The Mega Post of 2011

Rather than try to re-organize my existing posts and remember every detail behind all the old pics I have, I came up with a better idea. In many ways this post will be the marker for the beginning of the new era of tinkering for me. Being this, it only makes sense that I put the past to rest and get on with the new. What follows in this post will be some old pictures and a short and sweet description. Some of these may be roughly in order, but this is not intentional. The order of these pics may or may not bear any resemblance to the actual timeline in which they occurred.

CNC lathe
This little lathe was never good for anything. But, it was fun to build, which is why we do it. Right? It was built from an erector set and a couple of small stepper motors.



Here is the beginning of it. The motor being used as the spindle motor came with the erector set. You can't see in that picture, but the carriage is held tight by a rubber band. I have better pics of the carriage coming up.

The purple is a rubber band that pinches the ways.


A view of the Z axis lead screw. The choice of 6mm threaded rod was the wrong choice. A lead screw with multiple leads is ideal.

The Z axis stepper motor mounted just behind and below the spindle motor.


Unfortunately, this is the last pic I took of it. Pay no attention to the filterless cigarette in the ashtray.

Smoker Mods
I wish I had more pics of this, it worked great. I bought this cheap POS smoker at walmart only to find that it didn't really do that great a job. It turns out the problem was easy to fix. All a good smoker needs to do is hold heat well and heat evenly. There was not much I could do to make it hold heat better, but I could do something about how even it cooked. What I did was make a series of baffles to direct the heat to where I wanted it to be. The main baffle was attached right above the hole coming in from the firebox. I just measured the hole pattern where the firebox bolted onto the main body of the smoker and put that on my plate. The blue die you see is just a lay-out dye so I would know where to bend or cut the pieces.
The greyer colored rectangle pieces are meant to be moved around to allow tuning of the smoker. After a few boston butts and racks of ribs I had this baby cooking great bbq, Definitely worth the trouble.

The Great Sterling
I love Sterling engines. Sterlings are also called heat engines. Basically that are engines than get there fuel from a temperature difference on each end of a cylinder. The greater the difference in temperature, the more power the engine produces. Sterling engines are also fully reversible. All that means is that if you rotate the engine with some external force, the cylinder will get hot on one end and cold on the other. This is how heat pumps work. These engines are not terribly efficient but that doesn't take away from their coolness. Unfortunately, this one was never completed. I look forward to building another one of these and finishing it this time.\

**I'll add the pics later**