As you may or may not know Steamboat Ed meets weekly with his crew of Sebastopol Makers at the Haas-ienda. He has graciously agreed to begin posting his weekly reports on our website! So this is a treat for you guys, lots of great info in here and a great source of know how for gear heads. read on!
–Yeah, yeah, late as usual! For the first time ever I’ve been
swamped with work: four returning customers all had jobs for me at the
same time! Two jobs are done and delivered, one needs waterjet parts that
I hope to get this morning and the fourth is awaiting arrival of some
brass bar, hopefully on Monday. Newsletter’s slipped down the priorities
list a bit..
–Not only late but the network is borked! This may or may not
reach anyone in time; oh, well.. Error message sez: “DHCP server not
responding” Is there a piece of hardware I can swap out? Help needed!!
–Anywayyyy here’s a list of stuff going on.
-Rich and Spencer are frantically packing for their 6-month trip
to Europe. So much to do, so little time! But Rich still had time to bring
along our newest member, his newly minted grandson Finn, all of a week
old, for a quick peek!
-Riley’s building a power supply, aided by input from Joe. Joe’s
bringing a transformer tonight that will connect to Riley’s variac so that
they.ll have a variable voltage DC power supply that’s a good deal safer
than a ‘bare’ variac. Joe explains this better than I can..
-Ed’s made a mess of the workbench again, strewing it with steam
turbine parts. At present he’s just about finished making a turbine with a
variable-angle steam inlet for some tests he’s wanting to run.
-In other news Ed has been kibitzing with Wayne over ways to
safely remove some surface mount electronics and wiring from a cocoon of injected foam. Last week Ed pried a sample of the material out of the
device and later in the week Wayne ran an infrared spectrogram of it.
Results indicate that it.s not an epoxy foam and it might be possible to
dissolve it ever so carefully by dabbing swabs soaked in acetone around
the affected area. Ed has a ‘Plan B’ that might be the ticket too: he’s
got a small steam boiler that might be configured to steam clean the area.
All of above is needed as a first step in repairing a very nice
Optrel welding hood that Ed bought ages ago. It lasted one week past the
warranty before it failed and it’s been malingering in a corner for
several years. Now it turns out someone in net land has figured out how to
fix them but the trick is getting inside the *permanently* sealed
electronics to the root of the problem: non-rechargable batteries were
used in the auto-darkening device! Once liberated of gunk the repair is
simple: spot welded battery tabs are popped loose with a flat blade
screwdriver, the dead cells are chucked in the bin, long leads are
soldered onto the tabs and the unit is once again assembled. The other
ends of the long leads are attached to an external battery holder,
probably for a pair of AAA cells. That way the *next* time they die it
won’t be necessary to perform major surgery. More on Optrel hood repairs
can be found at:
http://hackaday.com/2013/12/
–Well that’s all I remember. More fun tonight and don’t forget
the shop will be open all day Saturday if anyone hads a yen to come over
and play. I’ll be gone Sat morning to the monthly meeting of Wine Country
Model Shipwrights in Petaluma but I’ll be back shortly after noon. Feel
free to come on in but don’t let the doggies out!!!
–Sooo have we got a volunteer burrito-getter??
“Steamboat Ed” Haas : Steel, Stainless, Titanium:
Hacking the Trailing Edge! : Guaranteed Uncertified Welding!
www.nmpproducts.com
—Decks a-wash in a sea of words—