Month: February 2014

The Destroyer of Dreams

Perhaps delayer of dreams would be more accurate. This is the power supply that isn’t powering my new 3d printer right now:
Dead power supply

I spent maybe 30 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn’t upload the customized firmware to my printer before I came across a post where someone had the same error message I was getting and in their case it was because they’d forgotten to turn on the power supply (usb apparently provides enough power to blink the LEDs but not to upload firmware). I pulled out my multimeter and sure enough, 115 volts were going in and 0 were coming out. The only switch on the entire thing is the 115/230 volt switch, which I had set properly to 115.

I asked the people who sell the printer kit I got about it – no there isn’t some power switch that I’d missed and my checks with my voltmeter were exactly what they asked for for diagnosis. Apparently they’ve had some other bad power supplies in the batch mine came from and they put in an order to ship me a new one this week. Once I was told they didn’t see any point to having me ship a dead power supply back to them I opened it up to check the internal fuse (still good) and extract the fan (I’m sure I can find a use for a small DC fan). I didn’t notice it at first, but while I was trying to get the fan unplugged (took pliers) I noticed some slightly singed spots on the circuit board:
Singed Board

I have no idea what that component is for, but it’s got a rather large heat sink (that got hot at some point) but isn’t just glued to the side of the case with thermal paste like almost all the other cooled parts.

I took a bunch of pictures of my printer as it grew from a pile of parts to a complete machine. I’ll sort through them and either post them in the next couple days or when I’ve successfully printed something (and include pictures of calibration prints).

Close Enough

My bathroom isn’t actually done, but it’s in a state I’m happy with for now: missing molding around the doors and baseboard, otherwise complete. Here are the main before/after pairs.
Before 1
After 1

Before 2
After 2

It was not my intent to be reflected in the mirrors in the second pair of pictures, but considering how the mirrors are arranged there’s not much I can do about it for that view.

The excitement this weekend was that I was replacing the switch/outlet with white so they wouldn’t clash as badly with the chrome. Unfortunately the breaker box isn’t comprehensively or accurately labeled, so after trying 3 times to turn off the outlet I gave up and turned off power to everything but the garage (because I was in the garage so when the lights there went out I turned them back on). After I’d rewired everything and turned power back on my router failed to come back up – tests with my multimeter indicate that the power supply went out. Were it not for that I’d have posted this yesterday, possibly with more write-up.

I probably should have been posting pictures as I went so they’d have more text to go along with them. This should give an idea of the progression:
Tile/Vanity removed

I really thought I took some pictures of the tile freshly installed, but apparently not. I actually do have pictures of just the freshly-painted walls, but they were taken at night so it’s not obvious that the color is from paint instead of from the lighting.
Tile installed, Vanity in place

Here the cabinet is installed and I was finally installing the light fixture. I came back with the stool and was reminded that Dash just can’t be trusted with power cords that stretch across at his eye level.
Dash helping/Vanity cabinet installed

Light fixture installed

Talore spent a surprising amount of time checking out that hole in the wall.
Vanity top/faucet installed

They almost never look at themselves in the mirror, this was a surprise (especially since the old mirror had been leaning against the wall in my bedroom for over a month and they’d walk past without even noticing most of the time).
Mirror installed

In no case were the cats placed by me. Generally I’d leave the room to get something and when I got back they were all over the new addition.