blade for the beastie and still have server fees etc t hand. Haven't made a cut with it yet but I'm sure it won't have as much tear-out as the old blade had... UPDATE: It's lovely to use now. I've just made around a dozen rails for the last (<i>The LAST!!! Hurray!!!</i>) part of the shelving and it's like magic. </p><p style="text-align: left;">As it's now our height of summer it's a bit warmish (<i>36-42C, about 97-108F</i>) to be working out there doing heavy work like finishing the rack shelving and moving large quantities of stuff around, but there are smaller projects:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The "new-new "dust extractor system. I made the cyclone system I mentioned and that I'm quite proud of out of a shop vac and an 80litre plastic olive drum, which is fine except it depends on high-speed rather than of volume of air so it screams a bit loud, which is annoying and also, high-speed air stirs up a lot of dust. The new-new system will use a 120litre drum for the cyclone, and whatever I find works for the second and third stage filtering and power plant. (Or in this case, power mushroom...)</li><li>I'm also working a 200litre drum into a plastics washing machine, currently making the mesh insert that the plastics will go into to be washed. (<i>BONUS: It'll also let me wash other things, as long as they're not oily.</i>)</li><li>Re-jig of the tiny table saw (<i>or finding a cheap one on local buy/swap/sell and having generous patrons</i>) so that I can finally be sure my badly racking home-brewed fence will remain square - or finally free up that table for use as a router table. </li><li>I need to make any draw of current on the power tools outlets, switch on the dust extraction and then keep it running long enough to clear out the plumbing afterwards.</li><li>I need a way to cut off ALL power tools power for emergencies.</li><li>I'll be getting back to designing my little CNC router so that I'll have some wood, plastic, and aluminium milling capability. </li><li>Still looking for someone to send me a Bambulabs machine 😺 so I can print parts for tools etc without having to futz and fart around with my cranky, fussy, and now ageing Creality Ender 3 Pro. It's still a good printer but takes a lot of setup, has to be watched while printing, and I just don't have that amount of time. </li><li>Thicknesser, anyone? I could really use that or an electric planer for taking plastic sheets to a smooth finish rather than clogging up expensive sanding discs as I'm currently doing... </li><li>I have - of course - the rack shelving to finish and move stuff into. But - LAST row of shelves!</li><li>And to build a lean-to roof with solar panels on top and a long wood rack underneath, and a water collecting drum for shop water seeing as running water isn't handy close by.</li><li>I need to make a cat-containment set of folding panels so that next summer I'll be able to partially raise the garage door to let air in but filter our cats that would otherwise escape and get run over on a highway 20 metres away.</li><li>I'm also going to need to partition off a space for the wife's little scooter so it can stay undercover but not get workshop dust all over it. </li><li>If I can finagle it I'll ask the landlord to please let me cut a utilities panel in one wall where I can place the dust extractor outside and only run plumbing and a power lead inside. </li><li>If I can achieve that last point, then in winter I can use the same extractor utilities panel to run diesel heater combustion pipes outside for winter heating. </li></ul><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">And at some stage of course, I'll want to be making useful items out of waste plastic including waterproof capping and cladding for my bird, bat, and possum nesting and roosting boxes. Oh and I have half a dozen orders from my wife that I'd really like to have the facilities to Make for her...</p><p style="text-align: left;">Now please bookmark, share, donate - help me get some of these projects ready to hand off to worthy community organisations.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center;">The great news is that we' ve heard a great new word from the wife's hematologist: remission!</p><p style="text-align: center;">Stay Awesome!</p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-86231006856691184292024-02-29T01:00:00.086+11:002024-02-29T01:00:00.141+11:00HDPE Fun Facts With Toasters<h4 style="text-align: left;">HDPE Bottle Cap Fun Facts. Here I am doing a quick research project using the HDPE bottle caps people have been bringing me to recycle. Meet your average soft drink bottle lid... </h4><h2 style="text-align: left;">Firstly.</h2><p>All HDPE will have roughly the same specifications. It has a Specific Gravity (SD) of 0.95 meaning if you had a cubic centimetre block of it vs a cubic centimetre (cc) of water, the HDPE would weigh 0.95g and the water, 1g. </p><p>That means that the HDPE will float in water, I tested it with my sample - and yes it does. </p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>I used my flat sandwich press which limits the outer dimensions of the piece I can make in it to around 25cm x 15cm. </li><li>I could place a grid of 8 bottlecaps across, 4 bottlecaps deep. I placed one of those BBQ protector sheets on the bottom first, left the long edge of it leaning up against the lid of the sandwich press, lining up the 32 bottle caps as close together as I could. </li><li>Then I folded the BBQ protector sheet over them, closed the press, and put about a kilo of weight on top. </li><li>Switched the unit on and left it for 20 minutes, then <i style="font-weight: bold;">did not open the press or remove the weights</i> but left it to sit for another 40 minutes to cool down. </li><li>That last bit's important. </li><li>For reason A) the plastic is tacky and despite all the non-stick claims for the BBQ sheets, it'll stick and get pulled like toffee if you try to take a peek and you'll end up with a warped sheet. </li><li>Reason B) is that even if you don't try to peek between the sheets, as the plastic cools down it'll shrink at different rates depending where it's getting cooled the most, and this will always put a bow in it. (<i>If you don't believe me, make a small thin patch of plastic sheet, peel it off the BBQ sheet as soon as you're able to, and drop it in a bucket of cold water. Scrunch!</i>)</li><li>By 40 minutes it was still warm but my plan was to put a second layer of bottle caps on, so it was all going back for a second heating anyway. I just eased the BBQ sheet off the top of the plastic (<i>using cotton gloves because it wasn't really all that hot by then - but I recommend <b>good silicone heat-resistant gloves</b> anyway</i>) and added another 32 caps in the same grid pattern.</li><li>I then proceeded as for step 3 again but set my timer for 30 minutes as there's a bit more plastic to heat up.</li><li>At the end of that time I again switched the unit off and then walked away - but for at least an hour this time. </li></ol><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">My setup looked like this:</h4><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbKtToUIbRFBxFoISjjUthBBFBxpLnPlRubenVzQ5-vmW1I4iyWFFIGjvCUhenBthA4zPqfKPep03gbYSfuRSkCscWGBiouA5WscxySd85aaaty6Shj3US_NPBuiCG1AirnCOerZ7zcNHlA37Tz7wdQEe54Q9QjtoZUgOsirv6QVXRV9iEZu8jrlJONLS/s4080/20240212_153027.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlbKtToUIbRFBxFoISjjUthBBFBxpLnPlRubenVzQ5-vmW1I4iyWFFIGjvCUhenBthA4zPqfKPep03gbYSfuRSkCscWGBiouA5WscxySd85aaaty6Shj3US_NPBuiCG1AirnCOerZ7zcNHlA37Tz7wdQEe54Q9QjtoZUgOsirv6QVXRV9iEZu8jrlJONLS/s320/20240212_153027.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>That's around 1kg of lead on top.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ccXcGUh04PNvQRQpwCpO9n3_tO4GzxEaAjt1pKgIneRl2haLwg54Owdc2WBq8yymsHn19KR16b4mXtQFf3KHKdCygb3fCCP0_8im0zJgzKXBFylqblMlgD36OzN7jgI8cC4rC0wrGqmHxh-ptF_RknH1l4aSEx6CrC5mB-QvpI1bW0hHq-bthHuo19x8/s4080/20240212_152953.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6ccXcGUh04PNvQRQpwCpO9n3_tO4GzxEaAjt1pKgIneRl2haLwg54Owdc2WBq8yymsHn19KR16b4mXtQFf3KHKdCygb3fCCP0_8im0zJgzKXBFylqblMlgD36OzN7jgI8cC4rC0wrGqmHxh-ptF_RknH1l4aSEx6CrC5mB-QvpI1bW0hHq-bthHuo19x8/s320/20240212_152953.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And by this time I was trying another experiment with other caps.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>You can see why my results have a surface pattern - both from the BBQ sheet and the wrinkles it gets, and also from the fact that for the sake of speed I wasn't "kneading" the plastic in between. Generally when making sheets in a panini press, you (<i>wearing silicon heatproof gloves, of course!</i>) roll and twist and knead the plastic between adding / reheating layers to get air bubbles out, and get a more uniform surface, better colour, and more interesting patterns. (<i>See almost any Brothers Make Youtube video to see how.</i>)<div><br /></div><div>Also note that some presses can fit several layers of bottle caps at a time but I'm not so lucky with this press. Also, most pros recommend that your plastic be shredded and I don't have a shredder nor a burning desire to sit down for two days with plastic bottle caps and a pair of shears cutting all down to shreds... </div><div><br /></div><div>(<i>Down near the bottom I have the ideal sheet-making machine I'm hoping to get my paws on one day - it's a teeshirt transfer press but it fulfils my requirements quite well - over 200C temperature available for harder grade plastics, 300mm x 380mm flat rectangular press plates, both heated, locking press mechanism, a timer, and can be readily modified to make precise straight-edged rectangular panels repeatably from most materials. Being able to experiment with one is one of the reasons I ask for donations...</i>)<br /><p>In the case of the lower image, the bottle caps are off the larger juice bottles but they're still all type 2 (<i>number 2 in a recycle triangle symbol</i>) or HDPE. I could have used all LDPE (<i>4</i>) but it's more flexible and softens at a lower temperature than HDPE. </p><p>As I said, I left the first experiment for over an hour to cool, because it's a bit warm (<i>34C</i>) here so the whole setup was still warm to touch - but also, luckily, the plastic had set solid enough to no longer bow during the remaining cooling. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">And the first experiment result was this:</h4><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnC7Mp_jxCJ_0xmBPPe3Md-Qg5QBDUZP_0H1JnDkJ_kY-ndRurwaummsbPxXF1caaN91dTI62FHgvcMriqKo1fzov2P7CgmaWeu0uqa4WjN8RpaOgRCDZyOtQ21bGUIwSHKjdJwgOeTvVhKtX-VwV46b2YnJdw8Fu3LRFME275tDi4tQ7nEaGeBSUxoDQ/s4080/20240212_142509.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnC7Mp_jxCJ_0xmBPPe3Md-Qg5QBDUZP_0H1JnDkJ_kY-ndRurwaummsbPxXF1caaN91dTI62FHgvcMriqKo1fzov2P7CgmaWeu0uqa4WjN8RpaOgRCDZyOtQ21bGUIwSHKjdJwgOeTvVhKtX-VwV46b2YnJdw8Fu3LRFME275tDi4tQ7nEaGeBSUxoDQ/s320/20240212_142509.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>As you can see, burnt sugars, and you can see each bottle cap still.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>The result didn't need to be fantastic for my purposes for it so I decided not to waste too much time on it. Washing it using a reasonable washing system I don't yet have, using hand shears to painstakingly cut it all into smaller more uniform chips (<i>and there's another tool I need, a decent shredder...</i>) was deemed to be too much mucking around for a sheet of plastic I was just going to use for in internal panel that will have stuff mounted on it, out of sight.. </p><p>The dirty looking marks are where there was dried drink on the lids, and because I didn't really care about appearance or strength too much, I left them unwashed. Also, because I figured it out all by myself when my first ever experiment had that same "grotty" look. Drinks (and milk) have sugars in them, the sugar when put in the press and heated gets burnt and "toasted" and also melted into the plastic itself. And that's a problem.</p><p>You'll appreciate that whereas with a sheet of clean plastic, I can return all the shavings and trimmings back into the tub to go round again, but once you've got some toasted sugars baked into the sheet, all trimmings will be contaminated with crud you can't get out by washing. </p><p>For my project, this is a sub-panel behind a control panel and will never be seen, there's plenty of room to place it with only minimal material needing to be taken off - and I wanted to show you one of my first "gotchas" I came across. You literally *must* wash every piece with water and maybe a small amount of surfactant (<i>detergent</i>) if you want a good clean output. Don't depend on your collectors to do it...</p><p>This shows the importance of having some means to wash and dry your plastic well, why a better press than a sandwich press is eventually going to be on your wishlist too, and for the sake of a consistent output, you need something that will shred or flake the plastic to a small consistent size that will form a uniform product. </p><p>I've got the materials for a decent wash system, and when I build it the documentation will be here. I'm hoping to find a way to shred/grind plastics after washing and drying, and again, if either I get enough in donations to buy one or build one, the build and use will appear here. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">That second experiment</h3><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO4c3wXVio98CRkwaf5mF1Drf7OyCvwEHnO3YM0GJ2Fr59WR5xfJS265hRIKOf298OPggOhyphenhyphen5dP9GmXCGzv0v-58pmGGEbAMmNki5vg4hjSwCNuFoE31nYGvw98ukRmbPTNTwsrCMSaoBwoGyrqnqrVL8gVxG4QCjz8EX2TthTXSPz0VLxAF5j672YBR85/s4080/20240212_153151.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO4c3wXVio98CRkwaf5mF1Drf7OyCvwEHnO3YM0GJ2Fr59WR5xfJS265hRIKOf298OPggOhyphenhyphen5dP9GmXCGzv0v-58pmGGEbAMmNki5vg4hjSwCNuFoE31nYGvw98ukRmbPTNTwsrCMSaoBwoGyrqnqrVL8gVxG4QCjz8EX2TthTXSPz0VLxAF5j672YBR85/s320/20240212_153151.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>... this seemed like a much better idea in theory ...</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmP9JsjQmotOD-A7DgkrCSc9UWTEUGCXrZQRlmQq79i4a4KClZWkaWYF19Unq_XsOowLn6Fj0ZfnyD4Sx1QiZYOs70u-zqoT8mEpJTRY279roOi6BS1O_60hqL-csytOQmdc5Ki-OkMScSUGXupRiFBfj92aa_ioO6h072oiLanyhrP3-Xek1rM5nJQPjE/s4080/20240212_173909.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmP9JsjQmotOD-A7DgkrCSc9UWTEUGCXrZQRlmQq79i4a4KClZWkaWYF19Unq_XsOowLn6Fj0ZfnyD4Sx1QiZYOs70u-zqoT8mEpJTRY279roOi6BS1O_60hqL-csytOQmdc5Ki-OkMScSUGXupRiFBfj92aa_ioO6h072oiLanyhrP3-Xek1rM5nJQPjE/s320/20240212_173909.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>... until you consider the wildly dofferent expansion ratios of plastic versus steel ... </i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>The idea was to put some fine wire mesh in between, but at this scale it <i style="font-weight: bold;">does not work</i> ... The steel mesh is fine when everything's melting, it's still sort of fine as everything's cooling down between the plates of the press, but as soon as the pressure comes off . . . sproing! </p><p>It was a first class lesson in first class stuff-ups thanks to my first-class lack of thinking things through. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">What I learned from that</h4><p>This would probably have worked if there was a 10mm - 20mm sheet of plastic involved, but you need a modified Precious Plastic sheetpress and cooling press set A) that I can't afford and B) that would wipe out all the spare space in my workshop and C) would need a separate mains power line in the workshop. My little sandwich press can barely handle 6mm thicknesses before it can't supply heat fast enough, so the contraction of iron mesh even as thin as that mesh was, will always result in a topographical map.</p><p>The idea for putting reinfocing inside a panel came to me because I've previously ironed plastic into cotton cloth, which works a treat and gives the plastic greater strength - just like the glass cloth in fibreglass. Because cloth (or fibreglass cloth) doesn't really expand with heat, and will always let the plastic win the shrinkage contest..</p><p>As I said, one could possibly stretch a wire mesh across a Precious Plastic sheetpress halfway up, but you'd need a special split edge form with space for the mesh. And it'd leak plastic, resulting in the top side always having sag. </p><p>The reason I thought of the wire mesh was twofold, A) as observed above, the strength factor, but B) also the fact that mesh as fine as I was using can also help to screen things from electrical interference. It'd be a great Faraday cage if one could connect the edges together and to earth.</p><p>Anyhow - this has to wait until I can test it with a <a href="https://bit.ly/sheetpress" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">tee shirt press</a> converted to mini sheetpress that can make consistent products. I might be able to make 8mm thick sheets on that with a bit of care. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Re-stocking</h4><p>We give our 10c Container Return Scheme plastic bottles to a friend's kids, and we keep the bottlecaps because HDPE. But now we've told the kids that if they collect bottlecaps of their other bottles before recycling them for the 10c, I'll pay them a few more bucks. I know, I'm a soft touch. But the kids are saving to buy themselves things and start savings accounts, and I'm happy to help them get some business nous. Plus - I'm slowly getting a 20litre tub filling up with hdpe. </p><p>My hope is to one day be able to put collection bins around the place and collect a useful amount of material. But that means buying or making lockable bins, and driving around town checking and emptying bins regularly. And once I have a system, I can donate it to the local Community House and they can use it to make money for their good works. But I won't be doing it with my pension income.</p><p>Anyway - like share bookmark donate - I'll take all the help I can get to get to my next goal of getting a tee shirt press I can make into a sheetpress. Your donations make it possible for me to keep my online stuff online and to keep experimenting and presenting my results for others..</p>
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<p><br /></p></div>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-68759707462729473292024-02-28T01:00:00.015+11:002024-02-28T01:00:00.257+11:00Ruby Tuesday - Meet the laptop<p>So I've had a new laptop for about a week now and am still nowhere near "moved in" to it. I'm going slowly because my old laptop (<i>Toshiba Satellite Pentiumsomething 4G RAM mechanical SATA 40G or some such originally I upgraded to 240Gb SSD SATA</i>) had some huge number of programs installed on it and I'm not sure which ones I'll keep on it vs transferring to the new laptop. It's also over ten years old and software that used to run on it crawls now, despite completely flattening it and re-installing new W10 on it twice in that time. </p><p>I've had a $300 Ideapad 10" convertible and the wife has a 14" Lenovo of a similar style to the new kid on the block but about four years old now. Most importantly, the Lenis have been reliable - and after my current one, my third Toshie, developed broken hinges leading to a broken casing, I'm regretfully saying buh-bye to the Toshiba brand. </p><p>The 10" IdeaPad has been great for a glorified tablet running W10, and I've used "Lena" as it's known, for about four or five years now as a note taker, Zoom and Skype machine, general take it anywhere machine, and between the wife's Lenovo and "Lena" I'm comfortable around the sleeky little grey/silver machines. </p><p>And apparently (<i>and despite a long career in IT, system and network admin, and freelancing</i>) I'm the least machine-proud person I know. When I was filling in for a worldwide logistic company's IT guy while they went for a six month stress leave, I had to buy a new phone because my current one had bit the dust. I walked to a corner shop near work in my lunch break, found another Nokia that looked like it'd do, charged it, whacked my old SIM in, and rang a mate. This is the conversation:</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times;">DD: (<i>the friend</i>) "I thought your phone was cactus? Waaaaasssssuuuuup?" (<i>Yeah. Unfortunately. It was back THEN...</i>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Me: "Yah I just bought one at lunch, charged it and put my SIM in it. Much better battery life now."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">DD: "So? Tell! What have you bought?" </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Me: "Ummm... Hang on. Uh - it's got a salmon pinkish case." (<i>And fair dinkum I had no bloody idea what make or model it was at that stage. And still don't to this day. Nor do I care.</i>)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">DD: ". . . kidding, right? Right?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Me: "fraid not, it was a phone, I needed a phone, now I haz one..."</span></p><p></p></blockquote><p>Pretty much always since starting a full-on career in IT, that's been my attitude. Screw the brand name, screw the accessories and bells and whistles - does it do the job and do it well? - then buy it and set it up, give it to the person it was built up for. Luckily a lot of the office machines, besides compiling software and letting the person program on it, also partook of the daily network FPS deathmatches we ran... So I did get to know the name Radeon pretty well... </p><p>But the thing about getting Toshies was - I got a secondhand Toshiba CHONKBRIK when I needed a machine to take out in the field, and it was surprisingly tough and capable so I was really pissed when one day I went to open the lid and there was a *crack!* and the lid separated from the hinge, the screen cracked across a corner, and that was all she wrote...</p><p>I finagled the second one from a supplier at a good price, copied everything off the old hard drive, and had a good machine I was still using six years later when I retired with disability and moved interstate to here. Then one day opening the lid creaked like opening the Great Hall doors at a haunted mansion, and from then on I didn't close the lid... (<i>I did hear that a touch of oil applied with a fine tip syringe helped. And it did, for a few more months, but apparently the issue is mechanical damage inside the hinges.</i>) Then one day the cleaner pushed the lid down when they went to dust...</p><p>And now, my latest Toshiba "whatever" has been sitting with the lid open for the last four of its ten years next to a big HP display, with a wireless keyboard and mouse... "Ruby" will let me roam with my machine again.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZezAvsrOqS2wktVnEta73VPCShoPdapNg100u3wvDJxyxM6H1-WJ0r_tZFzb3Y1DBE3N7xGcoz_pGlelJeixj3FH6VJ16pDtq_XeCQHFuSMEeddaE8IuIHZ7a1kCnb-pkaSMxCdO5eikXWAdBmBjq6ob1PCtKtLyrezKIQM7tGt6oBwdX0fknY1hIkW5M/s4080/Ruby_Blurred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZezAvsrOqS2wktVnEta73VPCShoPdapNg100u3wvDJxyxM6H1-WJ0r_tZFzb3Y1DBE3N7xGcoz_pGlelJeixj3FH6VJ16pDtq_XeCQHFuSMEeddaE8IuIHZ7a1kCnb-pkaSMxCdO5eikXWAdBmBjq6ob1PCtKtLyrezKIQM7tGt6oBwdX0fknY1hIkW5M/s320/Ruby_Blurred.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>It's a bad shot of Ruby but I think we all know what a laptop looks like.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>So for the people who will want to know:</p>
<center><table border="1" style="width: 60%;"><tbody><tr><td>
<p>Lenovo Ideapad Slim, aka "Ruby" because it arrived by courier on Tuesday 13th Feb, specs etc from the supplier website:</p><p>Lenovo 14” Ideapad Slim 1 Laptop R5 16/512GB<br />Brand Lenovo Descriptive Colour Cloud Grey<br />Manufacturer's Warranty 12 month<br />Microsoft Office Preloaded<br />Model Number 82R3006CAU<br />Operating System Edition Windows 11 Home<br />Product Dimensions (mm) 325.3W x 216.5D x 17.9H mm<br />Product Weight (kg) 1.38 kg<br />Windows Cortana Yes</p><p>Connectivity<br />Bluetooth Compatibility Bluetooth 5.1<br />Internet Connectivity Wireless<br />Wireless Protocols Wi-Fi® 6, 11ax 2x2<br /></p><p>Display Anti-Glare<br />Display Resolution 1920 x 1080<br />Display Size (Diagonal) 14 in<br />Display Type LED<br />Video Resolution 1080p FHD<br /></p><p>Display Performance<br />Refresh Rate 60 Hz<br /></p><p>Photo and Video Capture<br />Integrated Webcam Yes<br />Primary Camera Video 720p HD<br /></p><p>Ports<br />Headphone/Speaker Ports (3.5mm Audio Out) 1<br />Number of HDMI Ports 1<br />Number of Networking Ports -<br />Number of USB 2.0 Ports 1<br />Number of USB 3.2 Ports 1<br />Number of USB-C Ports 1<br />USB-C Functions Data-Only<br />USB-C Speed Type USB 3.2<br /></p><p>Power<br />Battery Technology Lithium-ion<br />Power & Charging Interface AC adaptor<br />Run Time (Up To) Hours 9.73 hours<br /></p><p>Processor and Memory<br />64-bit Computing Yes<br />Graphics Processor Integrated AMD Radeon™ Graphics<br />Max Processor Clock Speed 4.0 GHz<br />Number of Processor Cores Hexa-Core<br />Primary Processor Number R5-5500U<br />Primary Processor Type Ryzen 5<br />Processor Clock Speed 2.1 GHz<br />Processor Manufacturer AMD<br />RAM Installed Size 16 GB<br /></p><p>Storage<br />Hard Drive Capacity 512 GB<br />Installed Storage Type SSD</p>
</td></tr></tbody></table></center>
<p>And straight away I can tell you that the claimed max battery life is not all that. I tend to leave power save settings on the performance side because otherwise why did I buy a new faster machine to run updated software? - And so, I get about five hours. </p><p>Other than that, I still don't much like W11 and may yet retrograde to W10, who knows? I don't do Evil Things on my machine and it's set up as a work machine so there's nothing worth Microsoft's time and processing cycles to exfiltrate, either. I might grit my teeth for the moment and keep using it, maybe even set it up with a linux or ReactOS and see how they go. </p><p>I'm reasonably comfortable around touchpad use, but I got a $20 BT mouse because I prefer a scroll wheel to a two finger drag. Speaking of which "Ruby" has 2,3, and 4 finger drag actions, most of which I'll never use, but it's good to know I can 3-drag up to open task window views and left / right to select one, but alt-tab also still works, y'know? </p><p>Anyway - you may be wondering about how I could afford the princely sum of AUD$808 and maybe donations have helped finance the machine but no - I took out some superannuation since I'm now fully entitled to. Previous donations went to pay some part of the online fees I rack up for the hosted WP blog and domain names, and that's all she wrote. If you'd like to help, I direct you to the last part of this post, visit my Ko-Fi page and send me the price of a cup of coffee perhaps. </p>
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<p style="text-align: center;">As always - stay awesome!</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-90015835348470747192024-02-15T01:00:00.004+11:002024-02-15T17:43:26.126+11:00Gluing Bits Of Wood Together. <h4 style="text-align: left;">I've heard this over and over and over and over. And it's always so controversial; "This works!" vs "It'll never work!" My experience has been the latter.</h4><p>It's the old argument about gluing endgrain wood. There aren't many that say that gluing endgrain to endgrain is actually a solid way to join, nor that gluing endgrain into a longitudinal grain is all that much better. </p><p>But for better or for worse, the whole topic has just had a mini revival with the video by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-0FUO5lAjk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wood If I Could</a>. She feels strongly that gluing endgrain onto anything else needs mechanical help, from wiggle nails, dowels, biscuits, tenons, or screws. I have to agree.</p><p>It all stems from a video two years earlier when someone else proved that it doesn't matter because glue is stronger than wood fibres. And - sort of - that make sense until I try an experiment or three. But people tried to interpret that video as saying that endgrain joints are as good as longitudinal grain joints - because glue. Yeah. So ya!</p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwLWmoGh59g" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Stumpy Nubs</a> also picked the actual point of the OG video - that glue is way stronger than wood. Because glue. But he also seemed to miss the point. I could glue a square centimetre of steel to the end of a block of wood, and another square cm to the side. I can tell you the the steel will hold, the glue will hold - but the piece on the endgrain will come off much more easily than the piece on the longitudinal grain.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Errrhem!</h3><p>It's one of the tyhings I do - in my opinion, badly - but still something I'm working on improving in. So I dunno about great carpentry and woodwork. In fact, I don't even do mediocre carpentry and woodwork. But I've also been around the traps and this gluing issue has happened to me at times:</p><p>"WTFSM is going on with this *&%$!##* join? Why will it not stay glued? AARRGGHH!!!!"</p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times;">The Flying Spaghetti Monster never answers me. </span></p></blockquote><p>Over the years I've come up with an inkling of why it happens that when I glue two planks side by side after carefully straightening and dressing the edges, they stay glued to the point that I can often split one of the boards before the glue joint will let go.</p><p>And conversely, no matter how well I dress the ends of two boards and glue them up, they tend to fall apart when I put just a little bit of pressure on them...</p><p>It helps to imagine what goes into trees when they're making treewood. ("<i>Treewood "- hat's a technical term from my old man right there, if I pointed at a tree and asked what it was, he'd say, in all seriousness, "why that, that's bird-sitting-tree-wood." But he really could tell lumber apart by the look and smell of it, dozens of different types. Made me feel a bit uneducated about woodworking, and determined to do more until I became a bit educated. Anyway - back to treewood.</i>)</p><p>As WIIC says, trees need to get water and nutrients up their wood, or they woodn't (<i>hehehehe yes pun intended</i>) survive. So the fibres in a tree trunk run lengthways, from the roots to the crown. The tree has <i>capillaries</i> running the length of them. Capillaries, you can picture as thin long straws.</p><p>When we saw a log up, we split it lengthways as that's the way you get long planks. The planks have all these little straws running the length of them. This also makes planks strong in one direction, and carpenters and woodworkers spend all their time dressing the wood to show off the grain of those capillaries, and plan their projects to use the wood in the optimal orientation so that the project will be strong and look good.</p><p>But sometimes you have to join the <i>end</i> of a plank to something else and that's when the fights start. If you're in one of those fights right now, use this analogy:</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Bundles Of Straws</h3><p>Imagine a piece of wood as a bundle of straws. In fact, take a bundle of straws, and glue them together side by side until you have a shape like a plank that's 10 straws wide and 3 straws high. Just one length will do. It was relatively easy to glue the straws together side by side like that because there's so much surface area along the length of each straw for the glue to stick to.</p><p>Now make a second, identical plank and let them both dry for a few days side by side. Now try to glue them together end to end... </p><p>And that's it. The whole lesson. Gluing two straws together end to end is a damn sight harder to do, and has a damn sight less strenght, than gluing two very short bits of straw together side to side. Even if the glue <i style="font-weight: bold;">IS </i>stronger, it doesn't matter because you can break the tips off capillaries easier than you can separate capillaries glued side by side.</p>
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<p><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-73294631434783415482024-02-08T01:00:00.002+11:002024-02-08T01:00:00.132+11:00Solution to one flockintech at least<p><span style="font-size: x-small;">Before you read this, please scroll down to the bottom of this article and take action. Thank you.</span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">I've mentioned on my other blogs about "Lock-in Technology," which I refer to as <a href="https://zencookbook.blogspot.com/2024/01/flockintech.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">flockintech</a>. I've also posted about "bottlenecks" which get between us and technology, and suggest that maybe technology needs to become less intrusive and more ubiquitous, and that AI is still a long way from being fully and advantageously used for our betterment.</h4><p>And <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/19/hps_ceo_spells_it_out/ " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this article</a> details one piece of flockintech, and one CEO's precise impression of the people his company aims to serve. Totally treats each one of us as a minuscule annoyance he has to put up with for that extra half a cent in his annual salary... </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">My Brilliant Take: </h3><p>USE AI! USE AI! USE AI! USE AI! USE AI! USE AI! USE AI!</p><p>The stupid "protection" on some basically really stupid ink cartridges must be fairly easy to reverse-engineer. Using AI to poke and prod at various cartridges and printers should give us an easy way to make any and all 3rd party cartridges work just fine.</p><p>We have this technology, let's stop using it to make fap-worthy faerie warrior maidens and start a war against lock-in technology! We have some rwally really REALLY clever people out there who are looking for challenges that'll make a difference. This is one such. Go for it!</p><p>Before you ask, I don't really write programs. I write some basic code to accomplish simple tasks and my brain even rebelled at anything more than BASIC and some batchfile commands. Doinmg what it takes to teach "AI" to be "Any Kind Of I" is way beyond my pay grade. But you may know someone. Pass this post on!</p><p>It took hackers to fix Polish trains that were locked-in by their manufacturers - we need hackers now that will forego the huge FOSS projects and concentrate on these smaller, but oh so much more impactful projects. To me, teaching an AI to hack printer cartridges is black arcane magic. To someone out there, this may just be a trivial exercise. Posts like this one need to be passed on - please be one of the passers-on!</p><p>And that's it, really, you're right, this could have been a toot - but some messaging services still have a ridiculous character limit. </p><p>Before you go, life here has become immeasurably harder due to a long-term health issue in the family, and I am hoping I can rely on you to do that - pass this post and others like it on via your social networks, pass the link to <a href="https://ohaicorona.com/teds-news-stand" target="_blank">Ted's News Stand</a> on so people get to read some of my other recent posts, and if you at all can, please donate. Links in the graphic:</p>
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<p> </p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-79228966379053478172023-12-27T01:00:00.501+11:002023-12-27T01:00:00.250+11:00You Try And Support Local And This Happens<h4 style="text-align: left;">You try to support local businesses. You have a problem with a product. You ask - not even for a replacement, just some explanation. You get - Well, I'll post a sterilised version of the email exchange:</h4><h1 style="text-align: left;">The Email Exchange:</h1><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">=====================================================<br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">Tue, 24 Oct, (9 days ago)<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">to Sales@FilamentCo<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">About two years ago I bought three rolls of FilamentCo PLA in colours I needed for an order , then . . . (<i>recently</i>) . . . the filament just snapped while printing . . . <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">. . .(Omitted: Full explanation.) . . .<br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">. . .(TL;DR: Three rolls of filament only two years old are crumbling and snapping like very thin uncooked spaghetti ) . . . <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">And I'm not complaining, just very curious to learn . . . hope you can solve this mystery for me<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">=====================================================<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Oct 30, 2023 <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">to Sales@FilamentCo<br />. . . (They aim to respond to emails within three days) . . .<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Almost a week. Has this been an unusually difficult question? I really would like to learn what's happening with the filament, and how to avoid it happening again. Please can you give me some kind of response?<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">=====================================================<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Sales@FilamentCo<br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">31 Oct 2023 <br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">to me<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Your request (35260) has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">FilamentCo Team (FilamentCo)<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Oct 31, 2023, 07:02 GMT+11<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Hi *******,<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">The filament is really old and all sorts of stuff might be hapenning.<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Try to put it in the oven for few hours at around 65C and that should help<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">Kind regards,<br /></span><span style="font-size: small;">FilamentCo Team<br /></span><span style="font-size: x-small;">=====================================================</span></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Background:</h2><p>Okay - I bought a few rolls of filament from an Aussie filament maker/supplier two years ago, and when I opened it way back then, it seemed a tad brittle compared to my other filaments - but it was also in great colours that I wanted for some ornaments, so I dealt with it. It was all ornamental items anyway...</p><p>The remnants of those spools stayed in my filament cabinet. Along with several remnants of even older filament. These details will become important as the story goes on. The filament cabinet has a solid state dehumidifier that keeps the inside at 30C and 30% pretty much rock steady. Got all that? Okay.</p><p>Okay a week before the first email I got those FilamentCo brand spools out and printed a few more luckily non-critical models that wer. . . Oh hang on. The filament snapped between the spool and the top of the extruder? Cleared the nozzle, put the filament back into the extru . . . and . . . WTH? Damn stuff snapped again as I was feeding it in. </p><p>Fed it in again and left it ready to restart the prints next morning, only when I checked next morning, the filament had snapped again - in mid-air. With everything turned off overnight, cabinet door closed, not even a stray breeze to disturb things.</p><p>So - I also had some <a href="https://www.xtzl3d.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">XingTongZhiLian</a> filament I'd bought a year before the FilamentCo filament and - it printed fine. Hence, the exchange with FilamentCo. That lot above. Had I not gently prodded the people at FilamentCo, I imagine they'd not even have bothered to respond.</p><p>But their answer really floored me. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Why?</h2><p>This: <i>". . . filament is really old and all sorts of stuff might be hapenning . . ."</i></p><p>Whut? So filament they sold two years ago is already - old? Do they expect me to print with it and set a timer to let me know when the damn models made with it will crumble? Or are they saying that they had it in their warehouse for a few more years before I bought it? Plastic is one of those things that last for hundreds of years, which is why we're drowning in plastic waste right now. Exactly how old is this FilamentCo filament anyway? </p><p>Are the decorations I printed originally for family and friends going to start cracking and shedding microplastics? (<i>I know - it was heated in printing and re-formed but then again - the filament</i><i> was heated and re-formed</i><i> as part of the extruding process, and it seems <b>that</b> only kept it somewhat supple for maybe three years. </i>) Can you see what I'm getting at? Just how long after melting it will it once again turn to fragile toxic waste? Assuming they don't keep stock for more than a few years, the things I printed two years ago - *<i>tick tick tick tick</i>* may start to degrade in less than a year. </p><p>On second thought, maybe it wasn't all that old, just stored without any kind of moisture protection. Because, come to think of it, two out of three of the spool packages had lost their vacuum. There's every possibility this stuff has been improperly stored. Nothing would surprise me at this stage. Which still leaves the same sort of situation - how long stored in non-humidity-controlled environments before the models start shedding?</p><p>And as well as that, I print models that have to work. Handles for tools, parts for mechanisms, casings and housings. Imagine that handle on my plunge router in another year or two letting go during a cut in hardwood, I could lose fingers. It's not on.</p><p>BTW that <a href="https://www.xtzl3d.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">XingTongZhiLian</a> filament I mentioned really has been a pleasant surprise. They are not paying me for saying that, it's just been a lucky find. You can search for them on Amazon, which is where I came across their product. I found them, did a double-take at how inexpensive it was, and now always keep a few rolls of their filament on tap. </p><p>I'll not buy FilamentCo's products again, nor FilamentCo#2's products. Honestly - <i>I got support out of Creality</i> when I first got my Ender3 Pro, worked with them so closely that I got sent a heated bed and print surface, six POM rollers, and a new front panel. Ask your 3D printing network - how many people ever got that level of TS from the company? And yet when approached in a friendly and detailed conversation, they were downright courteous to a fault.</p><p>It took me two months to get a result and was delicate - but it proves I can collaborate even with the not-so-cooperative tech support Creality had, back at the beginning of its success story. I still have my old, bowed print bed in the box that the new one came in as a trophy, as proof that I am a reasonable negotiator. But both Aussie FilamentCos I dealt with are just poor experiences and poor negotiators.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Homily?</h2><p>Don't piss off customers, don't sell unstable rubbish, and answer enquiries properly. Or don't, and get a few more articles like this one, remember that while I won't name and shame because I'd like to see local businesses prosper and become <i style="font-weight: bold;">good</i> local businesses, there are other customers out there who won't be similarly restrained. </p>
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<p>Hey - help me out so I can afford a few spools of reasonable plastic. Also, please share this post and others like it with your social network. </p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-7871601425031553562023-12-07T01:00:00.001+11:002023-12-07T01:00:00.140+11:00How To Tell A Project Is Cr*p<h4 style="text-align: left;">Here's a technology idea that's bound to fail, along the way wasting resources, researchers' time, and a lot of time. <a href="https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2023/11/underground-parking-lots-are-a-wasted-heat-source/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">THIS is why</a> we can't have nice things.</h4><p>Why am I so against this idea? Name me ONE reason I should agree with it. Just one. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">What's This Project? Why Cr*p?</h2><p>The project is a discovered resource under every high-rise building - that parking garages underneath them. These parking garages are heated up by the vehicles parked there, and the heat transfers to the underground soil and water. It's a great resource if it can be tapped, providing enough energy to heat well over 14,000 houses' heating requirements in a city the size of Berlin. </p><p>It's a huge bonanza, because extracting that heat from there stops it getting into underground waterways and changing the ecosystems around the buildings, and saves some energy from other sources needing to be generated to heat those 14.6k houses. Well worth spending Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg's time and expertise on.</p><p>Except it isn't. </p><p>It's <i style="font-weight: bold;">fossil-fueled</i> cars that generate the heat. Unless there's something Mr Noethen knows that we don't, and in case he hasn't gotten the memo: <b><i>WE'RE TRYING TO TAKE ICEVs OFF THE ROADS AND OUT OF THE PARKING GARAGES. THERE'S A TIME LIMIT ON THIS.</i></b> </p><p>What precisely is the point of this project in light of that? They may be able to extract heat energy for another five - ten years but then - either way - the heat stops. Either replaced by EVs, or replaced by a dead silence... </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Crux Of It</h2><p>People seem to have huge blindspots. Noethen seems to ignore the fact that in a few years the rising number of EVs will reduce all that waste heat, and instead may even require heating those same garages. ICEVs (Internal Combustion Engined Vehicle(s)) produce a lot of waste heat - it's one of the reasons that fossil fuels should have been left in the ground, the sheer amount of waste involved at every stage. </p><p>EV's on the other hand don't generate much "waste heat" so a parking garage full of EVs won't produce enough heat to make the project worthwhile. And given that the other push is to have less private vehicle ownership and more public transport, there might be only a quarter of the number of cars in those spaces, anyway. </p><p>So why are we contemplating wasting research and development efforts on this when it'll be obsolete before it's perfected? A more cynical person than myself might mention job security but I'm just mentioning that this project is a POS. Anyone working on it will be working in a bullshit job. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Last Thoughts</h2><p>Mr Noethen would be better off studying ways to make public transport more efficient and clean. It's the way things are going - have to go - will be forced to go - whether we want it or not. The FFC (<i>Fossil Fuel Cartel as I refer to them as</i>) will continue to raise prices as demand for FF dwindles, making driving an increasingly unaffordable option for many. Us, for example. We've already cut down to the bare minimum travel we can justify, rare shopping trips, even fewer medical trips, and staying at home for more than at any time before. It's not going to get cheaper to drive our car, nor easier to justify driving more. That era is behind us. </p><p>People who ignore the Big Picture in pursuit of trivial and short-lived projects like this are wasting the resources of the entire planet for a brainfart. It should almost be criminalised.</p><p>And for people like my wife and myself, public transport is pretty much out because no one wears masks any more and we're both extremely at risk as proven by our one experience with the virus. We've both always masked up when out, but even that is only useful if using N95 respirators and we can't afford that, or else simple surgical masks <b><i>but only if everyone's wearing them</i></b>, and so we've, as mentioned, cut right down. We combine shopping at specialist stores with medical trips, visits to opp shops with the normal shopping trip, and otherwise, we just stay home and live from the pantry and freezer. </p><p>Don't worry, pretty soon the world situation will bring most people to the same pass and with us or without us the world'll heal from fossil fuel, lead, PFAS, and warming climate. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Last Last Thought</h2><p>Lastly, as the article points out, heat pump technology is already well established. Why reinvent the wheel? Why muck around with this at all? Will the heat pumps be re-usable? And if so, will they be re-used once their (<i>hopefully short</i>) period they will be of use before the ICEV extinction? </p><p><br /></p>
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<p><br /></p><p>As always, please share, use the graphic to see my other posts and sign up to the newsletter, and donate to help me keep these blogs and projects alive! </p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-53729993016885795452023-11-30T01:00:00.001+11:002023-11-30T01:00:00.127+11:00Keeping Records The 21st Century Way<h4 style="text-align: left;">(And how some of us did it in the 20th.)</h4><h3 style="text-align: left;">When Did We Buy It, What Did It Cost?</h3><p>The other day I couldn't remember when I'd gone to the garden centre last to get some bark chip mulch. I've become pretty reliant on the "<i>little plastic brain in my pocket</i>" and so I guess I've outsourced some memory to that device. It's inevitable. </p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">The Industrial Revolution ushered in an era during which mechanical devices eased mechanical workloads on workers and so (<i>for a completely random thing that just occurred to me</i>) workers at abattoirs needed less muscle mass once machines took over the transport of carcasses along the line. Clank-clank-clank took over from yo!-heave!-ho!</span></blockquote><p></p><p>But due to circumstances I've had to move three raised garden beds (<i>okay okay okay, the Shire has required the landlord to move our front fence back by a metre because they're upgrading the footpath outside</i>) and that means also the spaces between the beds will need new mulch. That mulch came from the garden centre almost two years ago, but I can't remember the date so I'll try to work out what cost we'll need to be dealing with. I'll be looking at Google Photos to see the earliest photos I have of the mulch down, then work backwards from there on Google Maps Timeline until I find a trip to the garden centre, and that'll pinpoint a date and time to look at the bank statement. Five minute job. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Records Are Records</h2><p>Since I live at this fortuitous time when the above heading doesn't make most of you think about my vinyl LP collection anymore, we know that I mean Records, not records. We may not like that so many companies track us online and physically, but instead of flat-out hating on it, use it. As I said just before, it'll be less than five minutes I'll know the exact day and time - and so the garden centre can also look at their dockets for that day and we can work out what it was that we bought so we can (<i>hopefully</i>) re-buy it again. </p><p>Over fifteen years ago, I was already advocating for using it rather than being archaic and antiquated. This <a href="https://tedalog.blogspot.com/2007/09/1-tool-for-7-ways.html" target="_blank">blog article I wrote</a> points it out. I'd read some article like "7 ways to recognise opportunity" and I sort of remember the OP suggesting you keep a camera on you to take pictures, a notebook and pencils to record stuff, and half a dozen other "things to focus you" or some such. And as I wrote in my article, keeping in contact with people, carting half a backpack's worth of paraphernalia and a spare kitchen sink with me at all times just seemed <i>outdated</i> even back then.</p><p>You're reading this article now, written by the guy that a mere three years earlier (<i>2004</i>) tried to interest several companies in developing a phone app that used the inbuilt GPS, camera(s), and other capabilities of your phone, as well as using a global database of photographs taken by others, which could then compare a photo you took (<i>and your phone's GPS and attitude sensor data</i>) to work out which object, building, or natural feature was in the shot you were taking and then provide you with a list of information about it. </p><p>True story - at that time several companies were using public images, lots of code, and image manipulation software to create accurate 3D models of famous (<i>or at least, often-photographed</i>) objects from the various images available online, and of course there was already heaps of text and audio data tagged to many of those objects, meaning a point and shootfully asutomatic <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Atlas Obscura</a> was possible, so why not be among the first to bring it to market? </p><p>And nope - I'm not an obscenely wealthy techbro now so you can guess how those pitches went. I still think back to those things and just have to wonder at how bad at pitching I must have been.,</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Horses For Courses</h3><p>But back to the point. Even back then my basic Nokia had a phone, a notepad, a camera, and a voice recorder. I was able to move all that data between my phone and my PC/laptop using a USB cable, and had my list of contacts and a basic calendar as well. It had reasonable battery life. It answered most of the points raised by the OP.</p><p>With the advent of so many connected devices - like your phone, a tablet, a laptop, or PC - and the fact that most of that data can live on the cloud and so be accessible from all those devices - it's easier than ever to combine things. Google Docs / Google Drive gives me documents I can access on my phone anywhere. </p><p>The Calendar has a shared calendar with my wife where we note down important appointments so we don't double-book ourselves. Contacts has numbers, email addresses, bios, photos, notes - and I can link to a document or folder of documents so that before I call the handyman I can see what jobs may need to be done. I can't see the point of carrying a large notebook with me when all of that's available.</p><p>Once upon a time I'd have taken a decent camera with me to get an opportunistic reportage photo but my A23 has cameras that beat the pixels off my old old OLD Epson (<i>I think!</i>) digital and my Samsung point'n'shoot I carried around for years. But there are times . . .</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7czZCwIXsbjw3syTIVWe_jKAjLiyJo3V-UfciQF0JZDNyJ4W1IruWlXgFFsz5NtaiCayIHBBTqVPKUV2OIZXjEYYALEm20AS__vzqb7F-DtEGsLD2e8faL66fFhthSASPqHDJgIDdMVSzk4RJd1ZJGOL8EQlP_mpiF7GZtVGJzE1v6HPZ8Lt-uyh5YWJe/s800/horses4courses.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="622" data-original-width="800" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7czZCwIXsbjw3syTIVWe_jKAjLiyJo3V-UfciQF0JZDNyJ4W1IruWlXgFFsz5NtaiCayIHBBTqVPKUV2OIZXjEYYALEm20AS__vzqb7F-DtEGsLD2e8faL66fFhthSASPqHDJgIDdMVSzk4RJd1ZJGOL8EQlP_mpiF7GZtVGJzE1v6HPZ8Lt-uyh5YWJe/s320/horses4courses.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Sorry, I had only a few minutes to throw together this overlay of an AI generated steampunk horse with a jet age silver horse, I may replace this image if I can find a bit more time to add my own art to it.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: center;"><i>Yep. My bad impression of a "horses for courses" image.</i></p><p style="text-align: left;">Because chatting with my twin soul spouse just before, I realised that I <b style="font-style: italic;">do</b> use technology as a way to take pressure off myself. I couldn't tell you off hand when we ordered and got that mulch without referring to Google. And I know that even Alphabet may not be around one day to keep it going. But for the moment it's what we have and it works and is far less intrusive than pulling out an A4 bullet journal in a howling gale at the beach and trying to hold it down to record my thoughts. Just take a damn video already Ted.</p><p>And yet I do have a small notepad and pencil stump in my everyday carry, and a notepad and pencil in the kitchen where I don't necessarily want to spread cooking oil or gravy on my phone just to note down that I need soy sauce, garlic, tinned red beans, and dried mushrooms. Sometimes, that's a more appropriate tool for the job.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Big PS:</h3><p>PS: Using my patented record searching technique, it took me about 2 minutes to find the earliest picture I had of the bark mulch laid down in the garden (1 Feb 2021) and then under a minute to find 20 Jan 2021 13:23hrs and just enough time to get a trailer load of bark mulch on the Maps timeline and another minute to find the right bank statement to show me that it cost $43. </p>
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<p style="text-align: center;">That has to be worth a share, link, subscription, or donation... </p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-23890908212456943472023-11-01T01:00:00.077+11:002023-11-01T01:00:00.126+11:00Why I don't Have A Patreon<h4 style="text-align: left;">I know that most makers, bloggers, and creators use Patreon. I also knew after creating two test accounts on there several years ago that I couldn't bring myself to like it. </h4><p>I did try to like it. Back then it was pretty much the only game in town, any other similar sites had quite low profiles. But on closer inspection, there weren't many things I could actually *do* with the big P to win over patrons. (<i>Yep, no "e" patrons.</i>) </p><p>There's also really not anything tangible I can offer in return for patronage. What I do the most of is blogging. About sustainability, recycling, the state of the planet, and my slow progress towards being able to develop machines and methods for recycling plastics, cardboard, textiles, food, and thin metals using inexpensive gear. Almost all my favourite activities are included in that - making small machines or adapting existing ones using metal and wood working and 3D printing, making useful products, and gardening and cooking.</p><p>That's a lot of topics, and so I have a lot of blogs to keep each topic (<i>sort of...</i>) separate. No point inflicting someone with sustainable / renewable / fossil fuel free articles when all they want is a recipe for green tomato chutney. But it's also a lot of work, entailing several articles a week, each of which can be hours or days to conceive, research, prepare, and do some artwork for. (<i>Yeah I don't make good art, it's just a way to fill up white space on the blog while fitting in with the topic, but I find the processes relaxing.</i>)</p><p>So there are a lot of costs involved in these things, and I'm not well off. So as I said above, I began to look for some way to cover some of those costs, and I'm glad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">I didn't use Patreon</a> now. I do have my donations/patronage account on <a href="https://ko-fi.com/ptec3d" target="_blank">Ko-Fi</a> though.</p>
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<p></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times;">And there are quite a few dollar costs. Even my best way to keep people up to date on what I'm writing, my newsletter, is going to start costing. ("<i><span style="color: #38761d;">Starting February 1, 2024, Free Plans will no longer be supported on the MailerLite Classic platform.</span></i>") And yes there's a way to stay free - but it involves moving everything to a different server. With no guarantee that the whole cycle won't repeat in a year, or six months, or six weeks...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">I used a whole complicated structure of online apps to automate the posting of links to the articles on social media but once again if one link breaks, no link gets posted on any of half a dozen social sites so I do this manually too because I can't afford to upgrade to a scheduling site. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">But you can help with that. Share the hell out of my posts, make a one-time or monthly donation, chat with me on Mastodon or comment here.</span></p></blockquote><p></p><p>As Tom points out on his article, Patreon over-reached with their funding rounds and are now losing the race to stay fundable. Their efforts are going into how to make money off the creators and the supporters, and when that starts to happen it's a short race to the bottom from there. Yes it was a good platform in its heyday but by the time I took an interest the "enshittification" was already well advanced.</p><p>I'm a great believer in the saying that "information wants to be free" - and also in Open Source anything - so I really didn't think about the donation patronage model. But the sheer amount of time I'm putting into this and the costs I'm already trying to bear (<i>and more that I really need to start paying to give me back some of my time for more useful work</i>) forced me to try monetising, to any little degree. </p><p>I started with using affiliate links but while people read my articles about things I've made and built, they didn't seem to use the affiliate links. And since the links themselves were costing me a lot of time to gather and code (<i>again, for a few lousy bucks I could have probably had an app that would automate the affiliate linking process</i>) and so I stopped that experiment. </p><p>I tried making any kind of useful monetisation with Patreon but the hoops, the regulation, the already-apparent graspiness - I just closed the tab after my 20th or 50th or 100th time trying to make something you'd enjoy and I'd be able to live with - and that was the last time I used the account. </p><p>Anyway - please share the link to this article, maybe use the Ko-Fi or Paypal donation buttons. It would really help. </p><p><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-44923887896537855062023-10-22T12:41:00.003+11:002023-10-22T12:41:49.394+11:00Precious Plastic 10th Anniversary<h4 style="text-align: left;">An organisation I've been following (<i>and wishing I could emulate, or at least start an affiliate here</i>) for what seems like ten years - has turned ten as of yesterday. In fact, now that I look back, I was following them from nine or eight years ago. </h4><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://preciousplastic.com/" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="176" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkLpJXOrjYU4HuEd6-WiXCYvg85J1r0tE6XMpE4lfnFpNsHD5Ad8dw0CpKrkw0DKT37jSG-qF0J8yGpq7ZdlG-pSN8222HThJnFuGhA0Qx-PhkigYnk0co8bk2yI7KBU70gJyduRpvC0t_M0MPRTc410PQqkBvpDDoEzedF1LKBT-gOyh9PW7sr18s6B4b/s1600/preciousPlastic.jpg" width="176" /></a></div><p>That organisation is Precious Plastic, and you've often heard me refer to them by that name, or PreshPlast, or PP. The reason I appear to be late in posting this is the tyranny of time zones, while it's 22 Oct to me it's just past midnight and the start of 21 Oct as our time zone is GMT+10 here normally and GMT+11 during daylight (<i>boo! hiss!</i>) saving which is now on for us here. </p><p>Dave Hakkens, founder, Kat, Mattia, and a few other PreshPlasters have been around from the beginning. Dave conceived it as a graduation project I think. Look - I'll link the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcxbIFbGF_w" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">video they made</a> here. Just promise to come back to here in 26 minutes okay?</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Welcome Back!</h2><p>So now you have their backstory. This is <a href="https://preciousplastic.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">their website</a>, where you can now find all manner of recycling related, PreshPlast-related, and useful information. So you can build their machines because the plans are available. They have a Community forum on there so you can join in and chat and get involved. They have a Marketplace where you can buy ready-made machines, and their Youtube channel that you'll have already found and subscribed to if you watched. </p><p>I'm not sure if the video mentions it but Dave's first project before PP was some kind of mobile phone which was modular and replaceable part by part. But luckily for us, he went on to do the PP thing instead. </p><p>I definitely wanted to do this but you still need money to make the big V3 and V4 machines. You need physical mobility. And you need sponsors. I had none of those things because I was pensioned with disability almost a decade before PP was even a glint in Dave's eye. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Corner</h2><p>For me, I turned the corner in 202... - 2020 or 2021 I think - when I bought Brucely the Ender3 Pro 3D printer. (<i>See the note down the end of this article for the Story of Bruce. Since this has become a nostalgia article now...</i>)</p><p>I realised that while I can't build a $10,000 V4 shredder or sheetpress, I can still innovate a bit. While I don't have a lathe to turn manually-recycled bottletops into fine pens, I can still do some small, inexpensive, but basically effective things. These are things you too can do right now and I'll put together an article or three in the future with the titles beginning with "<b>PlastiHack #...:</b>" and a description so you can find them. Please be a bit patient as I'm backlogged by real life demands that are currently hectic for a pensioner that can't even afford to hire someone to help (<i>part of the issue is house/workshop/rental related things moving and changing and the landlord having had issues themselves, most is down to me not being able to physically keep up the sustained burn of energy this is going to require, two months with a worker, six to ten months without</i>) and also some personal reasons. </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Dave's Corner</h2><p>Dave Hakkens also turned a corner of his own. At one point the brunt of the PreshPlast expansion was going to be borne by another organisation, <a href="https://www.onearmy.earth/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">One Army</a>. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.onearmy.earth/" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="176" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFhNOJbSMJ9Y6aLXNSSZ6qUCYnJwYxqyz_1nStxeXH-o4wmBddVYGDDNQX70h6pk3m-Exgfd2ifoRyWqBraQyxKxZLUhqq7q3aB70h-GwDq8Difl-GjhkxnMMM1MaucE_9yu7DH0CsdlrysIrzrV2lyPY6B3iRnNqID-6ZTmOwI1bNNFbWs25nphTcx57s/s1600/oneArmy.jpg" width="176" /></a></div><p>Dave and the PreshPlast crew spawned this to do other recycling / ecofriendly / sustainable / etc work. Rather than confining itself to PP, One Army also provided the launching of <a href="https://projectkamp.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Project Kamp</a>. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://projectkamp.com/" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="176" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzpKxoBnolGwZu-jK6PN9IWmN2rp0hg0PW6yBOprUR0XfRn_X9__TbRf7wnvgy708_eDpCoLcdLxUo63Hl0PMKX8ym9XHUDUgrFP6vGG5UorBNq9rooANydco6LbJcCTTKCy8quh4NrB_LvcXx7QkOjdCu-qoCAy9LDgARWbffvF2NYRbU7_bNKK0Ljegy/s1600/projectKamp.jpg" width="176" /></a></div><p>That's a little plot of land in Portugal which is where you can find Dave right now, and which the Army (<i>I think?</i>) bought in 2020 / 2021 and started looking to find ways to live sustainably and with low footprint in smaller communities. Project Kamp has its own <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@ProjectKamp" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Youtube channel</a> where you can see some of the downright amazing things they've done with majority recycled materials, local food, etc. </p><p>All in all, the guy at the centre of it all has literally moved mountains. There are thousands, if not tens of thousand perhaps by now, of organisations and projects under the Precious Plastic umbrella. There are another group of thousands that don't declare themselves affiliated with PP but whose founders got their inspiration from the suite of websites. And who knopws how many millions have watched a random video from them, and then another, and another, and another...</p><h2 style="text-align: center;">That's A Lot To Accomplish In A Decade</h2><p>Anyway - to that Note:</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">NOTE: Brucely Printer</h4><p>Okay so I know I posted this somewhere but I can't find where. So you lucky people get the story again... </p><p>When I wanted a 3D printer to make new devices and parts for recycling machines, I had some money saved from survey filling work, Banggood were having a birthday discounts sale, Creality had knocked a few more percent off their Ender3 series, and in the end I got Brucely for the princely sum of $240 delivered. Some things immediately caught my attention. </p><p>Creality is a company based in China. The logo for the Ender printer series is a dragon, a creature that features large in Chinese lore. I also read that the name "Ender" came from the Ender dragon in Minecraft. My printer was named after Ender The Dragon. It was now in Australia, so by default, an Aussie. A little light began blinking annoyingly above my head. What was the name that Monty Python based an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNBy1D1Y0h4&pp=ygUYQXVzdHJhbGlhbiBicnVjZXMgc2tldGNo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">entire sketch</a> around? And who starred in a movie called "Enter The Dragon?" </p><p>Bruce. The Bruces sketch. Aussie. Bruce Lee. Brucely. (<i>Which was, for a time, apparently synonymous with "manly" according to legend.</i>)</p><p>Okay - I've infected your mind with the Brucely virus. </p>
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<p>Dave got where he is now due to a few volunteers and sponsors. I'm going to ask you to volunteer - by <i>sharin' the hell outta me posts, mate! Fair crack o' the whip ay?</i> Because every share will let others read my posts, and they'll share, and I'll start getting an audience that will raise awareness of all the stuff I write about, several articles a week, and I really hope you too think my messages are worth being seen by more people.</p><p>What "messages?" There's a newspaper in the graphic above - it'll take you to <a href="https://ohaicorona.com/teds-news-stand" target="_blank">Ted's News Stand</a> where you can always see my latest posts across all my blogs. There's also at least one link on that page that'll allow you to subscribe to my newsletter. I recommend it. Share the hell outta that link too please. I'd really appreciate it.</p><p>And lastly, the dreaded donation. The coffee mug will take you to <a href="https://ko-fi.com/ptec3d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ko-Fi dot com</a> where you can make a one-time donation of the price of a cuppa, or - preferably - a monthly one. I want to not have to pay the cost of the server fees, the domain name fees, the subscriptions to news resources. I'd like to not pay for research materials for the projects I'm trying to get off the ground, for someone to help with the foregone moving of the old workshop, upcoming move of that workshop and shed <b><i>again</i></b>, to defray the costs of moving the experimental urban worm garden that I've now had to hire people to help with <b><i>twice</i></b> due to circumstances beyond my control, and to make possible a bit faster development cycle because I won't have to constantly wait until I can shake a few bucks out of my pension to buy material just to develop another device or technique for recycling. </p><p><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-7714604851690693022023-10-10T01:00:00.001+11:002023-10-10T01:00:00.145+11:00Building A Quick Table Saw - Something I Did Just Now<h4 style="text-align: left;">I guess I never told you about my hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Not that you should probably want to, anyway. But since you're here, I can bore you with a quick story about how I made one of my dreams come true within my budget. Something I'm doing must be all right.</h4><p>It's a <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=table+saw&atb=v212-7__&iax=images&ia=images" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">table saw</a>. Most of those in the search images are robust mid-size, ranging in price from probably AUD$600-3000. (<i>Don't look shocked, there are a few professional cabinetry/carpentry table saws that go higher than even that. It's a case of get what you paid for. If you need a hobbyist/home Maker type saw though, I think I've pretty much nailed the range. Here's a <a href="https://www.totaltools.com.au/116802-sawstop-saw-cabinet-ind-36-3ph-w-t-glide-fence-rail-kit-sstics36tglide3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">fairly good example</a> of a Pro saw with finger-saving SawStop tech.</i>)</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Why A Table Saw?</h2><p>Didn't I just buy a secondhand Mitre saw? </p><p>Well, yes, I did. But it was partly to help me finish the table saw. Mitre saws are great for cutting across a piece of wood at settable repeatable angles, but it's impossible make a long cut with them. You've probably seen <a href="https://ptec3d.blogspot.com/2023/09/something-old-and-inexpensive.html" target="_blank">Aggressive Arthur</a>'s acquisition video, you'll see what I mean if you check it out. The saw is at right angles (<i>and up to 45degrees either side of right angles</i>) to the direction of the wood it's cutting. If you want to cut up the length of a piece of wood to make it thinner, or take long straight cuts through a sheet of plywood or MDF or whatever, that's what a table saw is designed for.</p><p>With some table saws you also get (<i>or can make</i>) a sled that lets you 'flip' the wood feed direction and lets you put a length of wood in sideways and make a cross cut without a disaster causing loss of limbs or life...</p><p>So - mitre saws are basically <i>crosscut</i> saws and table saws are <i>ripcut</i> saws. "Crosscut" = across the length / grain, "ripcut" = with the length / grain. Sawmill saws are ripsaws, chainsaws are used as crosscut saws. </p><p>And now I have a very small very tiny table saw and a mitre saw. In theory I'm now unstoppable. In fact though I'm probably just unstable. Oh wells... </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Here's How It Went</h3><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN10LiOpwtdfBb8o0CpOuwtM4Q4W8iCi_69O0iTmJe0eyYatXYbNRgVbwP2tVN2SO8-HYYJuG3A1oc6TzlkKjeAGqEkCN0dM9GVZiniwNQtVnahE3vatPOo0GpFwt01aUqK5t3fXULgiGOYuFvc6AfZp7mMZ3jtxfN-LXbumNsHLkcgKqQMiBHzZc0ArHC/s800/tablesaw_build_01.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN10LiOpwtdfBb8o0CpOuwtM4Q4W8iCi_69O0iTmJe0eyYatXYbNRgVbwP2tVN2SO8-HYYJuG3A1oc6TzlkKjeAGqEkCN0dM9GVZiniwNQtVnahE3vatPOo0GpFwt01aUqK5t3fXULgiGOYuFvc6AfZp7mMZ3jtxfN-LXbumNsHLkcgKqQMiBHzZc0ArHC/s320/tablesaw_build_01.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I'll describe the process to some degree in the next few paragraphs.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>So (1) - I drew it up in Tinkercad and printed a model at one zillionth scale. Just enough to get me motivated enough to progress to (2). Which is where I made the legs, half the frame, and just over half the top of the bench.</p><p><b><span style="font-family: times;"></span></b></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Digression 1:</b><br />I'm as always limited for funds, but with a couple of reasonably accurate and repeatable tools I can make stuff to sell and also do some repair jobs. So I picked the cheapest pine from Bunnings (<i>now conveniently across the road from us</i>) which was 70x39 MGP10 non-structural pine and a few 150x25 "plinth" boards. These are more crooked than a dog pees but all the wood for two benches will be under $90. And I have a plane and some sanding gear so I can make it smooth.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>The choice of timber/lumber/wood was "as cheap as possible" and build everything from it. One day I may have the money to make a bigger stronger straighter work table but for now this will definitely work for me and may be all I need. The size was chosen to fit with a plastic fold-up Stanley workbench I scored from an opp shop ages ago, which also just happens to work with some really old folding tables (<i>glorified saw-horses really</i>) which were all I've ever really used as work surfaces before. So everything is just a bit under a metre tall, 70cm wide, 50cm deep. </p><p>I also wanted to make the saw bench able to be converted to a router table and a jigsaw table. So my one expensive piece of wood was a small sheet of plywood. That went in between the planks (<i>where the short plank is laying</i>) in (2). Usually, table saws have 250ish mm blades but I had a small handheld circular saw that I also scored at another opp shop with a 160ish mm blade, it means I can (<i>barely</i>) cut through a 40mm piece of wood once it's mounted under the plywood. There'll be other pieces of plywood with the other machines mounted under them later.</p><p>So anyhow - the table would have taken four of the planks plus a narrow strip in the centre but I only used three of them. They're not 150mm anyway, close to 140, and those edges were about the only straight things about them so I scarcely had to plane anything off them. (<i>The pros would have planed those edges almost optically flat and then glued them together. I'm not a pro, I used a sander to knock off the worst bumps and that was basically that, no ceremony, just boards with gaps but this isn't a rocket science bench.)</i></p><p>Turns out that three boards left a 240(<i>ish</i>) mm space and so that became the measurement for the plywood inserts. Also, because the plywood is only about 12mm thick and the planks are (<i>supposedly - more on that later</i>) 25mm thick I had to put some strips in that made the plywood flush with the top. Conveniently, that forms the perfect way to align the inserts as well. </p><p>The maximum of a 25mm thickness also means that the circular saw can tilt all the way to a right angle, if it was any thicker the body of the saw wouldn't have allowed it to get to the full right-angle. This was actually just pure luck and not any clever design on my part. That the saw with the plywood insert attached was able to be finessed into the gap - that too was pure fluke. If I'd had to use any other circular saw I probably wouldn't have been able to make things fit. </p><p>Now back to those plinth boards and the thickness of them. Most of the top was easy enough to roughly plane, but one corner of one board was a good 2mm thicker and took me ages to plane down. One disadvantage of cheap lumber... </p><p>Anyway - back to the picture and item (3) shows the other reason I need a table saw - that hodgepodge of bits is how I got right angles and longer straight cuts. Sometimes. And in any case it turned any job into an exercise. </p><p>(4) is what I've ended up with. I'd been worrying about how to make a fence and then I saw an idea where someone made slides either side of the table and attached the fence to them. I knew my woodworking skills weren't up to that kind of dovetail precision but I could find a matching pair of reasonably heavy-duty drawer slides (5) and now (6) a fence that can extend past the end of the table, effectively making the small table do the work of a larger one.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRCy50sU77qqY18uZylJIzGdEt9OnI05YTli91mMQRZ-3n3RkGkhIcRHEyln-7tVB4_DOLTzYsWe_z2AJoQQApNmqWpEv0IcbER0KMTdjuW59TuIvfgsNUoTezuLmKP2UL6lB9AOgdjNECth5Uo1Ha5NXV54FrMAvb2cYcFgocVdbvCide6oEkbeiE2y3W/s4080/20230915_110939.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4080" data-original-width="2296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRCy50sU77qqY18uZylJIzGdEt9OnI05YTli91mMQRZ-3n3RkGkhIcRHEyln-7tVB4_DOLTzYsWe_z2AJoQQApNmqWpEv0IcbER0KMTdjuW59TuIvfgsNUoTezuLmKP2UL6lB9AOgdjNECth5Uo1Ha5NXV54FrMAvb2cYcFgocVdbvCide6oEkbeiE2y3W/s320/20230915_110939.jpg" width="180" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>A closer look at those sliders.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Those sliders... When I found them it was just a case of "wow those could be useful some day, and for five bucks I can't really say no to them." And they finally were. Except that the slides in them were end for end wrong way around. Putting them on opposite sides would have left them upside down so the stops had to be removed, slides (<i>ever so carefully because there are ball bearings involved, LOTS of ball bearings</i>) removed and re-inserted the other way around. One of the uprights on each slide had to be cut off - thank FSM for angle grinders - and some scrapwood from some old furniture made the two rails that the fence support is attached to. I have some aluminium rectangular section that will make the actual fence.</p><p>There's already a heap more to update such as that ai may be getting a job site saw as well, and some workshop racking, and there's a long materials rack going behind the shed which will also hold the 250W solar panel in the exact right orientation, </p><p>The landlord has indicated that I'll get the use of that garage in a week or two so stay tuned for that, in the meanwhile I'll keep posting stuff I'm doing out in the wild as it were, and of course also my recipes and recycling and sustainable / climate posts but it's getting ever closer to my goal of making some inexpensive machines that anyone can use at home for recycling, so fingers crossed! Just a few lines down ther's a little graphic I made, if you click on the newspaper you'll get to my News Stand were you can see all the blogs I'm running and even subscribe to a once-a-week newsletter that'll keep you automatically up to date.</p><p>Now here's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLT1M9O0K0c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a video I just found</a> to get you thinking about woodworking if you're not doing it already. </p><hr />
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<p><i>I scared the shit out of myself with a small router I've had for 25 years but not used for about the last 20, and almost got to the point of getting sliced up by it first time I used it a year ago, but since then I've pushed myself to use it over and over and get comfortable with it again. </i></p><p>It'd be nice if you clicked on the newspaper in the graphic above and subscribed to my aforementioned once-a-week newsletter, even nicer if you shared a link to this article or others with your friends or on your social media, and totally boss if you could make a donation to help me keep all that stuff juggling in the air! See you next post!</p><p><br /></p><p></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-30601911533952339062023-10-05T01:00:00.001+11:002023-10-05T01:00:00.154+11:00Something New And Inexpensive<h4 style="text-align: left;">... other than... Actually, that' it. New and really cheap.</h4><p>As I mentioned in another post the day, that day started off being a pretty good day all around. I was the owner of a new - and cheap - box of Forstner bits that arrived for the workshop, bits I'd been wishing I had for years and they've always been way too expensive to buy a set of 16 like this. </p><p>But this set has cost less than 4 brand name bits. It remains to be seen how well they'll wear but for my use they'll probably outlast me, and if I find I'm wearing out one or two particular bits I can just spot-replace them. </p><p>As you'll know from <a href="https://ptec3d.blogspot.com/2023/08/what-do-i-actually-do.html" target="_blank">this post</a>, I've been lucky enough to have bought and built a brand new 3x3m shed/workshop, unlucky enough to have had to pull it down and totally vandalise it to (<i>luckily</i>) fit it into the spot allocated by the new landlord, and then (<i>luckily</i>) be able to erect a 3x3m roof behind that, and now unlucky enough (<i>again</i>) to have to move everything in it and take it down again. But (<i>luckily</i>) it's due to the same landlord erecting a 2-car garage for the house we're in and therefore I've gone from around 24sqm of space to 48sqm and will have most of that space as the new shed. </p><p>It means I'll finally actually have a "workshop" that I can work in. I never even got to make a workbench, instead using a few plastic and MDF folding tables and two plastic sawhorses - great when you're making a rough surround for a raised bed of a clunky gate in the cat fence but as for anything like a cabinet, forget it. Then when I thought Location #2 would be the permanent spot I started to organise myself but there's been almost two years in between filled with <i style="font-weight: bold;">other</i> shuffle-shift-restart jobs involved with the landlords' plans, health issues, all the usual.</p><p>But a week and a bit ago I built a small workbench which has removable section where I can put my older electric circular saw upside down to make a primitive but usable table saw, my router to give myself the convenience of a router table, a jigsaw table, and more. It'll be useful (<i>once I get the keys to said garage/shed</i>) to build another multipurpose table to use for clamping and setting the drill press or just as a general infeed/outfeed table. </p><p>Also note that these aren't BIG workbenches. For one thing, I didn't want a bench that's too tall. I have to lift stuff onto and off of it, and I'm not my younger fitter self anymore. It's not too deep either, same sort of reason. and then also if I made them too wide, I couldn't fit many in the space I'll have. Also, all my premade workbenches are around the same dimensions. The Stanley multifunction foldable one I have was 70cm wide, 50cm deep, and around 81cm tall so that's what my workbenches are made to.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHxgOSGs0iBbdT5sQ0C-gRD4yMU6zsYufJeonsmS89L08VKYlCZhbVHBc1XmQva-ZmQKt83uX-PBZm9ABRuwbfsjm8SHiR7lUFSlt0TThwXP2RQQY72LSYEEPg8oYq4XM9hkcCnL34P9x3krqp_QTallNJzys87EsXy8nXI7Vd6muWcJjVgwtNrMjN2d6C/s800/Workbenchstable.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="546" data-original-width="800" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHxgOSGs0iBbdT5sQ0C-gRD4yMU6zsYufJeonsmS89L08VKYlCZhbVHBc1XmQva-ZmQKt83uX-PBZm9ABRuwbfsjm8SHiR7lUFSlt0TThwXP2RQQY72LSYEEPg8oYq4XM9hkcCnL34P9x3krqp_QTallNJzys87EsXy8nXI7Vd6muWcJjVgwtNrMjN2d6C/s320/Workbenchstable.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>This collage is roughly to scale. Sorta. Kinda.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>As you can see, the gear I had was never bought for quality but for price. One of the tables on the left is over ten years old, the other about eight and bought secondhand, and believe me they are stuffed. Swollen from moisture damage, one of them has a somewhat repaired chipboard panel, and never made for accuracy.</p><p>The sawhorses on the right were bought to assemble my original 3x3 shed in 2018. And the Stanley worktable wouldn't be in my collection if we hadn't stopped in a little seaside town and visited their opp shop. It seems to be a genuine Stanley table, identical to the worktable in the centre, just a bit more beaten up. Okay - a lot more beaten up. But it's the 50x70x81cm one and it was one of the most useful so it became the standard. </p><p>The reason it was at the opp shop was that someone had broken the crosspiece that kept the front legs (<i>to the right in that picture and hidden because of the angle of the shot</i>) stable so I just screwed a piece of 70x35 across them and it's been in use ever since. But none of these has been what you'd call stable or conducive to making straight carpentry. </p><p style="text-align: center;">Anyway - back to these.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjWAqLK1IXAJEiitns3HIKgWun8nZ1Djn7LkSenhuEGQUReTZmOmiygBVg2kl701qNca5IM6sowweCgiIPC7_cYH13lLlhAOM29tUiOTlAZkrlGZ5ELhrkxitq7qronxLsixAhpRu5yjAQ3fcxosnIjSp8M7d-dZT6rqd8dqAiEqoL2TeUOhIE7u-x5xjh/s4080/20230906_110844.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjWAqLK1IXAJEiitns3HIKgWun8nZ1Djn7LkSenhuEGQUReTZmOmiygBVg2kl701qNca5IM6sowweCgiIPC7_cYH13lLlhAOM29tUiOTlAZkrlGZ5ELhrkxitq7qronxLsixAhpRu5yjAQ3fcxosnIjSp8M7d-dZT6rqd8dqAiEqoL2TeUOhIE7u-x5xjh/s320/20230906_110844.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>This lot cost under $25 landed in Australia.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>As you can see - they seem to be usable (<i>I might not use them in a hand powerdrill until I've checked how they perform in a speed-controllable drill press</i>) and should let me work out which sizes are the ones I'll tend to use most. </p><p>As I said in the photo caption they cost less than 2 or three more mainstream bits but that's also partially because I do tend to hold off and hold off and hold off until a reasonable price comes along. Call me a "hardware hodler..." </p><p>The only fly in the ointment's been the weather - yesterday the report for today mentioned 17C and a clear day so I started a load of washing. What an idiot... Of course it's barely 15C and with wind-chill feels like 10C so working (<i>outdoors, unluckily</i>) on the new bench to make it actually useful is not gonna happen. (<i>For one main reason, three quarters of the conditions that have me disabled are worsened by sudden exposure to cool/cold, and secondly because I just can't work bundled up in "Kenny layers."</i>)</p><p>So I sat with a few sheets of drawing paper and sketched wiring diagrams for the new shed when I finally get access, some possible floor layouts, etc. It's coming along. Stay tuned...</p><hr />
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<p>Thanks for reading along to this point. If you enjoy all these, how about a tip? Use the KoFi kup or Paypal and send me the price of a cup of coffee, or even make it a monthly thing? It would really help me with the fees and costs involved with all these projects and make me very grateful. Also, the newspaper thing lets you see my News Stand where you'll see why it would make me grateful, that being that I produce a LOT of different themed blogs, and write several posts a week, and I also make all these projects and write them up for people to try. </p><p>See you on the next post!</p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-31902196352177777372023-10-03T23:45:00.000+11:002023-10-03T23:45:04.447+11:00That Time At (Garage) Band Camp<h4 style="text-align: left;">Just some news on the horizon. Landlord has been finishing up some details around the back yard.</h4><p>One of the things in that backyard is this:</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjl1hbS5fRD-hc4mx5MRuGNEqn5B3ZY3rgYzbk0odH6_2NiHSoy2ohyphenhyphenhwkK7E8wEtnBkMopusf6WIih23dYBtRidc9guMK5QdlSGbUZa0-sblIaCPkQzfW3uR9ivEjp5jSB4szxSepswuq8jBDg8gHkdxy2WEBt5S7wTn0_X1192z2lrYetIeqF45UJFDV/s4080/20230812_132213.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjl1hbS5fRD-hc4mx5MRuGNEqn5B3ZY3rgYzbk0odH6_2NiHSoy2ohyphenhyphenhwkK7E8wEtnBkMopusf6WIih23dYBtRidc9guMK5QdlSGbUZa0-sblIaCPkQzfW3uR9ivEjp5jSB4szxSepswuq8jBDg8gHkdxy2WEBt5S7wTn0_X1192z2lrYetIeqF45UJFDV/s320/20230812_132213.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>It's a 6m x 6m garage, required by the Shire for a 3br house.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><h2 style="text-align: left;">Some Recent History:</h2><p>It was only being erected in that shot, in mid-August. In fact the shed guy's ladder is the one in the shot. That house to the left is the second house that the landlord split the block for and that's been another thing that's caused huge amounts of chaos in our lives, but the returns have been worth it. One of those things was that the local Shire required a lot of stuff that's required under their new building code.</p><p>Aside from shrinking our yard space by 96% (<i>which has been a bit of a squeeze but also now he looks after all the rest of the block so we're spared a burdensome expense</i>) there have been a lot of other things that came of it - roof got replaced after leaking for years, electrics got replaced as they were so old that rooms had actually lost power, and the most recent, the bathroom got a complete makeover to find a huge leak. </p><p>And the other thing that came out of it is that a 3-bedroom house must now have a 2-car garage. . . We have a car, and a mobility scooter. The scooter's been kept in its own shed, but the car's probably never seen a garage in its 14 years of life, and definitely not in its last three years since we've had it. </p>
<p>Here's the bonus: The "shared driveway" is fine for me to park in, and it's back from the highway far enough that road debris and dust isn't an issue there. <b style="font-style: italic;">On. The. Other. Hand.</b> If there's ever a storm or hail, I'd like to put the car into the garage. And I'd like to garage the mobility scooter permanently because my wife really likes the freedom it provides so it really needs to be kept secure and clean.</p><p><b style="font-style: italic;">On. The. Other. Other. Hand.</b> I'll be losing my 3m x 3m shed and have already lost the old "garage" which had rusted-shut doors but was still good for storage. I need that. And the landlord has I think been very aware of it. I had (<i>approximately</i>) 24sqm for all of that, the new garage has 36. Plus another 6sqm behind it. 42 is the answer to LTUAE. . .</p><p><b><i>But I Still Want To Garage The Car Too.</i></b> Okay - it's a mid-size SUV (<i>embarrassed cringe</i>) but it was right in our price range, our old car had failed the roadworthy, and the new vehicle is 10 years newer than the old Hyundai. We barely use it anyway - shopping, medical appointments. We fill the tank once a month or sometimes even longer. And if I could have a hybrid or full EV I'd jump at the chance. So - suck it up, we're at the time of life when we need wheels. </p><p>I also want a workshop again (<i>I did have that in my 3x3, briefly</i>) and space to keep all the workshed and yard paraphernalia and materials - and the mobility scooter, and, occasionally, be able to garage the Buttercup. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>I'll be posting this immediately, unscheduled, because I realised all the disruptions lately have put a dent in my scheduled blog article posts. </b></span></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Bring on - Tinkercad:</h2><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLmU3NDVwbCfO6savoddowRwIgh4jGYbWuYBeQ4Nty8E_x5Jqb51p_Gmont6-ySFhBVZIZyJGl05JWnaK8wh4diavQ8W37cArJmMV4APRTNiKh3thr6MPmHxj0LEIJxGv5pdx5eug2y4uZsq-Ml1vXitMIOn4zQ7kfhJ_HgSPZ6wgdv0w0viXf7RaVIfGL/s800/Garage_Band_Camp_v3.00.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="800" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLmU3NDVwbCfO6savoddowRwIgh4jGYbWuYBeQ4Nty8E_x5Jqb51p_Gmont6-ySFhBVZIZyJGl05JWnaK8wh4diavQ8W37cArJmMV4APRTNiKh3thr6MPmHxj0LEIJxGv5pdx5eug2y4uZsq-Ml1vXitMIOn4zQ7kfhJ_HgSPZ6wgdv0w0viXf7RaVIfGL/w400-h203/Garage_Band_Camp_v3.00.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The software that lets you CAD when you can't CAD.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Using <a href="https://www.tinkercad.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tinkercad</a> lets me design things that I can't do in CAD packages. (<i>I really am shyte at CAD - I got spoiled by Second Life's methods of building, and no amount of me cudgelling my brains has ever been of use.</i>) So a few hours running around with a tape measure and notebook and then drawing cubes and cylinders and you have a workable alternative to the old "graph paper and cutouts" way of doing things. And as a bonus - it's a bit twee, it's free, and it's 3D! Do <i style="font-weight: bold;">that</i> with graph paper. </p><p>So you have the end of our house on the left, the laundry outbuilding in white in the centre, and the neighbour's garage wall in battleship grey on the right. You can see two panels of fence across the left and across the old driveway between the laundry and neighbour's garage. Close to the centre you can see me if you zoom in - you'll know it's me because of the "T" on my pocket. behind me is the garage and the "shared driveway." The orange cones are to stop me walking off the grid. 😸</p><p>Behind me is the Buttercup beast, and the jet fighter (<i>don't hate - I just looked for two vehicles in the shared library because I thought two big featureless slabs were just too boring for a blog article</i>) is the mobility scooter. The two black prisms and the two yellow/orange prisms are some warehouse rack shelving for storage. The grey prisms (<i>one behind the jetplane scooter, one further right of that</i>) are the cheap tinplate shelving you used to be able to buy for a tenner a unit but I think they've been discontinued due to the amount of customer they sliced up or something. </p><p>Anyway. I've had those units for the best part of ten years, pulled apart and reassembled when we moved or our needs changed, and I still have all my fingers and body parts. The pale green, blue, and light blue prisms are the four workbench sub-units I've either already built or will finish in the next few months. (<i>The top green one and the dark blue one are already made, the pincushion and light blue are in waiting.</i>) The pink thing next to it is a trolley I made from two plywood sorters I found at some secondhand shop for five bucks apiece and some scrap wood and castors I had laying around. It's gotten older since 2020 but it's still as useful as it ever was. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxR2lAfNYXH6bcSEEJJsv50inorUmKkv53KOlMvuri5bjfXF4RI3wYPWqywJW-hc9PU01h6nQX5fO1zwQIVHGwnAODLue7OW1i4xDkbRcl9My3_QuK7oofDoV3bD94UFDLRsRUTptzoBap0OxAAUrMqUSVl5byH6ZH-KBED-RkcAjCQcDiWpVu7D-kvYaS/s1280/FKINGBENCH.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxR2lAfNYXH6bcSEEJJsv50inorUmKkv53KOlMvuri5bjfXF4RI3wYPWqywJW-hc9PU01h6nQX5fO1zwQIVHGwnAODLue7OW1i4xDkbRcl9My3_QuK7oofDoV3bD94UFDLRsRUTptzoBap0OxAAUrMqUSVl5byH6ZH-KBED-RkcAjCQcDiWpVu7D-kvYaS/s320/FKINGBENCH.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Made from junk sorting-bins and scrap wood I had laying around.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The two dark grey prisms below that are some metal Brownbuilt workshop cupboards that I'll probably use for epoxies, paints, and solvents, and perhaps abrasives and other dangerous materials. Gas bottles for torches etc. </p><p>And the green thing - now that <i style="font-weight: bold;">is </i> a surprise. Landlord was in the new garage the other day and I was daydreaming about where I'd put things and he has a workbench from another tenant that skipped at some point in the past and I can have it. <i>He doesn't know it yet but if he won't accept payment for it I'll make a donation at the charity of his choice.</i> </p><p>And if he doesn't, well - I have enough small utility workbenches and gear that I can build myself the same bench. It'll take me longer but I'll still have it. If you help out with the graphic below and donate a few bucks, I'll have it all the sooner and will be able to post new projects here.</p>
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<p>Back to the plans. As you can see, if I put the benches away in the rough locations shown, I can easily reverse Buttercup in. At all other times, it'll be parked just outside on the garage apron. And the observant and curious will have noticed I still haven't described a few other things, so here we go into bonus territory:</p><hr /><h2 style="text-align: left;">Extras.</h2><h4 style="text-align: left;">Doing Solar</h4><p>You may have noticed a transparent-y(ish) violet thing at the extreme right. Since my old shed had to be - for lack of a better word, bastardised - to fit into the (<i>not quite, alas! Missed it by 30mm...</i>) 3m width of the old driveway between our laundry and the neighbour's garage, I have an $800 pile of cheap glavanised tin and pressed tin ribs and struts which at the moment are still assembled but aren't going to be for very long, as they're not really in the plan for the place. In a word, it's scrap in a few weeks. And I can use some of that to make a lean-to roofed area between the garage and the fence. </p><p>Landlord's given his blessing, and so I can put up a short skillion roof the 6m length of the garage as long as it's not a permanent structure, which this will not be, being set atop concrete slabs and stabilised with (<i>strong</i>) ties to stakes in the ground. Now - I have one 240W solar panel atop my old shed, charging an old car battery, and it will fit on top of that temporary roof just fine. (<i>And may be joined by another one or two, if I come across any bargains.</i>)</p><p>It's currently only used occasionally to power 12V gizmos like a small tyre pump compressor, lights, and the occasional project I'm testing. But with a decent inverter it can already power our freezer via an extension cord if we have one of our rare but inevitable power outages, and it could already do this for 6-10 hours. With more panels and batteries I think we could keep our frozen food safe for 24 hours. It's a project among many. </p><p>And you'll also have noticed the timber trees in the three posts holding it up. Those will store almost every bit of my longer timber supplies, all the "scrap timber" half my projects end up being made from. So that takes care of 95% of longer materials including PVC pipes etc. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">And One (Two!) More Things</h4><p>There's also the blue cabinet and the orange cylinder outside the garage. Hmmmm.....</p><p>Orange thing will be my dust collector "cyclone" where air from the workshop tools gets drawn in along with chips and shavings and sawdust, swirled around, drops to the bottom, and right at the top, hopefully much cleaner air gets sucked into the lower left side of the blue cabinet where for the moment is a Homelite shop vac but I'm aiming for making a lower flow but more powerful turbine someday and then I'll be safe enough from workshop dust to make me happy.</p><p>The lower RH side will be the battery compartment for the solar panel(<i>s</i>) - and the shallower upper section of it will hold charging modules, power modules, control modules, inverter, etc. </p><p>All that's missing is to get wifi out to there. I have some old routers I may be able to press in to service, may need to make a longer range antenna for the garage end of it, but once it's there I'll be able to manage all the workshop power and also be able to check information as I'm working. </p><p>And there's a grey cross over the top. No I haven't set a demon trap (<i>too much "Supernatural"..</i>) it's just that if I'd drawn the two crossed wires to scale they'd have been invisible. And what they're up there for is to hold "curtains" (<i>probably old sheets or old tarpaulin pieces</i>) to keep workshop dust off the scooter and shield off the rear part of the garage if needed to contain dust from working. I know it seems I'm a bit gung-ho about dust but I'm pensioned with several respiratory issues and so working with masks and dust collection/extraction is pretty important. </p><p>If you'd like to help me, share this post and moy others, post links on your social media and messaging, also go back up to my cute li'l graphic a few paragraphs back and click the newspaper to go to my News Stand where you can see my most recent posts and subscribe to my weekly newsletter. If you want to really help, click the KoFi cup or the Paypal icon and make a donation or even a monthly one. It'd help me a lot with keeping my blogs and projects running, and you get all the articles, and plans for stuff I design and build. And I get to keep my pension instead of paying server fees and domain fees and scraping what few bucks I have left after living expenses to buy materials. </p><hr />teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-36538312831625723152023-09-28T01:00:00.028+10:002023-09-28T01:00:00.153+10:00Something Old And Inexpensive<h4 style="text-align: left;">And when I say old, it was bought from a deceased estate. And when I say inexpensive, it was priced at fifty Australian dollars and a touch of a cold.</h4><p>An ad for a deceased estate garage sale - which my lovely wife spotted and thought I might be interested in - seeing I'm equipping the garage (<i>or will be the garage once we get the keys handed over</i>) as a "bigger things" workshop. The estate of an older carpenter tradesman, and I glanced over the photos of the offering and spotted a few things I'd like to try for. </p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">(<i>WRT the "or it will be" reference above, we've found that nothing happens quickly here, the landlord does things or has things done as quickly as possible but the tradies are flat-out everywhere so things take time. Also the landlord himself is doing things as fast as he can but also - after a life of hustling to make a success of himself and his family - is taking regular time out for holidays to enjoy life. Our bathroom took just a few weeks to get from investigation to taken apart to being mostly usable again and then several more for the finishing tradespeople to - well - finish.</i>)</span> </blockquote><p></p><p>Anyhow - the morning of the garage sale was cold and wet and by the time I arrived (<i>with me exactly on time and despite the "definitely no early birds" injunction</i>) there were 15-20 cars lined up either side of the muddy laneway leading to the garage. And did I mention that it was 9AM and raining, hence the following cold...</p><p>The little garage that the garage sale was held in was pretty chock-full already. Only one mask amongst the lot, and that was me. But I went around the space and checked out most of the items, there was a crate at one spot with about 40-50kg of machine parts, labelled $20. I spotted several things I wanted, a vise screw / turnwheel / threaded boss thing, a mount for a power drill - I didn't want the rest - where would I put it? - so I asked if I could just pay twenty bucks and they could sell the rest of the crate, which they were (of course) happy to do.</p><p>Walking around I found a huge old belt sander and a similarly hefty plunge router, more than I wanted to pay and definitely more than I'd ever use. A thicknesser but OMFSM(<span style="font-size: x-small;">*</span>) it must have weighed several hundred kilos, being built on a cast iron plinth. Loads of three phase machine extension cords, home made. Again, I would have killed for just the switches off them but didn't want 2cm diameter cables and all the other fittings. </p><p>(<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">* - OMFSM - Oh My Flying Spaghetti Monster</span></i>)</p><p>I was walking out when a dusty mitre saw caught my eye. So did the price tag, the aforementioned fifty dollarydoos. It seemed to have not sold yet despite the pack of people in the garage. When I spotted the same person I'd been dealing with and asked about it he said yep mine for fifty bucks and then looked at the armful of bits I'd just bought. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaEPCEAK1pr5bAlbzJEiYyzvqp-fsr2GuW1S_m7ndCcvnBUfUAZGsIFA2H_Nhg7IJhrR7Bwhz3X-0Gmi16UK---b7qEnWTlbJWRSKXycW6U3NOXbPdzihuzXjsowXypu2Es9Gyf3scY7znTmkA0JO__lPbZ260oNoz8N8pR8KVRDFy9YrCMkF8C3SIpFhh/s800/Miter-mitenot.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="580" data-original-width="800" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaEPCEAK1pr5bAlbzJEiYyzvqp-fsr2GuW1S_m7ndCcvnBUfUAZGsIFA2H_Nhg7IJhrR7Bwhz3X-0Gmi16UK---b7qEnWTlbJWRSKXycW6U3NOXbPdzihuzXjsowXypu2Es9Gyf3scY7znTmkA0JO__lPbZ260oNoz8N8pR8KVRDFy9YrCMkF8C3SIpFhh/s320/Miter-mitenot.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>And I was sooo confused... Are they a Good Thing or not?</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>"Oh, you're the guy that could have taken that whole crate full of machine parts for $20 but only wanted those few bits and left the rest of the crate for us to resell, yeah. Tell you what - we pulled it apart to sell the plinth separately but I've got the bolts here and plinth for it there, you can have both for fifty."</p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">So I bought the saw and accepted the stand with thanks. And despite finding those two Youtube videos side by side almost as soon as I got everything home, I've now had a chance to use the saw a few times and it has (<i>as it's designed to do, I guess?</i>) proven to make short work of jobs I'd had to make ramshackle jigs for and go through 57 varieties of hoops to get right. </span></blockquote><p></p><p>Anyway - Aggressive Arthur got loaded into the back of the car, his old plinth (<i>and it was, I could even see where he'd been attached and the footprint matched perfectly, and to top it off I found Arthur in the sale pictures online and at that time it was still on top of the same table</i>) on top, and the handful of other loot alongside. </p><p>So - I may be about to let the cat out of the bag about the garage, and how I'm building small worktables rather than one big workbench and scaling everything to the plastic Stanley fold-up worktable I'd bought second-hand a few years back. But yep - I am.</p><p>I've made one such table already (<i>"rough as guts" as we say here but I'm no carpenter, and as you'll see, it's not been easy to work with the gear I've had for most of my life</i>) and made it something that I could add plywood inserts to with various machines - so a small table saw, a router, a jigsaw, etc - and converted my 6" GMC circular saw to a table saw. It's actually there under Aggressive Arthur in the first few pictures below. But for now, having a good mitre saw is more important than a table saw, and the table I've made is better than the supplied plinth. (<i>Which is actually going to have to be cut down a bit to fit my system anyway.</i>)</p><p>Artie is a GMC MS256 ten inch which has been continued for a few years now. But just out of interest I looked for prices of economy 10" mitre saws and found prices for similar <a href="https://www.mitre10.com.au/rockwell-2000w-sliding-compound-mitre-saw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">saws</a> from $250 to $400ish. I'm well pleased with my price. Anyhow - I've taken it for a spin and it seems quite solid and accurate. My next bench(es) will be better and I'll find ways to make them all fit together. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Pickup And Beauty Shots</h3><p style="text-align: left;">I didn't even see this before I went, only afterwards. This is a picture from the garage sale </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTXXSs7IEui6Oiv9wxdIreZdX9u59i35UZo3GhTIqFgjMYa4sZeN-0RgWI6UY4a4W5p9y_HYfCrVvSI90ja1koecLlzTWxHLSg0pfPNoBwCW5s8YoYoLfokqFn2sdvcSd3mHuO1Zm2FefMfVEy0V2G-zK5zrm2NZUawIKEcmogHNIdq2c5aA5SZuugAxcJ/s960/Artie_1st_see.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTXXSs7IEui6Oiv9wxdIreZdX9u59i35UZo3GhTIqFgjMYa4sZeN-0RgWI6UY4a4W5p9y_HYfCrVvSI90ja1koecLlzTWxHLSg0pfPNoBwCW5s8YoYoLfokqFn2sdvcSd3mHuO1Zm2FefMfVEy0V2G-zK5zrm2NZUawIKEcmogHNIdq2c5aA5SZuugAxcJ/s320/Artie_1st_see.png" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Arthur was actually in the background - to the right of that grey thing with big red wheel on the front - and that's the stand he was on. </i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Needless to say, that plinth the saw was on isn't the right height for my worktables so it temporarily finished up on the worktable mounted <i style="font-weight: bold;">over</i> the little table saw I'm building. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLzar02GMy_DpdusYyfgV2KjX8MnmRuVZtW_ZDUAqFckbOrsx7cKJ3Mzf5MvgGY1JYCLy6pmv7K5VVARgzkDj2li4uqYClpXHfiwkNeiEPg6pRVLeHJLW84Kyod8NhliVSkuGaOKZ7EVdUflMHKBBukiiJ1rtQU2dI1tkd17eVue5cznI65fpz2kPezre1/s4080/20230910_144019.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLzar02GMy_DpdusYyfgV2KjX8MnmRuVZtW_ZDUAqFckbOrsx7cKJ3Mzf5MvgGY1JYCLy6pmv7K5VVARgzkDj2li4uqYClpXHfiwkNeiEPg6pRVLeHJLW84Kyod8NhliVSkuGaOKZ7EVdUflMHKBBukiiJ1rtQU2dI1tkd17eVue5cznI65fpz2kPezre1/s320/20230910_144019.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>This work table hasn't even been finished yet but it's become Arthur's temporary new plinth.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>And I wanted saws in both orientations so it became important to give this saw a table of its own.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2sd6G0rRR0OZ-OE-PRBEDTUWv8dotA6veStduuxMJ5o92ETLl79F8sfSCeR9ClOj40Qq2vxE5cc2iKVuVfYZhSqKG_cM7kFo47AfVm0r2PrIF0OVdgsRNIfPDvCGzFgL5oCLaaFFq03FN5t42cTUQsLRaxcByFMkkNRlS6NDXLMvAr1DNW3QRV-8tK2Ct/s800/ArtieBeautyCollage_01.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2sd6G0rRR0OZ-OE-PRBEDTUWv8dotA6veStduuxMJ5o92ETLl79F8sfSCeR9ClOj40Qq2vxE5cc2iKVuVfYZhSqKG_cM7kFo47AfVm0r2PrIF0OVdgsRNIfPDvCGzFgL5oCLaaFFq03FN5t42cTUQsLRaxcByFMkkNRlS6NDXLMvAr1DNW3QRV-8tK2Ct/s320/ArtieBeautyCollage_01.png" width="320" /></a><br /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Artie's beauty shots, on a background of - background.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>This was Artie still on the table saw bench. I got a day of good weather (<i>since I still have to work on a veranda amid all our outdoor stuff</i>) and went for it. My back's killing me but the saw's already proven to be a great investment. What had taken me a complete reset on the Stanley bench, a crappy (<i>and very limited</i>) jig, and a lot of swearing, took under five minutes from setup to finished product with Artie.</p><div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJe08iWd-GPUrqaHRI_w-Kj8vs3mxe0Xd_okIZ_ukoYbZ3GTWvu5d2f-G7ZZL9oa6XEZXzy-uyJkcEV9gjFtBA1ZWt2G_mhe-KE2oonssuHLC7wVOvNG3GyVF69vW7NnG64HhDJLUaXVFGuhi3Qm6lLymKG2zslk5lnfRPUAb5MNUANNEYE46FT754ramf/s4080/20230912_144051.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJe08iWd-GPUrqaHRI_w-Kj8vs3mxe0Xd_okIZ_ukoYbZ3GTWvu5d2f-G7ZZL9oa6XEZXzy-uyJkcEV9gjFtBA1ZWt2G_mhe-KE2oonssuHLC7wVOvNG3GyVF69vW7NnG64HhDJLUaXVFGuhi3Qm6lLymKG2zslk5lnfRPUAb5MNUANNEYE46FT754ramf/s320/20230912_144051.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>First cut.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>While still on that bench, it made the boards for me to remake its cut-down table. The table was solid - except for the actual top which was mad of 25mm chipboard. And, at some stage, apparently, water. A LOT of water. It was so spongy in places I wasn't surprised the sellers split them apart and tried to sell them separately. </p></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7A5WDw9tzIoG-P8TLtx6INuHwgu5munT8YynHm1XcX_iU9QRk9GZqgS81sxPdCN8-9x0v1okqo-qExJET8ihfYUaFlwcRiY9q9SPu8Ezn78X2WmtJrdxGgu8UfOlpm_kjTv6hOOLZ7GOoJfy2x7GiBCEhDDtl8_mVA9cFpCU4U-DBltwGs9rspMBQDz5J/s4080/20230912_152514.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7A5WDw9tzIoG-P8TLtx6INuHwgu5munT8YynHm1XcX_iU9QRk9GZqgS81sxPdCN8-9x0v1okqo-qExJET8ihfYUaFlwcRiY9q9SPu8Ezn78X2WmtJrdxGgu8UfOlpm_kjTv6hOOLZ7GOoJfy2x7GiBCEhDDtl8_mVA9cFpCU4U-DBltwGs9rspMBQDz5J/s320/20230912_152514.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I shortened the stand I got with the saw and reworked the top.<br /></i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>The stand as supplied was already a smidgen taller than my 'standard' benches, and of course that put the bed of the saw well above. And I wanted to be able to use any of my 'standard' benches as the in-and-out feed tables, so I shortened the stand by quite a lot, chucked out the chipboard and top 7cm or so of the legs, and added some new framework and put the same planks (<i>150mm plinth board, about the cheapest lumber I can get here</i>) on top as I'd put on my benches, and it's now perfect - just a bit taller than the benches so I can use pieces of dowel as rollers. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy4GzhcrdRIc9ubQTFGSMNy7qnLoleRy6_j6MLwXpk0-rjjsQGKvkehlpQkjXzuVXyAyoPsAc7BfNjA9pQK89RpumJwaiIb0e26K73fdImlz6CFfxLnGbu6E9rJQfi6a9WprCAjTJkMlXRMDilN-wLcZjvrmq9-oWCdP6qwHkCe_jpYjVlKXQ84vzEjfed/s4080/20230912_152526.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy4GzhcrdRIc9ubQTFGSMNy7qnLoleRy6_j6MLwXpk0-rjjsQGKvkehlpQkjXzuVXyAyoPsAc7BfNjA9pQK89RpumJwaiIb0e26K73fdImlz6CFfxLnGbu6E9rJQfi6a9WprCAjTJkMlXRMDilN-wLcZjvrmq9-oWCdP6qwHkCe_jpYjVlKXQ84vzEjfed/s320/20230912_152526.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>This made me happy.</i></div><p>It's not apparent because the veranda floor is decking boards that are weathered and up to several centimetres variable in height, so the spirit level across the two isn't anywhere near level but the heights are right. And I'mn stoked.</p><p>There's not too much wrong with the (<i>old</i>) new from what I could tell, I should be able to use it to make any new bits for the shed and then take it apart and do a bit of a service, repack the gears with grease, etc. But for now, it's going to have a big job ahead of it. </p><p>And so am I.</p>
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<p>These posts are all about a week or two behind actual events. I'm getting snowed under with everything, and there are a few other posts that explain what's been going on that makes for all the workload. (<i>I know - how did I get time to make a couple of crappy photo collages along with everything else going on? - just know that I do a lot for you, dear reader, to bring you happiness and a smile. Please read on for how you can show your appreciation and support...</i>)</p><p>I'll keep sharing all my low-budget projects - I really want to get to the point where the projects I share are about developing easy-to-make machines for cottage industry scale recycling and the odd post about advances in vegetable gardening also on the cottage scale. (<i>And where I say "cottage" I want to also be able to substitute "cottage and/or local community level." </i>)</p><p>You can help me by sharing the link to this article or any others you enjoyed. Use the newspaper in the graphic above to go to the News Stand and find other articles to enjoy, use the link there to sign up to my once-a-week newsletter. Or use the coffee mug or Paypal icon to send me a donation. It all helps keep things online and paid up. Thank you.</p></div></div></div>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-62927647853823055712023-09-15T01:00:00.053+10:002023-09-15T01:00:00.137+10:00The Big Store Comes To Town<h4 style="text-align: left;">This is a simple and very short post. Three years ago today, demolition began on the other side of the highway from us.</h4><p>It started a period of disruption, stress, and constant disturbance that's continued pretty much unabated since then. Almost every goalpost in our lives slid away to the sidelines. </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>There was months of demolition noise</li><li>then a new landlord</li><li>then months of repairs to the house</li><li>and also moving major things here and there to allow the block split</li><li>then the second house works out in the new split</li><li>then construction began across the highway</li><li>then more repairs to the house <br />And in between there were other minor things like - oh, you know, cataract surgery, bladder cancer resection, oh yes and the pandemic, and various other health issues and then COVID - if anyone deserves to win a huge Lotto prize and go on a six month holiday it's us...</li></ul><p></p><p>But also we've become a lot more resilient, slightly crazier, and - with any luck - the last big disruptions will end with this year 2023 and then things will return to just our normal chaos. </p><p>Peace out...</p><div align="center"><iframe allow="fullscreen" frameborder="no" height="95px" scrolling="no" src="https://ohaicorona.com/Minibanner.html" style="border: 1px #FFFFFF none;" title="iFrame1" width="190px"></iframe></div><p><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-11570787141877566972023-09-13T01:00:00.000+10:002023-09-13T01:00:00.143+10:00Why I sometimes Actually Do Not<h4 style="text-align: left;">There's a nice picture of a positively HUGE garage in my <a href="https://ptec3d.blogspot.com/2023/08/what-do-i-actually-do.html" target="_blank">article last week</a> titled "What Do I ActuallyDo?" and it's one of (<i>and connected with</i>) what I do and don't do. And that makes about as much sense as everything else I write, I just realise. Anyhow - here are some reasons that </h4><h2 style="text-align: left;">Sometimes I Just Cannot Even</h2><p>This arrives after the eleventh real life anniversary and twelve years after the Facebook anniversary of our wedding, my wife and me. In the times before that my life was highly changeable and sometimes chaotic and sometimes copacetic, but in the times since, it has also been the happiest I've ever been. </p><p>The last twelve years include four moves, the last of them six years ago to a coastal-adjacent town in Victoria's Bass Coast region, where we can almost throw rocks at Tasmanians, although we shouldn't do that as the wife's family came from that island to Melbourne. </p><p>But the last move has been one of the most conflicting and difficult periods, not least because a certain coronavirus made an appearance, but also a helluva lot of other things happened. We were offered a long-term rental with a rider to "make the place your long-term home" and so we spent our savings doing that - a tall fence to keep the cats controlled, a gazebo in the back yard, a small but new shed for me in the back, raised garden beds, a gazebo and outdoor kitchen. </p><p>I have to also say that this was not tens of thousands of dollars because I did much of the work myself and recycled and used salvaged materials where we could, but still - it was our savings, eagre as they were. (<i>four figures not five, m'kay?</i>) </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Demolition And Pandemic</h3><p>And across the <i style="font-weight: bold;">HIGHWAY</i> from us was a motel, caravan park, and pub/club that had been the focal point for shadiness in the lovely town, but the land was slated for new building works. Long story short, by our second year here there was demolition work across the way for several months that kept us on the ragged edge of our nerves. Then COVID-19, and our landlord had a marriage breakdown and sold the house. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">A House Sold World</h3><p>For almost a year, the real estate company that managed it kept us on tenterhooks and the ragged remains of our last (<i>or so we thought - but we were ever the optimists</i>) remaining nerve, then a new landlord arrived on the scene and was happy to keep us on - but then split the block <i>en twain</i> as the Twelfth Century English used to say. </p><p>So our nerve was restored, then shredded <i>en twain</i> again, and of course almost our entire outdoor life was in that back yard so we had to strike nine (<i>or was it ten? I honestly can't remember</i>) garden beds and put the best six of them into the front yard. The "front yard" had been a pocket-handkerchief sized patch of lawn that had no fence between it and a footpath which formed a major walkway into the town centre, so we'd actually never left anything on the veranda or lawn. (<i>At least, not after some rotten bastard stole a quite large and beloved plant in a fairly valuable pot from the veranda...</i>)</p><p>So that had to wait until the landlord, realising we'd erected a cat fence of considerable size and now had nowhere for them, and had lost our entire vegetable gardens, so he very kindly put a 1.8m paling fence around it, in the process reducing the pocket handkerchief to a ladies' lace hankie. But we loved it, I added cat retaining wings and then moved those six garden beds, and there are articles on these blogs about how I improved them to make them more productive. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Which Occasioned A LOT Of Work</h3><p>My by then only just over one year old shed had to be taken apart, hacked and re-shaped to fit the new space allotted, and so 2020 and 2021 were spent doing those things. Then in 2022 when I finally had things going, the local Shire kicked up a fuss. Because there'd be two driveways on one block, the front fence would have to be moved back a metre from the footpath for pedestrian safety. The lace hankie is soon to be a ribbon and more than half to those six garden beds will have to be uprooted again and moved.</p><p>Also, a hew hardware store started construction on that newly-cleared land (<i>remember that land? yeah . . .</i>) and if we thought demolition was shattering, we hadn't seen anything yet. This was almost eleven months of unmitigated hell, and it's only because there's now a huge Bunnings almost across the road that kept me out of serious loss of mind, I think. </p><p>Anyhow - among other things, the new split block also required a garage and two carports. The garage is, as you'll see in the photo if you go look at the article linked in the lede, huge. And it turns out that the landlord made it that huge because he was well aware that he'd caused me to have to pretty much destroy my existing shed, and was also tearing down the existing garage (<i>which had never been usable as a garage as one door was rusted shut and it had builder's trash on the ground</i>) that I'd been using to store materials for the work we did and future work. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Best Of Best Things Happened</h3><p>So it turns out the whole huge thing is ours, not the other house on the property. I basically have a 6m x 8m area to become parking and also my new shed. The trade-off is that my old shed becomes so much scrap materials, the parking garage shed we bought for my wife's mobility scooter will be sold or given to a friend. </p><p>But it means also that I have a chance to make a first real workbench, and so I decided to build it A) to match a plastic folding bench I bought secondhand and which is an easy height to lift materials onto, B) to be similar-sized modular units, C) to be mobile and D) for at least one module to become a "multi-tool table" which had interchangeable inserts with a converted had circular saw, jigsaw, router, and later a grinding/sanding machine and finally, E) that it had to be modular so that I could lock benches together in order to make a larger work surface when needed and store the units compactly when not needed. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">And That's Where I'm At</h3><p>So right now all my other projects have to go on hold because I have to make some slightly better workbenches as mentioned above. Then I'll have to move all the tools and materials and projects into the new garage, which will also mean making storage like shelves and racks for the space while also leaving room to back the car in, the garden equipment, and of course the mobility scooter.</p><p>You can understand perhaps that this takes priority over blogging and recycling and other projects. (<i>The garage will offer me the space to set up a modular bench for plastic recycling, for example. For building the mechanical parts of other projects. And for at this stage unimagined new projects. The rewards are considerable.</i>)</p><p>One other thing will take priority, moving the garden beds when the front fence has to be moved. We are reliant on the vegetable garden to offset our food bills so this will also be a priority, and having workbenches available will allow me to make anything needed.</p><p>What no amount of my effort will solve is the finances. Our philanthropic and very kind landlord will nevertheless stop short at financing materials for shelving and racking, or the cost of a handyman to move garden beds (<i>since I can only do a limited amount of heavy physical work any more</i>) and that will make things very tight - to downright impossible - for keeping up all the online costs involved, and leave nothing in the kitty for desirable projects like building recycling machines and facilities etc.</p>
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<p>And so, you know, one of the best things you can do is to hit the KoFi cup or the Paypal logo and make a donation, and better yet, make it a small monthly one. Also use the newspaper to go to my News Stand where you can sign up to my once-a-week newsletter to stay up to date, and share the link to this page with your friends and social network - the more people this reaches, the better the chance that someone will help us with our projects and (<i>in my very artistically talented wife's case</i>) artwork which I'll also post here.</p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-86274675090821897732023-08-24T01:00:00.047+10:002023-08-24T01:00:00.146+10:00What Do I Actually Do? <h4 style="text-align: left;">What do I actually do? Not as much as I'd like to. Let's face it - I'm on the far side of my 60s, on a diso pension, and finding that the things I always wanted to do when I stopped working - are just as much work as work ever was, and then some more... </h4><p>It's true. When I was working, it was one of those salaried jobs that meant I was working 50 and 60 hour weeks and getting paid a salary for about 40. Then I left there and went freelance for a year, which was enough to convince me that I should have been a freelancer for a lot longer... Same income, half the hours. Still high-pressure but I liked it. Then my third or fourth health issue struck and I ended up on a disability pension. </p><p>But once I started doing the things I'd always put off for when I "had more time" I discovered the thing that a lot of retirees find - hobbies and favourite things expand to fill a lot more time than a job ever did. I found some reasonably sane advice for old farts online about having a plan - and gloriously ignored almost everything in it except that bit about being kind to myself and not letting any of my hobbies become an obsession. </p><p>But it started me on this trip of a time. I'd been <b><i>blogging</i></b> sporadically for a bit longer than thirty years before that, first on BBS's then by hand-writing HTML in Notepad, etc. I also started writing about renewables, AI and the ethics of automating and cyborging, and recycling, and becoming a very clumsy Maker of all-sorts-of-punked jewellery and small sculptures, and machines and recycling gear, and learning the arcane art of programming Arduinos and their endless family of cousins.</p><p><a href="https://www.ryrob.com/history-of-blogging/">https://www.ryrob.com/history-of-blogging/</a></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">From The Top Down, From The Depths Of History</h2><p>Ready for some history? I have some history to impart. Here's a bit of Bulletin Board System history. Skip to "Blogs And Me" if you know all about the online communications software that the Hackers and Wargames kids used. Read the next few paragraphs to find out where the Internet took some form and direction from... </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Blogging. As I said, blogging. </h4><p>Only it wasn't, at first. In 1990 I became a member of a BBS (<i><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-lost-civilization-of-dial-up-bulletin-board-systems/506465/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"Bulletin Board System"</a></i>) called Wizard - or something like that. I think. It's kind of a long way back to remember. Sysop's (<i>"<b>SYS</b>tem <b>OP</b>erator"</i>) name was GAry. I think. Helped me set up the modem and client on my IBM AT clone computer - and I was in this new territory of computing. I worked out how to use Netmail and Echomail (<i>Netmail was close to what we now call email, Echomail was more like an email group</i>) and Filebone. </p><p>Echoes were set up by sysops and were like chatrooms accessed by sending echomails to the echo. Filebone was the collection of folders full of files that people shared. There was ASCII art, there were text files, there were images (<i>no prizes for guessing what many images were of</i>) and there were the program files, all the way from "demos" that specific groups put up to show off their skills with images and music to the more suss things like "hacking tools" that BBSs were famous for. </p><p>Each BBS accepted your files locally, and then at one specific time every day, it relayed all new echomail, Netmail, and Filebone files to an upstream hub, which sent it to a major hub, which sent it to relevant major hubs in different countries/areas which sent the relevant ones to their relevant local BBS at the other end, and there the user you were sending to would receive what you'd sent, usually taking between one and four days to get there by the nightly hops. Your correspondent would send a reply which took the same amount of time to relay-hop back to you. </p><p>This stuff opened my eyes. I was chatting to interns and engineers at NASA. Had conversations in echoes that had participants all over the world. And one day I made a file directory with my name and sent up a file with a recipe. I can't even recall what the recipe was but I also started adding files about life down under. That was the start of oversharing online.</p><p>When I got back home (<i>I was interstate before that, hence the reaching out online to a community I could partake in</i>) I set up my own BBS, called "TEdLIVISION" (- don't touch that dial!!!) that the previously mentioned sysop (<i>who might actually have been called Steve, perhaps? It's another name from the era that's scratching away in a corner of my memories</i>) helped me set up. And kept posting textfiles with snippets of how-to, recipes, whatever else came to mind. It wasn't a blog <i>per se</i> but it was online content. </p><p>Then the hard drive of the machine I used as my Windows PC and which TEdLIVISION ran on in the background crashed after four years. I'd bought a secondhand drive because it had a whole 40Mb of space and my original drive was barely big enough to run my pride and joy, Windows for Workgroups. WfW had a thing called "Winsock" that let one access a LAN - or a network connection over a modem. But the stack of floppy disks fitted on the original drive I had but there was no room for the BBS software and all the files that the mail and filebone would put on my PC once I was running the BBS software. And after a few years, it spun its last spin. It took me a while to save for a new hard drive, which came with a newer late model PC, TEdLIVISION was reinstated, and ran another two years until 1997. </p><p>So that's stuff I <i style="font-weight: bold;">did</i>. I got Internet-connected in 1995 or 1996 but kept TEdLIVISION going until there weren't even 2 dial-ins a month. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Blogs And Me</h3><p>And that brings me back to blogging.</p><p>It led to a veritable stable of blogs, the oldest of which (<i>that are still going</i>) are sixteen years and counting old, but have their roots in some of the old BBS files I'd managed to hang onto and some old hand-coded HTML. (<i>All written in Notepad so: "<body><h3>The cat was being cute yesterday</h3><p>He worked the electric can-opener all by himself last night. There wasn't a tin of cat food in it, he was just gently reminding me that the food bowl was empty by making that noise he associated with food.</p>" etc etc etc. And yes it's true, the cat really did that. The can opener was on the kitchen counter and my desk was on the dining room side of it, he jumped up and nudged the lever because he felt his bowl was too empty. . . </i>)</p><p>And so my first hand-coded Internet blog was called "TEdALOG Lite." It included some of my few surviving BBS texts, and pretty soon I found some software that let me edit files on my PC and link them in a blog structure with an index and all the good things right there on your own hard drive - and then uploaded the whole blog by FTP to your webserver. EVERY TIME you wanted to add or edit a post... It was still better than hand coding. So TEdALOG Lite moved to this software, losing quite a lot of data in the process. </p><p>It was joined in quick succession by "TEdAMENU Tuckertime" and "TEdADYNE Systems" but these two were on a new site called Blogger.com, aka Blogspot.com, and as blogger started in 1999, I guess that dates the first edition. (<i>*sigh* yep there were losses. Again.</i>)</p><p>I started "The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook" on blogger.com a few years after it was acquired by Google which was also during my second health crisis, and most of those hand-coded and reposted online (<i>"Surely this'll be a more stable provider. . ."</i>) files went away around the same time that the service provider that had been hosting the files - went away. It kind of put a damper on me and I was as said dealing with a health issue - and a personal issue - and still working long hours. Anyhow - by 2007 I was ready to start with blogs again so I found as many of the files as I could, and reconstituted them. Not long afterwards I retired with my disabilities and had more time to start doing things - but that didn't include much blogging. </p><p>I knew I'd have a limited useful life. Wanted to do the Grey Nomad thing - and didn't, because of health. And also because of a new life halfway across Australia, with a woman who became my favourite ever lovely wife. So everything sort of took a pause there, except growing fresh food. I'm going into way too many details aren't I? Yeah, I think I am. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">So anyhow. Jump cut.</h3><p>You can find my blogs' output at <a href="https://ohaicorona.com/teds-news-stand" target="_blank">Ted's News Stand</a> - it has the twenty most recent blog posts across all of my blogs and a sporadically updated list of what those blogs are and what their main themes are. I figured if I posted everything on one blog, it would get confusing and chaotic really quickly, so I tend to *try* and stick to themes for each one. </p><p>I know my readership is tiny compared to real blogs but I'd like that to change. On the News Stand there's a link to subscribe to my newsletter. It's not a high intrusion thing, once a week (<i>currently Friday Eastern Australian time</i>) it gets sent out and has the updated list of blog posts. That's it. Sharing the link to the News Stand would help me. Sharing my articles would help me, help more people get to read them.</p><p>Also, I pay for everything related - domain name fees, server fees, subscriptions to the news services I ferret out my stories from, the hardware for the projects I share online - out of my pension. Sometimes I get a donation, and when I do, I put that into the next set of fees and that lets us keep a bit more of my pension for our use. Any help here is appreciated.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Next Things I Do.</h3><p>I grow as much of our fresh food as I can. The job has gotten harder and harder due to circumstances beyond our control but I document all the tips and techniques and constructions I use to make our increasingly smaller and smaller patch as productive as I can. I've made mini aquaponics systems, raised garden beds, in-ground worm farms, and systems to support and grow the plants. I've shared all that online. There are reasons other than age and infirmity that I won't go into, let's just say that sometimes, life just hands you lemons and keeps right on pelting you with them. But also some great crops and stories. You can find most of them on the <a href="https://zencookbook.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Zen Cookbook</a> or <a href="https://ptec3d.blogspot.com" target="_blank">PTEC3D Blog</a>. </p><p>I'm also the unofficial carer for my wife, I do the cooking and most of the laundry. The laundry isn't something that I feel I need to air in public, so to speak (<i>hehehe see what I did there?</i>) but the cooking is. Whenever I develop a new recipe or food health tip or cooking technique tip, it goes up on <a href="https://tedamenu.blogspot.com" target="_blank">TEdAMENU Tuckertime</a> recipe blog. </p><p>I also splashed out almost $250 for a 3D printer a few years ago. I have models online at Printables for the most useful and universal of them, and they're also on my <a href="http://Ko-Fi.com" target="_blank">Ko-Fi.com</a> pages, mostly for free there but unlike Printables you can tip me for them at Ko-Fi. Most of my prints are designed to solve problems or be tools to solve problems with. </p><p>Designs and so forth for electronics and programming end up on <a href="https://ptec3d.blogspot.com" target="_blank">PTEC3D Blog</a>, and my forays into sustainable and renewable on the <a href="https://grumpyoguy.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Grumpy Old Guy</a> blog or <a href="https://zencookbook.blogspot.com" target="_blank">Zen Cookbook</a>. Depends on what angles the stories have. </p><p>I also get shitty with supermarket and corporation food crimes on those blogs because I think there should be a special place in Hell for people that adulterate foods or knowingly take the nutrition out so that you'll instead get hooked on excessive sugars salts and fats or other additives and then play into their medical arms. Preferably that place would be a place where people like me get to fry the bastards over and over in very hot palm or corn oil in a teflon pan... Stuff I've turned up on food corporate crimes would turn your stomach, trust me on this. Sometimes the foodie outrage also gets into the recipe blog. Sorry - I wasn't too focused on themes and topics for a long while and it's difficult sometimes to know what to file some stories under. </p><p>I've also made and still occasionally make (<i>when I have spare time or get bored, ha ha HA!</i>) all-kinds-of-punked jewellery and small sculptures, and while lifelong poor eye-hand coordination have limited me to wishing I could make drawing art, a cool new thing (<i>pssst! It's AI...</i>) has allowed me to tell a computer somewhere to make a starting point image for me that I can then edit to my heart's content and that I put on my blogs to fill up white space when pics aren't available or applicable. Some of those images make their way to <a href="http://Ko-Fi.com" target="_blank">Ko-Fi.com</a> where again, some are for sale and many you can figure out what you'd like to tip me. </p><p>I may put some of those things online at Ko-Fi sometime - not sure. Is anyone interested in a steampunked Nerf Maverick or a completely fabricated "raygun?" Leather and wire sculptures and jewellery? "Robot assistants?" For an example, a desk lamp I made (<i>out of an old hard disk drive and QH lamp</i>) for a friend in the mid 1990s is still working and she still uses it most evenings. Also I have the originals of my digital/AI art and can supply it in original quality. <br />(<i>story continues below</i>)</p><hr /><p>Let me know - the image below has a contact link (<i>"Mastodon"</i>) where you can reach me if any of these kinds of things interest you. </p>
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<p style="text-align: left;">Also please subscribe to my newsletter using the newspaper in the image above, it's a once-a-week email that'll keep you informed on all the latest blog posts. If you'd like to help me keep the blogs going, the recipes flowing, please use either </p><hr /><p>(<i>cont'd</i>)</p><p>I may dig through the boxes of old bits'n'bobs and take a few pictures - I have a half-completed working Nerf Maverick being steam-punked into a lovely old steampunk prop, several other devices being turned into steampunk props, a lot of jewellery made from brass and springs and stuff. I have one "robot assistant" similar to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_Gearloose" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gyro Gearloose's Little Helper</a> (<i>does anyone remember Disney comics? And Gyro? He was my hero when I was very young, age five and upwards - and still is a hero of mine . . .</i>) and a few other robot and general sculptures (<i>all small/tiny</i>) made of metals and plastics and so forth that I need to complete, and now also recycled plastics will start making an appearance. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">A Small Proviso</h3><p>Over the last five years or so, disruption has been a feature of life. First there was setting up a fence to keep our cats safe from a highway just outside our front door, then setting up raised garden beds, then the back fence blew down in a storm and we put it back up and made a gate to the back alley, then putting in a 3m x 3m shed and a gazebo and outdoor kitchen area. And then taking all those things down again... You see, we rent. Our old landlord had told us we were here for as long as we needed a place and to make it what we wanted for long term lease. </p><p>Then across the road from us an old caravan park, motel, and pub/club were demolished to make way for a new - something, vague rumors of something - and our landlord's life changed and he sold the house... </p><p>The new landlord (<i>and a local business owner and secret philanthropist</i>) has turned out to be the most generous and kind person but as he was capitalising on the huge block by splitting it and putting another house on the now rear block, it meant the fence and gate went the way of the dodo, the garden beds (<i>well, some of the garden beds</i>) had to be uplifted and moved into the newly-fenced front yard, the shed had to be moved, and the cat fence and bazebo etc all had to come down. I reckon I aged a decade in those few years. </p><p>But it's still ongoing. The local Shire dragged out proceedings by a year - during which I/we consolidated into the smaller garden space, hacked the shed to fit into a new space, got the gardens producing veges again, - and now that the new garage has been erected - just finished as of yesterday (<i>16 Aug 2023</i>) in fact - I have to move all the shed and old garage tools and materials into the back of it. It's a HUGE garage, will be more than enough - but it's all been taking inordinate amounts of our time. Once I've moved everything into it, I'll have the right space to do more recycling, build more projects and equipment for making new projects, and may even have a better space for electronics and 3D printing. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0lmhlcP5Gfb1jRjWTIAqs9rNnLzCovAkOiAF4o6fQZKYzAZRMM1UT4wdwLS9yP_00Y2jG4bIJERsJ4ivwpIMU0PPoeMQfkCqogvdBxDyV6cXOrRUPazfz7KT0EownYkym1QGn3XsArs43vheyy4PdXPM9HsYsm7k89_IfFVMz9n5Qvkh1KtqWUyPx7nIK/s4080/20230816_172205.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2296" data-original-width="4080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0lmhlcP5Gfb1jRjWTIAqs9rNnLzCovAkOiAF4o6fQZKYzAZRMM1UT4wdwLS9yP_00Y2jG4bIJERsJ4ivwpIMU0PPoeMQfkCqogvdBxDyV6cXOrRUPazfz7KT0EownYkym1QGn3XsArs43vheyy4PdXPM9HsYsm7k89_IfFVMz9n5Qvkh1KtqWUyPx7nIK/s320/20230816_172205.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>That's a 5m or 6m front on that garage. Woo-ee!</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Oh and of course COVID-19 and all that panic also happened, and a load of health issues for us both, under stress and ageing as we both are. It gets to the point where all the small cuts add up to a big painful gaping bite out of us. And it's definitely all added up to delays, delays that are now ever more important to us because they're taking away from a steadily-shrinking pool we call "the years we have left..." For example, my self-designed desktop CNC I've been working away on has been in abeyance for almost two years, a planned seed raising hothouse that I wanted to build and put into use right about now, will have to wait another year. And so will more than a dozen other projects. Blogging is about the only thing I can do anytime and anyplace and even that has had to pause for the occasional issue. </p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">Today is also the eleventh anniversary of our wedding, my lovely wife and I, one day I'll post that lovely tale on <a href="https://tedalog.blogspot.com/ " target="_blank">TEdALOG Lite II</a>, for now let's just say this has been the happiest twelve (<i>almost thriteen</i>) years of my life. Why? Because <i>tomorrow</i> is the twelfth anniversary of our Facebook marriage. Seems a twee thing to do but it led to us actually meeting in Western Australia, being pretty much smacked over the head with the fact that we were more compatible than any other two people either of us had ever experienced, and so I finished up in Victoria Australia just before 2012 rolled around.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>But anyway - an article "What I Did and Do and Will Actually Do" may be on the cards with a lot more info on the stuff my wife and I have Made and will keep on Making. It's something in our blood I think so projects will keep happening. You can help - there's a little graphic a few paragraphs before the picture of the garage where you can subscribe to my once-a-week newsletter which will keep you up to date with all the ins and outs of doings and catatonic states, or you can arrange to help by making a one-time or monthly donation to help with creative costs, or chat with me on mastodon. Or just share the link to any or all of my articles, the newsletter / News Stand site. It all does help us. </p><p><br /></p><p></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-63557317070824580852023-08-10T01:00:00.025+10:002023-08-10T01:00:00.130+10:00What Sort Of Channels Do We Watch?<h4 style="text-align: left;">In an effort to shed light on the chaotic nature of the brainworddumps I make here, this very short article intends to shine light on the channels that we watch on Youtube:</h4><p>Firstly and probably meaninglessly,</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">We discovered a few synchronicities in our viewing: </h2><p>Many have the name <b><span style="color: red;">Scott</span></b>, several are tall <b><span style="color: #783f04;">mop-headed</span></b> people, many have <b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">blue/blue-adjacent/grey eyes</span></b>, and quite a few are "odd Stuff" Channels, including:</p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">AJ</span></b> Gentile (The Why Files) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIZNBTRYj_o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIZNBTRYj_o</a> </p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Joe</span></b> <b><span style="color: red;">Scott</span></b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNcHPF_tX3c" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNcHPF_tX3c</a> </p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Tom</span></b> <b><span style="color: red;">Scott</span></b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE</a></p><p>...and the <b><span style="color: red;">Scott</span></b> theme carries over into <b><span style="color: #04ff00;">music</span></b>:</p><p>David <b><span style="color: red;">Scott</span></b> (aka <b><span style="color: #04ff00;">The Kiffness</span></b>) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwLLFbC1H0c " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwLLFbC1H0c </a></p><p>... and 3D printing </p><p><b><span style="color: red;">Scott</span></b> Yu-Jan <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYy8RFcN_ds" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYy8RFcN_ds</a></p><p>Thomas <b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Sanladerer</span></b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGUPBoDxmKk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGUPBoDxmKk</a></p><p>... leading into two <b><span style="color: #783f04;">mop-headed</span></b> presenters:</p><p><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Stefan</span></b> <b><span style="color: #783f04;">Hermann</span></b> - CNC Kitchen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPxCtMUTuiI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPxCtMUTuiI</a></p><p>... one of which goes right back into music</p><p><b><span style="color: #783f04;">Andy</span></b> - <b><span style="color: #04ff00;">Guitar Geek</span></b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPPOIThqRLI" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPPOIThqRLI</a></p><p>...and then our list also leads into stuff like</p><p>Precious Plastic <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHAwxRe4R0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmHAwxRe4R0</a></p><p>Brothers <b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">Make</span></b> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4P39WeTV8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4P39WeTV8</a></p><p>I've only selected a single video from each of them but you'll get the idea of what ferments in my brain after a few hours of catching up with my videos, posts, and podcasts material for the day. </p><p>We're also avid watchers of <a href="https://nebula.tv/videos" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nebula TV</a> videos. This is a site similar to Youtube but created and operated by the creators of the content, and many of the same people we follow on Youtube have their videos on here, often a week before they get to YToutube. Why? Because the group of creators sell the advertising on Nebula and get all the income derived from it. If you want to support some of your favourite YT creators, look them up on Nebula first.</p>
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<p>If you like the mix or have found a new favourite Youtuber maybe make a small donation using the banner above, or subscribe to my once a week newsletter.</p><p>If you enjoy my articles, share them on your favourite messaging service, social site, or news site. That really helps to get them seen more widely. </p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-29644810780008408842023-08-05T18:03:00.001+10:002023-08-06T12:56:33.142+10:00Do You. (Doing Recycling.)<h4 style="text-align: left;">I know - easier to say that than do that. And it's only a part of the waste problem. But it's gotta start somewhere.</h4><p style="text-align: left;"><i>This is an article with a lot of links. They all open in a new tab so you won't lose this page. They're mostly links to videos because the concepts are best shown in video essay formats, and you'll end up down a rabbit-hole and possibly spend weeks afterwards following up the further rabbit-holes these videos will present. All I can say is "I hope so. I fervently hope this shows you how recycling can help you and your community and your country and your planet. This is the way."</i> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Trash Tripod: </h3><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. </i></b></h4><p><b>Reduce our use of plastic, re-use where we can't avoid it.<br /></b>Especially one-shot plastic. Ask for your coffee in your own permanent mug/cup. Carry a few pieces of opp shop (<i>thrift shop</i>) cutlery and refuse the plastic kind. Or keep the first plastic (<i>or bamboo <span style="font-size: x-small;">*see Note 1</span></i>) cutlery you get and re-use the heck out of it. Take your own containers to take-away places. Take a refillable long-lasting thermos for drinks. </p><p>You'll find this is less than welcome in some takeaway restaurants/fast food places. My advice is to stop using them, is that superduper vindaloo really worth it? I'd also take a moment to note that they "don't accept re-use practices" on your food review app of choice. Activism is the ONLY way any company or corporation will take notice of you. If you hit their bottom line.</p><p>(<i>We often take a small hamper in the car with us that has enamelled plates, bowls & lids, basic cutlery and a couple of car mugs with lids. When I was still in the workforce I'd take leftovers for lunch in similar re-usable containers with lids, and brought my own cutlery and coffee mug every day. This is how you start seeing how much single-use plastic and crap is foisted on us every day. Even at the start of the century I was appalled at this, and I'm still offended at how few alternatives we have to this day.</i>)</p><p>For takeaway places I'd recommend even something like a set of old takeaway containers (<i>one of our noodle places has these hard white plastic bowls and lids - they're easy to clean, seal well, and last for months if you look after them</i>) they're still a single-use plastic, but this gives them several dozen more uses before they finally have to go out, in the process saving you from using that many other, new, single-use containers. And any reduction in personal use of plastics is a gain for the environment. </p><p>Similarly, it's hard to find bread that isn't in plastic. Maybe re-use those bags to carry fresh fruit, veg, and other groceries from the market or store a few times, then use them one more time as a bag for collecting together a whole pack of soft plastics for recycling. </p><p>Remember that if you do have to accept a single-use plastic, be aware that it can be re-used several times thus reducing a few subsequent single-use plastics. The more often and for longer, the better. Or you could try recycling things for yourself. Read all the way down, it's far easier than you think. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">So actually the "tripod" should be just two broad categories:</h3><h4 style="text-align: left;"><i>Replace/Reduce/Re-use, or Recycle/Revert/Re-create.</i></h4>
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<p>I'll get to the last two terms in a bit. So for now that leaves:</p><p><b>Recycle the rest. </b><br />In my mind I have a special place reserved in Hell for The Fossil Fuel Cartel (<i>The "FFC" to me</i>) who are maligning recycling and making it seem so awkward and clumsy and wasteful and expensive that even our governments are wholesale swallowing the bullshit propaganda. You need to know that this is propaganda and that recycling has become extremely easy and profitable this century.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #fcff01; font-family: times;"></span></p>
<blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fcff01; font-family: times;">RECYCLING BECAME A SOLVED AND <br />EASY PROCESS LONG AGO.</span></div></blockquote><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji11_ZVyXdtI5rQWnyoDBr3DO1EqWfg1LOl-VDA3x5CKl1IrI9zJOsn1uFgmUKcRH3w7utOvlxrYAaydW-jVs6S33uJrheQnfp-WotDTYxxUQwQRYJq01euZ-SSWshwY24bCWC5Gx13cNw9ut4g-JonftD-Z5zLF_250G82umeELhJp0TNrGLuy-dnlr4p/s512/DrFurgatroyd.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji11_ZVyXdtI5rQWnyoDBr3DO1EqWfg1LOl-VDA3x5CKl1IrI9zJOsn1uFgmUKcRH3w7utOvlxrYAaydW-jVs6S33uJrheQnfp-WotDTYxxUQwQRYJq01euZ-SSWshwY24bCWC5Gx13cNw9ut4g-JonftD-Z5zLF_250G82umeELhJp0TNrGLuy-dnlr4p/s320/DrFurgatroyd.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Dr Furgatroyd urges you to watch as many videos<br />as it takes to demonstrate how easy recycling actually is.</i></td></tr></tbody></table> <p></p>
<span style="font-family: times;"></span><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Recycling is actually easy.</h2><h4 style="text-align: left;">(Also, here come a lot of links...)</h4><p>I watch Insider Business and a few other channels on Youtube. They may have "Business" in their name but they produced some great videos of stuff being recycled. I featured [ <a href="https://tedalog.blogspot.com/2022/05/so-many-recycling-things-01.html" target="_blank">this series</a> | <a href="https://tedalog.blogspot.com/2022/06/so-many-recycling-things-02.html" target="_blank">of three</a> | <a href="https://tedalog.blogspot.com/2022/06/so-many-recycling-things-03.html" target="_blank">great videos</a> ] of recycling projects in an article each about a year ago and they already weren't exactly hot news scoops at the time those videos were made. </p><p>Also, watch [ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTe_oAFfEho" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">some</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHwpO_4d8Nw&t=49s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">of these</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRtEH82xco&t=22s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">videos</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEqPjhllYTY" target="_blank">about</a> | <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Precious_Plastic" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Precious Plastic</a> ] style of recycling. PreshPlast have been working on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thhHoPJ6Y14" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">open source recycling machines</a> for over a decade and have inspired others like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@BrothersMake" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brothers Make</a> as well. </p><p>And here we come to the reason I say that recycling has been quite deliberately framed as a hard problem. In Australia recently we've had a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-17/recycle-collapse-proof-plastic-recycling-system-broken/101666054" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">company called REDcycle</a> go belly-up and leave <i><b>ten to fifteen thousand of tons</b> </i>of plastic bags stuck in warehouses and buildings in Australia. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Making the easy seem impossible.</h3><p>REDcycle founder <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-26/redcycle-founder-speaks-to-war-on-waste-soft-plastics-collapse/102626934" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Liz Casell</a> says that a fire in the one factory recycling the soft plastics caused the backup and yet also there's mention that the material the factory was turning soft plastic bags into wasn't selling. You get why there wasn't a flood...</p><p></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times;"><i>(Okay - that's a reference to a really bad joke that goes like: A businessman arrives at a fairly upmarket resort in the Bahamas to find two other businessmen also there. They get to talking and he asks the other two how come they're here enjoying such a lavish vacation. "Well," says one of them, "I owned a chocolatier company that was barely breaking even, then there was a fire, the insurance paid out, and here I am." The new guy turns to the other one and ask him. "It's a lucky thing," says that guy. "Or unlucky, take your pick. I owned and operated a fireplace shop, but then wood burning fireplaces started to be frowned upon and sales plummeted. Then my fireplace shop - caught fire. Insurance came through though, and here I am." They both looked at the most recent vacationer expectantly, and he decides to share his story with them. "About five years ago," he starts, "I bought a carpet warehouse. It was doing quite well too," he continued, "but then there was a flood."</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><i>The other two stare at him blankly and ask "How the heck do you start a flood?")</i></span></p></blockquote><p></p><p>Please note that there are several varieties and large quantities of bullshit involved in those two articles. Firstly the article claiming that "recycling is a broken system." Note that the word "broken" can be used in a number of ways, and in this case the writer of the article seems to be using it as an adjective, when in fact it should be used as a verb. The system isn't "broken," it's been deliberately broken by those who don't want it to work because it conflicts with their plans. </p><p>"<i>Most single-use plastics produced worldwide since the 1970s have ended up in landfills...</i>" Well of course they bloody well have, because to the FFC there's no profit in recycling because they can't shift hundreds of thousands of tons of petrochemicals that get turned into "virgin" plastic every year. If recycling had been left to produce recycled plastics, there's nothing more certain than that the FFC's profits would suffer a fairly heavy loss. </p><p>"<i>One of the biggest problems with plastics recycling is the massive diversity of plastics that end up in the waste stream — foils, foams, sachets, numerous varieties of flexible plastic, and different additives that further alter plastic properties.<br />Most plastics can only be recycled in pure and consistent form, and only a limited number of times. What's more, municipal plastic waste streams are very difficult to sort.</i>"</p><p>I don't know where to start on this mountain of BS. There already exist some really excellent machines now that can sort individual pieces of <a href="https://insights.globalspec.com/article/18037/smart-recycling-equipment-learns-to-identify-plastic-types" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">trash <i style="font-weight: bold;">in realtime</i></a> at the rate of ten thousand pieces per hour using that technology and compressed air jets to knock the identified plastics into their relevant output streams. </p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fcff01; font-family: times;">RECYCLING BECAME A SOLVED AND </span><br style="font-family: times;" /><span style="background-color: #fcff01; font-family: times;">EASY PROCESS LONG AGO.</span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zDtArflfe3xL6_w5wj4IgeHd4Td1fzOCpp6n4mx7TI037WiTBBKaCaJ-5X0M0izPinc4uZMyScoxH0Xilb6tioV292iUJnhQSUe3fDGj1Gv5MHO9cd9mRnSNDywzGYYux9TCpqAgRBpSL4szP_RcrkPD6AWAp-AmrUDw-TKZZ7flSq7BFMKEQFyuJmCY/s1024/hicsuntdraconis3232.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="1024" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7zDtArflfe3xL6_w5wj4IgeHd4Td1fzOCpp6n4mx7TI037WiTBBKaCaJ-5X0M0izPinc4uZMyScoxH0Xilb6tioV292iUJnhQSUe3fDGj1Gv5MHO9cd9mRnSNDywzGYYux9TCpqAgRBpSL4szP_RcrkPD6AWAp-AmrUDw-TKZZ7flSq7BFMKEQFyuJmCY/s320/hicsuntdraconis3232.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Don't let the flimflamming deceive you - Recycling<br />is being systematically demonised and opposed.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Then the total BS about plastics being only able to be recycled in pure and consistent form. That too is crap, and like most of the other errors it's not the journalist's fault for believing the FFC propaganda, but it IS their fault for not researching properly. In fact, as long as you observe the broad plastic types (<i>HDPE, PET, PA, etc</i>) plastics can be quite handily recycled with little loss of functionality. And lastly, the comment about "only a limited number of times" is misleading. Insofar as that this can mean several tens of times. And that would be more than enough times to see the plastics problem eliminated when better decomposition techniques are discovered and developed.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Deconstructing the BS</h3><p>The problem we have is that on the one hand we can see that plastics are extremely durable - after all we call them a forever pollution - and on the other we have the propaganda machine claim that there's a limit to how many times they can be recycled, the process is extremely finicky and difficult to get the exact composition right, yada yada bloody yada. On the other hand you can see from the PreshPlast and Brothers Make videos that you can recycle plastics with old appliances and car jacks. </p><p>On the one hand some would like us to believe that poor fragile little plastics can be made into complete fiascos by processing, yet on the other hand things like PET plastic bottles are <i style="font-weight: bold;">really</i> easily spun into fibres that are made into threads that are used already to make clothing and yarns; and we see the Brothers recycle plastic bags into sheets and also into extremely solid and durable furniture. And that sun-damaged garden furniture can be restored with a wave of a hot-air gun, cracked plastics welded and restored. </p><p>The fact that REDcycle apparently lacked the imagination (<i>or the inspriation</i>) to turn plastic bags into an additive to road bitumen speaks volumes to how totally ass-whipped we've been into this fatalistic losing attitude. There's yet another side to this, too. Whereas <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmx6-Xc3VMU" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this company</a> turning soft plastic into paving blocks makes sense, adding plastics to a material that will see heavy highway use is just re-releasing the plastic but this time under ideal conditions for the wear and tear of traffic to turn it directly into microplastics... </p><p>(<i>The paving blocks will only ever see light traffic. The addition of sands and gravels means that there is in effect a layer of sand preventing even that traffic from making contact with the plastic. And the plastic is deliberately burned hard. The asphalt on the other hand will experience hundreds of thousands of times as much traffic, traffic that already wears away large stone aggregates that are included in the material. The tyres of vehicles will make a short snack of the plastic additive and result in more and more re-asphalting to be done while releasing tons of microplastics.</i>) </p><p>All manner <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OzirYG1MM0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">of materials</a> can be turned to pavers. There are literally <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dglygoLIDJE" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">hundreds</a> of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XTYv-AP4Jk&t=27s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">small businesses</a> showing that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWNA1CjIaIw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">ANY plastics</a> and filler materials can be <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckWqR1JD158" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">turned into building materials</a>. Glasss can be recycled back into sharp sand for construction, smooth sand can be turned to glass. One beauitiful thing about using plastics in these ways is that the plastic in pavers and building walls isn't subject to as much abrasion, and with the application of a coat of paint can last for centuries. In the process it sequesters that plastic until some future time when science and technology catch up and fond ways to "un-make" them again, getting (<i style="font-weight: bold;">finally</i>) to the "Revert" part of the formula. Revert the plastics back to basic building blocks, atoms and elements. </p><p>That sequestering process is a better aim than recycling - because turning a pile of plastic trash into another pile of single-use-soon-to-be-trash-again-plastic-trash is just rubbish. In every sense of the word. But putting it into buildings and footpaths ensures it stays out of the waste stream for decades, allowing technology to catch up and find ways to permanently disassemble plastic molecules into their constituent parts again. Or completely burn it. </p><p>I honestly could put a clickable link to some recycling success or other on every second word of this article. There are - I don't know exactly - hundreds at any rate - of videos on Youtube alone to unique and profitable recycling projects. There are many more on a web search. (<i>I use <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DuckDuckGo</a> because it finds more than Google does these days, you might consider switching to it too, to preserve at least *some* privacy online.</i>) </p><p>The only downside to those businesses is that there's more manual labour involved, many are being carried out in "less developed" countries and so lack some basic safety such as air filtering and dust management - but I say both that these drawbacks can be easily fixed for developed nations, and secondly, that the terms "less developed" and "developed" are not clear descriptions to me because it seems that in things that are becoming truly important (<i>environmental stewardship, waste management, and winning the race to change our ways before the planet changes them for us</i>) the "less developed" nations are well and truly leading the way.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Long Way Round (To You)</h2><p>With the really terrifying summer of 2023 that the Northern Hemisphere has just been through, there are going to be a few changes, I think. I've said in past articles that it wouldn't be long before a job in recycling will carry some serious clout, and become a valued skill set. I think that 2023 and 2024 will start to see that change happen. </p><p>I listened to a TED talk in which the speaker claimed that the pace of adopting planet-friendly measures is quickening, and I have to agree. While governments might turn a bit of a blind eye to a minor town's water supply being poisoned or a bunch of homeless people perishing in the cold because local businesses have chased them off the last warm spots outside their shops, they can't ignore people perishing in their hundreds due to climate-change-induced storms, floods, fires, and heatwaves now provably beyond a doubt caused by their corporate buddies.</p><p>Climate remediation will be the number one topic, if not by the end of this year then by the end of 2024. Just to be clear I'm not suggesting that you stop working at the office and take up work as a recycle truck driver on the basis of my article. Stop panicking. (<i>Although, in a year's time you may find yourself kicking yourself that you didn't...</i>) But I am thinking that we need to accelerate this change.</p><p>And if the lure of actually DOING SOMETHING has you in its grip, watch some of the videos - here are the Brothers Make using <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz4P39WeTV8&t=37s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">plastic bags</a> to make a new material for a sling chair using a previous exercise piece, a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGc-Z7TtiVg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">home-made park bench</a> made from recycled facemasks. Note that this is applicable to any of half a dozen other recyclable plastics too, and that once the molds are made they can be used over and over to make as many park benches and seats as you want. </p><p><b><u>06 Aug 2023 EDIT:</u></b> As usual, another contender shows up <i style="font-weight: bold;">AFTER</i> I publish an article. In this case, and as much as I love Precious Plastic, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JNflNu0B6Pw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this is NOT a good recycling idea</a>. These trinkets will get used a few times by the new owner, then thrown out. The park bench wins. Would have been better to make the sheets 2-4times as thick and use them as construction materials for longer-term sequestration of the plastics.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Even I can do it</h3><p>I used a flat sandwich toaster press to make flat sheets out of bottle caps, which can be used to make very unique house street number plaques or any other wall art. I've ironed plastic bags into cotton cloth to prove that I can make a waterproof sheet but that I haven't yet decided to use. When I do, I'll use a plastic welding pen to weld sheet parts together to make more complex objects, or just heat-laminate several layers of sheets together to make material for project boxes and front panels for projects. I've temporarily stopped this because I realised that I need to experiment with an A3 laminator machine that I can adjust the speed and thickness of, to make larger panels. Ironing is okay but if you wanted to make larger projects then you need a machine, and using a ready-made laminator as the base for it saves a lot of expensive development. </p>
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<p style="text-align: left;">So - I could do with your help to make that particular project. Use the graphic above to support my recycling work with a few dollars, or even a regular patronage of a few dollars a month. Every bit helps, to pay for servers and domain names, subscriptions to news and information sites that I use for research, and to pay for equipment and materials for developing these kinds of inexpensive ways to recycle and b doing such things locally, raise awareness of the corporate smear job that's been perpetrated on the recycling industry for the sake of petrochemical and FFC profits.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Also - please share the hell out of this and other similar articles I post - the more people get to see it, the better the chance that it'll go widespread and help accelerate the change that I think you'll see sweeping government and public thinking in the next few months as the planet starts reacting to all that corporate greed. </p><p style="text-align: center;">Strap in for the ride, and<br />KEEP THE BASTARDS HONEST!</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><hr /><p></p><p><b>Note 1:</b> <br />This is one of the oddest things I've ever seen. I saw some hair combs or some such beauty product on the shelf in a discount dollar type store, that claimed to be "bamboo-like" and to all appearances were just plastic made to look like bamboo. </p><p>Bamboo is a prolific grass that can grow several feet a day in the right conditions, it's tough and durable and can be carved, steamed, and molded into a variety of shapes. It's hard enough to be used to cut food, doesn't absorb food juices or flavours, and has been used for centuries for everything from building to food bowls. Due to its growth rate it's inexpensive to produce. </p><p>It's a sustainable, renewable, and compostable alternative to plastic and to use plastic to fake it is just Machiavellian. </p><p>Seeing a manufacturer having to produce imitation bamboo tells me that there's a primary production / supply issue here. The people growing the bamboo aren't letting a crop grow in the field for long enough to be useful for anything else, so there's got to be a lag there. Then too there's the problem that the powerful building industry wants bamboo for the increasing number of construction projects using bamboo, i.e. for flooring or wall panels etc. </p><p>No-one wins in that greedy demand process. Growers are reducing the average age (<i>and thus value</i>) of their crop, the building industry is going to get fobbed off with barely-usable bamboo as the growers sell cutlery grade bamboo as construction grade, and the cutlery/general is going to be made with increasingly more expensive bamboo as demand takes it away to construction.</p><p>And the irony is writ large - bamboo was used for its environmentally-friendly nature, the ease with which it can be adapted to places where plastics need to be eliminated - and now, it's become cheaper to replace it with plastic again... </p><p></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">There IS a way around this. Insist on bamboo where it makes sense, avoid plastics at all cost. That's it, that's the way. Insist on a multi-use reusable item over single-use, every time. It's all very well to package something in a magic pressed cardboard container but if it's had to be treated with a chemical to help it retain its shape or to repel water then it's <b>NOT</b> environmentally friendly to put in landfill. And to supply something like <b>plastic</b>, <b>fake</b>, <b>single-use</b> bamboo cutlery with that pressed cardboard container is a crime against the planet and everything and every being on it.</span></blockquote><p></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-10210506944876794712023-08-02T01:00:00.017+10:002023-08-02T01:00:00.145+10:00Many Hands Make Waste Less<h4 style="text-align: left;">We all know at least one story about plastic waste - being stockpiled instead of recycled, filling landfills, piling up in great drifts in alleyways, choking oceans and waterways. But what about some good news stories? </h4><p>My State of <a href="https://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/recycling-and-reducing-waste/at-home/small-acts-big-impact/recycling-is-changing-for-the-better " target="_blank">Victoria in Australia</a> is just the tip of an iceberg, with more and more governments taking action on waste. These actions <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/10/more-stockpiles-of-soft-plastics-from-failed-redcycle-recycling-scheme-uncovered" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">aren't always successful</a>, but let's not always point to the nature of government as being the reason things don't work out as planned. It's not always "isn't it droll how if you want to bring something to a standstill, just get the government to do it?" - often it also needs the populace to pitch in and do something. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZ8GZML9KsJ_9mZT0Y-gKYd9Mc-jr7DYCR3AvpahcBOr3CIbCDUlkRwWeHOaJxngWDR7AkxvqKekodBEzBGq7jBY9cqRlTEZtcaOwRTI1Gvm049rV2ZQvjwUKvNPC6J8mKr9igLHCmr9a3iqleb8GsawU8RGXB3G_CShA5ljRuatkQJuHsqtxp7iawsZM/s800/Biohazard_us.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZ8GZML9KsJ_9mZT0Y-gKYd9Mc-jr7DYCR3AvpahcBOr3CIbCDUlkRwWeHOaJxngWDR7AkxvqKekodBEzBGq7jBY9cqRlTEZtcaOwRTI1Gvm049rV2ZQvjwUKvNPC6J8mKr9igLHCmr9a3iqleb8GsawU8RGXB3G_CShA5ljRuatkQJuHsqtxp7iawsZM/s320/Biohazard_us.png" width="320" /></a></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Recycling is not "broken."</h2><p>Don't fall for the story that plastic recycling "is broken." Sadly, our national broadcaster ABC has joined the wailing chorus of voices that claim <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-17/recycle-collapse-proof-plastic-recycling-system-broken/101666054" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">plastic recycling is broken</a>. It isn't broken <i>per se</i>. It's been quite deliberately broken. It's been belittled, and beset with imaginary problems and pitfalls, by the one cartel that has the most to lose if we stop making so-called "virgin plastics," the cartel of the petrochemical and fossil fuel industries. </p><p>Don't forget that as electric vehicles make dents in the consumption of fossil fuels, the Fossil Fuel Cartel will lose all that lovely profit, all that shareholder value. There won't be much else left for them except the dirty process of breaking petroleum into hydrogen and pollutants. Their back is to the wall already and the firing squad is loading their rifles. They are desperate for one more suck at the tiddy, and recycling would wrench that away from them.</p><p>You'll notice that the other recycling industries are all steaming along at a great rate - aluminium used in manufacturing is almost all recycled despite the large amount of engineering and energy and effort that has had to be made to get it there. That's because aluminium dug from the ground and then smelted from virgin bauxite ore costs more than recycled aluminium. </p><p>Glass is recycled without a quibble, too. While it's easy enough to make new glass basically from sand, there's a little balance here. The building industry needs "sharp" sands, sands that aren't worn smooth by weathering. Round sand grains produce dangerously weak concrete. And guess what? Grinding up glass produces lovely sharp new grains of sand. Glass itself doesn't care if it's made by melting sharp or smooth sands. </p><p>Some things such as the repeated claims that mixed plastics are the biggest impediment to recycling plastics are right - and also wrong. Yes, plastics need to be sorted into their respective classes in order to produce the best quality recycled plastic. It's often said that we "can't afford the manpower to sort those mountains of plastics" but that's not true. </p><p>If we assigned an actual value to recycling plastics and, you know, saving the bloody planet, then we'd have a metric shit-ton of money to throw at people and the actual jobs at recycling plant would have a lot of prestige and <i>kudos</i> attached to them. (<i>And a commensurate wage, too...</i>)</p><p>But that needs <i style="font-weight: bold;">us</i> - you, me, the person over there - to realise how important recycling and recovering waste plastics is to us, to our kids, to the other living beings on the planet, and to the planet itself. </p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The best way we can raise that awareness is to share posts like this. The second best way is to use the links in the image below to support me so I can increase the reach of my blog posts. The absolute best way would be to do both...</span></b></p>
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<p><br /></p><p>There are already machines that can sort 10,000 to 100,000 pieces of plastic automatically, autonomously, without any human intervention needed. They can even sort each type of plastic into colours. </p><p>We have machines that can wash, grind, and wash again all the nicely-sorted plastics into factory-ready stocks of pellet plastic. We can similarly find ways to run autonomous loaders and dumpers that can handle that plastic waste from delivery to those machines, and then from the output of those machines to specific containers for shipping to those factories.</p><p>You know how plastic is such a problem because it doesn't break down? That's also the reason it can be recycled and reused multiple times over. And the reason we're not recycling it over and over is pure obstruction and opposition.</p><p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Please help raise that awareness.</span></b></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">And is mixed plastic really that bad?</h2><p>Most of the time, you're looking for a particular set of properties in a plastic, I agree. And for those times, well-sorted plastic recycle product is important. But there are also some uses for plastics that are less demanding. </p><p>Some uses for mixed plastic have been things like the entrepreneur in Africa who's turning mixed plastic and sand into paving bricks. I agree, there's still going to be wear and tear and more microplastics abrading off those bricks, but nowhere near as much as the bucketful of thin plastic that it's made from abrading - on the one hand you have several square metres of plastic bags and takeaway containers exposed to weathering, on the other, all that plastic is now encased in a shell. Still a bit of surface area to abrade, but reduced by a factor of several hundred. And there's sand and other hard material, prevent shoes and wheels from getting even to the outer layer of plastic to abrade it'</p><p>Similarly, some mixed plastic waste is melted and extruded into large beams and sheets for constructing non-structural things like park benches and tables. Again - yes there's a surface area that will abrade slowly, but once again the huge surface area of the plastic waste that went into has been reduced by many hundredfold. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">And one reason for mixed plastics is</h3><p>the manufacturers of those plastics themselves. They need this additive and this plasticiser and that congener, to produce a very specific set of qualities in the resulting plastic. Now <i style="font-weight: bold;">that</i> is a danger in plastics, and just by seeing that these additives have been used so irresponsibly and haphazardly you can see that the plastics industry never once had a serious concern that they'd ever have to pay to clean up their own mess. </p><p>Such contaminated plastics can also be detected by those sorting machines and directed to a different pile, the one that I like to call the "kill it with fire" pile. At the moment, burning plastic for energy is all the rage - it's still technically fossil fuel after all - but of course it also produces as much pollution ad coal and oil and petroleum fuels. "Clean green incineration" is currently just so much greenwash.</p><p>But as other sources of energy take over from fossil fuels, we'll find that energy will become inexpensive, possibly even considered a civic responsibility governments will once again have to step in and provide. And when it does, extreme high temperature incineration will become possible, to really truly burn plastic with fire. There are no more toxic fumes when the incinerating arc is hot enough to also burn all the fumes to a fine dusting of carbon too... </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Now I'm going to present</h2><p>a number of good news stories. </p><p>One organisation has done more to change our perception of plastic waste than any other government or organisation in the world. That organisation is of course <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Precious_Plastic" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Precious Plastic</a>. I've just linked their Youtube channel because the links to their website and the websites of the other sub-projects they've spawned are right there for you to follow. And their channel is full of positive examples, education, and technical details for those who want to get a grounding in plastic recycling and then get involved.</p><p>Here's a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRtEH82xco" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">report by PreshPlas</a> detailing how their many small projects and branches around the planet have made a difference in the amount of plastic waste. It's still not enough but it does show how we CAN make a difference, and a very positive one at that. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">I cannot stress enough how great a result that is! And it just needs you to share their video. And this post.</h4><p>I myself have done some <a href="https://ptec3d.blogspot.com/2023/06/plastic-recycling-tiny-lesson.html " target="_blank">small research projects</a> in plastic recycling and re-use, and I'm still recycling when I get time, and developing new uses for the new products from the recycling processes. And I'm only following the leads of groups like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@BrothersMake" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brothers Make</a> and then applying my own inimitable brand of pretzel logic and developing other ways to recycle, ways to re-use the products I recycle, and hopefully also inspire more people to "have a go ya mug" as we say.</p><p>My hope is that one day we may find it difficult to find petrochemicals to make virgin plastic from. We may get over our bullshit fixation on "convenience" and realise that things are <i style="font-weight: bold;">meant to be made to last not thrown away</i> and that our needs for plastic products will be met by bioplastics and mycelium. </p><p><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #2b00fe; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The best way we can raise that awareness is to share posts like this. The second best way is to use the links in the image below to support me so I can increase the reach of my blog posts. The absolute best way would be to do both...</span></b></p>
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<p><br /></p><p>I've deliberately not added any of my eyecandy graphics to this post because I'd like to be focused on the message, and that message is that we ALL need to get involved and we ALL need to have this conversation with other people and we should ALL consider helping me to get my page views on posts like this one up by sharing it. </p><p><span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>And I'm sorry, I know some posts have a "Share" button that does this automatically but I've looked for a way and so far not found one I can implement here. Which is where donations are super helpful because I can pay someone to actually make a Share button for me, among all the other things which need money. You know I'll keep looking for a piece of code to do this that's also simple enough for me to "get it" and implement it but life as a retired pensioner doesn't leave as much free time as you might imagine if you have a spouse and pets and blogs and a hobby and a garden as well as a day to day life. So any and all help is always welcome.</i>)</span></p><p><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-51783839184045964242023-07-17T01:00:00.326+10:002023-07-17T13:38:47.757+10:00Is 3D Printing As A Business Viable?<h4 style="text-align: left;">I watched a video I won't link despite it being a good video. It was just not what I've seen happening in real life. </h4><p style="text-align: left;">The presenter begins from a premise "can I make my initial outlay back after a month, starting from nothing?" SPOILER ALERT: They do not in fact make their initial outlay back after a month. I have to say that I wasn't surprised. </p><p style="text-align: left;">When I bought Brucely (<i>long story...</i>) it was just so I could print functional models, it was a tool. I did price up a set of common prints for things people might buy, and the spreadsheet for a venture such as the presenter posited, not promising.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Proposition</h3><p style="text-align: left;">that the OP presented was that they were going to "... start from a position of no experience, no equipment, no stock ..." and so they made a list - printer, models, materials - and then went about obtaining them.</p><p style="text-align: left;">So they bought a Bambulabs P1P, and set about creating a series of models using the CAD software that somehow wasn't included in the initial capital nor the initial experience to be acquired. Then they revealed that A) they were already a successful Maker, B) already owned two larger format 3D printers, and C) already used CAD as part of their Making. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Startup</h3><p style="text-align: left;">They designed models for several tools and accessories, refined them, and declared that they'd print them on demand. They also bought posting packages, packaging, and had custom labels printed for their products-to-be. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Execution</h3><p style="text-align: left;">They then sold their items on their existing Etsy store, operated it for a month, and as expected, didn't really make a dent in the outgoings let alone a profit.</p>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">My Take</h2><p style="text-align: left;">First of all, I'd be more realistic. Do actual groundwork before committing a single dollar. To me, that groundwork starts with an analysis of what sort of income I could expect. No point developing a widget store if someone else was making them at lower cost than I could get my materials for. I mean, it was fine for the OP to <i>say</i> they were going to start from zero but then they really should have tried to imagine being a newbie. </p><p style="text-align: left;">They wasted money on buying custom packaging and labels - suppose you decided after six months and only three sales that this wasn't the side-hustle you were looking for? You can sell the printer and filament and recoup some of your capital, but the packaging and labels printed with your name and details are dead money.</p><p style="text-align: left;">And if the OP had said "I already know about 3D printing, I already have an online shop presence and experience with both," then perhaps I'd have been inclined to be kinder to them. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Products</h3><p style="text-align: left;">I calculated costs and prices (<i>Google Docs spreadsheets are magic</i>) by working out how long each piece would cost in time to print (<i>and thus wear and tear on the printer, and electricity costs</i>) time to clean up and prepare for sale, grams of filament, any filler or paint or fittings, for a series of items I knocked together in Tinkercad, which was the lowest-cost in terms of money (<i>free</i>) and experience needed. I worked out my time taken to do the design, and included some of that in the prices of finished items. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The margins would be slim and not recoup the costs of the printer and materials in a month. I realised there needed to be a "killer" niche product or it wasn't worth it. But let me take it further anyway.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Now the OP was, as I said, a Maker and already had a Youtube channel to publicise their mainly carpentry / woodworking endeavours. That's already starting from a privileged position that no-one else can expect to have.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I'll mention the "killer" products you need if you want to charge a price that would recoup your costs, this Maker decided to make some well-known woodworking accessories, and here I'll say only that these accessories already exist, and are of two kinds, accurate and machined in metal or molded in ABS, or less accurate and 3D printed. OP chose to sell 3D printed items at machined prices, which is the best way I know to guarantee low sales.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">My Inclination:</h4><p style="text-align: left;">would have been to use the printer(s) I already had for the video, explaining that there are multiple different ways of working such a printing business. That would have been a bit more fair on the person watching and looking for information. </p><p style="text-align: left;">My <i style="font-weight: bold;">first</i> inclination would be to look around for something people needed and that didn't exist yet or that I could do better than existing products. My second would have been to test myself. Can I design it and make a model that prints well and makes best use of my machine and material? And only then would I have any idea of what to sell it for. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Selling</h3><p style="text-align: left;">As I mentioned, the OP already had an audience for their woodworking channel, they already had customers for such of their wooden products that they chose to sell on a new store. They had new packaging and labels made, a custom domain as I recall, and sold through a popular online store. They had the video directing possible customers to it, and probably a link to it from their existing store and website. I know I'd do all that at the very least. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And still they didn't recoup more than a fraction of their initial outlay. </p><p style="text-align: left;">If you are starting out new, you can expect that unless you include a promotion budget, your products will only sell to a fraction of those of your friends and family that you personally email and send to your online store. </p><p style="text-align: left;">This is one of the more important things to accept. Your products will not even be seen unless you're prepared to drop a large chunk of cash to get the right kind of customers to your store. And no matter where you go, they will charge fees commensurate with the reach they provide.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">My Inclination:</h4><p style="text-align: left;">is that if I already had a store, I'd sell on that. If they were products that I designed and made all myself I'd go to <a href="https://ko-fi.com/ptec3d" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ko-Fi-com</a> and also set them up there, and if I made a Wix shopsite as well I'd make sure they all link to each other, I'd make sure they're all linked to in my all my social media profiles, I'd write a piece and post it to ever social media site I could, and I'd look at getting advertising in front of an audience local to me. And if I was the OP I'd make sure my audience understood that this is what it actually takes to start gaining a bit of online cred. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Ability</h3><p style="text-align: left;">As I said right back in Products, and hard as it is to say, you need to be sure of your ability to make a product that people will buy.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The most important thing is that if you can make a very good quality item, then even if you have competition, your items will get a reputation fairly quickly. It probably won't be enough in that first month though.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Capital Outlay vs Production</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Only <i style="font-weight: bold;">now</i> am I even bothering to consider the printer. I made a quick calculation here and it seemed to me that my existing printer, while slow, was accurate enough for the purpose. The only problem would be that I couldn't realistically expect to be able to print items on demand. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtZ3V9Yjp200cWRCPiU0dCTRnx9ML3IC778Qj4WjexfRpafnRRsvzLr5FoUTovm0OKBMWOfBfURGoqx6Zh9aAOqrx7h-iKZiJZGr52elhB8XVpaKFpfjShJ-YXJexvvCRhD0jUmZUBzVaC_vIOESIDvYdgbhVS1pUR-25yVqd1b4eJeXwa04ri83E-5w/s832/3gMLG7Q5RUoqhD1Ie9zt.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="832" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtZ3V9Yjp200cWRCPiU0dCTRnx9ML3IC778Qj4WjexfRpafnRRsvzLr5FoUTovm0OKBMWOfBfURGoqx6Zh9aAOqrx7h-iKZiJZGr52elhB8XVpaKFpfjShJ-YXJexvvCRhD0jUmZUBzVaC_vIOESIDvYdgbhVS1pUR-25yVqd1b4eJeXwa04ri83E-5w/s320/3gMLG7Q5RUoqhD1Ie9zt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> </td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">My Inclination:</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Would be to use what I have, or go for a reliable machine rather than the Machine Of The Day. Going for the newest printers in the range ensures you'll be paying a premium price. There are people still using Creality Ender3's almost five years after purchasing them, they've stood the test of time and there's a ton of help available online if I get stuck. Yes it's a slow printer but in some cases you can get one for as low as AUD $200. If you just wanted to dip a toe in the waters this would let you recoup the outlay far quicker than you could amortise a P1P (<i>or now a P1S</i>) so - choose your starting point.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I weighed up the generally low cost of filament against the convenience of speed printing and guess what? If I printed ten each of my range of ten models to be kept in stock, that would still be way less than half the outlay of a more expensive CoreXY machine like the P1P. If I already had my printer and didn't need to add it to the capital outlays, this is a no-brainer. Work slowly and steadily, have a lot of stock, your first month won't be exactly meteoric... </p><p style="text-align: left;">The problem with continuous production and keeping stock levels would be that I'd have to be prepared to get up during the night to clear the printer bed and start another print, and if sales unexpectedly spike, being on the ball with those bed clearings/restarts erven if it meant setting alarms during the night. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h3><p style="text-align: left;">My conclusion is that there's a place for bespoke or custom 3D printing at the "I'm doing this in my bedroom" level of enterprise. It's a cottage industry. It'll make cottage industry level income. It would be enough to give one a taste for the industry. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Larger print farms aren't included because they're not the premise of that OP video. Larger print farms generally print specialised parts for a manufacturer as that's bread and butter, or they generate parts for things they build in-house, they may possibly print bespoke specials, or just things they exclusively design, print, and sell. And most print farms use reliable machines that can continuous print with needing to be attended, not the latest speed racers that need a person in attendance every 20 minutes day or night. Multiply that by a farm of twenty machines and it's worse than production line conditions. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And beyond just print farms are larger shops that also offer 3D printing from FDM to resin to metal printing, and they invest tens (<i>and up to hundreds</i>) of thousands into their machines. And they're generally part of a machining fabrication business of some sort. PS: Those sorts of shops charge a mini-fortune for the parts their huge CNC machines and machining operators turn out to order, their prices for 3D printed parts are on par with those prices. Generally, for the level of accuracy and finish required by their customers, an Ender3 and a good selection of sandpapers in your spare room just isn't going to cut it. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Don't Lose Hope</h3><p style="text-align: left;"> It's still possible to make money by selling 3D-printed models. But the most profitable ventures are in bespoke and custom art prints. You can make lithophanes of people's photographs, for instance. Having a multi-colour-capable 3D printer like a Bambulabs P1P with the MMU (<i>Material Management Unit, I believe?</i>) becomes an advantage in those sorts of situations. But of course that involves an AUD $2000 investment at the very least, and that means you'll need to charge art prices on your products. </p><p style="text-align: left;">But people make a living at creating cosplay accessories and artistic objects. Here's a (<i>very tongue in cheek</i>) example:</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mBLB_NFle-HWg3gjxBBMz2gXiTbMZdnsAbyciU2pA0WBj36sQbed70Oz1pRNbF3Uy8tEZSN6V7CzXzaWdQOmHgkA-RbaE_ID1EBx_FkmGPL2OLzRVaJU93v9QMX_9uAqhSCqNN0Ig72hJ8mpQP-6fwwPREUAoWCsfZ1gEjquwHfFNrQcfrxcCApmSQ/s2976/20210627_184811.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2976" data-original-width="2976" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3mBLB_NFle-HWg3gjxBBMz2gXiTbMZdnsAbyciU2pA0WBj36sQbed70Oz1pRNbF3Uy8tEZSN6V7CzXzaWdQOmHgkA-RbaE_ID1EBx_FkmGPL2OLzRVaJU93v9QMX_9uAqhSCqNN0Ig72hJ8mpQP-6fwwPREUAoWCsfZ1gEjquwHfFNrQcfrxcCApmSQ/s320/20210627_184811.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>This is a model (not mine) that I printed, of a<br />"Premium Riding Sausage"</i> </td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">I mean: Look at the image above. <br />That is a Premium Riding Sausage right there. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I found the model amusing (<i>and could think of half a dozen people I'd have presented a personalised one to...</i>) so I printed one as a test - and I can tell you that with my printer in standard trim it took around 75 minutes to print and used just under 10g of plastic so it'd cost me $1-2 to print, tops. On top of that, you have to check the licensing attached to the model. Some are quite liberal and let you do anything, but the licenses can go all the way to strict copyright.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Also a single colour PRS is, as you can see, quite boring. It would be better if the saddle and tack were a different colour, the plinth another colour, and so on. Only at that point would it become appealing enough for a customer to drop more than a few bucks for it.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you have the multicolour printer, you'll find that every colour change costs a lot of material that the printer needs to just waste in between to be sure there's not a muddled-up mess of the old and new colour getting into the print. Depending on your printer and how often colours have to change in a layer, you can waste between 10% and 50% of the filament in the pile of waste that's called a "purge block." Some multicolour models can have a purge block that weighs more then the model itself. And a purge block is all wasted plastic.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you only have a simple printer you either have to change colours manually, a process that you need extensive knowledge of gcode to achieve, or find the best base colour and print it in that, and then you have to paint the item by hand afterwards. That means sanding and preparing, several coats of paint, and puts this into the same sort of class as a custom printed and painted Imperial trooper helmet made for a Star Wars cosplayer. </p><p style="text-align: left;">You might put a $320 price on the Star Wars accessory to account for your time and skill in painting it. Similarly, the PRS would need to be on your store for $32. A customer may very well pay several hundred dollars for the bespoke and carefully "distressed" and movie-accurate helmet, but you may find that the novelty item doesn't sell all that well even though it was harder to sand down and paint due to the small size of it. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Added to that is the fact that really, anyone can buy a 3D printer and print their own things using one of the by now millions of free model files online. Or they know someone they can ask to print that <i style="font-weight: bold;">one print </i>for them. And let's face it, buying a 3D printer is fun, learning to use one is getting easier all the time, making something useful / artistic / amusing is a great hobby, and so your customer base will always be slowly slipping into becoming your competition. . . </p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h2><p style="text-align: left;">So the correct answer is that it definitely can be a source of income - I know any number of people who have a successful 3D printing business. But almost all of them run print farms, and most print (<i>and manufacture from in-house printed parts</i>) things that are more than just printed models. But it's possible. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Similarly, if you want to just design great and unique models, there's money to be made just selling the files for them. Nothing says you actually have to print the item as long as the model files are definitely your own. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Also you could consider trade shows, expos, and markets. This means a large stock of pre-made items but can be lucrative. Hey! - You could just pay someone else to printfarm the items for you and take them on to road with you and just do itinerant sales like that. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Or just do it for the pocket money. Prepare to spend a lot of time making things for your own enjoyment and selling them for a bare minimum profit. </p><p>You have to pick your battles...</p><div><br /></div>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2b00fe;">My battle's to keep this blogging venture afloat. All donations are going towards running this series of blogs and the projects I develop, so it'd be most helpful if you could just click above and make a donation. And if anyone did buy a P1-P and then lost interest and wants to send it somewhere, I do have a postal address . . . </span>😺</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3855301599555450394.post-3521990743258129542023-06-26T01:00:00.003+10:002023-07-03T08:38:59.711+10:00Blog Woes, Google Goes, Substack Blows<h4 style="text-align: left;">... <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLRCFyLtu7M" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Nobody knows the troubles</a> I've seen, nobody knows my sorrow. </h4><p>Beautiful voice. </p><p>But it's true. The last few months have been - the last few years have been - a bit troublesome. And the last few months have been a particular hassle for my blogging activities and for my project activities. I've been missing out on organic search results for months, possibly longer. And that's affected my ability to tackle projects, too.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">So - Organic Search Results.</h2><p>As some of you know I've had TEdALOG Lite II blog since 2007 - and it was a continuation of a blog I'd been operating with Notepad and HTML, then some clever program that let me compose and edit on my PC and then uploaded a new set of pages to replace the indexes and add new pages, and finally I hit on Blogger.com - which you as readers experience as Blogspot.com - and which was a Google property when I started. My reasoning was Google Blogs should work with Google Search Engine should work with Google Anything Else. Right? </p><p>Well, sort of. For a while there wasn't any easy way to check stuff so I used <a href="https://statcounter.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Statcounter</a> to keep my page hits statistics for me. Then there was this thing called Feedburner that let me "burn" my blog posts to an RSS feed that people could put into their newsreader software to see all my latest posts - and I still have RSS feeds for all those blogs and a list of them at Ted's News Stand if anyone wants the ultimate in post reading convenience. The <a href="https://feedburner.google.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google bought Feedburner</a>. For some reason it got harder to work with the feeds. And now it's practically useless. </p><p>And then Google Ads came along - I put "spots" in my blogs to fit one of dozens of precisely defined formats, Google served their ads into those spots, if anyone clicked or in some cases just visited the page with the ad in it, I'd get a micropayment in my account. I was on my way to millions! </p><p>Only... They'd collect my millions for me but would never pay them to me - because I was in Australia and they didn't pay here. And then they required me to have a business account and send them proof of identity, TFN, all the hooey. I couldn't even use the income on Google Play to pay subscriptions to apps. It would have been maddening.</p><p>Except... After several years, and adding two more blogs and installing Google Ads into them too, my balance was about $23. And Google wouldn't pay out until the end of the month, and only if the amount was $50 or more, and anway still not to Australia you uncouth little antipodean oik. Are you sensing any frustration yet? I had frustration. Oh yes. </p><p>But I've sort of digressed. Statcounter began to limit the free features set and Google came out with Google Analytics, they allowed Aussies to cop a fair suck of the saveloy and have money paid into Aussie bank accounts, the verification process got more convenient and attainable, and so I set up Analytics on those blogs and there seemed to be a bit of friction between GA tagging stuff and Blogger blogs and it didn't always quite work for me oh and the formats of Google Ads changed a bit and - oh yeah - my balance was still under the magic $50 by a fair way and then the limit changed to $100 anyway and do you know I <i style="font-weight: bold;">still</i> haven't had a payout yet? </p><p>Also Analytics was not playing ball all the time and the famous Google DILLIGAF attitude of no support is the best form of support meant I was trying to work out a lot of different suites of stuff to keep things going. </p><p>Long story short - at some point I made DuckDuckGo my default search engine. Because I wasn't happy with their privacy management. Bt this was one of the frustrations.</p><p>And I also deactivated Google Ads and Google Analytics because Ads made my pages look like shit on a shingle with touches of Piet Mondrian and Pro Hart and if readers clicked away to a link they'd cop a page in between that you had to close and it was the biggest POS ever. </p><p>Analytics kept throwing errors that I had to look up and then try to "fix" according to vague and odd snippets of BS and so one day I stopped fixing any of the errors and guess what? If you waited a few days then Analytics suddenly realised it had apparently made a cock-up because the errors went away and were never mentioned again without me having to raise a finger. WTFSM Google, WTFSM? </p><p>Then one day recently I was actually using Google Search Engine to find a particular term on one of my posts on one of my blogs and it didn't find it. I tried DuckDuckGo and it did. Somehow in all the wholesale deactivating Google products that weren't working with the one Google product I actually found useful, the search engine stopped actually searching and serving my pages. So for FSM knows how long, I've not had a single referral from anyone doing a search any of the stuff that's in my blogs. I know DDG is becoming more popular but GSE is still the only game in town for search hits and I'm not getting them. </p><p>Go to DDG, I have almost all my blog posts listed. Go to Bing, there they are. Go to Google, zip. It is ALL the blogs hosted on Blogspot so it's not a case of being delisted for using the "F" word too often. It's pretty obviously something I did while deactivating all the Google fruit but - geez... I have NFI what. </p><p>But if anyone knows what else to check and rectify, I'm all ears. Contact me. Please. I'm getting too old for this shit. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">But That's Not All</h3><p>I got the steak knives too... See, because I wasn't getting organic (<i>read "served by Google or Bing but of course almost always Google and you don't have that Ted ha ha ha for reasons ha ha ha but we aren't going to tell you what they are Ted ha ha ha"</i>) hits to my pages I'm minus about 70-80% of traffic. And even though I don't serve ads now (<i>unless I want to put them in, and please contact me if you want me to do that</i>) I did have a few links to donate in a text footer and of course people wereren't seeing those.</p><p>So I did research and figured out how I can have one banner with multiple active zones so people could donate or subscribe to the newsletter. I felt too needy and beggy constantly adding a paragraph of "please subscribe and/or donate" messaging to the bottom of each post, I mean WTFSM? I could always do with help with the costs involved with everything I'm doing with the blogs and projects but there had to be another way and I decided a single banner image would be better. </p><p>You know how reactive websites work? If you're on a mobile phone you get served a format that fits the screen, if you're on a tablet you get another format and if you're on a laptop or PC you get another format. </p><p>I'm old school and use my laptop for most of what I do. (<i>Okay I'll be honest - I'm past the point where people still have 20/20 vision and also have other issues that make reading a tiny screen difficult and swiping a little soft keyboard on-screen almost impossible.</i>) So I preview a post, it's good - I schedule it.</p><p>I also know that most of my visitors use their mobile phone to consume the content. And just for a lark I opened a page on my trusty Samsung. </p><p>The flippin' banner doesn't appear on mobile sites!</p><p>Blogger promises to make the site reactive if I check this box here and add this set of links there in the blog settings page and I'd done that for the lot way back when I realised some people would be reading them on their phones. But IT DOESN'T WORK. Apparently. </p><p>So I kept the banner - which I quite liked because I created the artwork in it and scaled it and worked out how to image-map it and then use my hosted server to allow me to use one banner on multiple blogs and only have to change things in one place rather than seven. </p><p>But I had to also make a smaller image-map banner and then insert that into the body of the blog posts so that mobile phone readers could see them and (<i>hopefully</i>) feel moved to donate occasionally. </p><p><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: times;">I make no bones about it - it costs me hundreds a year to keep the domain names registered, the hosted server paid up, subscriptions to the news services I read to get news and story ideas and research, and the materials for various projects I do and then make all the info available online here for free. And currently I am getting exactly nothing because no-one sees the damn pages, and then when people do, 80% of you still didn't see the banner so had no way to.</span></blockquote><p></p><p>So anyhow - I made the little banner, served it from my hosted server, and - Blogger crapped itself. "<i>You can't put an imagemap in the body! I don't know all those tags! I'm going to add a shitload more tags to try and fix it, fuck it up even more, and then spew up every time you want to edit or update this article!</i>" </p><p>I'm going to add here that if I add an image from yet <i style="font-weight: bold;">another</i> Google property, Google Photos, Blogger also routinely shits its pants and then the image often disappears. It's still there in the HTML but obscured and hidden by Blogger's crappy HTML handling. Why it does that sort of thing is a mystery to me but then look at Blogspot blogs anyway - they are butt-ugly and klunky af and if it weren't for the fact that Blogger is FREE I'd have found a way to transfer them all to WP and host them somewhere else. </p><p>I had to do the same thing as I do for the header banner - kludge up an iframe and put <i style="font-weight: bold;">that</i> in the HTML and finally, that works: </p>
<div align="center"><iframe allow="fullscreen" frameborder="no" height="95px" scrolling="no" src="https://ohaicorona.com/Minibanner.html" style="border: 1px #FFFFFF none;" title="iFrame1" width="190px"></iframe></div>
<p>(<i>Oh and that little inline frame works in Blogger, in WP, and in any web pages I want it to. I basically McGyvered myself a tiny CDN for my blogs... </i>)</p><p>I mean - this has been a several-months-long battle where everything was not only rigged and stacked against me and I had and still have no way to work out what's going on. I wasn't even aware that anything had been wrong, I've lost the little bit of support I'd had, and I'm still not sure what I'll do about it but if I can get some supporters back I might just upgrade my hosted server and stick multiple WP installations on it and then figure out how I can redirect all my Blogger properties to there. But I know one thing for sure and that is that in my current state I can't manage the extra expenses. </p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Late Edit: Substack</h3><p>Substack, I just listened to the top cocky of the company being an arsehole in a video interview and figured they needn't be making any more income off my posts. Sorry - this was so crap when I watched it that I may have blocked it. Just got asked about it on <a href="https://mastodon.au/@ptec3d" target="_blank">Mastodon</a> though so I though I should explain it.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Summary:</h3><p>I know my page hits count has decreased dramatically, but I don't know by how much or when because Statcounter have been totally unhelpful in recovering a possibly hacked account a few months ago and so I've had to create a new account which doesn't have the history the old one had. I do know that I've been seeing a tiny percentage of what I was used to though - I keep saying I lost 70-80% because I'm being conservative but I can tell you the figure is far worse. Since I can't fix that on Google and can't ask everyone on the planet to use any other search engine than Google, nor afford to move all my blogs to a different platform, I'm stuck with it for now. </p><p>If you can help, that'd be great. If you know things I can check on Google to figure out where my organic search traffic has gone to, that would help. If you can spare the price of a coffee, hit the Ko-Fi mug above or the Paypal link. If you want to know what I post, the newspaper is a link to my current list of posts, and that page also has a link to subscribe to the only-once-a-week newsletter. </p><p><br /></p>teddlesrusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05638710353431154925noreply@blogger.com0