Not my weekend!

I guess it's just not my weekend for welding! I woke with another fever and struggled to walk 3 loads of lightweight things 100 yards from one trailer to another. That exhausted me!

After a suitable rest to recover, and having completed my electrics yesterday, I fancied a spot of welding. Thus I cleared a spot outside of leaves and laid two pieces of steel tubing ready to do some practice welding.

Then I unpacked the welding box. I'd expected perhaps some gloves and a mask of some sort. Nothing of the kind! There was a paltry instruction manual that didn't explain what one of the strangely shaped pieces of plastic included was for. Nor did it explain the lower of the high-low settings on the welder.

Included was an eye protector for somebody with a single eye - perhaps some kind of cyclops? It certainly wasn't in any way adequate for anything I could envisage!

So, it looks like another trip to the store for proper protective equipment. I'm estimating probably another $100 there. By the time I can use the welder I'm estimating I'll have spent $250. It's almost looking cheaper to have paid somebody else to do the damn welding! Of course there would have been little to no satisfaction in that.

Still, I'm in this now so I have to finish. I'm going to have to teach myself welding. That might be a very useful skill to have!

Meanwhile, my eBay multimeter is giving strange readings. Yesterday it was giving me strange resistance readings on unconnected wires. Today it couldn't make its mind up whether my 12v solar panel was giving me 0.00v or 16.5v. It's really all rather frustrating.

Speaking of eBay, I had a communication from the seller of the heatsinks ordered from China: Thanks for your waiting, Please don't worry, everything will be fine.

This is confirm that we shipped out your item immediately on Nov 8th. As it is economy shipping way, free shipping, so there is no tracking number. The number: 33343918782 that you received is just a package bar code for us record, it cannot be tracked to be frank, but our shipping agent can locate the package position by using their interior tracking system, we can offer tracking number for each item price over $32 only , hopefully get your understanding,

According to our shipping experience, it normally takes 25 to 30 working days to arrive (weekends are not included, about 35 days).Sincerely hope you could wait for it another 2 weeks. Your understanding and patience will be highly appreciated. It should arrive soon.

if you have any issues, please let me know, i will be always here at your service.

Thanks for your waiting and have a nice day.
Regards,
Anne. Clearly the seller's name is not Anne as their English is too poor. They're also talking nonsense because just about every other seller provides a functioning tracking number. It's also inconceivable that the heatsinks take longer to arrive than the 10 days everything else takes. I smell fish!

All I want to do is to work on my bus! Is that too much to ask?

Danger, danger danger!

This is why air conditioner engineers make extremely bad electricians! Look at the bare wire to the right. It looks like an earth wire but its connected to the right side neutral bus. Interestingly the live and neutral wires going to the air conditioner unit are both live. It looks like the cheapass that installed the air conditioning unit used 3 wire cable instead of 4 wire, running the two live lines through the live and neutral wires and the neutral through the non insulated earth wire. The result is shocking wiring. I am informed that the incompetents that installed this may well have been a South Carolina firm called Kabiner or something similar. I am apparently the first person in 5 years to open that breaker box! Let's just say I'm very glad I inspected, used a voltmeter and rubber gloves. Thus kind of horrendously dangerous electrical workmanship is far too common in South Carolina!

I still have to cover my conduit with soil but my 30A socket works. It's all correctly wired and working. Sadly, I couldn't bury my cables due to the fact nobody else has which would make putting a shovel in the ground somewhat hazardous. Dish Network for example, laid cable that looks like stitching with alternating above ground and slightly buried cable. The old phone conduit is largely underground but above ground in other places. There are various loops of cable of various types poking out of the ground, hence my decision to lay my conduit on the surface and cover it over. It is most definitely not the recommended solution but the only alternative would have been an aerial cable which would have had to be armored against squirrels.

The end result was a working socket. I tested it with a TT30 to 10-15 adaptor and a fan. Tomorrow, the big test when I plug my welder in. For now though, the electric cable that has been running under m'ladys front door for the past few months is now gone.

I'd been stressing over doing the wiring because I had to look everything up. Normally, I go by what was done before but what had been done before was so horrendously dangerous, it couldn't be used as a guide. As I said, normally I'd bury the conduit but what with it being a low to no traffic area being in a nook by the end of m'ladys trailer, I'm not afraid of foot traffic over the cables.

I braved the Black Friday hoard!

Well, not really. I didn't leave the house until 4pm. By the time I arrived at Lowe's (hiss, spit), the car parks were pretty clear and the roads about as busy or quiet as normal. It was pretty mundane in actual fact.

In Lowe's I found the Nema TT 30R that I was looking for. I looked for an adaptor to turn it into a standard household socket but they didn't have one. I would have left it at that but I spied a stand with 60W equivalent LED bulbs for 99 cents each. As bulbs are dying in m'lady's bathroom, I added four and then a flashing LED necklace to spice things up a bit at work over Christmas. I got out for $16.

Next stop was Walmart where I got the Nema 30TTR to Nema 5-15 adaptor and a can on black spray paint they had for 96 cents. I got out of Walmart for about $8.

Returning home, the mail still has not brought my cooling vanes for my Peltier cooler. This looks a bit suspicious! I ordered it on November 8th and the seller provided a tracking number that doesn't state the vanes actually arrived at the carrier. I'm suspecting they're hoping I won't notice they haven't supplied the product.

Tomorrow I hope to complete the wiring for my RV power socket. The adaptor I bought says "don't use for more than 15A" yet looks to be solid brass connectors. I'm putting 20A through it and will just watch to see what happens. I suspect they labelled it conservatively. Worst case scenario, it melts and catches fire. Not a big deal, where its located.

Maybe Sunday I can do some welding!

As far as the heatsink is concerned, I suspect I'll have to buy another elsewhere and try to get a refund off eBay!

The best laid plans of small marsupials and of homo horizontalis!

I must have been laying down on the job. The idiot at Lowe's sold me a Nema 10-50R when I needed a Nema 30-TTR socket. After battling all day to lay cables, I can't put the socket in place. Without the socket in place, I can't wire the breaker box. Without the wiring completed I can't do any welding.

Tomorrow I might have to venture out in the Black Friday melee to get a socket. Perhaps visiting the mobile home parts store nearby might be in order. Otherwise, its available "cheaply" online at $15 or in my nearby * hiss, spit* Lowe's for $8.

In more positive news I did discover the spare brushes for my angle grinder. I'll have to see if that solves the problem.

Laying the cables needed two people and the conduit isn't even buried yet! The big problem was sliding the 30A cable through 10 foot lengths of conduit. It ends up needing a thin wire passed through, pulling the thicker wire. Even with that, it needed copious quantities of WD-40 to make it possible.

By the end of this weekend, I want to be welding. Heaven knows whether I will be though. Everything this last two months has been characterized by unforeseen delays. Maybe by the 3rd coming of Christ, I might be ready!

Frustrations

Today started with my laying conduit on the ground from the outside breaker box to where I was going to have my plugin. Then I was going to erect a stake for the socket. The plan was to have the electrics completely done today but as with plans, little was actually accomplished.

The blower swiftly removed fallen leaves and the conduit was layed over the ground. The next stage will be to insert the cable and bury the conduit. I can certainly do better than the Dish Network people that didn't bother burying their cables. An ants nest was revealed and the scurrying ants blown away too.

When it came to cutting a point on the metal stake intended for use with the outside socket, I hit my first big problem of the day. My angle grinder stopped working. After some tinkering, I gave up on it as a lost cause and zoomed off to buy a new one. They're cheap enough at Harbor Freight for $15.

After returning home with my new angle grinder, I proudly plugged it in and it didn't work. Nothing I did could make it work. Putting it away and cursing Harbor Freight, I pulled out a hacksaw and completed the task. Then I drove the stake into the ground.

By then, the light was beginning to fail but I took another look at the angle grinder and found how to dismantle it properly. It seems one of the carbon brushes on the motor had broken. Looking around as I recall there had been spares, I found some that didn't fit.

Clearly either I found spare brushes for another device or Harbor Freight put the wrong brushes in the box. This is rather disappointing and frustrating!

As tomorrow is a party day, nothing will be done. Friday being shop til you drop day, should be good. Everybody will be out on the roads hunting non existent bargains. A good time not to go to Harbor Freight!

Even without an angle grinder, I can complete my wiring in order to run my welder. I fully intend to be welding by Sunday night!

In other news, the Peltier cooler arrived. The glue that fixes it to cooling vanes arrived a few days ago as did the solar panel to power it. I'm still waiting for the cooling vanes.

I've ordered a long permanent magnet to use with a home made coil for my door opening device. Failing that I did see a likely looking solenoid but I'd rather try building something myself first rather than going to a last resort of buying somebody else's junk.

This bus project is taking longer than anticipated. Were I starting again, I would definitely take a different route. Meanwhile I'll have another hunt for the right carbon brushes. Harbor Freight surely can't have been dumb enough to supply the wrong brushes?

Mechanics Magazine 1853

In my quest to build a latch opener for my bus I had a brainwave and consulted Mechanics Magazine from 1853. Yes - a publication I downloaded as a free eBook. On page 52 was an article about an oscillating telegraph arm that used two magnetic coils and two permanent bar magnets.

The original telegraph machinery was largely constructed from brass. In my case, it'll be aluminum as I have quite a surplus of aluminum. Indeed, perhaps the permanent magnets I bought the other day sliding inside a plastic tube around which is a coil I could wind would be the solution.

I don't anticipate the plastic tube having an eternal life but tube and wire are cheap. I'd also estimate the tube lasting at least a few months until it could be replaced with copper or brass. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Today was another day of zero progress. Aside from stepping outside to check m'ladies chickens for eggs, that was the extent of my exertions. My virus had taken over. It's like a very light version of flu (I'm glad I had the flu vaccine). I'm getting tired of being ill at weekends and not being able to work toward completing my bus project.

How depressing!

Two identical electromagnets refused to repel each other. Today I wound an electromagnet all of my own. I put about 5 layers of coils on a bolt then put power through it. The result was that it picked up bolts easily.

Next I put a bar magnet on the end. Power was applied and nothing happened. As there was a spark when I connected the wires to the batteries, it was not lack of power. Clearly I had to reverse the polarity. Thus, the polarity was reversed and a spark proved there was a circuit. The bar magnet didn't budge!

That was rather odd. I have no idea why nothing is working. The identical magnets should have repelled each other. I tried a permanent magnet on the bought electromagnet with the same lack of effect. Next I tried a bought electromagnet on my homemade electromagnet and the same thing happened or rather didn't happen.

Now I'm rather depressed. I just don't know why what would appear to be fairly standard physics aren't working. Either there's a factor I'm missing or physics laws don't apply any more; possibly this is an indicator of the end tymes.

The only other thing to try is a bar magnet and a simple coil - if that doesn't work then I'll be totally stumped!