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Random Rushing - I'm Back
 

I'm Back 

Found this a week ago or so. Think I might start up again. This looked like fun. Comment if anyone still reads this
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Damn rocks 

So we had a place in the back of your yard that is tree covered and we could not get grass to grow well. Wife decided that we should make a forestry garden setting in the back and plant low light plants and such. So starts the project for the summer...

I borrowed a tiller from my boss and tilled up the grass that was there, we then loaded in 4 yards of leaf compost and tilled that in. 6 yards of mulch.

We bought 20 pallet loads of sandstone off of this old guy named Huey who was into all things rock. His place had huge pieces of granite, limestone, sandstone and various other stuff. If you buy rock by the pallet at most places you are looking at about 125 a pop. We got the sandstone for 35 a pallet but I had to buy it all so I have a shit ton of rock. I also had to load and unload it all by hand, which took awhile. We used that for path borders. He also gave us this 3ftx10"x8" piece of limestone to use as a stone bench for the garden.

Wife got about half the plants from splitting plants we already had and another 1/4 from free craigslist listings, basically come dig it up and its yours. Found an add for free pea gravel on craigslist, which was load your own again, got 3 yards of that for the pathways. My little truck has been working hard this year. I put supersprings on my truck a few years ago and they work great.



Got a cheap wrought iron gate/fence from Lowes to keep the dogs from tearing everything up and as a nice demarcation line. Supposedly it rusts easily but if you add a good coat of paint on it before you put it out it lasts a long time.



Still have a lot of rock left so I am building pathways around the yard to various places. I rented a sod cutter, which worked great, cleared a path right out. Put the sod created on craigslist for free and someone came and took it about an hour later. Also giving some to a coworker to patch up his lawn.



Been a hard labor summer but it kept everything cheap and has come out well.


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Rain Water 

I have been meaning to write a blog on my rainwater catching and irrigation system and since I just finished some enhancements I thought now would be a good time.



I have a 55 gal drum to catch rainwater. It is not nearly enough but tanks are expensive and this was free. I use the Leaf Beater as a filter to keep the tubing/barrel from clogging. It a least filters the big stuff out. It seems to work well I clean it out of leaves and gumballs every so often. I then use Garden Watersaver to actually capture the rainwater and siphon into the barrel. The good thing about the watersaver is that it auto shuts off when the tank is full based on back pressure, the rainwater then continues down the gutter as normal.



For getting the water out I use a harbor freight Booster pump. This keeps the water a constant pressure so the heads work correctly. It as fittings for garden house connections and most importantly a check valve. When the pump pressurizes it shuts off at a preset limit if there is no check valve it sends all the water back into the barrel. The check valve prevents that.



A much finer filter and a pressure regulator so that the water pressure does not get above 30PSI. Micro irrigation heads are prone to clogging so you have to filter the water if you want it to work for any period of time. The pressure regulator protects the heads from getting blown off or injured by pressure surges. The system can also be hooked directly to city water via garden hose if the rain barrel is empty.



Finally the sprinkler heads. The first iteration had drip lines but the wife did not feel they were getting enough water so the micro sprinklers were installed and they work well. I get most of my micro irrigation stuff from http://www.dripworksusa.com/ although the heads pictured are from Lowes.

All in all it works great I just wish I had a 300 gal tank or so to get though longer droughts.
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Blender Part 2 

So for this years canoe trip I decided to remake the gas powered blender project so that it worked without the help of 3 people.



This is the finished project and I have to say that it worked awesome. I used all junk laying around the house/work to recreate because I am currently being cheap.



The switch is a kill for the engine which shorts the magneto. The ball valve is the a simple mechanical speed control. I extended the pull start outside the box for easy starting and added a vent hole in the side near the air intake so it could breath better. The strap holds down the blender jar and doubles as a carrying handle.



Nothing special here just the wiring and the motor mounting.

See it in Action, thanks to M1

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House Repair 

So I have been pretty busy at work lately and busy at home on the following crap. I noticed some rotting wood on a section of our house, basically the trim around a 2nd floor gutter spout. I also noticed that I was getting a crack in the drywall in that upstairs room. Well I finally got around to taking down the trim and this. is what I found. This happens to be a loading bearing beam for the second floor and roof, its 2 sandwiched 2x8s supported by a post on one end and a wall on the other with a span of about 16ft. I was concerned about doing this work myself because I was afraid of the house falling on my head. I braced the area with 4x4s and jacked up the end to help support the load then called in a construction company to fix the problem. After seeing what they did I could have done this myself, not saying I did not like the job they did just that it was nothing special. They said it was probably from some flashing failure so that tiny section of roofing was replaced and reflashed when fixed. .

After that costly repair I decided to check out some of the other areas of the house I had been ignoring. DON’T EVER BUY A HOUSE WITH MASONITE (type) SIDING. It sucks. Masonite is basically a compressed wood product that is used in sidings and rots like crazy. Anyways on the leeward sun side of our house the dormers were rotting. I pulled off all the old siding found that the under structure was intact (thank god) and replaced the siding with Hardie Board which is a concrete based siding which does not rot but blends in nicely to the existing crap board. The only problem with the hardieboard is that you have to pre drill the nail holes and the crazy dust when you cut it, but it was not too much of a hassle. I did 3 dormers here is pic of 1.

Next project was to replace the rotting trim on the front of the house, as the front has no gutters and it’s shady so the water does not dry quickly enough. So pulled off ¾ of the front trim, was bad enough that the 2x4 behind had taken some rot and pulled them off also. The rafters were in good shape, so I replaced all of the 2x4s with pressure treated and replaced the trim. A note, if you are replacing trim paint the front/back/sides/ends, this will help stop water from being absorbed into the wood. Most of the rooted areas were at the seams at the boards or the top of the board which was not painted. This pic is from the middle of the project.

Last project (for now) was at the rear of the house. My house has lots of roof to wall interactions, don’t know why but I hate it. These are the areas that let in water and cause problems. So I noticed some rotting siding under this area, I pulled off the trim and found a rotting rafter, a 1x1ft section of rotten plywood roofing. Great. I pulled off the shingles, cut out the rotted roof, sistered in a new rafter for about 1ft that needed it. I then replaced the plywood roofing, tarpapered the plywood, flashed a bunch of areas, shingled the roof and replaced the trim. I also replaced some of the siding underneath. I have never worked on roofs before so I was a little worried but we had some big rains the other day and it looks perfect. I don't have many pictures from this project but this one is after plywood, tarpaper and rafters installed.

Each one of these projects is a weekend, usually only a day. Only have one more thing to do which is to replace some boards on some posts we have on the front porch. Since we don’t have gutters on the front the splashing get on the posts and the shade causes no drying.

I am looking forward to doing some more interesting projects in the future.
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Wood 

So been a while since I BAB but I have not been doing a whole lot. Winter slows me down since both my garage and my workshop at work are unheated and it gets too cold. The wife also dislikes projects inside the house due to a non-linear building time frame that I employ (time itself stay linear but my use of it for building is not).
With Z0.3 (for the confused, Zoey 0 years 3 months) now in her own room I have been requested to build some furniture for her room. I am getting fairly good at my woodworking skills and am BAB to show you these skillz (sucka).

First off I was required to build a small bookshelf with odd dimensions since children’s books are the strangest sizes. The wife then painted and antiqued it to match the crib, pic. . All the edges are routered and a decorative router on the top piece. There are a couple of things I would do differently, I don’t like the way the back attaches the shelf, I should have oversized the top some on the rear to cover the backing and routed the sides so it inlaid better. The paint pretty much makes it unnoticeable, but I still know. My favorite part is the recessed pegs that are holding up the shelves which make it look like there is nothing holding them up. There is a matching shelf that hangs on the wall but I don’t have a picture.

Onward to the requested ToyBox, I decided to get a little fancier here. I tried to make the toybox in the same style as the dresser. This required 2” square supports and a recessed paneling on the sides and front. I glued 2 1x2 boards together with wood glue then planed and sanded them until they looked right. I used my router to put a 1/4“ grove in the supports to lay in some 1/4” wainscoting. I used glue and pegs to attach all the supports together so there are no nails or metal in the construction at all. All in all very pleased with the box, , inside. although still deciding if we want/need a lid.

Almost forgot, I used my new saw on all this a Bosch 4410L 10" dual bevel sliding miter saw . This saw is awesome, perfect cuts, smooth as silk, came with a free stand that extends the supports for long wood. Only issue is the dust collector is the worst I have ever seen.

PS

For those interested Z0.3 is progressing nicely, with the ability to roll currently we are hoping for a mobile Z very soon. Pictures updates are always available at PhotoBucket.


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Camera Rig 

This was a work project but I liked it a lot.

We take pictures of our plates for record of number and size of samples. I originally started with a cheap nikon L10, the pictures were decent but the auto focus would crap out sometimes and the auto white balance was not consistent, about 1/18 were bad.

I finally finished our new version which uses a canon rebel xt with the standard lens mounted to my custom rig. This is mounted under the table so the place where the plate goes is flush with the table. It is made all from surplus 80/20 extruded aluminum I got from Ebay. I created some software using the canon SDK (specifically the EDSDSK) that allows full control over the camera and integrates into our system. The old system used the windows WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) which is supposed to work for a variety of cameras but of course not the canon rebel. We use all manual settings so the pictures turn out the same every time (notice the tape on the zoom lens to keep it at 47mm).

I then created a software program that will compare the picture to the expected number of samples and determine if it matches. I was surprised at some of the tricks you can use to get simple image recognition. This program basically turns the pictures to grayscale then does a few contrast tricks then looks pixel by pixel to determine any value above a certain threshold. I limit the search to the areas I am interested (in this case the wells, not the space between the wells), we then flip it time and date stamp it, compress it and voila. In case you are interested I program mostly in VB.Net, not the fastest language but its easy to program and everyone here knows it.

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Updated Pics 



Updated pictures should be accessed from the same pictures link below if you want to look. Different Albums now...


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Baby 



Baby Zoey Marie
8lbs 4oz 21.5in long born at 4:16 Friday Nov 15th
Baby and Mother are doing fine.

Pictures


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Makers Faire 

Have not had a lot of time to do much lately. Wife has me running all over to various appointments or classes or parties but I did take a weekend and go to Austin to the Makers Faire.

The Makers Faire is setup by Make magazine which is a fairly cool magazine that gives different project ideas and technical information. Some of its worthless but they do have some interesting items. I saw that have 2 events one in SanFran the other in Austin. Since my parents live in Texas I figured I would do a quick visit with them and a chance to see the show. On a side note I had never flown AirTrans before, newer planes, no fee for checked luggage, still have drink service, recommended.



Anyways I was unsure what the faire would entail. They had robot combat like you used to see on TV which was cool. They also had a 2 big solid state Teslas that were trigged against music with a bunch of automated drums also computer controlled. Lots of alternative power people there, wind turbines, converted electric vehicles. Austin is apparently a big bike town and they had the Austin Bike Zoo which was a bunch of homemade bike designs, (a lot of artsy fartsy crap but some interesting design work with everything pedal powered like this )
There was a huge area for vendors, lots of chips, CNC machine, robot stuff. I am also into metal working and they had 5 forges running at the show making different sculpture stuff. These were my favorite . A bunch of shows and talks including the diet coke and Mentos guys, a human sized Rube Goldberg mousetrap (like the game) and Mongo the trebuchet. . All in all it was a huge show, lot more people than I expected especially with a UT game going on downtown and it was fun.

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Sherman Stats 

I loaded up the cooler with some pre frozen bottles and some bags of ice cubes. I tried to buy some block ice but was thwarted. This is the graph for the back of the truck


The outside temperature… (Note the time scales do not match)



My max delta T was 19F which I am very pleased with (this includes a heat input of 3 dogs, heat transfer from the bed of the truck and sitting in the sun). What I am not pleased with was the number of refills needed. What I really need was the entire cooler full with block ice this would give me a lower max delta T but a longer release time. If I had thought of it earlier I would have filled and frozen a bunch of 2 liters and milk jugs and used those.

One anomaly I would like to explain between 3:30-4:30 when we were stuck in traffic in Nashville. I was trying to figure out why there was such an increase in temperature. On the way back I had Erin drive while I road in the back with the dogs to feel what it was like. I noticed that the fan started and stopped. Turned out when you have the lights on and hit the brakes it turns off the taillights and lights up the blinker lights for brighter brake lights. Since we were in traffic I had the brakes held on and the damn cooler stopped running. The fix for this will be to rewire the turn signals into the system and insert diodes to prevent all lights from coming on.

I sat in the back for a while and noticed that even at 85F in the back it seemed much cooler because the humidity was decreased. Overall fun experiment even had some people ask about it when we stopped for lunch, interested in how much it cost to build and how well it worked.

On a side note I used this to record the temperature/ humidty in the truck. I have to say this thing is awesome; I use it all the time at work and have brought it home for use on numerous occasions. Plus it only cost 80 bones.

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Sherman 

Been a while since I BAB but I have been doing stuff so I should have a couple within the next couple weeks.

This project, hence forth known as Sherman, came from the need to cool the back of my truck. I have a camper on the rear of my mazda b2500 (compact pickup) and we travel with the dogs in the back of the truck. This gives the dogs lots of room and plenty of fresh air when needed. The problem is its 95 degrees now and air flow is not enough especially if we get stopped in traffic, so Sherman is born.

This started off as a basic swamp cooler design which was quickly thrown out, we have as much humidity as heat. So my next thought was a cooler filled with ice/water and a pump that recirculates water through a radiator and has a fan attached to blow cool air out.
I started looking on the internet and found that this company Artic Air sells some units for airplane cockpits. This design not only used the radiator but drew in air from the chilled air inside the cooler to blow out. I initial thought this was going to add humidity to the chilled air but apparently the water vapor recondenses on the radiator when blown out.

So here is my version which I named Sherman . The inside looks like this. Parts are a bilge pump, a transmission cooler radiator and an electric radiator fan (10"). The cooler I got free from work and I used particle board for the cowling.
Everything is wired together with a 5A fuse and connects though a flat four trailer hitch adapter. When I turn on the lights Sherman turns on. It draws 4.5A which I was worried about blowing the fuse for the lights but I hooked it up and it worked well. From what I read normal trailer lights pull 2A per light + 0.5A per turn signal, so I should be fine.

Next blog I should have cooling data from the device in the back of my truck and I will yet you know how well it worked.

(It's named Sherman after the tank)

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Arcade2 

The arcade is finally finished (Well mostly finished, I ordered some cup holders to put on and it needs to be moved to its final location).

Its running WindowsXP with MameExtended (.124u4) which is an unofficial build of MAME that has added support for hiscores, filters and artworks. I ditched the GameEx front-end I was looking at before because the interface on both emulators was easy to use and I did not need the other functions of GameEx. I also ditched the 22" monitor for a 27" TV that I bought off of craigslist. I ended up having to cut the back of the TV off because it was about 1" too deep.

I am especially proud of these 3 buttons . The red one is power, starts everything and turns off everthing with 1 button. I am using a SmartStrip, which basically monitors the "Control" outlet for current draw and turns on or off the switched components. So I have the computer hooked to control and everything else hooked to switched (speakers, fans, marquee lights, power button lights). The only modification I had to do was to the TV which will not power back on by its self if the power is cut off. Some TVs are programmable to do that, this one was not. I was originally going to modify the remote control to push the send on/off signal but I suck at soldering on boards and I messed it up. I got it working again by switching the power to the remote and hardwiring the button but it was very clumsy. I found another solution that was extremely easy, If you hold down the power button on the TV during startup the TV starts up, button does not reset until you release it so you can hold it in as long as you want. I used a screw to hold it down. Sweet.

The other 2 buttons are for Exit (Esc) and Pause (P). The controller does not have that interface built into it and it's a pain to open and close the drawer to quit a game or pause a game. I took apart a keyboard and pulled the guts. If you have never opened one before they have 2 membranes laid on top of each other connected to a board. The 2 membranes create a matrix which lets the board know what has been pressed. The board has 13pins and 13 pins which make up all the buttons on the keyboard. I wired the pins I needed to the buttons and voila I have and Esc and P button.

I have a marquee and the woodworking guy is still making the holder for it but it lights up nicely on the arcade. I had it done at http://www.emdkay.net/, and they did a great job.

One thing I would avoid is buying the acrylite for the bezel. I ordered the Acrylite F-99 which is supposed to be "museum quality" UV protected non-glare plexiglass. Apparently the non-glare comes from a matte finish which reduces sharpness as well as glare. It works ok but I would buy non-glare glass if I did it again.

I did spend a little more that I thought I would. I have about $600 in it now, not including the computer and parts I already had. The controller was $179 and the TV was $95, MDF was about $100 and then everything else was nickel($20) and dime($50) stuff. Overall I have happy with the way it turned out and its fun to play.

Thanks to SS I had about 300 games to mess around with. Some people were asking for specific games so yesterday I download a torrent that was 16GB and had 5000 games, that should cover everything.

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moto bike 

For awhile now I have been looking for a older (70s) enduro motorcycle to putt around on back and forth to work and such (I had one growing up and loved it). Most of the pricing I have found to be higher than I wanted to pay or at the price needed too much work and parts. I had given up on this idea until my dad came back from Costa Rica. Apparently there is a multitude of dual sport bikes down there, they get good gas mileage, work on road or off, maneuverable and are cheap. My dad being my dad stops and talks to a couple of the guys with the motorcycles trying to figure out who makes them. Comes to find out they are mostly Chinese.
So I start researching Chinese dual sport bikes and find that there is a huge amount of junk out there but there are a couple of brands that get consistently good reviews. I picked one that everyone seemed to respect and it turned out to be a Lifan. I ended up ordering from a guy online that also got good reviews (Check out http://www.chinariders.net/). It cost about $1400 delivered which if you have ever priced bikes likes this is about 1/3 the price of a japanese bike.
Well some assembly required, no problem I like working on stuff. Hmm, no directions, okay no problem I know what this thing is supposed to look like. So now I have a handful of leftover parts, spares maybe? After a couple of misadventures (some of those parts were not spares and were required for the rear brake) all is well, bike runs great. I took off the stickers and repainted a couple of sections to my liking. Bike turned out to be exactly what I was looking for (it’s a Lifan LF200GY-5(200cc) if your interested).


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Outdoor 2 Update 

It finally stopped raining long enough to put my arbor in the ground. The rain did make it easier to dig the holes with my new post hole digger.
It is surprising sturdy, the posts are sunk 1 ft into the ground and have a dirt/dry cement mixture that I refilled the holes with, this will harden up over time as the cement pulls moisture out of the ground. Trick I learned for laying out flat path way stones to keep them stable, without making permanent concrete.

Only need to make the path to it and I'm done. Go vegetables.

Well almost done, I am setting up a rain barrel water catching system. So far I have the barrel and the device to fill it, I have a pump from harbor freight I just need to run the lines for the drip irrigation to the garden and figure out where to mount the pump. I got the barrel setup before a big rain, 55gal filled up in less than 30mins.



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Go me 

I built a baby. Ok I started building a baby, wife is probably going to finish it.


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Its alive 

The CNC machine lives and is operational. I decided to get rid of the die grinder and put on a Rotozip. This way I don't have to use a collect adapter since the Rotozip has a keyless chuck. I also hooked up the V-Clamp (see CNC Update1) and I am using it hold pieces on the worktable. Both items seems to be working well. I cut some wood, some ABS and some acrylic with it on Friday. Here is the machine in action. I was cutting out a template that when finished will make a 3d puzzle of a butterfly.

It is finished, actual time only took about 30 minutes once I figured out what speed to I could run at. I did not cut deep enough though so I had to finish the last 0.5mm by hand; fairly easy though since I was using 3mm Birch plywood so most of it was cut already. Of course I messed up a couple parts with the knife/dremel pulling it out. Next time I know the settings I need. I am thinking about a dinosaur this time. All in all it came out pretty good considering I don't really know what I am doing. Oh yeah here is a picture of the butterfly. I think my wife is going to paint it and seal it to put out in the garden.
Also this is a link to the dxf file , its an excellent getting to know you CNC piece, since you should setup multiple layers for outside cuts and inside cuts in order to get the slots to fit correctly. Of course I did not so everything was a little loose, but I know better next time to think about these things before jumping into cutting.

I got my dxf file from http://www.cnczone.com . If you are interested in building a CNC this is a great place to get information. It can be done on the cheap and still get pretty good results.
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Various Outdoors 2 

So the wife had me busy outside last weekend since it was such nice weather. I built 2 flower boxes in the corners of our property for some hibiscus bushes than my dad gave us. Apparently I am into various geometric shapes, currently I have a pentagon, a rectangle and an attached square (to the rectangle). I built a triangle and a I guess what we are calling the boomerang. It could be referred to as a irregular hexagon, whatever. These were made with standard landscaping timbers.

We also created our garden based on the idea of square foot gardening. Basically it is for creating gardens in a small space, uses less water, allows easy access to all the plants and is easy to create. We built four 4'x4'x12" squares using a kit from framitall. You can buy the anchor joints and supply your own wood or just build your own without the joints. I liked the composite plastic timbers because you never have to worry about them rotting (so they should last forever), don't leach like pressure treated and they use recycled plastic (slightly higher priced than cedar but cheaper than the plastic timbers at Lowes). I also built a center dual layered 3'x3', 2'x2' for strawberries out of cedar. The plan is to create a path inside the giant square and build a small arbor at the front entrance. I think it will look real nice and we get fresh vegetables. Yum

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Mold & Cast 

I recently found the need to mold and cast something, I needed a gear for this drive mechanism that had broken, I had 3 but needed a 4th.
Anyways I had seen plaster of Paris molding and know it to be slightly annoying due to originals and parts sticking in the plaster. I have seen some easy to make vacuum systems that use a household oven (wife probably not happy with that option). I ran across this website while looking and found the silicone rubber for the mold and urethane for the cast.
Now I have never done anything like this before and was more interested in the process than the actual product, I mean this could be useful at work for parts I need for instruments they don't make anymore. It actually turned out to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen. I will go over the proces below:

Steps
1. Make a frame to hold the part preferably not much bigger than the item ( I used MDF).
2. Hot glue every edge that will touch the mold (So it does not leak)
3. I hot glued the gear to the base but it is not necessary
4. Stir the silicone Rubber a lot, Shake the catalyst
5. Add the rubber and the catalyst together and stir until it turns a beige color.
6. Pour the liquid mixture into the box.
7. Wait overnight
8. Break open frame and take out original (This is the great part you just push and pull the rubber/part until it slides out.)
9. Alright this is the trickier part I used to the Alumilite Regular which has a 90 sec hold time. Shake the "B" container (This is a blend of polyols)
10. If you are using a dye add it to the "A" side (Isocyanate)
11. Add equal parts of A and B to a secondary container and stir quickly for 15secs
12. Pour the liquid into the mold
13. Wait 5 mins.


A little Chemistry...
Now the mold/liquid is going to get hot as this is an exothermic reaction. The first time I did this I it was in the back of my mind that this was a polymer reaction and I remembered doing a polymer reaction in PChem back in college (God, I hated PChem). What I remembered about that lab was the near instantaneously of the reaction, had this been at the front of my mind I might not have ended up with this..
A urethane linkage is produced by reacting a isocyanate group with a alcohol group. So to get a polyurethane you need a polyisocynate (usually diphenylmethane diisocyanate) and a polyalchol (usually polyproplyene glycol) (Plus some catalyst [an amine like triethylenediamine], maybe some chain extenders, cross linkers etc. depending on the type of polymer you are looking for) Basic reaction looks like this



Results
The original part looked like this.

I don't have any picture of the frame but this is the mold it produced.
The end result looks like this.

Pretty damn cool.


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Arcade Machine 

So I started a new project a couple of weeks ago, parts are starting to come in and I currently have all the hardware
I decided to build an Arcade Machine. If you have ever looked at PC Arcade games before you know there are emulators out there that allow you to play older arcade games. The software is called MAME and there are a couple of different versions out there MAME ,MAME32 and others to play nintendos, playstations etc. I think I also am going to run a front-end called GameEx which seems very nice.
Anyways I was going to build my own controller setup and I priced it out 6 buttons apiece, 2 joysticks, 1/2 player buttons and a card that converts to usb. What I ended up with instead was this which actually cost the same I was going to spend and comes with the trackball for games like missile command.
I was also going to build the cabinet myself but I have a guy here at work that is a woodworking whiz and he is going to build it (own his own dime since the machine is going to stay at work).
I got a 22" flat screen CRT monitor from another guy at work who did not want it anymore. It weighs almost 70lbs since it’s an older style but resolution upto 2048. Slightly injured but functional.
I have so many leftover computer parts that I had enough to build a decent machine for the project P43.0, 512Mb, 40GB, 128mb Graphics Card, On board Sound.
I am currently working out software, hardware, controller issues and I will update when I have a cabinet.
I am hoping the end result will be similar to this. (thats only a 17in monitor)

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