Author: Maya Posch

1401 Articles

Safer And More Consistent Woodworking With A Power Feeder

February 12, 2025 by 24 Comments

Woodworking tools like table- and bandsaws are extremely useful and versatile, but they generally have the distinct disadvantage that they make no distinction between the wood and the digits of the person using the machine. While solutions like SawStop were developed to make table saws sense flesh and try to not cut it, [James Hamilton] makes a compelling argument in a recent video for the use of power feeders.

These devices are placed above the table and feed the material into the machine without having to get one’s digits anywhere near the machine. Other than the safety aspect, it also means that the material is always fed in at a consistent speed, which is great when using it with a router table. Most of these power feeders are portable, so a single unit can be moved from the table saw to the router table, with [James] showing how he is using MagSwitch magnetic clamps to ease the process of moving between machines.

With the 1/8 HP mini power feeder that he’s using, the 4 magnetic clamps appear to be enough even when cutting hardwood on the table saw, but it’s important to make sure the power feeder doesn’t twist while running, for obvious safety reasons. On [James]’s wish list is a way to make moving the power feeder around more efficient, because he only has a single one, for cost reasons.

Although these power feeders cost upwards of $1,000, the benefits are obvious, including when running larger jobs. One might conceivably also DIY a solution, as they appear to be basically an AC motor driving a set of wheels that grip the material while feeding. That said, do you use a power feeder, a SawStop table saw or something else while woodworking?

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Plastic On The Mind: Assessing The Risks From Micro- And Nanoplastics

February 12, 2025 by 49 Comments

Perhaps one of the clearest indications of the Anthropocene may be the presence of plastic. Starting with the commercialization of Bakelite in 1907 by Leo Baekeland, plastics have taken the world by storm. Courtesy of being easy to mold into any imaginable shape along with a wide range of properties that depend on the exact polymer used, it’s hard to imagine modern-day society without plastics.

Yet as the saying goes, there never is a free lunch. In the case of plastics it would appear that the exact same properties that make them so desirable also risk them becoming a hazard to not just our environment, but also to ourselves. With plastics degrading mostly into ever smaller pieces once released into the environment, they eventually become small enough to hitch a ride from our food into our bloodstream and from there into our organs, including our brain as evidenced by a recent study.

Multiple studies have indicated that this bioaccumulation of plastics might be harmful, raising the question about how to mitigate and prevent both the ingestion of microplastics as well as producing them in the first place.

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Improving Aluminium-Ion Batteries With Aluminium-Fluoride Salt

February 11, 2025 by 43 Comments

There are many rechargeable battery chemistries, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Currently lithium-ion and similar (e.g. Li-Po) rule the roost due to their high energy density at least acceptable number of recharge cycles, but aluminium-ion (Al-ion) may become a more viable competitor after a recently published paper by Chinese researchers claims to have overcome some of the biggest hurdles. In the paper as published in ACS Central Science by [Ke Guo] et al. the use of solid-state electrolyte, a charge cycle endurance beating LiFePO4 (LFP) and excellent recyclability are claimed.

It’s been known for a while that theoretically Al-ion batteries can be superior to Li-ion in terms of energy density, but the difficulty lies in the electrolyte, including its interface with the electrodes. The newly developed electrolyte (F-SSAF) uses aluminium-fluoride (AlF3) to provide a reliable interface between the aluminium and carbon electrodes, with the prototype cell demonstrating 10,000 cycles with very little cell degradation. Here the AlF3 provides the framework for the EMIC-AlCl3 electrolyte. FEC (fluoroethylene carbonate) is introduced to resolve electrolyte-electrode interface issues.

A recovery of >80% of the AlF3 during a recycling phase is also claimed, which for a prototype seems to be a good start. Of course, as the authors note in their conclusion, other frameworks than AlF3 are still to be investigated, but this study brings Al-ion batteries a little bit closer to that ever-elusive step of commercialization and dislodging Li-ion.

The Science Behind Making Buildings Comfortably Non-Combustible

February 11, 2025 by 33 Comments

Although the most fire-resistant building is likely a windowless, concrete bunker, this tends to be not the vibe that most home owners go for. This is why over the years construction of buildings in areas prone to bush- and wildfires – i.e. an uncontrolled fire in an area with combustible vegetation – has adapted to find a happy medium between a building that you’d enjoy living in and a building that will not instantly combust the moment an ember from a nearby wildfire gently touches down upon any part of it.

To achieve this feat, the primary means include keeping said combustible vegetation and similar away from the building, and to make the house as resistant to ember attacks as possible. That this approach is effective has been demonstrated over the course of multiple wildfires in California during the past years, whereby houses constructed more recently with these features had a much higher chance of making it through the event unscathed.

Naturally, the devil is in the details, which is why for example the Australian standard for construction in bushfire-prone areas (AS 3959, last updated in 2018, 2009 version PDF) is rather extensive and heavy on details, including multiple Bushfire Attack Level (BAL) ratings that define risk areas and legally required mitigation measures. So what does it take exactly to survive a firestorm bearing down on your abode?

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Upgrading RAM On A Honda Infotainment System

February 10, 2025 by 5 Comments

Car infotainment systems somehow have become a staple in today’s automobiles, yet when it comes down to it they have all the elegance of a locked-down Android tablet. In the case of the Honda infotainment system that [dosdude1] got from a friend’s 2016/2017-era Honda Accord, it pretty much is just that. Powered by a dual-core Cortex-A15 SoC, it features a blazin’ 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB of storage and runs Android 4.2.2. It’s also well-known for crashing a lot, which is speculated to be caused by Out-of-RAM events, which is what the RAM upgrade is supposed to test.

After tearing down the unit and extracting the main board with the (Renesas) SoC and RAM, the SoC was identified as being an automotive part dating back to 2012. The 1 GB of RAM was split across two Micron-branded packages, leaving one of the memory channels on the SoC unused and not broken out. This left removing the original RAM chips to check what options the existing pads provided, specifically potential support for twin-die chips, but also address line 15 (A15). Unfortunately only the A15 line turned out to be connected.

This left double capacity (1 GB) chips as the sole option, meaning a total of 2 GB of RAM. After installation the infotainment system booted up, but only showed 1 GB installed. Cue hunting down the right RAM config bootstrap resistor, updating the boot flags and updating the firmware to work around the LINEOWarp hibernation image that retained the 1 GB configuration. Ultimately the upgrade seems to work, but until the unit is reinstalled in the car and tested it’s hard to say whether it fixes the stability issues.

Thanks to [Dylan] for the tip.

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Your Favorite Basic Oscilloscope Operation Guide?

February 8, 2025 by 9 Comments

Like many pieces of lab equipment, oscilloscopes are both extremely useful and rather intimidating to a fledgling user. Unlike a digital multimeter with its point-and-measure functionality, digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs) require fundamental knowledge before they can be used properly. Yet at the same time nobody likes reading manuals, so what is one to do? Try the Absolute Beginner’s Guide to DSOs  by [Arthur Pini]

[Pini’s] Cliff’s Notes version of your scope’s manual isn’t half bad. It covers the basic user interface and usage of a (stand-alone) DSO. Unfortunately, it focuses a bit too much on a fancy touch-screen Teledyne LeCroy MSO rather than something the average hobbyist is likely to have lying around.

We rather like the PSA-type videos such as the classic ‘“How not to blow up your oscilloscope” video by [Dave] over at EEVBlog. Many guides and introductions cover “what to do,” but covering common safety issues like improper grounding, isolation, or voltages might be a better place to start.

What tutorial or reference work would you hand to an oscilloscope newbie? We can endorse a hands-on approach with a suitable test board. We also enjoyed [Alan’s] video on the topic. Even if you are an old hand, do you know how to use all those strange trigger modes?

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Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?

February 8, 2025 by 99 Comments

The MP3 file format was always encumbered with patents, but as of 2017, the last patent finally expired. Although the format became synonymous with the digital music revolution that started in the late 90s, as an audio compression format there is an argument to be made that it has long since been superseded by better formats and other changes. [Ibrahim Diallo] makes that very argument in a recent blog post. In a world with super fast Internet speeds and the abstracting away of music formats behind streaming services, few people still care about MP3.

The last patents for the MP3 format expired in 2012 in the EU and  2017 in the US, ending many years of incessant legal sniping. For those of us learning of the wonders of MP3 back around ’98 through services like Napster or Limewire, MP3s meant downloading music on 56k dialup in a matter of minutes to hours rather than days to weeks with WAV, and with generally better quality than Microsoft’s WMA format at lower bitrates. When portable media players came onto the scene, they were called ‘MP3 players’, a name that stuck around.

But is MP3 really obsolete and best forgotten in the dustbin of history at this point? Would anyone care if computers dropped support  for MP3 tomorrow?

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