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Solder Spool Holder

I got sick of the old solder spool holder I had not really doing its job. I actually designed a nice laser-cut spool holder years ago at work but alas, I left it there when I moved on. I know you can buy spool holders, and I know you can also make you own, so I made a new one.

This is a chonky spool holder for sure! I really just designed this in about 10 minutes and then hit print before going to bed. It’s a bit more chunky than I expected but I don’t mind much. It’s also not perfect, but it’ll do for now. If I didn’t make this I would have kept using the old crappy one that I’d been using for years.

Here’s what I replaced, which I call the “crappy spool holder” because it’s make from scrap, and I slapped it together in a few minutes, and I’ve had to hot glue it back together after it broke. (I still hate MDF, BTW.)

Print your own! Grab the files from Printables.com

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Subaru Forester

As mentioned previously I got rid of the 2005 Honda Element. It was a great car, and I loved it, but it also broke a lot, and broke more. I finally replaced it with a 2010 Subaru Forester. It’s a smaller car, and it’s different, and I like it, and I’m still getting used to it. It is an all wheel drive vehicle, but it doesn’t seem to have the same handling as the Element. That’s okay. It has heated seats, which is kind of nice. Dana had a Subaru Forester about 15 years ago which is slightly amusing. Anyway, don’t ask me to help you haul large things anymore because I no longer have a large vehicle. Oh well!

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Header Pin Snapper

Things have been busy lately. I’ve been building a lot of electronic devices and since there’s soldering and assembly involved I’ve been looking seriously at my tools. In some cases I’ve bought new (and better) tools, and in some cases I’ve looked at making my own tools. Here’s a “Header Pin Snapper” that makes it easy to get a 14 pin header from a longer strip.

I used to use a diagonal cutter to snip the pins to length, and that works fine if you do a few, but if you need to do a bunch a tool is a quick way to do it. I’m not the first to make one of these, you can also check out the Header Snapper – WHSN, the BlueBreaker, this Pin Header Snapping Tool, and a parametric pin header snap fixture, among many others… including the OctoSnap!

So I spent a few minutes making this simple device that can snap pin headers to a length of 14 pins. Exactly what I need, and it works fast. Working fast is often better than working slow. I didn’t need an adjustable one, or a customizable one, so this one fulfills my needs, but might not be useful for others.

It’s just three pieces of 3mm thick acrylic, and four 3mm x 12mm bolts along with four 3mm hex nuts. I’ve got plenty of small scraps of acrylic lying around so made two just in case I misplace one.

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Selling a car on Facebook

Last time I sold a car I used craiglist, and you can read about that adventure. I just sold another car, so here’s another story. It went much better this time.

I sold my 2005 Honda Element with almost no effort, but I think this is a rare thing, and I was lucky. See, a few years ago I guy I know who also owned an Element said “Hey, you need to join this Honda Element Facebook Group!” and since I’m already in a hundred groups I just joined another. Over the years the group was quite useful! Since the Element was made for a limited time they are all getting old, and they break, and people would share posts about fixing them.

So this time around when Dana and I talked about selling the Element she joked that she would hire someone to haul it away. I said “Let me post it to the group” and I did, with a “Hey, I might be selling this” post. I got people interested immediately. Now, my Element was in okay shape, but not great shape. It was seventeen years old, and broke a lot over the years. It had a cracked windshield caused by some rust on the roof. But hey, it ran, and it was AWD, and the body was in good shape.

I ended up connecting with a woman who lived about an hour away, and five days after she contacted me I had it cleaned up and she was test driving it. She made an offer which I was happy to accept and I sold it to her. No flim flam like when I sold the CR-V. Just straightforward “I want to sell it for this much” and “I am willing to pay this much” and we both agreed and walked away happy. Well, I walked, she drove!

I’ll admit, I was sad to see it go. I mean, I could fit so much in that car! I once put a Wienermobile in the back. I even made a DIY Roof Rack for about $30 USD. Anyway, I’m glad it’s going to someone who really appreciates it. The Honda Element is a special vehicle.

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Repairing a Nektar Panorama P4 Keyboard

I recently did repairs on a Nektar Panorama P4 Keyboard. A guy I know got in touch with me and said there was an accident involving someone stepping on a USB cable while it was plugged into the back of the unit. This damaged the USB connector and it no longer allowed the keyboard to show up via USB.

Here’s the main PCB in place. There’s a few ribbon cables that connect it to the rest of the keyboard. I removed them and pulled out the board. Oh, I should note that what took the most time in the disassembly process was removing all the screws holding the case together. I think there were about three dozen!

I had to desolder the broken USB jack. It was definitely damaged and pretty much crumbled when I got it off. Some of the holes still had solder in them, so I carefully drilled them out with an 0.8mm bit on my Tiny Drill Press. (The red squares show the holes. The white stuff around the large holes is not damage, but some sort of glue or epoxy that held the jack in place in addition to the solder.)

I grabbed some USB Female Type-B Jack as recommended in this reddit post. Also, take a look at the photo in that post. See how the USB jack has no plastic in the center? Yeah, they used jacks that just had the metal contacts hanging free in the air. Terrible choice! (Below shows the new jack.)

The owner also mentioned a USB plug protector support thing, from this blog post. So I modeled one up for him…

I measured a bunch of my USB cables and, well, they are not all the same. So I printed about four of these supports with different inside dimensions. I figured one might work. (Little did I know the cable for the keyboard was right in the case! Oh well.)

Once I had the keyboard repaired and put back together I fired up GarageBand and made sure it worked, and it did work. Hooray. I also charged next to nothing for the repair because the guy’s cat passed away the week before and I know exactly what that is like.