diy

Like the title says I fixed my remington shaver/clippers today. It started behaving especially badly a couple weeks ago after sitting unused for a bit.

It didn't seem to hold a charge and would fade until the motor stopped dead within 5 or 10 seconds, and seemed to be getting worse. I'm a pretty repair-minded person so I took it apart and took a look around at how it was put together, and grabbed the battery size while I was in there. 1 or two plastic clips broke but ultimately it came apart okay.

So, not seeing anything else obvious I ordered a pre-tabbed replacement battery online and set it aside.

Yesterday I received the battery and tried to install it (a whole other issue, the tabs from the factory were offset on one end so it was tricky to snake the new straight tabs through the pcb). I finally got it in, and voila.... oh wait, it still doesn't work. same issue.

That is why you should always troubleshoot before you buy parts! A quick voltage check on the old battery would have revealed that the battery was full, and not sagging too much under load.

I got back to it today, and after poking around for a few mins with a multimeter, I found that the battery voltage was great, and that the issue seemed to be with the surface mount PTC thermistor that was in series right before the wires that went off to the motor. I removed that thermistor and temporarily bridged the contacts (should be relatively safe in the short term, there is other protection circuitry in there incl a thermal fuse on the battery), and the shaver works great again (I also took the opportunity to remove the insane amount of hair built up in the head of the shaver, which is far too open on this model, allowing things to get inside)

I highly recommend people who are interested get into repair! with a little know-how, plus soldering and desoldering equipment (nothing fancy), you can do quite a bit of little repairs of devices that would otherwise be disposable for no reason

Bought a house at a discount from a lady that 8 dogs that seemingly predominantly used the bathroom inside. The piss was enough to sting your eyes when you walked in. Pretty nasty stuff.

I really wanted to do a move-in ready home, seems like I always have to do a bunch of work to a place, but it's saved me some money.

Subfloor repairs were pretty significant, but it had to happen anyhow. 70's house with mdf under it that was piss logged, and I laid tongue and groove bamboo anyhow.

I got pretty nervous after demo because I was still getting a urine smell, but it's out now. Got most of the new floor in, but still gotta finish a closet and a bedroom.

Not a terrible project, ended up looking really nice. The bamboo is hard as a brick. Took some trial and error to get the stapler right to not split tongues but to also get the staple all the way through.

It also functions as a portable Gameboy cartridge player.

Pretty slick little repackage of a UV-5R

Made of 10 awg copper wire and 18 awg silver plated wire. Copper work hardened more than I thought, wish I went with 12g instead, but it does make the final result sturdier.

This article is oldish, it was written all the way back in 2004. I just wanted to share this because it shows another facet of the submersibles world, where every day people build their own submersibles from kit plans. I remember kit plans from back in the day before the internet, when passionate people would subscribe to magazines like Popular Mechanics and (usually) use tons of fiberglass and other materials to build whatever functioning contraption their hearts desired. This is on other end of the spectrum to billionaires descending thousands of meters below the ocean surface, but as of the date this article was written (2004), there were no fatality accidents involving certified submersibles. (I don't know if that safety statistic has changed since 2004, but I was quite impressed with that record either way.)

Here also is a link to one of the main personal submersibles communities, called http://psubs.org/ Personal Subs dot Org.

There are many other resources out there. I've been spending a little time celebrating them and learning something about this fascinating hobby and community.

Cheers.

edit: Here is a list of known incidents involving submersibles since 2000. With the exception of Titan and Nautilus (The Danish submersible intentionally sunk as part of a murder plot, in 2017) , all have involved 1 or more submersible (most often appear to be submarines) involving naval vessels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarine_and_submersible_incidents_since_2000

Cool and useful video for electronics stuff

Not as polished as the other video I posted, but still a neat project and it's always cool to see open source and printable board games and toys.

Very cool free and open source board game that you 3D print.

I found this channel a few weeks ago and now I want to start doing watch repair. Lord help me I don't need a new hobby.

Here's a vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeqvTJ-Y22Y

As the guy notes, these are and have been commerciably available for a long time, but usually one piece to link two specific parts together. This one will basically do whatever you want it to (barring some exceptions where the ratios are too far apart).

I wouldn't go world touring on it, it seems liable to break or gunk up and you'll probably increase your consumption of cables, but for throwing together the parts bin special this seems pretty good.

Seems cool you can mix and match again, but time will tell whether their improved wear and tear resistance is marketing dreck or actually pans out. I kind of get the feeling it's not going to be as good as using thicker 7/8/9-Speed chains.

Also kind of worried about parts for my traveling bike. Really don't want a 1x11 on that one, even if has similar range. Hope Microshift keeps cranking out 3x systems.

Muc-Off especially. I mean props to them for making their shit biodegradable (if it actually is) but I have seriously not encountered anything from dirt to effluvial grime that a spray bottle with water/dish soap mix and a rag didn't take care of it brilliantly.

Like the only thing is really, really mucked up cassettes or sprockets and chains. Chains clean really easily with steel wool and the really, really mucked up cassettes just get tossed in vinegar for a bit and scrubbed with steel wool.

I need to fix the cable management before this thing starts a fire, but it's working :anakin:. This is the second time I've completely stripped this thing down and taken a soldering iron to it (to shorten the fan cables and attach JST connectors to them). Glad it's running again.

I also cleaned all the rails and replaced the wheels. This has been the deepest tune-up this machine has gotten since I bought it. Along the way I discovered the hot end thermistor was loose, as well as one of the Z-axis wheels. :what-the-hell:

@RNAi maybe this is a solution for you

Posting in DIY, but this is work and the machine and tooling belongs to the capitalist who pays me for my labor. I "did it myself" though.

We needed to add through-coolant slots to some milling tool holders, and... this is what I came up with. The longer you look at it, the more awful it is. At least, the wire EDM doesn't apply any torque to the workpiece. A mill would obliterate this house of cards.

Based on a Jay Doscher Quick Kit and built over a rpi4 and 7" touch screen. The Harbor Freight case I'm using is slightly different than the Pelican the kit was designed for, so I had to tweak some dimensions to make the faceplate fit. Next I will be designing a bottom tray for the keyboard and possibly finding space for an audio jack (maybe the hole by the power input???)

I named her Sophon (智子) after the microscopic supercomputers from The Three Body Problem series, even though this Sophon isn't going to be sabotaging any particle accelerators any time soon. No particular project purpose yet, I just had a spare Raspberry Pi and thought making a laptop would be neat.

I'm super squeamish about asking for help from people I know in real life. I'd be way more comfortable working with a comrade of basically any stripe. I don't care if you know more or less than me - teaching is beneficial, being taught is beneficial.

Done enough front end to know I hate it, but I'll share what I know.

Where I'm at experience wise:

-Scratching the surface of back end (configured my own LAMP environment and have a local website with some basic PHP/JS/MySQL functions

-I've done 2/3 of the first ODIN Project (HTML/CSS)

-Completed some front-end online free "bootcamp" that was a pre-req for a paid java bootcamp I didn't pursue

-Getting somewhat savvy with git/github, IDEs, and very comfortable with operational logic and scoping from modding games

-Lots of IT experience, so I never really have configuration/interfacing issues

-finished the w3schools "webdev" track (JS/HTML/CSS/PHP/SQL) along with a few other

Where I'm at mentally:

-Haven't touched my PHP project in months

-Feel like I forgot everything I learned

-Feel like a fraud and like I probably have undiagnosed ADHD

-Constantly tempted to give up and dive into something even less likely to turn my life around

-Alienated from my friends who don't really understand why I'm struggling to get economic traction

The reason I'm interested in paired learning is because I believe in other people more than in myself - I struggle to invest in myself, working as a team on things always gives me limitless energy. If I work alone I typically will finish a step of the project I'm working on and then retreat away from the project rather than pushing it further continuously. Kinda just need a person that goes "okay next we need to..." and when they don't say that I say it, rinse repeat. That doesn't mean we constantly work, I know time is precious; it just means there is no official "hiatus".

The engineers asked me to bisect a part so they could inspect a couple welds. I NAILED it. A few hours later, they came back and asked if I could remove another slice at an angle because they thought the EDM wire might have been getting stuck in the cracks (this is not how EDM works, the wire NEVER touches the part, because if it does that means you get no sparks, and no cut... but regardless).

So here I am, the first cut was already diagonal so I could get both welds in one slice, now I'm fixturing this shit up on a sine plate, indicating the part to get it lined up again, trying to rotate a diagonal plane in 3D space and only give it a couple thousandths of an inch shave.

exactly what it says on the tin

hell yeah the vehicle i bought to be reliable and boring blew its headgaskets, hell yeah previous owner fucked the gasket surfaces, hell yeah a fucked header stud won't back out

hell yeah