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10 Articles

Tech In Plain Sight: Windshield Frit

January 18, 2024 by 29 Comments

You probably see a frit every day and don’t even notice it. What is it? You know the black band around your car’s windshield? That’s a frit (which, by the way, can also mean ingredients used in making glass) or, sometimes, a frit band. What’s more, it probably fades out using a series of dots like a halftone image, right? Think that’s just for aesthetics? Think again.

Older windshields were not always attached firmly, leading to them popping out in accidents. At some point, though, the industry moved to polyurethane adhesives, which are superior when applied correctly. However, they often degrade from exposure to UV. That’s a problem with a windshield, which usually gets plenty of sunlight.

The answer is the frit, a ceramic-based baked-on enamel applied to both sides of the windshield’s edges, usually using silk screening. The inner part serves as a bonding point for the adhesive. However, the outer part blocks UV radiation from reaching the adhesive. Of course, it also hides the adhesive and any edges or wiring beneath it, too.

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How To Create Hermetically Sealed Electrical Connections

September 23, 2020 by 25 Comments

[Eric Strebel] is no stranger to pressure and vaccum tanks, regularly using them for all manner of resin casting jobs for his product design business. However, sometimes it becomes necessary to run equipment within a pressure tank, such as for rotomoulding or other similar jobs. In order to get power into a tank under pressure, [Eric] built a special plug with a hermetic seal to do the job. (Video, embedded below.)

The build starts with a large metal plug which screws into the pressure vessel, into which a square recess is machined. For the electrical passthrough, [Eric] selected GX-16 aviation connectors, in this case packing six conductors. The connectors are hooked up back-to-back through the hole in the metal tank plug, using bare copper wire. This is to avoid insulation on wires acting as a channel for gases to pass through. With the connectors wired up and an acrylic disc in place to stop overflow, the metal plug is filled with resin to create the hermetic seal.

Results are good, with the connectors functioning electrically and the resin acting as a perfect seal. There’s a small risk of short circuit with the exposed copper conductors, but [Eric] is exploring some easy solutions to avoid issues. We’ve seen his work before, too – like this great discussion on cardboard as a design tool. Video after the break.

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Fog-Free Mask Hack Solves Mask Versus Glasses Conundrum With Superb Seal

September 2, 2020 by 35 Comments

If you have worn a mask and glasses together for more than a quarter of a second, you are probably annoyed that we don’t have a magical solution for foggy lenses. Moisture-laden air is also a good indicator of where unfiltered air is escaping. Most masks have some flexible metal across the nose bridge that is supposed to seal the top, but it is woefully inadequate. The Badger Seal by [David Rothamer] and [Scott Sanders] from the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering is free to copy during the COVID-19 pandemic, even commercially. It works by running an elastic cord below the jaw and a formable wire over the nose to encourage contact all around both mouth and nose.

You can build your own in three ways. Each configuration is uniquely suited to a different situation. The first design is the easiest to make and should work for most people. The second is best for folks who need a better seal on the lower half of their face, like someone sporting a beard. It can also have ear loops, and that means your 3D printed ear savers have another use. The Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin also has fun with lock cracking and graphene experiments.
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Geocaching On Mars: How Perseverance Will Seal Martian Samples With A Return To Earth In Mind

July 30, 2020 by 23 Comments

With the roughly 20-day wide launch window for the Mars 2020 mission rapidly approaching, the hype train for the next big mission to the Red Planet is really building up steam. And with good reason — the Mars 2020 mission has been in the works for a better part of a decade, and as we reported earlier this year, the rover it’s delivering to the Martian surface, since dubbed Perseverance, will be among the most complex such devices ever fielded.

“Percy” — come on, that nickname’s a natural — is a mobile laboratory, capable of exploring the Martian surface in search of evidence that life ever found a way there, and to do the groundwork needed if we’re ever to go there ourselves. The nuclear-powered rover bristles with scientific instruments, and assuming it survives the “Seven Minutes of Terror” as well as its fraternal twin Curiosity did in 2012, we should start seeing some amazing results come back.

No prior mission to Mars has been better equipped to answer the essential question: “Are we alone?” But no matter how capable Perseverance is, there’s a limit to how much science can be packed into something that costs millions of dollars a kilogram to get to Mars. And so NASA decided to equip Perseverance with the ability to not only collect geological samples, but to package them up and deposit them on the surface of the planet to await a future mission that will pick them up for a return trip to Earth for further study. It’s bold and forward-thinking, and it’s unlike anything that’s ever been tried before. In a lot of ways, Perseverance’s sample handling system is the rover’s raison d’être, and it’s the subject of this deep dive.

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Torturing An Instrumented Dive Watch, For Science

July 18, 2019 by 24 Comments

The Internet is a wild and wooly place where people can spout off about anything with impunity. If you sound like you know what you’re talking about and throw around a few bits of the appropriate jargon, chances are good that somebody out there will believe whatever you’re selling.

Case in point: those that purport that watches rated for 300-meter dives will leak if you wiggle them around too much in the shower. Seems preposterous, but rather than just dismiss the claim, [Kristopher Marciniak] chose to disprove it with a tiny wireless pressure sensor stuffed into a dive watch case. The idea occurred to him when his gaze fell across an ESP-01 module next to a watch on his bench. Figuring the two needed to get together, he ordered a BMP280 pressure sensor board, tiny enough itself to fit anywhere. Teamed up with a small LiPo pack, everything was stuffed into an Invicta dive watch case. A little code was added to log the temperature and pressure and transmit the results over WiFi, and [Kristopher] was off to torture test his setup.

The first interesting result is how exquisitely sensitive the sensor is, and how much a small change in temperature can affect the pressure inside the case. The watch took a simulated dive to 70 meters in a pressure vessel, which only increased the internal pressure marginally, and took a skin-flaying shower with a 2300-PSI (16 MPa) pressure washer, also with minimal impact. The video below shows the results, but the take-home message is that a dive watch that leaks in the shower isn’t much of a dive watch.

Hats off to [Kristopher] for doing the work here. We always love citizen science efforts such as this, whether it’s hardware-free radio astronomy or sampling whale snot with a drone.

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Shop-Made Pneumatic Cylinders From PVC And Plywood

September 11, 2018 by 26 Comments

You see a lot of pneumatic actuators in industrial automation, and for good reason. They’re simple, powerful, reliable, and above all, cheap. Online sources and fluid-power suppliers carry a bewildering range of actuators, so why would anyone bother to make their own pneumatic cylinders? Because while the commercial stuff is cheap, it’s not PVC and plywood cheap.

Granted, that’s not the only reason [Izzy Swan] gives for his DIY single-acting cylinder. For him it’s more about having the flexibility to make exactly what he needs in terms of size and shape. And given how ridiculously easy these cylinders are, you can make a ton of them for pennies. The cylinder itself is common Schedule 40 PVC pipe with plywood endcaps, all held together with threaded rod. [Izzy] cut the endcaps with a CNC router, but a band saw or jig saw would do as well. The piston is a plywood plug mounted to a long bolt; [Izzy] gambled a little by cutting the groove for the O-ring with a table saw, but no fingers were lost. The cylinder uses a cheap bungee as a return spring, but an internal compression spring would work too,. Adding a second air inlet to make the cylinder double-acting would be possible as well. The video below shows the cylinder in action as a jig clamp.

True, the valves are the most expensive part of a pneumatic system, but if nothing else, being able to say you made your own cylinders is a win. And maybe you’ll get the fluid-power bug and want to work up to DIY hydraulics.

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Fridge Alarm Speaks, And Saves Power & Food

November 4, 2017 by 21 Comments

One of the most power-hungry devices in our homes, besides the air conditioner or heater, is our refrigerator and freezer. It’s especially so if the door doesn’t close all the way or the magnetic seal doesn’t seat properly. [Javier] took to solving a recurring problem with his personal fridge by attaching an alarm to the door to make sure that it doesn’t consume any more power than it absolutely needs.

At its core the device is straightforward. A micro switch powers a small microcontroller only when the door is open. If the door is open for too long, the microcontroller swings into action. The device then powers up a small wireless card (which looks like a variant of the very well-documented ESP module), that communicates with his microwave of all things, which in turn alerts him with an audible, spoken alarm that the refrigerator hasn’t closed all the way. It’s all powered with a battery that will eventually need to be recharged.

While there are certainly easier ways to implement an alarm, the use of the spoken alarm is a nice touch for this project, and the power savings that can be realized are not insignificant. There’s also the added benefit that [Javier] can prevent his freezer from frosting over. If you’re in the mood for other great fridge hacks, there are other exciting, novel, and surely one-of-a-kind ways to trick out your refrigerator.

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