My sister is a beekeeper, or maybe a meta-beekeper. She ends up making more money by breeding and selling new queen bees to other beekeepers than she does by selling honey, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t also process the sweet stuff from time to time. She got a free steam-heated oscillating hot knife, used for cutting the waxy caps off of the tops of the cells before spinning the combs down to extract honey, and she thought it might be easier to use than her trusty hand-held electric hot knife.
The oscillating knife, which was built something like a century ago, hadn’t been used in decades. All of the grease had turned to glue, and the large v-belt wheel that made it go was hard to turn by hand, and the motor was missing anyway. So she gave it to my father and me as a project. How could we resist?
We found the original manual on the Internet, which said that it would run from any 1/2 hp motor, or could be optionally driven by a takeoff wheel from a tractor – unfortunately not an option in my sister’s honey house. But we did find a 3/4 hp bench grinder at Harbor Freight that conveniently fit inside the case, and bought the smallest v-belt pulley wheel that would fit the grinder’s arbor. We thought we were geniuses, but when we hooked it all up, it just stalled.
We spent more than a few hours taking the mechanism apart. It was basically an eccentric shaft with a bearing on the end, and the bearing ran back and forth in the groove of a sliding mechanism that the knife blade attached to. As mentioned above, everything was gunked, so we took it all apart. The bearing was seized, so we freed that up by getting the sand out of the balls. The bearing couldn’t move freely in the slide either, but we filed that down until it just moved freely without noticeable play. We added grease from this century, and reassembled it. It turned fine by hand.
But with the belt and motor attached, the mechanism still had just enough friction to stall out the motor. Of course we wrapped some rope around the shaft and pull-started it, and it made a hell of a racket, nearly vibrated itself off the table, and we could see that the marvelous zinc-coated frame that held it all together was racking under the tension. It would require a wholly new housing to be viable, and we hadn’t even figured out a source of steam to heat the knife.
In short, it was more trouble than it was worth. So we packed up the bench grinder in the original container, and returned it no-worse-for-wear to the Freight. But frankly, we had a fantastic time playing around with a noble machine from a long-gone past. We got it “working” even if that state was unworkable, and we were only out the cost of the small v-belt pulley. Who says all of your projects have to be a success to be fun?
Bench Grinders are notoriously low torque (but high speed) motors.
Just about any other motor would do the trick. Try one of those online electrical surplus places, they have a zillion motors of all specs.
I now have two employees, to my continuing surprise, and one of my favourite expressions is “that was a good idea that doesn’t work”. I use it a lot.
It’s a modification of the Thomas Edison phrase “I haven’t failed, I know 5000 ways that don’t work”. (Probably apocryphal, or at least amplified, but that doesn’t matter: it’s a good story.)
My problem isn’t finding new projects, it’s deciding to spend the time writing them up and posting them for others to see. I make use of the written/posted work of lots of other people, but just can’t be eff’ed to spend the time. Even though Hackaday.io is relatively easy to use, it’s still a lot of work to take pictures and write descriptions, this and I don’t find writing descriptions all that hard.
At this late stage in my life I’m actually losing interest in doing lots of things. Writing things up on IO isn’t super interesting, nor are most of the actual projects I do. Everything is a project, and I’ve discovered that most goals are projects and even getting the tools and mechanisms for achieving a goal are themselves projects, and each one requires learning lots of new things.
My current example: rebuilding a fireplace chimney with a shelf to hold a computer that sends video to the TV (these already exist). The computer will be hard to access, so I’d like a way to turn it on remotely, I can get a bluetooth remote camera shutter switch on eBay and a bluetooth relay to goose the computer power switch connection on the motherboard – all well and fine.
(Of note: That’s one of about 10 currently ongoing projects for me, that I sick my employees on.)
The relay comes with an obscure micro that isn’t an ESP series, uses a bluetooth password (published), and I can get the remote switch to communicate with my desktop, but how do I get it to connect to the relay? Also, the relay is cheap Chinese and probably part of a botnet, I’d like to either reflash it or reprogram it.
Lots and lots of nested projects here: learning a new microcontroller architecture, wiring up a new reflash interface for my computer, learning the manufacturer dev system, learning how bluetooth works… lots and lots of “learning new stuff” projects and work.
Nowadays I find everything works that way, and I’ve also noticed that lots and lots of people simply give up instead of learning new things. I know how to rebuild a small engine carburetor, my chainsaw was free on craigslist. I know how to replace a CMOS battery, my Journo was cheap on eBay with no returns, I know how to replace a battery, I have a reasonably good cell phone I got free from the dump (box for phone E-waste).
For me, the fun isn’t learning to do new things, not any more. My fun comes from doing something as a group, with other people.
Speaking of which, mooltipass was a group effort by people here on Hackaday. Howcome we never get collaborative projects like that, where people can get together to contribute and make something interesting and worthwhile?
I’ve never understood why there aren’t several groups of people, using HAD as a base for communication and coordination, each making something valuable and interesting. With open admission.
i really enjoyed reading your comment. this line sent me over the edge, “I know how to replace a battery, I have a reasonably good cell phone I got free from the dump (box for phone E-waste).” i have never gone phone shopping at the e-waste box before and now it’s like “why didn’t i think of that?!”
your Thomas Edison quote also triggered a memory…i’m having trouble exactly placing it but i think it was at university, i came to report my day’s progress and my professor-mentor said “well now you know two ways that don’t work” and something about how he said it always struck me as odd. now i know even though he was in academia he was failing to cite his sources (he didn’t mention Edison). for shame! :)
fwiw i have had kids long enough to adapt to their presence (i.e., long enough that i can tell they’re about to leave and i will be again maladapted to freedom) and my personal feeling about projects is they fade into the background of chores — dishes, laundry, plumbing, roof, embedded development, android apps, practice piano, it all blurs together and i’d like to have nothing to do for a few months. it is very sad for me. “buy the ticket, take the ride”, they say.
“why didn’t i think of that” – In my (EU) country all the content of a waste box is property of the firm holding it, sold by weight exclusively to waste firms, so it is illegal getting something from there or for the personnel to allow something like this. Then everything gets pulverized for metals separation, the whole being heavily subsidized by the state as “circular economy”.
yeah but off the top of my head i already know of a box with poor physical security :)
You already need to get a (presumably) HDMI signal to the TV. You can run 2 wires (or just 1 if you don’t mind using the HDMI as a ground), along with it for a manual switch.
For remote purposes I presume you could use WakeOnLAN, for which many apps exist.
Although letting it wake from an HID device like a Mouse/Keyboard might be fine too.
So in conclusion, you might be making this Bluetooth thing just for the fun of it, as all of the use cases for your bluetooth switch are solved with lateral thinking by pre-existing features, and/or made superfluous with a single additional wire.
I have a PC behind my TV and it wakes from standby using a standard wireless Logitech mouse just fine.
Don’t let me stop you from rabbit holes. But note there are rolling code RF remotes with 2 keychain controllers and 2 internal relays available for a pittance. They have 4 buttons and can e configured for latching operation. So you could control a lot more than just the PC. Like kill the whole power strip with TV and PC for low standby power.
I also have disparate projects going on, one being my car, which is also a classic.
In that case I write things up and publish, to help others with the same make of car, which in turn (added to the corpus of advice) makes them easier/cheaper to maintain and maybe raise the secondhand values? So long-term, maybe I gain from it.
|Thanks for reminding me though, my dead chainsaw project (also a carb service) needs resurrecting, as it’s nearing wood season again.
“The bearing was seized, so we freed that up by getting the sand out of the balls. ”
Was that a quote by a young Anakin Skywalker?
B^)
wow. this the first post on hackaday without a video, link or image. how refreshing. keep up the good work.
I’d have liked at least one image, just to see what it looks like.
Yeah! We were too involved / greasy to take pictures, but once I thought about writing it up, I regretted that fact.
Refreshing? It would have been nice to see the machinery in question.
I would also love to see a picture of the century old oscillating steam-heated hot knife that can use PTO (power take off) output from a tractor.
Please?
Where do you get 1/2 a horse?
French supermarkets? :P
Google Miniature Horse.
It’s really not that hard to find half of a horse. There is, however, a very strong tendency for horse halves to come in sets of two.
From a steam powered knife accident?
Raising queens is legit beekeeping, honey harvests or not. Depending on who you talk to, it’s advanced beekeeping.
–beekeeper and HaD reader:)
It’s absolutely advanced beekeeping. And also advanced customer relations, to keep them from screwing up the hives once she sells them the queens.