What did you do today?

[fixerdave]

Ran into a wall... 3D printing just 'aint holding water (or air)

Well... the run had to end sometime

Been having a lot of fun with 3D printing solutions to various things... kind of got used to the "draw it, print it, done" routine. But, this time... I just don't think it's going to work. Sigh...

I'm making a bottle rocket for my kid (and me). Just the pop bottle with fins, half full of water, and compressed air. Printed a bottle cap that leads to a 1/2" quick-release air fitting that I drew up. Printed a gasket out of TPE80 (the flexible stuff). Works well enough. Printed the fin holder. Drew and CNC milled the fins out of sign board too. Nose cone and separate top cap that sits on a ribbon to waffle the descent. Printed the contraption that adapts a bike brake caliper to release the air coupler, and that includes some tripod legs.

But, I wanted an adaptor from the tire valve to a 1/4" pipe thread. Drew it, easy enough as Fusion has the pipe thread built in. Printed it in nylon for strength and flex, being a pipe thread and all. Ran up the system for the first time and started working through the leaks. That last leak... it was going THROUGH this plastic adaptor. Right through the sides, all over. Didn't think of that. Did some research, found some slicer settings that were suppose to make things air tight... nope.

Might be because of that pipe thread going in. Maybe it's busting apart all the layers. Maybe it's just nylon. Don't know. But, it looks like I'm actually going to have to go to the store and buy some adaptors, or maybe spin something out of aluminium or brass on the lathe. Kind of feels like cheating at this point though

I guess 3D printers can't do everything,






David...

[PStechPaul]

Received a set of 15 metric cobalt drill bits from AlieExpress, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6.5, 6, 5.5, 5, 4.5, 4, 3.5, 3.0, 2.5, 2.0, 1.5 mm, $11.38. They look pretty good, but one or two of the smallest bits are not sharpened properly:





I also had a damaged 17/64" drill bit, made in Austria, from an old set I bought somewhere. I think I was using it to drill out a 10 mm bolt, and I had to use a cobalt drill bit instead:


I used my Drill Doctor to resharpen it. Seems really sharp, but who knows how hard it is. It might have gotten annealed when I tried to drill the bolt and it got hot enough to smoke. The markings don't say HSS, so maybe just carbon steel?


BTW, I am now using Firefox in Ubuntu, and I edited the photos using the Linux "Shotwell" photo viewer/editor. And I uploaded the images to the forum.

[Cenedd]

Well, they look good for the money Paul but you'll have to try them to find out whether they're real cobalt steel....or just blue cheese.

Fixerdave: Nice. If the bottle's cap can take the pressure and isn't nylon, it must be possible. Different material or maybe thicker walls? Yes, you can run something up on the lathe....but you know you'll always be curious!

[RB211]

Hanging shelves, glorious shelving!! Shelves Shelves Shelves Shelves!

[DennisCA]

Yesterday I used the crane i have modified and got the mill off the pallet.

I first lifted it both at the front and back so I could drag out the pallet, no pictures of that....

I lifted the mill as little as possible, a millimeter clearance perhaps. I pulled the pallet halfway out, stacked up a bunch of boards at the front and lowered it onto that. Then I lifted only the rear of the mill and removed the pallet completely, and put some boards there... Then it was lift at the front, remove board, lower... then lift the back, remove board, lower down. And keep on doing that until it was on the floor.







I could perhaps have just removed the pallet and lowered it to the floor at once but I felt this was safer. It's a lot scarier than you think to lift a machine like this for the first time, I got a real adrenaline rush from it.

[Dave C]

Good, safe, job DennisCA. I agree with your method. That's a lot of weight to handle. Have fun with your new machine.

[mattthemuppet]

finished a major job this week - adding new lights and a fan to the kitchen, partly because I wanted a more mellow set of lights than the 4x4ft LED tubes in the overhead recess and partly because I found it really annoying having to walk around to the other side of the kitchen in the dark to turn the lights on.

I didn't actually plan how long a light strip I needed for the kitchen, so it turned out the 5m strip of 2700K high CRI (supposedly) wasn't enough. Got around that by cutting the strips into their 3 LED units and spacing them apart on the under counter lights (alu strip from a closet door rail, believe it or not). Was super tedious wiring them all together.


light strips for the overhead light


dimmers (one for under counter lights, one for overhead) and 2nd power supply. The first one lasted an hour as it was a 24W unit with a 60W sticker on it. That'll teach me.


under counter strips with some diffuser plastic (bulk trash find) as a cover, mounted on stand offs made from a piece of small diameter metal pipe (possibly from a toilet roll holder)

[mattthemuppet]

dim shot of the overhead light so you can see where the strips are


bright shot, I like the light colour. You can also see the new fan that I installed. Running the wire for that was not fun and required machining some adapters so I could use my socket extensions to hole saw a hole in the side of the box between the light recess and fan hole.


one side of the kitchen


and the other

[mattthemuppet]

and some lights under the island more for fun than anything. Makes a nice "don't walk into the dishwasher" light for the nights.


now onto the next project, a new work bench

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

I finally finished sorting and labeling all of my small hardware (#2-#10, M2-M6). Everything larger is up in my mezzanine and I'll finished labeling that this weekend.

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

My small metric hardware, and set screws, and misc

[PStechPaul]

Key "Stalk"?

I got some bronze bushings from AliExpress:


I found an interesting little booklet my father got when he was in Germany during WWII:

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

Key "Stalk"?

Whops, I'll fix that

Does anyone know what you call these types of nuts? It's like they are some type of rivet nut but not sure. There are some threads inside then. Unfortunately my fasteners book doesn't mention them.

[Dane Bramage]

Hi Loks.
High tech aircraft fastener nut in the left bin. The bolt has a flat head and is made to close tolerances. Hole is reamed and the bolt is tapped into place and the nut is tightened with a special tool til the back part breaks off.
Not useful for much else besides fastening metal structures in aircraft, AFAIK.

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

Hi Loks.
High tech aircraft fastener nut in the left bin. The bolt has a flat head and is made to close tolerances. Hole is reamed and the bolt is tapped into place and the nut is tightened with a special tool til the back part breaks off.
Not useful for much else besides fastening metal structures in aircraft, AFAIK.

Ah yes, thanks! Some of this hardware came from my Dad and I bet he got these from Boeing surplus when we lived on Mercer Island, WA many years ago.