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Apr. 25th, 2020 03:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyMy workbench toolbox was getting full so I got a riser for it. It's an intermediate tool chest, with drawers, and it's designed for another tool chest to sit on top. I should probably get another one for the toolbox in the garage as that's already full too. One of the driving factors was my expanding tap collection. It starts off as one, then two, then I need another for something, then next thing I know I have a full line. Mostly metric.
I also have gage blocks which are precision size references. They can also do a magical thing called wringing, where their sides are so smooth that they can be stuck together without adhesive or magnetism. Useful for chaining them together to make a reference for a dimension not available in an existing size but in a needed size.
I took a big thick chunk of aluminum, and have been using that to get some practice on using Helicoils (thread inserts), and then seeing what I could get away with in terms of how much torque it could take. For example, a bolt with an M6 thread can take 15 ft-lbs easily but 20 will make the head shear off. M6 is a relatively small size so it doesn't take much. That said, I also learned that there's a minimum amount of thread needed when putting steel fasteners in aluminum. Not enough thread, and the bolt will just churn the threads. Sometimes destructive learning in a controlled environment is some of the best learning. As opposed to learning the hard way on a complex/expensive/important part such as an engine block.
Wiha Tools recently had a 50% off sale to celebrate 50k followers on Instagram, and to keep the place open for their employees. I don't have an Instagram account but I certainly took advantage of the sale on precision German tools, one of them being a torque wrench that reads in the low end of Newton Meters, which is how the torque specs are written for my cars. I bought that with a purpose in mind. The sale was so successful for them that it's taking them a week to catch up on the orders. Great savings requires great patience, I guess.
Another year of having someone mow my lawn for me. I look at it this way: It takes me an hour to mow it with a push-mower and I only really have the weekends to do that, while it takes the lawn service maybe 10 minutes and they can do it any day of the week. If I go to work and put in an hour of overtime each week instead of mowing my lawn, I'm coming out ahead. I keep saying someday I'll get my own lawn tractor which would reduce the mowing time. Or I could just keep being lazy and keep my weekends for other uses.
One of my USB flash drives died in an unusual manner. The ones that have died on me before went suddenly and completely so I guess my only complaint is that it lasted only 5 months. This one would no longer take write cycles. I could still read from it, so I immediately copied everything onto another stick. I'm not sending it back for warranty replacement because I'd rather eat the $20 than let that still-readable data get out of my reach. Normally I would just roll down to MicroCenter and snag one but times being what they are, I actually have to plan my trips now. Oh wait, I have extras of these things anyway.
Robot Girls Z is a very silly anime. So is the Z+ anime. RG-NEO, well I'm not sure what they were trying to do.
I also have gage blocks which are precision size references. They can also do a magical thing called wringing, where their sides are so smooth that they can be stuck together without adhesive or magnetism. Useful for chaining them together to make a reference for a dimension not available in an existing size but in a needed size.
I took a big thick chunk of aluminum, and have been using that to get some practice on using Helicoils (thread inserts), and then seeing what I could get away with in terms of how much torque it could take. For example, a bolt with an M6 thread can take 15 ft-lbs easily but 20 will make the head shear off. M6 is a relatively small size so it doesn't take much. That said, I also learned that there's a minimum amount of thread needed when putting steel fasteners in aluminum. Not enough thread, and the bolt will just churn the threads. Sometimes destructive learning in a controlled environment is some of the best learning. As opposed to learning the hard way on a complex/expensive/important part such as an engine block.
Wiha Tools recently had a 50% off sale to celebrate 50k followers on Instagram, and to keep the place open for their employees. I don't have an Instagram account but I certainly took advantage of the sale on precision German tools, one of them being a torque wrench that reads in the low end of Newton Meters, which is how the torque specs are written for my cars. I bought that with a purpose in mind. The sale was so successful for them that it's taking them a week to catch up on the orders. Great savings requires great patience, I guess.
Another year of having someone mow my lawn for me. I look at it this way: It takes me an hour to mow it with a push-mower and I only really have the weekends to do that, while it takes the lawn service maybe 10 minutes and they can do it any day of the week. If I go to work and put in an hour of overtime each week instead of mowing my lawn, I'm coming out ahead. I keep saying someday I'll get my own lawn tractor which would reduce the mowing time. Or I could just keep being lazy and keep my weekends for other uses.
One of my USB flash drives died in an unusual manner. The ones that have died on me before went suddenly and completely so I guess my only complaint is that it lasted only 5 months. This one would no longer take write cycles. I could still read from it, so I immediately copied everything onto another stick. I'm not sending it back for warranty replacement because I'd rather eat the $20 than let that still-readable data get out of my reach. Normally I would just roll down to MicroCenter and snag one but times being what they are, I actually have to plan my trips now. Oh wait, I have extras of these things anyway.
Robot Girls Z is a very silly anime. So is the Z+ anime. RG-NEO, well I'm not sure what they were trying to do.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 01:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-27 05:44 am (UTC)So far I've been lucky in that a mitigating factor has been that automotive use is more forgiving of debris than the semiconductor industry.