It sort of reminds me of a planetary gear set in an automatic transmission, but it is different. I'm trying to remember where I've seen something like this in operation. It'll probably come to me tonight right before I go to sleep, and then it will keep me awake thinking about it.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
So, I was given one of these for Christmas:
A cheap imitation one, which is actually more fun to play with. But anyway...
I began the same way I would have if I was six... Ran the batteries dry messing with it. Its weird -- what kind of tricolor LED only does red, yellow, green, and white? Why is every third color a shade of white? Software bug? When it broke completely, I also did what I would have done when I was six: Took it the fuck apart.
The LEDs are tricolors, all right -- red, green, and white. Obviously a manufacturing error. The moon itself is still impressive, so I've been amusing myself reinventing the wheel, building new electronics and installing proper RGB's.
I've gotten the colors PWM-controlled fairly nicely now, the remote control is still fighting a little bit. It will look nice hanging next to my hideous clock.
We had our 3D printing demos Friday and tonight. They went pretty well. People are looking forward to being able to print at the library. I filmed this print to show at the beginning, and one of our other staffers edited it for me. I call the prints Joel and Caspar, for reasons that will become evident.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I didn't really have a space to work on it in, so I ended up having to work on it sitting on our old rotting deck, using hand tools, so it came out skewed in a couple of places and it's not pretty at all. It should be pretty habitable, though, I hope. I didn't totally like any of the plans I found, so I sort of winged it.
I ended up doing a two-chamber nursing colony sized house big enough for around 200 small bats, in hopes they make some batbies in there.
I used rough, untreated cedar fencing for the main part of the body, because cedar is ideal for those purposes, and the planks are cheap.
This ended up using five cedar planks, some pine furring, untreated plywood for the roof, and various scraps of wood I found in the garage. (Plus those fucking shims I used to plug in a gap along the side.)
So yeah, I didn't have a usable working space and the only power tool I used was a drill. I didn't want to use glue because I wasn't totally sure what was bat-safe, so everything is just screwed together, and I sealed up the back layer with 100% silicone caulk*. The outside is stained dark brown to absorb heat, and the inside is unfinished. I just gouged up the inside parts with a cheap screwdriver to give the bats something to hold onto.
This is the view of the inside from the top. I put the roof on hinges because sometimes wasps build nests in bat houses, and I figure this way, I can just lift up the roof and knock them out through the bottom. You can see my foot through the house in this picture. I am wearing sandals with socks.
I'm just going to use regular dark brown latex housepaint instead of that stain. It doesn't look like what I was hoping, and I'm just going to keep adding coats until it's opaque. You're also not supposed to use oil-based, so it's water based and heck only knows how that'll hold up in the weather.
I need a better workspace, and I am not going to cut the boards with a handsaw. I want to just lay out all the layers at once, align them, clamp them up, and then secure them all at once. It wasn't really an option this time, but it'd be much better and easier that way.
And I think I am going to pick up some rubber weatherstripping when we get the stuff to mount it, to seal up the roof at the hinges. The goal is to make a house with warmer and cooler spots so the bats can choose their environment. There is that vent strip and, of course, the open bottom for the lower part, so I'd like to seal up the top parts for warmth. That is supposedly where the babies tend to hang out if you get any. (That's also why the tops of the chambers are staggered and accessible--some bats, especially babies, can lose their grips and fall out if they have to move between chambers from the bottom.)
I am always going to continue to wear socks with sandals, though. I don't go out like that on account of rampant bigotry, but it is the best combination of footwear around the house.
PS we had a big hailstorm the other day, and have had rain and wind a few times since is why there's stuff everywhere.
* I also repaired a bad tear in an irreplaceable silicone oven mitt.
I suppose you have to site bat boxes where they get the right amount of sun and shade to suit the local climate? As the bats chose to live behind your shutters, are you going to put the new house in a similar location?
Yeah, they require something like 6-8 hours of sun a day. We're going to put it up between the two windows with the most popular shutters. There was one that was piled up almost halfway with guano, which we didn't even notice until we got the house painted.
There's an even better location on the south side of the house, but it's in an inaccessible area, so my plan is to see how this one works, and then next year, make any necessary modifications to the design and make another next year for that location. It'd be tough to do a test run in the ideal location because it's really high up and directly above a gated off pile of compost in a fenced off side yard, so we won't be able to keep as close an eye on that one or mess around with it if we need to make adjustments.
__________________
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
I am building O gauge barges (models for an O gauge train layout). They are about 21" long 6.5" wide and just over 1' high, waterline models. Once someone came by my table and asked if the waterline models of ships I had would float. I rapped the table and said "Yes, on very hard water". I am also building profile models of the same thing, just as long and high, but only 3/4" wide. this way the modeler can put them on a narrow shelf on the edge of the layout and simulate a string of barges in the background. I'll post photos as soon as I get some finished.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
My daughter has an entertainment center in our attic, that had a 34 x 30 inch space for a TV. but it was 50.5 inches high and the TV they wanted to use wouldn't fit. So I cut it down, and now it is just 25.5 inches high and the TV will sit on top of it.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
We have a place on the west side of the house that could easily hold a bat house under the eaves. So I'm thinking of building one too, because we live near a place that could use some more bat habitat (Chiwaukee Nature Preserve).
What have I been doing? Well, I made a four-tier herb ladder for the veggie garden. And I'm still in the process of screening in our deck so we can have some dinners out there without mosquitoes or other bugs. I'm working on a needlepoint wallet.
I made Scotch Eggs for breakfast this morning. Since I have never had them before I don't know if these came out right or not, but they were pretty good.
Apparently I did something right because they actually looked like this picture from Betty Crocker.
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
And I'm still in the process of screening in our deck so we can have some dinners out there without mosquitoes or other bugs.
I've built a few decks over the years, and I have always found that the higher the deck is off the ground the fewer bugs and mosquitoes. I had a picnic table on the ground and had lots of insects. Later I put the table on a deck that was off the ground and had fewer bugs.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
I wondered if it was possible to 3d print a 10:1 gearbox for a model helicopter. My first couple attempts were overblown shite and I won't show them. I threw them out and started over, resulting in this dangerously-sarcastic triple-eyeroll-of-doom:
Like my previous ideas, the gear is forced to wobble around the inside, and the teeth foce it to rotate. The three ball bearings fitting in the three holes are how useful work is extracted from the gear, to fit in a plate above it.
If someone raised the upload limit for gifs just 100KB more, I could post a passable-looking 32 color version of what gets stacked atop that gear, instead you get this:
...which after a lot of fine tuning actually works when printed. All the balls are 4.5mm airgun bb's.
I want you to know I use you as an example in every 3D printing demo we do when people ask me for practical uses.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
My son is coming this sat to trim or cut down a few more dead trees, so I had to make a drive clear, that a dead tree had fallen over, (it was one of the trees that he would have been cutting down).
Other than that I have been working to make more clear space in my attic, my daughter is moving, and I will be storing a lot more furniture for her.
__________________ The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about. Wayne Dyer
Re: The Make Something Every Week Contest
lisarea has forgotten where she is!
You can find my designs at 
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