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Feeling accomplished.
I hit all the goals I set for myself tonight, to whit:
I finished the edit and video menu backgrouns for the last Luff school video. The disc is burning right now and if it turns out the way I want it to, by morning it will be retail ready and I can clear the video Inbox (so to speak).
For ten damn years I've wanted an outlet on that wall. Now I can plug in the drill press and the band saw at the same time without running an extension cord across the whole garage. Hoo-rah.
I made a gear. Yeah, okay, big deal, but it is to me. For about a year now I've been thinking of building a machine to do the mechanical work of the dye job - basically: stirring. A washing machine won't work because the fabric bunches in the center and doesn't actually circulate - that, and we only do about two gallons of water at a time. I envision a 5 gallon bucket turning in some sort of rig with "fingers" on the walls of the bucket to force the fabric to tumble and fan out. To do that it needs a motor: I found an ice cream machine at the local Savers, and I'm hoping the motor from that has enough torque to do the job. The gear (in the picture) is the first step in joining the motor to the bucket and slowing down the RPM: I want to tumble the fabric, not spin it.
Anyway, the gear is made from 1/2" plywood, and I made it on my drill press and band saw (see the connection from above?) A much larger one - six times larger as it happens, 120 teeth instead of just 20 - will drive the bucket. I hope. I'm hoping the smaller gear will have a lot of push against the larger gear, in spite of it's small size. It won't take long to find out. The small gear took only fifteen minutes or so to make. The larger gear - the toothy bit divided into four equal parts - can have a lot of it gang cut. We'll see, won't we?
This last weekend I build the locking platform for the bucket: a plywood circle with a rubber ring to fit the bottom edge of the bucket and a locking lever to hold the bucket tight against the ring. Friction and gravity will do all the work of holding the bucket in place while it turns.
If the small motor is indeed too small, I've got a motor that runs at 1,725 rpm, and I can do the math to slow it down to where I want it. Thanks to the wooden gears, I'll be able to do that for $20 or so, instead of the $100+ I estimated using metal pulleys.
Seamlyne is its usual busy self. The queue is full of orders with deadlines, and they're just far enough away to give me some breathing space. I have hopes that I'll be able to finish the dye machine prototype and do some actual work with it. That'd be cool.
The day job is...well, the day job. Not much to report there. Steady as she goes,
Bankruptcy: not official yet, but ever so slowly the pieces are falling into place. We're going to owe our accountant a helluva lot of money by the time it's all said and done.
I finished the edit and video menu backgrouns for the last Luff school video. The disc is burning right now and if it turns out the way I want it to, by morning it will be retail ready and I can clear the video Inbox (so to speak).
For ten damn years I've wanted an outlet on that wall. Now I can plug in the drill press and the band saw at the same time without running an extension cord across the whole garage. Hoo-rah.
I made a gear. Yeah, okay, big deal, but it is to me. For about a year now I've been thinking of building a machine to do the mechanical work of the dye job - basically: stirring. A washing machine won't work because the fabric bunches in the center and doesn't actually circulate - that, and we only do about two gallons of water at a time. I envision a 5 gallon bucket turning in some sort of rig with "fingers" on the walls of the bucket to force the fabric to tumble and fan out. To do that it needs a motor: I found an ice cream machine at the local Savers, and I'm hoping the motor from that has enough torque to do the job. The gear (in the picture) is the first step in joining the motor to the bucket and slowing down the RPM: I want to tumble the fabric, not spin it.Anyway, the gear is made from 1/2" plywood, and I made it on my drill press and band saw (see the connection from above?) A much larger one - six times larger as it happens, 120 teeth instead of just 20 - will drive the bucket. I hope. I'm hoping the smaller gear will have a lot of push against the larger gear, in spite of it's small size. It won't take long to find out. The small gear took only fifteen minutes or so to make. The larger gear - the toothy bit divided into four equal parts - can have a lot of it gang cut. We'll see, won't we?
This last weekend I build the locking platform for the bucket: a plywood circle with a rubber ring to fit the bottom edge of the bucket and a locking lever to hold the bucket tight against the ring. Friction and gravity will do all the work of holding the bucket in place while it turns.
If the small motor is indeed too small, I've got a motor that runs at 1,725 rpm, and I can do the math to slow it down to where I want it. Thanks to the wooden gears, I'll be able to do that for $20 or so, instead of the $100+ I estimated using metal pulleys.
Seamlyne is its usual busy self. The queue is full of orders with deadlines, and they're just far enough away to give me some breathing space. I have hopes that I'll be able to finish the dye machine prototype and do some actual work with it. That'd be cool.
The day job is...well, the day job. Not much to report there. Steady as she goes,
Bankruptcy: not official yet, but ever so slowly the pieces are falling into place. We're going to owe our accountant a helluva lot of money by the time it's all said and done.