Electrifying Franken-Trike

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Jay

Franken-Trike is big and heavy. And it’s only going to get bigger and heavier once I finish the rain cover. So I added an electric motor to it… Weight with motor and battery is now 80 pounds.

This is a Chinese generic hub motor, controller, LCD display that includes speedometer and odometer, along with a “water bottle” style 36v 10aH Li-Ion battery pack. The motor claims to be 500 watts, and the battery claims to be able to provide 540 watts (15 amps * 36 volts), but on steep hills I have to petal a bit myself to maintain speed. On level ground it can get the bike up to a scary enough 10 mph by itself, and I expect it will fulfill its purpose of making my commute into less of a taxing workout of lugging the monster bike up the big hill…

Fabricating Gingerbread House Cookie Cutters

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Jay

One of my relatives makes a large number of gingerbread houses for all the kids (and me!) to decorate for the holidays. They have been cutting the house panels out of rolled gingerbread dough using a knife and paper templates. I volunteered to make them some custom cookie cutters, as the three panels (2x roof, 2x wall, 2x end pieces) are geometrically very simple (two rectangles, and a triangle sitting on top of a rectangle.)

I bought some 1/2″ angle aluminum at the the big box (I would have preferred 3/4″…but they didn’t stock it…), along with some aluminum “welding rod” which is really a Continue reading →

Ugly Trike Steering Linkage

Posted on December 22, 2014 by Jay

This is the completed steering linkage for Ugly Trike. I constructed both the Akerman correction tie rod and the steering linkage drag arm from a steel shower shelving unit rod and 1/4″ rod end bearings from vxb.com. The rod end bearings are the “correct” solution, but the ones I purchased from vxb.com were annoying because Continue reading →

Ugly Trike Frame

Posted on December 21, 2014 by Jay

This is ugly trike. In total, I used parts from four different used bikes to assemble it. Here are two of the frames that I welded together Continue reading →

oneTesla playing the Imperial March

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Jay

Here is the coil with my custom top facing breakout point playing the Imperial March.

Here is a photo of the Tesla Coil:

OneTesla O-scope traces

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Jay

I have reduced my primary to 5 turns, and using the standard 0.068 MFD tank cap, this is the general shape of my oneTesla output waveform (as captured by a scope probe hanging in the air about 3 feet away from the coil):

As you can see, the primary rings up and then the secondary oscillates for quite a while afterwards.

The next three traces are running the coil at a very low power level. Depending upon where I measure between peaks on the trace, I get different frequencies:

277 kHz

294 kHz

17.80 uS between five peaks, or 1 / (3.56 / 1000000) = 280 kHz

As the 280 is between the 277 and the 294, we’ll just say that my primary has a resonant frequency of 280 kHz, when at low power.

Next, I turned the power up a bit (around 1/3 of the way up) and got the following two measurements:

263 kHz

18.40 uS for 5 peaks, or 1 / (3.68 / 1000000) = 272 kHz

So my primary resonance is somewhere between 263 and 294 depending upon how I measure it, with a value of 272-280 looking to be a reasonable average.

Surprisingly, my secondary resonance measurements agreed with themselves a bit better. Here is the low power trace:

And the “Mid Power” trace.

(You can see the primary ringing extending out so that it becomes visible in the trace…)

In both cases, I measured 15.20 uS between 5 peaks or
1 / (3.04 / 1000000) = 329 kHz

So my ratio is currently 329 / 280 or 1.175 ( Secondary 17-18% higher than my primary).

oneTesla top breakout point for my musical Tesla coil

Posted on April 6, 2014 by Jay

Since I’ll be primarily using my oneTesla to play music, I wanted a top facing breakout (so the sparks will shoot up, instead of out to the side). Also, I wanted something more professional looking than a stick of metal taped to the top of the toroid. Here is the final product on the top of my toroid:

You can visit [ this post ] to see a video of it in action.
I used the lathe to get the general shape I wanted:

Then turned it to even up the 15 degree angle:

And this is my original 1″ diameter aluminum stock. I tapped it for the 14-20 bolt on the top of my Tesla coil that normally has a wing nut to hold the stamped toroid together, so the whole thing just screws onto the top.

Turning custom extruder parts

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Jay

This is my new extruder hot end. After enclosing my printer with an insulated box, I decided that I needed to drop more heat before the plastic entry side of the end of the barrel. I accomplished this by turning an extra long barrel out of brass, and a small heatsink out of aluminum to go between the heater and the Groove Mount.

You can see the barrel compared to the original part here:

The barrel was straightforward to turn out of a piece of 1/4″ hex stock. I put the threads on with a metric M6x1 die.

The HeatSink took more time, mostly because I had to cut the fins out of a 1″ diameter rod quite deeply with a cut-off tool.

I compressed the several hours of work on the heatsink down into a six minute video below:

Turning Punches

Posted on February 1, 2014 by Jay

I’ve finished reading the Home Machinists Handbook by Doug Briney and am starting on some of the projects. Project 1: Make your own center and prick punches.

All finished except for the heat treating to harden the steel. Each punch was about 0.19 USD worth of steel, plus an hour of (technical, but non-union) labor.

CaseModding my 3D printer’s insulated cover

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Jay

After building an insulated cover for my 3D printer, I decided that I needed to put some lights inside. This allows me to see how the print job is progressing, both via the porthole, and via the interior webcam. Because green surplus neon tubes for computer cases are inexpensive and take 12 volts, I riced up the cover with two green neon tubes. The color complements the light teal of the foam insulation nicely, and gives my ~~Garage~~ Laboratory an evil green glow at night.

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