Vaccuum Desolderer; Pump replacement overkill.

Heya. starting a small hackerspace with some guys.
I’m the resident electronics dude, so i’ve taken it upon myself to get a semi-decent lab going.
I already got a fairly decent digital soldering station there.
However, at work we have these super sweet Hakko vacuum-desolderers and i’m absolutely addicted.
A sucker would be a blessing when salvaging parts and such.
Enter the old solderstation from way before i was ever employed at my company. donated to me.

This combi rig seemed decent for its age but the pump was terrible. if the legends around the office are true, it has always been terrible.
My brother, TinkarLjarl suggested i try this pump. a 350w mains driven vaccuum pump!.

Size comparison:

Never thinking i’d actually use it, i went along and hooked up the hose and he plugged it in while i tried to desolder some components.
A bit loud, but it worked like a charm!

Seeing as these pumps have never been of use to the company, and my boss never explicitly saying no, I got to work after hours at the office.

The carrier plate for the pumps looked useful for making this beast more manuverable, so i got one pump off..

..and bolted the station snugly it its place.

A quick relay board for driving the thing, triggered by the old pumps 24v. fuse for good measure.

Cut open a slot for the vacuum and pump mains with a hacksaw. ugly but functional.

Heatshrink muffler.

Works good. the relay sparks like crazy so i might go SSR when the contacts go bad.(they will!)

And there you have it! weighing in at 18Kg its not for lugging around.
A bit of a pain to get to the hackerspace.
going from 8w to 350w will put on some weight.

The CMeTron

Got a request from the Brage Theater in Drammen / Norway. They wanted a weird contraption to visualize the dream of a 12 year old boy. A great invention that would change the world. They gave me a good budget and mostly free will so I ended up with this:

Cargo Cult at Burning Man

Cargo Cult at Burning Man

We should ask for some Norwegian cultural-petroleum monies and go to Burning Man this year…

Our story begins in Melanesia during World War II. Thousands of American GIs suddenly descended on this South Sea island chain, bearing with them unimaginable riches: magical foodstuffs that never spoiled, inconceivable power sources. Just as abruptly the troops departed, leaving only broken, rusted Jeeps, crumpled beer cans, and the memory of Spam. To the astonished eyes of the natives, this was a miraculous occurrence, and they yearned for the return of abundance. Accordingly, they built totemic sky-craft in an attempt to summon back these Visitors and their legendary leader, the man the Melanesians called John Frum. They had formed a Cargo Cult.

Violet Ray

I found this beauty on a marked in Fredrikstad on a family holiday:

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I had no idea what it was but instantly fell in love! A few hours of research (AKA Googling) later i realize I have bought a pre WWII miniature Tesla Coil to stick up my ass! How cool is that!

The device is a Helio Lux Violet Ray Electro Therapy kit with a large variety of electrodes, including Eye Socked Electrodes, Anal electrode and Spinal Electrode. These devices was used for health care in the late 1930s but are now adopted by the BDSM community.

We have off course already given it a run at the 220Vs but, as expected, the device is completely dead. A look inside revealed a broken fuse and a shorted primary cap 1uF/1000V. This is now ordered from RS-components and my guess is that it’ll do the trick.

One question remains though; is the Noble Gas in the tubes still present after so many years..? Update will come when the cap arrives!

Update: Cap has arrived 🙂

 

Hugs,
Einar
tech dept.

We are robots, you must be a robot too!

We are considering making a moral robot. Nice then to see that others have made a holy robot. Video peaks at 3:30.

“No, you’re right, Colby doesn’t have a soul,” Mrs. Betts explained. “He’s just been programmed to think he does.”

The Crop Circle Incident

We are currently working on a project similar to Mapping Madrid in home town Porsgrunn where a major theatre event called “Stedsans” is held for the fift time this year. This time the projected map will be a air photo of Porsgrunn and the surrounding area, and the pictures will be from the earlier events of Stedsans.

During the assembly of the air photos which I collect from gulesider.no/kart, a service similar to goole maps but with better norwegian coverage i made this amazing discovery:

(bilde av kornsirkelen)

I have never heard of any crop circles in this area so I though that “this is big!”. I am avare that the images used can be several years old and that the circle probably was gone by now. However I wanted to find out just how old they where, so I could search lokal newspapers and other sources for unusual events araound the time the pictures where taken. I contaced gulesider.no to find the source of the image database. They politely forwarded me to Statens Kartsentral which translates the State Map Center. I sendt them a mail with the GPS coordinates, explaining the issue and asking for the date of the images. I never got any respons.

Here comes the weird part: A couple of weeks later I wanted to show the phenomena to a friend opened the browser on the gulesider maps. The crop circle was gone!

(bilde uten kornsirkel)

Now I should explain that I am a great sceptisist of “supernatural” phenomenas like crop cirles. I have allways beleived that human beings are clever folks well capable of making these patterns just to have a laugh at the people beleing they come from outher space. I just havent figured out HOW they have made them and I thus keep an open mind.

The real question is not hwo made the cirle and how. It is: Why did the gouvernment remove the evidence? What are they trying to hide?

Me, I’m pussled. Maybe time will show…

We are currently working on a project similar to Mapping Madrid in home town Porsgrunn where a major theater event called “Stedsans” is held for the fifth time this year. This time the projected map will be a air photo of Porsgrunn and the surrounding area, and the pictures will be from the earlier events of Stedsans.

During the assembly of the air photos which I collect from gulesider.no/kart, a service similar to Google maps but with better Norwegian coverage, I made this amazing discovery:

I have never heard of any crop circles in this area so I though that “this is big!”. I am aware that the images used can be several years old and that the circle probably was gone by now. However I wanted to find out just how old they where, so I could search local newspapers and other sources for unusual events around the time the pictures where taken. I contacted gulesider.no to find the source of the image database. They politely forwarded me to Statens Kartsentral which translates the State Map Center. I sent them a mail with the GPS coordinates, explaining the issue and asking for the date of the images. I never got any response.

Here comes the weird part: A couple of weeks later I wanted to show the phenomena to a friend opened the browser on the gulesider maps. The crop circle was gone! Link:

Now I should mention that I am a great skeptic of “supernatural” phenomenas like crop circles. I have always believed that human beings are clever folks well capable of making these patterns just to have a laugh at the people believing they come from outer space. I just haven’t figured out HOW they have made them and thus I keep an open mind.

The real question is not who made the circle and how. It is: Why did the company remove the evidence? What are they trying to hide?

Me, I’m puzzled. Maybe time will show. Maybe not…