Baronnies projects

Sunday, 20 March 2022

Cubster mini service

air filter clean

plugs left black tip, but grey

right clean.

Sounds like it's running a bit rough

Removed deck, clean sharpen

Drive belt worn out

Put original back on. Light crazing on sides.

Monday, 14 February 2022

Philips LED ceiling light 1500 lumens

Philips 333623117 Plafonnier Cinnabar

https://www.lighting.philips.fr/consumer/p/myliving-plafonnier/333653116

15W / 0.11A / 0.55pf nominal at 236V

Went faulty (flashing) after a few months service and replaced under warranty. Return of defective part not requested.

Rude not to repair it...

constant current smps outputs 87.2mA above a mains input of 208V

There are 4 modules in series.

Each module has 14 leds, with 41.3V across the module.

I had a faulty led on one module, so bridged it. Module now has 38.6V volts. The rest still have 41.3V.

It's now September 2022 and the replacement light has gone faulty in 11 months. Same fault.

I've bridged the broken LED and we'll see. This is a product with 2 year warranty on the fitting and 5 years on the LEDs and the smps (go figure). So far 2 out of 2 have failed to make a fifth of the warranty period. Can't even blame a batch fault.

I have noticed that the fitting glows when it's off. There is an earth terminal but no recommendation to fit an earth. I've fitted a X2 0.1uF cap N to E terminal and they glow no more. Maybe this leakage current was enough to pre-roast the LEDs? We'll see.

I do also have a tube light LED Philinea 45W made by Philips which glows when off. No earth terminal and no problems since installing it July 2019, but it's a 60W equivalent vs 80W for the faulty one. A lot less stress and heat!

more fire wood

A friend wanted some trees gone. A 50yo oak 60cm/15m, a large ash and a small ash. I got the easy job of felling the trees, then 10 trips to move the wood home. My friends spent days clearing up!

say 4 stere, so 2 years heating.

27/2 8h splitting oak and ash. Built a new wood store (0.75 x 1.1 x 1.9m = 1.6m3) near the house to hold a year's worth of wood. Filling it with ash today. Most ash now split.

28/2 1h all ash now split and stacked.

Sunday, 6 February 2022

Hedge cutter service

Dewalt DCM563. New 22/11/18

Bit disappointed with this having just serviced it, I see the motor is nearly worn out. It's not brushless like the drills. It's not like I use it every day. I have 300m of hedge I cut twice a year, plus 300m I cut elsewhere. Or around 4 days per year.

The blade is pretty worn too on the back side where it's supposed to be flat.

A new motor assembly - motor not available (brushes not available as the motor is sealed) is £48/60€ They've even gone to the trouble of pressing a plate over the motor mounting screws so you can't even source the motor.

The motor part number is 90626374, and this pops up on a V20 fatmax, for £27/40€

W180430 19.5V S-494 755

Worn brush on the right side just visible.

The brushes might be swappable. They are approx 5.5mm x 7mm, with a square locator on the back which is 5.5mm x 4mm.

This seems a good start

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000265047084.html

These are known as RS895/ 875/ 887 motors, although the case size of this motor is the next size down known as a RS755 (in the part no) but the same brushes as a RS750. 755/750 brushes are a lot smaller, reducing the contact with the comm. Important? Don't buy a complete brush assembly because 1. the dewalt one has suppression caps 2. slightly different moulding 3. different arms 4. you can't easily remove brushes from the arms.

See notes + more photos on PC.

New brushes are 4.8mm wide but are too long at 7.2mm from indent. Need to sand them back to about 6mm. Once fitted, the motor takes between 2.2 and 2.8A at 18.5V. I'll need to put some spots of weld to hold the back on. There isn't enough metal to peen.

Soldered some wire to bridge the holes in the brush holders.

A new blade is £87/100€

Why am I quoting in £? Because despite buying the product in France, no-one stocks them. Poland, Finland, UK. But not France.

A new tool is 118€

Guess this is going binward and I'll be changing brands.

Thanks Dewalt.

1/10/23 Replaced the brushes again. One holder completely missing. Bought complete 895 brush/case assemblies (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005890644120.html), but they are too big (it's a 755 case ie 40mm dia) Brushes are perfect size and can be carefully removed from holder. Cut off a new holder and soldered it onto the old bracket. Ensure it's nicely central on the motor.

Ensure the current is less than 2.5A at 5V before welding. The plate is a bit bent. Will take about 3.3A at 18.5V with the blade attached. Ensure to straighten the blade and WD40.

Thursday, 30 December 2021

How things shrink

Since January 2014 I ran a local server based on a microchip 32MX PIC. It originally connected to a weather station, gave a local read out, controlled remote sockets, uploaded to various logging services such as Thinspeak and Wuinderground, screened phone calls, monitored basic energy use, etc. It was largely ok until this year when the webserver would randomly stop responding. I'd slowly removed some things like the weather station and the grid tie inverter, which became self contained nodes and did their own logging etc.

I'd planned to replacing it since March 2019, so I finally time to implement it this year. The box with buttons was the RF receiver and display, replaced by a receiver on the blue pcb, bottom left and the display also driven directly. The white board bottom middle is replaced by the blue one too, although its large size was partly driven by needed a hardwired ethernet connection, amd partly due to it being home made and single sided. New board is wifi and double sided with screen printing; I have no idea how them can make 5 of them for around 15€. The board bottom right is caller ID which had both a PIC and a wifi module. This is replaced by a dedicated CID chip and uses serial to communicate the main blue board. Quite a space saving, and the new board also allows me to use modern control methods like MQTT.