Picked up this gem a few weeks back
The compressor ran for 3 mins every 18 mins maintaining 0C (setting 4) with 18C ambient. That's ~8Wh. I'll have to see what it uses to drop to -15C, but will make a useful backup freezer, or overflow freezer in the summer when we have energy excess.
Yep, I cheaped out. I paid around 65€ for a knock off of the Oregon Jolly, and saved 200+ €
Was it worth it. Yes, considering the amount I use one. It'll pay for itself in about 10 sharpens, which could be a bad weekend when I'm working on the ground.
First the bad. Poor assembly. The earth wire was so badly crimped, I was able to re-use the crimp. Wires from the lamp weren't sheathed, so the shorting to case would have happened and a 20A/230V circuit probably wouldn't have cleared the earth fault. Sheath below the earth was simply pulled up.
Quite a bit of rust / chroming hasn't worked.
Discs are ok, but centre a bit tight on the shaft. 22mm centre, 145 diameter. One is 3.3mm thick, the other 4.8. For my pico chains the 3.3 fits fine. Cant get the 4.8mm in!
There is a 15W E14 (small Edison) lamp. Probably enough, but only comes on with the motor so no use for set up. I'll have to mod that. It is 25mm above the holder and the is another 25mm of free space. 20mm diameter and it'll go to 22mm.
The top plate angle has 2 scales, 1 front, 1 rear. They vary by about 2.5 degrees.
The chain clamp needs work, as it doesn't seem to clamp without a loss of force which then changes the angle. When I work this out, I'll put the solution here.
Test fitted against a brand new Stihl chain with the advised settings, the disc fitted well.
There is a really useful table in the manual with chain set up and mine is shown correctly. The parts diagram is missing the parts, but has the numbers!
Ordered in EU and came with EU plug. Oddly, came with a 2 pole travel adapter to UK plug. This would be illegal under CE marking as a product has to come with the correct plug for the country. It is also unsafe as there is no earth pin.
Great video here link starting at about 8:30. Also suggests using a CBN wheel and moving the clamp hole closer to the centre.
I have a variac, or variable transformer which I use to supply variable AC to projects, or testing switch mode power supplies. Normally I just connect a DVM to measure the volts and don't worry too much about the current. I recently saw these incredibly cheap panels meters that show volts, current and frequency - typically 2€. You can get them in singles too, but I bought a combined one as it came duty paid for ~4€. You try buying one in France and they start at 10€. Mine is red.
Time to hack it! To get it apart, remove the red LED cover and unsolder to 2 wires on the terminals. Live goes to the cap/res.
The chip on the right is a VK1640, I2C to 7 segment driver. IC on the left is sanded off. Probably a PIC!
The yellow and blue wires are the mod. Originally the 1k resistor on the yellow was soldered to the 330n cap. The cap is a simple wattless psu. On reflection, as the voltage input range goes to 500V, reducing the cap to day 220n would have reduced the input voltage, so long as the zener current isnt exceeded. However, this mod allows it to read from 6V. It consistently reads 2V high above 20V, and 1V below, so the error ranges 10% to 1%. Current is spot on.
20/9/23 Testing on a cheap 2-stroke genny, the volts and frequency shot up. I saw volts at 300V, and the 56R resistor glowing. Took it apart to check and it is a little burnt, but 57R. Have left it.
I'd guess that the 2 feeds top right are for volts and frequency.
In feb 2013 I pulled in a dodgy data cable to the gates with the power cable.
Lost a core in March for the gate open. No spare cores, so swapped it for the door bell.
Pulled in a new pure copper today. Existing pull was very stiff and gave up at 20m. Turns out the duct had quite a lot of water in the horizontal portion. Sucked it out with the hoover. Then tried to pull a plastic bag down. Only went ~1m. There is a joint, so maybe that killed the suction.
Tried again with more lubricant and it went in quite easily until the last 5cm when the pull snapped!
It's that time of year again. Wood for the wood store.
A shock this year, as the tree repo was bare. I'd thought that there was a fair amount of oak, but it turned out that there was mostly compost from birch cut several years ago. A small amount ~1/4 stere was cut. Birch that fell last year was wet, but cut to burn this year. A large goat willow was wet and will probably be rotten by next season.
Oak felled a year ago was put in the back of the store. About a stere had failed to stay in a pile and had fallen and got very wet. Another pile of a stere had been kept dry until October when the cover blew off. It's the start of the next 2 rows. These 2 will be topped off with wet birch.
A friend has 10 stere of beech, so this have to be found a home.
Snake bush is so called as we found small 2 asp vipers there when we hadnt been in long. Back then it was maybe 2m deep and 4m long. We'd hacked it back quite hard a few years back as it was causing a fruit tree to not grow straight.
Today it was probably 4m deep, 10m long and around 6m tall. Removed up to 1m in depth in some places (it borders the neighbours) and maybe 3m off one end, and some of the blackthorn trees were 4+m. Plenty of bramble too. We had a good crop of both sloes and black berries this year.
Even with kevlar gloves, it was punishing work. About 2 man days providing about 2.5m3 of chippings.
Another hour of my life...
Separate the 2 parts as best you can, and pass a small screwdriver under the tab nearest the screen (blue) and lever the yellow one gently down, using the blue tab as a fulcrum.
Releasing one seems enough to wiggle the other off. Then the lower cowl can be removed.
Removed bolts and spacers, cleaned with oil, removed burrs and sharpened with diamond file. Didn't remove from body.
Cut the southern hedge back very hard on top. It's down to around 1.5m, to allow it to grow and be cut at 1.6m where I can just reach. Took off around 2m in places - the laurel had got way too tall. Around 4m3 of waste shredded in 1 hour. About 40m of hedge.
80€ at Lidl. I'm not a good (stick) welder, and a good welder will not make me a good welder. Looked at the more expensive one (140€) which does everything, but only seems to be sold in Belgium. Disposable gas bottles last 15 mins according to plenty of forums and at 25€ a pop, that wasnt going to happen. I could hire/buy a bottle, but I weld maybe 10 times a year. Gasless was the way to go for me. And after a bad start I'm happy with the results.
The main circuit is very similar to this one https://www.instructables.com/id/MIG-Welder-Repair-and-Mods/ but it is AC output, and the speed control is more complex. All the pin numbers and AC correct on this one. https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/comments/amsy7p/help_can_someone_please_explain_the_wireing/ Mine uses the welding supply to drive another bridge, and the drive is 24V, so ignore all the electronics.
When you press the trigger, you complete the AC circuit from a small 12V trafo on the pcb, which drives a large relay and a small relay together, so you should hear a click. I had no click. The large relay feeds the large welding trafo. The small one runs the feed motor via a 4069UB chip, pot + SVF740 mosfet
I removed the PCB, and the 1/2A fuse, and put a 12V psu on the fuse and pin 4. Doesnt matter that it's DC as the next device is a bridge rectifier. Nothing. Tried on the relay. All good. Kept working back and it was a dry joint on the bridge. Looked fine, but a quick re-heat and all good.
I repair quite a lot of stuff and this is by far one of the best pcbs I've seen in cheap gear for a long time. They could be fake parts, but they are branded, and the soldering is err good. I think it's hand soldered, but it looks like lead to me, not ROHS - way too shiny. A good layer of conformal coat too...all over the connector too!
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| harbor freight flux 125 |
I might look at changing to DC - see here
