/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>123155
Yeah, I'm going to be making my own forge and foundry; even a solar foundry for soft metals like zinc. Pottery clay will work. Explosions in clay is caused by air pockets, moisture, and uneven heating. So, make sure you don't have air pockets, that you allow the clay to dry for several day, and you heat the clay slowly for a couple of hours (conventional oven at 200F will work to help remove moisture). It's the steam created from retained moisture that is the biggest problem. Get your clay mold good and hot and pour in the molten metal.

To prevent air bubbles in your metal, while you pour it into the mold, you can place the entire mold on a vibrating table of some sort. You can make one by putting an off set weight on a motor shaft (like in a vibrator/personal messager) then attaching it solidly to the top of the table or board you have your mold on. That board of table top needs to be loose enough to actually vibrate of course. The smaller the shaft and weight the quicker the vibrations. If you don't want to go into that trouble, you can gently rap the table surface to cause the same effect, but you may need someone else to do that if you are pouring at the same time.

I recommend starting with really soft metals and low temps like using soldering wire or perhaps modern pewter. You can then make silicone forms if you wanted to; using regular window/house silicone, but you must allow it to cure 100% otherwise the metal poured into it can move around where it has not dried yet.

You need to use a lost wax method obviously, which can be done in the oven with both clay or silicone molds prior to metal pouring. Once you have finally item cooled you can make another mold off of it, but that mold will have seems and not be using lost wax method.

[spoiler]>>123153
I've never done that, because the place near here only deals in pure metals. So there's no heap of good PC/electronic parts anywhere.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>123139
Good link btw.

Oh, and one more thing. Keep all those HDD platters! you can make a Tesla Turbine with them. you can do the same thing with CD/DVD discs too, or any disc for that matter. I have 15-20 HDD platters I plan on making into a Tesla Turbine as soon as I get sheet metal drill bits for my drill press.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>123126
You can take two of them and put them together like this and use them for pocket containers you can carry around. If you put a divider between them with a bit of plastic from a soda bottle it will then have two compartments. All of those are just hot glued.

Notice on the ones in >>122375 that their rim is right on the board. I used a hacksaw to cut them that close. With the ones in this pic I cut further away from that rim using a knife; giving this container more room inside. The hot glue evens out most irregularities in the surfaces, so you don't need to be very neat with it.

This one is water proof.

>>123139
I use heat to remove the magnets. They slide right off without too much trouble. I was going to use the knife method but after applying x amount of power I decide I didn't want to lose a finger and though that there was a chance of breaking the magnet. Each set of magnets have been glued differently. Some are in 1-3 spots and others are all over the surface.

>>123142
Besides freecycle, friends, family, local networking like at the library. also, there's a local recycling center, but it does not take certain items. I gave them my contact info. When someone comes in that has something they don't want they give them my contact info.</spoiler>

>>123134
>It kind of went back to its previous shape after shaping it.

Sounds horrible. Despite that, it looks like you did a good job. It's cleaner looking than my Cthulhu bust. Which I guess is my first clay sculpture of any kind lol.

>>123130
>Modeling clay OR ready-

fixed

>>123108
Modeling clay for ready-to-be-fired clay?

I have a bunch of potting clay and clay dug from under my house foundation this year. The foundation clay was gray white so its fairly good quality. I want to get a furnace set up and fire some stuff. I made a little Cthulhu bust and some generic pottery out of pond bottom clay I dug from near here. I fired a couple pieces in a wood stove as bisque ware. Here's pic. The pot is fired to bisque and the bust is still green.

[spoiler]>>122970
From the bottom board in that pic I was able to pull all this!

Any ideas on what to use those big capacitors with the high uF for?</spoiler>

>>122992
Pick up some extra tips too. They are cheap and come in several styles. This flat wedge style I'm using is great for crossing small PCB components' leads and quickly releasing them from the PCB. Larger ones or ones with quite a few leads need solder wick used with them or they may heat up too much and be damaged and worthless.

[spoiler]>>122972
They are motors that I'm going to be using for making electric. That is why I'm turning them. I just need to open them up to check the gear ratios to I know exactly how many RPMs they are working at. Here's the sticker info and RPMs. The low RPM one was great for a wood lathe in combination with my Dremel.</spoiler>

>>122972
They are motors that I'm going to be using for making electric. That is why I'm turning them. I just need to open them up to check the gear ratios to I know exactly how many RPMs they are working at. Here's the sticker info and RPMs. The low RPM one was great for a wood lathe in combination with my Dremel.

[spoiler]Here's last night's meager haul after fixing my soldering iron's tip. This stuff came mostly from old Soundblaster PCI and Ethernet VESA cards.</spoiler>

[spoiler]Here's what I'm looking forward to today, a big old sound system (cassette, radio, and LP setup). Look at those massive capacitors, transistors, and transformer bigger than my fist in the background. The 12" long heatsink is actually 2 side-by-side for 2 transistors. The two large capacitors are 75v 8200uF.</spoiler>

>>122966
Here's what the soldering iron's copper tip looks like before and after.

1-2: corroded tip
3: ground down and sanded to shape
4: tinned, sponged, and ready for use

Since doing that last night I've been allowing the soldering iron to cool off every so often so this doesn't happen again. It's the cheap kind without a switch or trigger, so I was being lazy unplugging it while removing PCB components.

Here's mine I did last night. I attached a broken music CD jewel case front to my Dremel to make an eye shield for repairing my soldering gun's copper tip. The iron's tip was destroyed from overheating during long PCB component removal (see: >>122375 ) This is a dead simple tool hack. I just drilled holes and screwed them together. Though, I will be making something down the road to be able to quickly attach and detach the shield that is faster than the screw. The screw is a torx screw from a scraped HDD so it isn't very long. I made sure not to drill too far into the plastic of the Dremel; using the little hand drill assured perfect depth.

[spoiler]Here's a couple of items I'm rather proud of salvaging. Both of these motors came from a dead office copier machine. They are both geared. One has a cog head and the other a belt head. I used the cog headed motor as a make shift wood lath many years ago. Now, I'm going to turn these into wind turbine motors.

I hooked them each up to my multimeter and did a really foolish thing. 1, I forgot to check the rating of the fuse in the multimeter and 2, I did not scale down from the largest setting to smaller settings on the multimeter. Well, I tried the belt head motor and I could make about 15volts and 2 amps with it and the cog head motor made 35volts and 2 amps also. I can't hand turn them any faster than that and it's REALLY difficult to turn them under load (easy when they aren't hooked up.)

The mistake I made was when I went to test the amps. I set the multimeter to 500mA instead of the 10A setting. I instantly blew the 250V 0.75A fuse. Now I can only test in the 10A scale until I get a new fuse and hope it blew before anything on the PCB burned out. I guess I'll get a few extras and secure them inside the multimeter should this ever happen again. I know better than to make such a mistake, but I was excited that I found these motors again.

>>122542
Those do work well. I just don't drink that much other than my own water, so I don't have as many as I'd like. What you see in the OP is like 8 months worth of bottle tops. lol</spoiler>

>>122500
....After that, buying and using solar panels became an expense that wouldn't pay off for 20+ years for me. So, you really need to first make sure you are being energy conscious in order to lower your energy use in the first place. Then you need to balance that lower costs with the cost of whatever energy source you wish to use. You may find that you pay more for a certain energy source than you are using after you are properly energy conscious. For people that waste a lot of energy and have large energy bills, a solar panel system may look very reasonable and pay for itself in a very short amount of time.

I won't go into alternatives like wind since that is off topic and should be keep to another thread.

However, I will say that passive solar applications are more efficient, cheaper, and longer lasting that active solar like PV cells. You can heat your water and home easily with passive solar even in locations where I live that get -15F in the winter. You can also create electric with passive solar if it is hooked to a device like a Stirling engine as >>121669 suggests, although you can use a less expensive and less complicated system.

>>121589
Solar panels are horribly inefficient right now. In order to use them efficiently for your usage you more than likely need to change your usage from the ground up. It also depends on your application and available light determined by your location. What I mean is that you should weatherize your home to prevent hot/cold exchanges, use CFLs instead of incandescent lights or better yet get LED lights, learning to turn off and unplug devices you are not directly using, learning to keep lights off that you are not directly using. There's 1000 ways of reducing the amount of energy so that your net energy usage is far below what a simple cheaper solar panel array can give you. For instance, my monthly electric bill went from $200+ a month down to under $20 a month after I weatherized my house, changed my light, and became more energy conscious... continued

[spoiler]>>122440
lol I get your point. Google it from several sources to make sure. Knowledge and understanding usually kills fear.

On American wall outlets the ground is the little round hole on a 3-hole wall outlet. Older outlets may not have 3 holes and if that is true then there's no ground at all for them. Any plug with only 2 prongs or outlets with 2 holes won't have a ground.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122430
You can easily discharge a TV or CRT monitor with a flat screwdriver that has a plastic handle and a length of 14 AWG or 12 AWG electrical housing wire, and a grounded outlet. Basically, you wrap some bare wire around the screwdriver and stick the other end of the wire in the the GROUND in the wall outlet. Then you shove the flat metal end of the screwdriver under that little suction cup. The there was a charge you'll hear a crackle and/or snap of electricity. Do not touch the metal part of the screwdriver, wear gloves too. This safely discharges the electric to the ground. After that you should be able to handle the TV without problems.

Also, read up on it,

http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+discharge+CRT+TV

I do similar things with PSUs and other devices that can harbor high voltage. It's the amperage that kills you, not the volts. 2 amps = death, but 4 amps = non-death. This is because the 2 amps causes your heart to fuck up and the higher amps merely causes your heart so clench hard which you can survive. Regardless, you don't want to find out first hand.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122423
Yes, but, I suppose it depends on what your goals are, availability of the parts, and cost if any to dispose of the unwanted materials. Most people want the flyback and high voltage component parts. you also need to be careful and decharge the TV set before touching anything once the cover is off. You can get killed from voltage that can still be stored inside any CRT-based TV. I've seen 6-inch long arcs of electricity come out of those little suction cups on the top of the TV tube (the one attached to the flyback) months after it was unplugged.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122416
It's correct, see pic. You must FIRST search for a Freecycle group for your location. The closest one for me is based 50 miles from where I live. THEN you join that group or a few groups if you have a large populated area.</spoiler>

[spoiler]>>122408
Glad to be some help.</spoiler>

>>122410
As it is no. There are far too many variables and you'd need a lot of solar power to use a trickle charger for a car. Far more than just a few yard lights could give you. You'd need the same voltage coming from the PV cell array as you have from your wall outlet for the car trickle charger to work properly, unless you rewire the trickle charger. Then you need some competent circuitry knowledge, which I do not have...yet.