lwill.net » Home Projects

Tick, tick, tick…

lwill — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 19:46:57 +0000

My, how time flies.

I need to catch up on a bunch of stuff soon.

First, I have started building custom K-Cup holders called the Kupousel. Please check them out.
I have spent a lot of time with my “new” CNC’ed X2 Mini-Mill. Lots of mods and stuff I hope to post about.
Sill making Tonal Insanity effects pedals. The mill is helping with them. Started using surface mounted components.
Got my hands on some Arduino knock-offs and been using them to develop other AVR stuff.
Built an SMD reflow oven from a toaster oven and a ATmega for a PID control.
Built (cobbled together) a new spindle for my old router when the Roto-Zip started to give out. It also has less run out so I can route PC board directly now, even SMD stuff.
Completely re-written my Board Tools program with even more options, partly to take advantage of the new spindle and mill.
Will be re-re-re-building the rain barrel yet again this year. Last year I tested a control using a pico-power ATtiny13a AVR. Worked well, needs a bit of fine tuning. Main reason for rebuild is the barrel cracked, I moved the garden, and I dropped the solar panel at the end of last year and broke it.
Building my daughter a loft bed – out of an old desk.
Rebuilt my MythTV system and got in a fight with the stupid cable box that uses XMP IR protocol. (on going)
Oh! It has been so long I never mentioned my new main computer: 8-core! AMD “Bulldozer” FX-8120, liquid cooled, msi 970A-G46, 16GB RAM, 1TB HD, Bu-ray burner, 23″ wide screen monitor, running Fedora 19 (20 soon). It F…’IN SCREAMS! Built Android (for A10) complete from source in a few hours! That was why I got it thrown in on a job to modify a Mele A2000 STB into a network/web based, Scent Palette controller. Builds MythTV in about 10 minutes.

Hopefully I will add more info in less than the next 2 years!

Number of View :9465

Front yard landscaping

lwill — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:45:46 +0000

My front yard has been slowly sliding down hill for years. There is hardly any topsoil left, so the grass looks like crap. I have been wanting to add a small retaining wall along the front then back fill to level out the whole yard and replant new grass. After doing the pool, I had to a lot of dirt left over and figured now was a good time to do it. (hence the “free” pool just got more expensive!) Of course, there was not quite enough dirt to fill it all the way! Now to get more dirt (or dig another hole in the back yard!) and get some grass growing. I like having nice grass in my yard, of course the best grass I had was right where the pool went!! I could always start on the garage I wanted to build and use that dirt. Hmmm… another project, but not for a while, I need to rest up for this whole wedding thing. A few more pictures

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New “free” pool

lwill — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 03:43:36 +0000

Earlier this spring we got a complete free pool on freecycle. It was in pretty good shape, we just had to take it down. At the time it was still cold, in fact part of the pool was buried and was frozen into the ground! The liner had a small leak in it but didn’t matter since it was still frozen too and got destroyed.The reason “free” is in quotes is it still cost some money to install:
A new liner (duh)
Building permit
Electrical supplies ($45 GFCI breaker!!)
Spray paint for the uprights and rails
Renting tiller
Pavers to go around edge
New filter cartridge
Vermiculite for bottom
Misc. replacement hardware
Food to feed the friends who helped on set up day (Thanks Scott)
All in all, no where near the several thousand a new pool would have cost.
For others who might do this, we found the Vermiculite at Menards in the “insulation” department for insulating block walls, worked out to be cheaper than bags of sand and a whole lot lighter to handle!! It also gives a wonderful bottom. We installed the liner using a shop vac to suck it into place and have no wrinkles!! My family had several pools and I had been though setting them up before, and this method rocked!

Next thing will be to install the solar heater we also got on freecycle. I am not happy with it’s cheesy installation though and will be looking into something better. (Oh goody, another project)
You may also notice the home made solar cover roller. It was a quick project that needs some refinement (it bows real bad) When I redo it, probably season, I will try to document it as well.

A few more pictures, during and after

Number of View :3050

Under Slab Vent Repair

lwill — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:39:01 +0000

While remodeling my bathroom I discovered a problem I suspect many face – a rusted out HVAC vent that runs under the slab.Now in a house with a basement or crawl space this would not be a big deal to repair. Accually it would probably never happen! I my case though, the vent is basically buried in dirt and in addition to being right next to the tub (and being flooded a few times I suspect) it rusted completely away.

This probably explains where the occasional ant would come from every spring.The sheet metal was completely rotten, the only pieces left are the seams that were imbedded in the concrete. You can see the bottom is just sand, gravel and dirt. the Pipe it was connected to was rusty as well, but still had enough integrity to be OK (thank goodness!!)

Once it was all ripped out I had to come up with a way of fixing it. Before I started tearing into it I thought I might be able to simply coat the inside with something like undercoating or “Liquid Duct Tape” I saw at the auto parts store. Once I found how bad it was this was no longer an option. The dirt in the hole was well packed, but very dry and crumbly. I had to come up with a way to stabilize it so I could perform a repair.

Enter Aqua Net!

I gave it several heavy coats and let it dry well with some help of a hair dryer. The sandy portions mostly soaked it in, but it held enough to move on to the next step. I remember using hair spray to protect drawings stuff years ago, but the stuff today does not seem to be quite as good. Probably all the “environmentally friendly” stuff in it now.The next step was to create some form of mold or form to fill with what ever I was going to use to patch with.

Enter Duct Tape!

I lined the inside of the hole with duct tape being careful not to disturb the soil. I allowed it to slightly overlap the duct still intact and up the sides of the concrete. I then cut an even edge around the top about 3/4″ or so down to allow the patch something to seal to. I did not cover the top area under the slab since it was free of dirt and formed to the old piece of duct.

Now to decide what to cover it with. In a pinch I could have just left the duct tape and called it a day. It is “duct tape” after all! This didn’t sit well with my scene of “do it right once” so on the the next idea. I debated about using fiberglass mat and resin, but knew it would be a sloppy mess, especially upside down. You may also know that fiber glass doesn’t stick well to duct tape (or dustly concrete) and I wanted to do this in one shot without any gaps.

Enter Bondo! (can you scense a theam here?)

And not just any old bondo but Bondo-Glass reinforced with fiberglass fibers. It works just like ordinary bondo, but turns sort of black when you mix it instead of pink. since it is reinforced it is much more ridged than normal Bondo. This can was bought at the local big box and must have been setting on the shelf for a while. When I opened the hardener all I got was “juice”. Even after kneading it for a few minutes it was still runny on the first mix. After some was used and there was room in the tube, I kneaded some more and it started to look more like past. Because of this the first layer took a lot longer to harden that normal. I mixed about 1/6th-1/5th of the can at a time.

The first coat was mainly to cover as much area as I could to give the tape some rigidity.

I started by slathering the Bondo in place by hand (wearing gloves) working it around all the edges and the top of the opening. Once I had a good base in place I started to smooth it out using a small piece of cardboard as a spreader. The gloves of course did not prevent me from getting Bondo stuck in the hair on my wrist! Notice I also filled a large chunck missing in the edge of the concrete. It was pretty big so it was done in several coats so it would not ooze down the side.

Anyone who has used Bondo knows the best time to trim the excess is just before it is completely hard. Normally you would use a “cheese grater” when working on a fender, but in this case I just scrapped everything level with a sharp paint tool and knocked of the lumps around the inside edge. The inside is not perfectly smooth, but then again life isn’t either.

Here you can see how far I over lapped the old pipe and how rusty it is. (Hope my girlfriend doesn’t know I used her compact!)

Swept clean and test fit.

All Done!

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