StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I'm building a strip sander based on this machine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJQUTKG0ho

But I want to use a 2" or 50mm wide belt and run it with this fast little induction motor I got, with the right belts one can do a lot of things sharpening wise, even stropping. It'd be like one of those 2x72 grinders but on a smaller scale.

Made a small octagonal patio table:




Applied stain, I am not sure if this table wouldn't have looked nicer without it and just gone directly to spar varnish, but oh well I wanted it to fit in with the chairs better, still going to varnish it with Epifanes spar varnish, I'm diluting it 50/50 with mineral spirits to get a rub on finish rather than a brush one:

Nicely done! I particularly like the splines at the miter joints. Round-over router bit on the edges, I assume?

Also, I see you've got a rabbet, if not a full tongue, on the end of your bench. Is that for a breadboard end or are you going to attach a vise there at some point?

Kind of reminds me of the table set I got on my balcony atm.

Elheru Aran wrote:Nicely done! I particularly like the splines at the miter joints. Round-over router bit on the edges, I assume?

Also, I see you've got a rabbet, if not a full tongue, on the end of your bench. Is that for a breadboard end or are you going to attach a vise there at some point?

Thanks, yeah used a router for rounding over the edges. Recently upgraded to a Bosch GMF 1600 1/2 router (also 8mm and 12mm collets) so I got something better than my old lidl router.

The rabbet on the table, I meant to put a breadboard there but I think the bench will be too long if I do that, I want to cut it off and perhaps use the router to make a sliding dovetail instead and maybe fit a small tail vise.

Boys turned 2 this weekend, amongst other things they got a sandbox


Fun fact, that exact tyre is what I had for my sandbox when I was a kid, and the tyre was old then. I dunno how old it must be now, 40 or more years maybe. Repainted white and grey.

The best kind! (As long as you can keep the cats from crapping in there...)

I made a cover for that last weekend actually so that should be good now.

I made a small solar collector that I started on last friday. Started with the frame for the window, as I would size the rest of the collector after that:


Then the frame, surplus paneling from the house & garage build.


Insulation that was left over, I will add more in the back of the collector to insulate against the wall:


Assembled and mounted on the wall. I have painted the inside matte black. The outlet and inlet are in the lower left and upper right corners respectively. I've not installed a fan yet. I will take the air from the upper part and suck it below to achieve a better mixing of the air in the collector and shop. The fan is rated to be able to replace all the air in the shop around 3 times per hour. You want a high throughput of air, the goal is not make the solar collector as warm as possible.


The window frame is attached with hinges and locks, also added weather stripping to seal it up. I still need to seal up the frame against the wall too. There is a subframe with a mesh inside the collector that the air will pass through.

Got the electronics part mostly done last night, an old 230v -> 12v 1amp power supply and a cheap temperature controller, it was like 2 bucks shipped on ebay.



There are four connections from left to right, K0, K1, +12v and GND:

I've not done this before and I hooked it up incorrectly first. I thought the controller would supply 12v through the K0 and K1 connections but it is really just a switch that breaks or bridges a connection between K0 and K1 so I had to make a jumper wire between +12v and K0, then I could hook up the positive wire from the fan to K1 and it's negative wire to GND.

Next step is to install the pipes and also to seal up the vapor barrier. I haven't done that with the two regular vents but I think this since this will be much more active and also run a lot of warm air through it I should go the extra mile. Ideally I'll wrap the ducting in insulation to prevent condensation, might be worth doing since it's a rainscreen facade and there's an airgap that cold winter air will flow through and so go right over the pipe which will carry warm air from the collector.

Here's the mesh frame


Mounted on the inside

I have some ideas yet to improve it, introduce more turbulence in the air flow.

Fan installed on the inside:


I made a box for this filter I have so I wouldn't pull dusty air into the collector:


Filter box mounted around the intake:


Wiring's not my strong suit, good thing it's only 12VDC.

What it looks like now:

Resuming work on the Dust collector build:
Routing the top and bottom pieces for the impeller housing. Now I need to make a hole in the bottom that's the size of the impeller. This so I can remove the impeller housing from the motor & impeller later without much effort. I am copying Marius Hornbergers design in this (he's on youtube).

Best way to cut this is with a router compass. I don't have one, but I have a fence and removing the fence part from the shafts is easy and requires no tools, so I made another attachment to work as a router compass:


Then setting it correctly:


Turn out I didn't set it correctly and made the hole a few millimeters too small, I thought about various solutions to enlarge it a bit but the best one turned out to be using a spokeshave and a kind of clamping jig, worked real well. I also routed a rabbet in the hole and I will rout a corresponding one in the insert plate.


Next up is to make the insert plate in question and mount it to the motor.






I had to make a kind of complicated mounting arrangement here in order to get the back of the impeller housing far back enough that the impeller wouldn't rub against the housing. The router compass jig has been exceptionally useful on its first day and this will be useful in the future in all kinds of ways that I couldn't do with the bandsaw jig. Anyway now I can start working on the walls for the impeller housing, I plan to use 4mm plywood, I have some that is very bendy in one direction.

Assembling the housing last night, ran out of screws. Will have to pick it up today after work:




Pre-drilling every hole as not to split the plywood as well. I'm also unscrewing the screws a bit and trying to squeeze some wood glue in before screwing them back in. Still, going to have to run some kind of bead of sealant along the inner joins as well.

Also as for the solar collector, it's all I use to heat my shop with now and last night it increased the temperature from 11 to 15C in the shop while it was around 10C outside and almost freezing in night.

looking good!

Impressive work. I'm a little more unplugged than you so I don't need a dust collector, but I'll be watching that for the time I ever do get a table-saw or more production tools

Thanks, I got video this time:
https://youtu.be/JrW-fWd8g-Y

Is that a dust collector or a jet engine?

Well I guess you could set fire to the dust as it's ejected from the blower...

Where does the dust go?

When it's all done I will have ducting in the roof that goes to the machines, the blower will sit in another room and be remotely controlled. There will be a cyclonic dust separator placed before the blower that will separate 99% of dust and debris into a container, then a high quality filter before the air enters the blower, which will then return the filtered air through a vent in the wall to the shop.

Started designing the separator. It's always good to have a sketchup model to reference from. I made this 500mm in diameter (20") and I made it 400mm tall. It uses a 160mm inlet and outlet (6.3") so it's a bit more than 2x tall.

I made the baffle from 6.5mm plywood but I am not sure if it will be strong enough, perhaps one can stiffen it up with a cople of wooden boards from the underside.

The plan is it will be screwed onto the ring above it, and you can rotate the baffle to find the best position for it and screw it back in after adjusting.







The opening into the separator wall will be rectangular.

Nice Thien baffle - I gather you can adjust the inlet's angular position relative to the slot to minimise turbulence?

I haven't entirely decided on the inlet yet. I don't think it will be as large as the interior dimension of the round to square box I have there now, I think i will narrow it down a bit and add in a taper in the box. Not sure about angling it or not, if I can adjust the thien baffle it shouldn't be an issue i think. I am not sure if a spiral like in a bill pentz cyclone, would help or not.

Took a trip to the playground today.

Daniel leads the way:




It's not really far from our house:

They are just growing like weeds, aren't they! And your wife is so adorable

Yeah it's going fast, but slowing down all the same. But that's normal, they're below the average in charts but I've seen they aren't the smallest kids in their age group anymore. I just wish they'd hurry up from Tampere hospital, cold seasons already started and they're probably not getting surgeries until november. We really want the pollicization procedures done so they can get used to having thumbs while young.