Thomas Watt LED (A+ rated) lamps are branded for distribution in France under an energy saving scheme. There have been 3 handouts. The first was 10 free, the second was 15 free plus €1 for a further 15. The last tranche, this month, is 25 for €1. Oddly you are eligible for each batch. It's not a wide choice, offering 9W ES 9W BC globe, 7W GU10 or 5W SES candle.
These run much cooler than a bunch of Ikea (A rated) LED ones I got in 2013, and use 1W less energy for the same lumens.
The GU10 has 11 LEDs and run at 96V DC/ 0.4VAC, although the HF component was too high to measure with a multimeter.
By comparison, the 10W Ikea ES globe (had 2 fail within a couple of months of use) have 44 LEDs and run off 30.7V set up as 4 clusters of 11 in parallel. It was the PSU that failed.
Thursday 30 November 2017
Sunday 26 November 2017
Cubster hydro box oil level
The gearbox has always been a bit talkative, grumbling to itself when cold, irrespective of ambient. Last time it went out to collect leaves it was positively reluctant.
this is a nice post
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3541703/k46-oil-change-with-pictures
The K46 box fitted is sealed for life. However, under 'heavy' use, its oil should be checked and changed. I'd say this ride-on has had an easy life, however, it was worth a quick check of the oil level.
In order to make life easy for the customer, there is no dip tube, or emptying point. By removing the collection tube, and the breather you can almost get to the recommended filling/inspection point, conveniently located under the pulley and fan.
Some variants have an oil expansion vessel, but I've got a breather in that spot. I had to remove that to get to the cap. Again, to help the customer, they fit one-use jubilee clips which are easy to fit in production, but risk injecting yourself with a screwdriver when trying to remove them, assuming you don't stuff the screwdriver straight through the pipe. Once removed, I couldn't get the cap off, so managed to measure through the dip tube and refer it to the cap. 35mm was what it appeared to be. The recommended range is 17-22mm. I added some 5-30 fully synthetic. The forums suggest 10-30, 15-50 or 5-50 synthetic. It's now about 25mm and a lot quieter.
The oil is oily colour, not grey or black.
http://www.tufftorq.com/tuff-torq-k46-oil-maintenance/
A pdf here
https://www.tufftorqservices.com/instance1EnvEEdefault/FlatHTML/TechInfo/ttcoil/pdfs/cc%20Changing%20&%20Checking%20Oil%20in%20the%20K46AM%20Transmission.pdf
this is a nice post
http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/3541703/k46-oil-change-with-pictures
Saturday 11 November 2017
Dishwasher
Dishwasher played up in Feb 2017. Threw water out through the vent, into the base and sort of flooded. Pump ran continuously. Seemed to be a blocked pipe vent. More notes on hard drive.
Repeat performance 11/11/17, however the cause was not a blocked vent pipe. The DW flooded and the pump ran, but no water emptied. Removed the drain hose, but there was almost no flow. There is a NRV on the pump, so it wasn't possible to blow to clear the blockage, but careful sucking cleared it out.
After strip down, it turned out 2 cardamom pods had got past the filters and were blocking the pump inlet, and there was plenty of other gunk. The pods would not have caused the over flow, but is shows that large bits got past the mesh filter and blocked the outlet pipe, or possibly the impeller.
The bits get easily past the mesh filter when it's removed for cleaning. The filter mates with the base, so large parts on the pre-filter simply stay on the base, and never get cleaned out. When the filter is dropped back in, they can drop straight in to the pump. Cardamom pods swell nicely and block the small pipes.
23/1/23
Repeat performance 11/11/17, however the cause was not a blocked vent pipe. The DW flooded and the pump ran, but no water emptied. Removed the drain hose, but there was almost no flow. There is a NRV on the pump, so it wasn't possible to blow to clear the blockage, but careful sucking cleared it out.
After strip down, it turned out 2 cardamom pods had got past the filters and were blocking the pump inlet, and there was plenty of other gunk. The pods would not have caused the over flow, but is shows that large bits got past the mesh filter and blocked the outlet pipe, or possibly the impeller.
The bits get easily past the mesh filter when it's removed for cleaning. The filter mates with the base, so large parts on the pre-filter simply stay on the base, and never get cleaned out. When the filter is dropped back in, they can drop straight in to the pump. Cardamom pods swell nicely and block the small pipes.
23/1/23
DW started to fill then stopped. Lights still lit. Power cycle resulted in a crack, and no lights. I could smell the magic smoke. The circuit is easily removed. 4 screws (leave the central 2 in).
A LNK365PN from 2011 had a small crack and had 15R D to S. I only have LNK306 and they cannot provide the 1A the 365 can. A quick check and the ATMEGA 8L runs off 5V, and the pot div on FB pin has 2k/4k3 which works out to 5V with 1.65V on FB. The app note shows only isolated circuits, but this was wired with 320VDC onto pin D, then a choke wired D to S. The other weird thing was the -ve side of the input cap was wired to +5. I didnt track it as I didnt have the spare and the DW was full of stuff to wash. I took a 1A USB psu (repaired last month, not terribly good 4.6V and won't start if load > 0.8A) and wired that in instead.
I feel the choke configuration may have saved the electronics.
Friday 10 November 2017
HDD enclosure
The hard drive failure was confirmed after the purchase of an external sata case
It's a really nice case for 2.5" drives. This one was €5, the usb2 one being a few cents cheaper.The controller is a innostor is621 which, despite some adverts stating it, is not UASP/ SATA. It connects as a bulk transfer drive (Win 10). The manufacturer's web site doesn't state it either, and I can't find a datasheet.
However, the Maxtor M3 drive I bought is UAS/ UASP, but tops out at ~20MB on usb2. Odd, considering it could be 480Mb/60MB. Write cache was off (normal) From a few searches, plus info from CrystalDiskInfo, plus a teardown video, the drive is Seagate st2000lm007 (mobile HDD), with a 128MB cache, 140MB/s, SATA 6Gb/s.
https://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/mobile-hddDS1861-2-1603-en_US.pdf
Nice review here
http://goughlui.com/2016/09/28/review-maxtor-m3-portable-4tb-usb-3-0-external-hard-drive-hx-m401tcbgm/
Crystal Disk Mark Q32T1 shows 32MB read regardless of cache setting. The write improves from 28.5M to 30M with cache on. Seq write test was actually 6MB worse with cache on. The above review shows 41MB normally, plus a massive improvement to 100MB with cache on. USB3 makes a lot of difference.
It's a really nice case for 2.5" drives. This one was €5, the usb2 one being a few cents cheaper.The controller is a innostor is621 which, despite some adverts stating it, is not UASP/ SATA. It connects as a bulk transfer drive (Win 10). The manufacturer's web site doesn't state it either, and I can't find a datasheet.
However, the Maxtor M3 drive I bought is UAS/ UASP, but tops out at ~20MB on usb2. Odd, considering it could be 480Mb/60MB. Write cache was off (normal) From a few searches, plus info from CrystalDiskInfo, plus a teardown video, the drive is Seagate st2000lm007 (mobile HDD), with a 128MB cache, 140MB/s, SATA 6Gb/s.
https://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/mobile-hddDS1861-2-1603-en_US.pdf
Nice review here
http://goughlui.com/2016/09/28/review-maxtor-m3-portable-4tb-usb-3-0-external-hard-drive-hx-m401tcbgm/
Crystal Disk Mark Q32T1 shows 32MB read regardless of cache setting. The write improves from 28.5M to 30M with cache on. Seq write test was actually 6MB worse with cache on. The above review shows 41MB normally, plus a massive improvement to 100MB with cache on. USB3 makes a lot of difference.
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