The giving washer

I’m sure most people have heard of the children’s book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. In it, a boy and a tree have a lifelong relationship where the tree gives of itself to help the boy. At the end (spoiler alert) the remaining stump of the tree gives the now old man a place to sit. I’m starting to view the old dishwasher I’ve dismantled as a little like the giving tree. Though I have no illusion that the dishwasher holds me in high regard as the tree did the boy, it has been useful in many ways. Naturally, it started out as my dishwasher, providing many years of satisfactory service. As of now, the tub is part of an almost finished centrifuge unit. (more on that later) I’ve cut a piece out of one of the sheet metal parts to be the top of the little stand that holds the crock pot oil heater. I’m sure the rest of the metal will find use somewhere. The water heating element may find its way into my oil storage system somehow. And now, a part that I thought even I was crazy for hanging on to has proven its worth:

One of the racks fits perfectly on top of one of my storage barrels, allowing me to completely drain oil from the bottles it came in.  Honestly, I doubt I could use the rack for much else. There are some seriously rusted parts of the rack, and it’s not worth my time to strip the plastic off to find the good stuff left.

As for the centrifuge that the oil is going to go through, I am so close to being able to run oil through it I can almost taste it. (eeewwww!) The bowl is about as balanced as I can get it. I mounted it via face plate on my lathe and sanded, filed, and ground down areas until it spun without too much wobble. But when I mounted it back in the tub, I still got too much vibration. Closer examination of the problem revealed that the shaft I fabricated was not as straight as I thought it was.  So I fabricated a new one and it seemed to work better. I’ve also installed an idler pulley system that works ok, but needs some tweeking. I’ve also ditched the blower housing. The current motor has a side mounting bracket so it is directly attached to the frame.

That’s about it for the update of the weekend’s activities. I’ve got some intriguing ideas for future updates but they may be a while. I’m not sure if much of anything will get done this coming weekend. The boat, dock, and hoist need to go in the water and apparently I’m the entire labor force. Then there is that whole “enjoying the holiday weekend” thing.:) Speaking of which, y’all have a good one yourself.

The weekend putter report

No, this is not deja vu, its just that I couldn’t think of a better title and it still fits anyway. :)

The weekend got started pretty well on Friday. Our family went out garage sale hopping.  There were a lot of them because it was advertised as a city wide garage sale. Normally, I’m just happy to find a few small items that will assist me in whatever I’m up to. But I hit the mother lode of tools at this one sale. I’ll tell ya, if I had the budget and actually needed everything the guy had I would have been sorely tempted to just buy him out. As it was, I limited myself to two items, one of which I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to use.  The first item was a bench-top grinder with a wire wheel on one end and grindstone on the other.  I’ll probably be putting this to use almost immediately due to the nature of my recent projects. The other item was a full molding head set for my table saw. Here is what a similar item goes for retail.  I honestly don’t know when I might get to use it, but when you can pick up both of those items for a total of $60, you just have to take a leap of faith and invest in the future.:)

Fast forward to Sunday morning in the shop. My first order of business is to measure my centrifuge rig to purchase a drive belt. It was a bit difficult since I was not sure how tight I should make it. But I settled on a loose fit since I could install a tensioner pulley if need be. I had some time to kill before the store opened, so I decided to track down a reason for why one of my electrical circuits in the shop had stopped working a couple of weeks ago. The breaker did not appear tripped or damaged, so it was a bit of a mystery. I tried everything I knew to pin the source down. I was about to give up when I looked to one side of the breaker box. There was a GFCI outlet there. And it was tripped. I knew the outlet was there, I guess I just didn’t realize it was on that circuit. It was one of the few that were there before I put the workshop in so I didn’t give it much thought. The whole thing made me think back to my jr. high science teacher. I will never forget him always saying “A good scientist is a keen observer. Look around, look around look around.” Good advice no matter what field you are in if you ask me.

The rest of the day was spent working on the centrifuge drive.  Here is a picture of the result so I can discuss what I did.

The motor is resting on a furnace fan blower housing. This is the third motor I tried. My first attempt used the motor that actually came with the housing. But it proved to be too weak and slow. My second attempt was the motor off an old water pump. I had to do some serious modifications to that motor’s housing in order to get it to fit in the first motor’s cradle. Firing it up, I found it went fast enough, but it had overheating issues that kept shutting it off. The motor in the picture is 1/2 hp  and turns at just over 1700rpm. On the shaft is a 4” diameter pulley. The shaft under the centrifuge has a 2” diameter pulley. This doubles the RPM at the centrifuge to over 3400rpm. I can actually thank my Friday bench grinder purchase for allowing me to use this motor because it had been my stationary wire wheel. Right now, the motor is not attached to anything, merely sitting on the sheet metal. I’m using the 4x4 next to it to vary the tension on the drive belt, but this will eventually be replaced by some sort of pulley system. I need to vary the tension because I have found that the motor will not rev to speed if the belt is tight.

So, we’ve discussed the drive train. But what is it driving?  Well, this:

We are looking through the hole in the tub where the spray arm came up through the bottom.  The centrifuge vessel is an old aluminum pot. (Of course it’s old, when’s the last time you saw a harvest gold piece of cookware?) I have added a 2” lip made of aluminum sheet metal. I had wanted to solder it on but was not having any luck at that so I went with adhesive caulk.  My next challenge on this project will be getting this thing properly balanced. I knew going in that I was never going to get these materials together and achieve perfect balance right off the bat. It is going to take adding a little weight in some places, shaving some off in another. I just needed a way to get it spinning fast to see if my balancing efforts are working or not.

Well, I’m putting myself to sleep reading this, can’t imagine how it’s affecting you all.:) Goodnight.

The weekend putter report

I promised yesterday that I would have things to report from my Sunday at the workshop. First off, I have successfully pumped oil from the ground level up to the storage barrel in the rafters. It was a great display of teamwork. Not from me, but from my two pumps and the fry pan I bought last week.

As you can see, the fry pan gets the oil up to pumping temperature. Next, the utility sump pump  discharges into the inlet of the shallow well pump, which then pumps the oil up to the holding barrel. I’m kind of wondering now if both are necessary. Neither worked well on their own before, but I was using some of my old garden hose for the job. Since that try, I happened to find a good length of used 3/4” black irrigation pipe at the local Habitat for Humanity Re-store. I’m sure the much larger diameter pipe decreased how hard it was to push the oil.

The centrifuge project is coming along fairly well. I now have a stand to mount a motor and the tub. I’m going to have to do something to keep the centrifuge shaft vertical. The tub body flexes when a belt is put on the pulley. This binds the shaft in it’s bearing, keeping it from turning.

One last thing. Since I have the other six days a week to fill between shop sessions, I do a lot of research. Last week I was searching for other methods for removing the water from oil. I found a page that had an interesting, and cheap, method that would be easy to test. Here’s what happened when I did.

Sometimes its just not the equipment

My wife called from the office this evening asking if I could come over there because the aquarium was making loud noises. Not exactly what you want to hear, but ok. I get over there and the first thing I notice was there was definitely a clunky noise coming from the filter unit. But that's not all that catches my eye (or ear). Yes there is that clunky noise, but there is something I'm NOT hearing, that being the water flowing out of the filter AND the bubbles coming out of the undergravel filter risers. (I'm a belt/suspenders kind of guy:) ) Now I'm thinking "Oh this is so not going to be my day. Two units going out at the same time?" I check the air pump. Its running, but putting out very little air. I check it's intake filter and cleaning it does not help. I figure I'd better take the filter unit downstairs and clean it. That's when the mystery deepens. I turn on the light and it's dimmer than it should be. At first I thought my wife put in a dimmer bulb. But when I go to the utility room and turn the light on there, the same thing happens. The dim bulbs make a light bulb go off in my head. I grab my voltmeter and check an outlet to confirm. 58 Volts. Oh joy. A few more tests confirm that the whole building is this way. My stuff isn't broken, it's just not getting enough juice! Local power company was notified, and after a work crew stopped at a nearby transformer, voltage was back to normal. I'm just grateful that it was a cool day and the air conditioner was not running. A low voltage situation like that would not be a good thing for the compressor unit.
I've got another blog entry in me regarding my weekend workshop exploits, but I want to get a video edited first.
Bye for now.

The ever popular garage sale

My wife and I hit a couple of garage sales yesterday before heading off to see a movie. My wife and I definitely have different objectives at sales like this. She is searching for clothes and toys for our daughter, meanwhile I’m searching for toys for me. Yesterday was no exception. The first stop was a rummage sale at a local church that was to benefit the local animal shelter. Normally there’s a pretty good selection at events like these, but I was sort of underwhelmed. I did however manage to pick this up for a buck. An old electric fry pan? Yup. I have no intention of making breakfast with it. I have two uses for it in mind.  First, I’m going to cut off most of the sides because they are in my way. I can then use it as a hot plate for heating various things.  Also, from prior experience, I know that I can completely submerge it in oil and use it as a heating element to thin out my used motor oil to make it easier to transfer it via pump. I know it may sound dangerous, but motor oil is non-conductive. As long as the unit is completely submerged it will do what I want it to do without making smoke or shorting out.

My other find of the day wasn’t quite as exciting (yeah, like the readers out there would think the pan was exciting).  I found an outdoor, light up, wire frame snowman. It looks like its missing a light bulb or two, but that’s an easy fix. Should make a good addition to the office Christmas display.

Lucked into a scrounge today

Driving to the store today I spied a large household appliance near the curb. Normally I wouldn’t give it too much thought, but lately it seems that I’m in need of sheet metal stock for my projects. After taking care of my errands I went past it again to size it up and see if it was still there. Yep, it was. A dryer with no “for sale” sign on  it or anything. Far as I know, that qualifies as being put out for trash. I rush home and get my small flatbed trailer to bring the dryer home. As of now, I have no idea if it even powers up. I don’t care too much. It would definitely be a bonus to score a working dryer motor, but I’ll just be happy with the metal stock.