Manufacturing my own dice

Just showing off

dice_1

Text from top to bottom on each dice:

  • Volume
  • Melting point
  • Name of material
  • Weight
  • Density

Modifying my newly added carrier for my E-Bike


Problem

  1. Bike carrier wont fit with newly bought mudguards

Finished product

3D printed PETG adapter for my mudguard.

carrier_2


A few weeks ago I built a new carrier - which didn't really work. It would have worked if I hadn't decided to add mudguards to my bike. The mudguards didn't really fit on my 29" wheel and 6" tire, so I had to mount them in a way which deviated from the manual. Front wheel got the zip tie treatment and the back wheel mounting points had to be modified.
As a result my self built carrier mount had to be removed.

carrier_3 carrier_1

The OEM mudguard mounting was just a piece of straight plastic. But for my use case it had to be angled 90°. After 4 revisions on the 3D printer it finally fit. The black marks on the prototype are areas which had to be modified between each iteration.

carrier_9


carrier_4 carrier_5 carrier_8 carrier_6 carrier_7

The carrier mount was a whole different problem. As a test I printed a mount from PETG which only held for 200km on my bike. Because the overall design worked quite well, I decided that im going to rebuild it from 6061 T3 aluminium, which I had laying around.


Sadly I cant tell you about the longevity of the parts, because I had to RMA the controller. Maybe I'll remember to write an update once the replacement parts arrive.

Adding a carrier to my new E-Bike


Bill of Materials

  1. Bike Carrier
  2. 1m of aluminium tube (outer Ø10mm, inner Ø8mm)
  3. Block of aluminium

Finished product

It does look okay, if you are standing far away. But for your trained "metal-worker-eye" it is hideous. But im treating it as an early prototype, meaning i´ll drive it for a couple of weeks and will adapt the new design to its current flaws. Let´s get to the build process.

Bike_26


Build process

I had the raw stock material laying around in my workshop. The carrier was bought from a local bike shop. It is an Cube ACID 29". One could ask: "why not use the included mounting option?". Easy answer: Because it does not fit with my 61mm (2.6") wide tyres.


Planning phase

The idea is as always: KISS.
Fortunately the aluminium tube had the exact diameter as the bought carrier, so no work had to be done there. Except cutting it to length.

Bike_1 Bike_2 Bike_3


Manufacturing

The stock had to be squared and brought to dimensions. After that they need to be drilled three times for all the mounting points.

Bike_4 Bike_5

Because one part should yield two finished parts, I had to saw them apart. (No pictures, because the manual sawing sucks).
Fit check looked good, but there was one unaccounted problem.

Bike_7 Bike_8

The aluminium tube did end way too high for the forward facing mounting points.

Bike_9 Bike_10 Bike_11

So I had to manufacture an angled adapter, which did fail horrible. As you can see on the last picture I used a drill bit as a spacer. It worked wondeful for the first part, and failed spectacular on the second part. (No pictures because I threw a small rage fit). I was not in the mood to mill the parts again, because they took way too long on my small hobby mill, and they were way too over engineered.

Bike_12 Bike_13 Bike_14 Bike_15 Bike_16

New plan: make the parts simpler.

Pro:

  • can manufacture parts way faster.

Contra:

  • aluminum bar is bent a little bit in final mounting position

Because I dont have a lathe I had to mount my tool in the vice, and my part in the spindle. Dont judge me. It worked.

Bike_17 Bike_18 Bike_20 Bike_21

Assemble time.
For a prototype it looks good, but im not happy with it. Im waiting for my mudguards to see how they fit my my carrier. Maybe I have to rethink the whole mounting options. But thats a problem for another time.

Bike_22 Bike_23

Last step was painting, which did not work really well. It was windy and I wanted to finish the project. Thats why I rushed the paint job.Its a prototype.

Bike_24 Bike_25

Finished assembly:

Bike_27 Bike_28

A new month, a new small restauration


The old part

I got my hands on this old “Röhm” three-jaw chuck for free. But it was in a really bad shape. The internal scroll plate was gunked up to a point where it was impossible to turn it.

3jaw_1


Time to disassemble

Firsts step was the removal of the back cover plate.

3jaw_3

Each pinion has a small stud bolt which helds it in place. Easily for me, they could be unscrewed without any problems.
The removal of each pinion was not as easy. I had to break out the hammer and some piece of delron to gently tap them out of the body. The interior is not as dirty as I thought.

3jaw_5 3jaw_7 3jaw_6 3jaw_10 3jaw_9


The cleaning

All the parts where cleaned with generic brake cleaner and Loctite SF 7063.

3jaw_11

I left them to soak for some minutes and got to work scrubbing all the parts with some coarse scotch brite.

3jaw_13 3jaw_12 3jaw_2

While waiting for the parts to dry I went ahead and greased the scroll plate and the pinions with “chuck grease”.

Before assembling the chuck, I reworked the cover plate screws with some light filing and whetstones.

3jaw_16 3jaw_17


The new part

The restored chuck still looks a bit worn and old but works as a new one.

3jaw_18

My first small restauration - a small paint job, 3D printing and a mechanical repair


List of defects

  1. Volt gauge won´t go lower than 2.5 Volt
  2. Old paint peeled off

Improvements

  • 3D printed dust covers

Lab_Powersupply_2 Lab_Powersupply_3


Disassembly
The modelnumber is blacked off, so my best guess for the build date is somewhere in the 80s. But i could be completly off. After taking of the top cover, one could really see its age - dirty but still impressive.

Lab_Powersupply_4 Lab_Powersupply_1


Repair
I tried to remove the gauges from the back, but after a quick glance it seemed that its way too much work.
So after some sweaty minutes of fiddeling with the front cover I had success and could remove the pointer assembly. Sadly I dont have any pictures of it. Turning on the powersupply shows that my repair worked. The analog pointer showed the exact reading as the digital one.

Lab_Powersupply_8


Painting
Second to last step was a fresh coat of paint, but first the old flaky had to be removed. I applied a thick coat of paint stripper and let it soak for a couple of hours. After the time had passed I could simply scratch of the old paint with a plastic scraper.
A quick sanding, degreasing and painting session later the powersupply looked 20 years younger.

Lab_Powersupply_3 Lab_Powersupply_7


Finishing
Now it was time to apply the 3D printed dust covers. Some small dabs of superglue did the trick. A quick assembly later and the powersupply looked like a new one.