Tag: hacks

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Fixin’ It

Fixed Outlet

When the wife left the house yesterday she asked me to fix the outlet cover in the bedroom as it was loose and plugging things in was proving difficult. She said that she would have done it but was afraid of getting electrocuted.

I was about to tighten up the plate, but I noticed that the entire outlet was loose. No problem! I just removed the cover and tightened up the screws… Problem! The outlet box was too far into the wall, and my first attempt at pulling it out resulted in a nice jolt and the box not moving. (She didn’t warn me not to electrocute myself, but maybe she should have.) My guess is that whoever put the outlet in didn’t do it right, and just figured that putting things in loose and calling it a day was easier that fixing it and doing it right the first time.

Plastic Spacers

I thought about using some washers, but I would have actually had to find some washers, and they would have needed to be the right size, and I would have needed to have enough of them… and if you’ve seen my workshop, you’d know this is not an easy task.

I could have 3D printed some spacers! But like my last repair involving plastic, it would have been overkill for this task and would have taken way to much time.

So my solution involved taking some plastic anchors and snipping them to the right length. I have enough anchors that I could repair a dozen outlets in the house and still have a bunch left over. (Let’s hope I don’t have to do that, by the way.)

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Upcycle Plastic Repair

A year ago I saw a post on the Sector67 site that talked about upcycling the plastic from laundry jugs. After seeing the post I thought about how many of these jugs we end up tossing in the recycling bin, and if there were any ways I could make good use of them.

Laundry Jug
Empty Laundry Jug

Here’s a typical laundry jug, and as you can see I cut out a nice (mostly) flat piece from the side.

Plastic
Cutting the plastic with an X-ACTO blade

I wanted to cut a small piece into a rectangle to match a missing piece from a window blind, and using an X-ACTO knife and steel ruler are the perfect choice for such things.

(Somehow we’ve lost/misplaced these window blind parts, or they weren’t here when we moved in. I thought briefly about 3D printing a replacement, but cutting a piece from plastic I’ve already got seemed like a better option.)

Holder
New vs. Original

My replacement is not an exact match, but I’ve cut it a bit taller to provide some friction so it will stay in place. For the simple purpose it will serve, it should do just fine.

Holder in Place
Original and New

Here’s the original piece, and my replacement piece. Both are holding the blinds into the bracket reasonably well.

I’ll often just cut out the flat sides of laundry jugs and keep them in a stack and then recycle the rest of the jug. They’re handy to have around when you need one.

We’ve talked about building an injection molding machine at Milwaukee Makerspace (Mold-o-rama anyone?) so if that happens, I may have a few more uses for these plastic jugs.

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Hacking Space

SpaceHack

Back when I was a kid (which I’ll just say was 30+ years ago) I was fascinated by space travel, I mean real space travel, the kind NASA was doing. The Space Shuttle program launched Enterprise when I was in grade school, and I remember doing a school project on it, and I even wrote a letter to NASA offering to be the first kid on a shuttle flight.

So while I’ve been ignoring space travel for many years, with the final flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, I was interested in what the future would hold. Over on Google+ I asked about the privatization of space exploration, and got some good info. My thinking was that perhaps the time is right for commercialization of such things. (Yeah, I’m seriously not up on the subject, but it’s interesting enough to look into.)

Mashable actually had a recent post: How the Private Space Race Has Taken Off which is a good summary of the current situation.

On top of all that, I remembered reading about what Ariel Waldman was up to a while back, and this interview with her talking about Spacehack is worth a read. (There’s another interview in Soho House Magazine, which is much harder to read.)

SpaceHack.org looks pretty cool. It’s a way for anyone to get involved in space exploration. Of course, “space exploration” is not the same as “space flight” but hey, with any luck the “flight” part may still become a reality while I’m alive.

Meanwhile, I’m still watching Star Trek, Firefly, and Doctor Who, and taking notes…

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Today’s the Day!

Workbench

Today’s the Day!

Get out there and make something besides HTTP requests and log files…

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My first sugru hack

sugru

I remember hearing about sugru last year, and looking through some of the ways people have used it, and thought I should get some of this magical substance to play with. What is sugru? Well, it’s a magical material that cures at room temperature, is self-adhesive, waterproof, flexible, and dishwasher-proof. See the blog for more info.

One thing that’s been broken in our house for a while is the electric griddle. I’ve had it for a long time, and it still works, and I’m a fan of repairing rather than replacing things, as it helps save money, as well as the planet. We’ve been using the griddle for years, but have always been annoyed at the cracked edge piece.

Griddle (before)

I ended up drilling a few small holes and twisting up some wire to bind the broken pieces together. Wire worked great for this. I didn’t want to mess around with trying to fit a small piece of metal, or any sort of screws in place. But the wire isn’t exactly pretty… and it’s got those pointy ends.

Griddle (after)

sugru to the rescue… I took the black sugru and molded it around the top of the crack, covering the wire. It’s still not the prettiest thing in the world, but it’s a big improvement.

My only complaint about sugru is that it has a shelf life of about 6 months, but then again… once you start using it, you start to see all the little things around the house that sugru could make better, so chances are, I’ll have used it all up 6 months from now anyway. :)