TardHaus Projects

Fixing Things with a 3D Printer

2012-01-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

The drill press at work has a plastic holder on the side to hold the key for the chuck. It broke. I took a few measurements with some calipers and created a 3D model in OpenSCAD. I made my version a little more rugged than the original. Then I printed it on my Makerbot Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer. After a little bit of sanding to remove any sharp edges, I installed it on the drill press.

3D Printer

2011-12-10T19:32:00.000-08:00

SamCo got a MakerBot Industries Thing-O-Matic 3D printer. It prints in ABS plastic (the same stuff LEGOs are made of).

It prints parts layer by layer.

I even used my 3D printer to print out some spool holders for my 3d printer! I love using a machine to make parts for that same machine.

The plastic comes on spools. Because the printer can only print in a 4" cube, this spoolholder design prints in two parts. The bottom part has a bracket that clips on the top of the Thing-O-Matic and has a dovetail on the top. The holder portion then mates with that dovetail. You print out two of the bottom pieces, two of the top pieces, and then use them to hold your spool. You can see it assembled in the first picture.

I found this bracket on thingiverse.com, where people upload their 3D designs. You just find something you like, download it, and then print it out!

2011-08-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

SamCo got a 2012 Mustang.

Making Google Search stop autocompleting and autosuggesting

2011-08-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

Google's autosuggest feature finally got annoying enough that I decided to do something about it. If I paused long enough to think about what to type next and then tried to use the arrow keys to modify my text, the autosuggested stuff would be inserted into my search textbox. Occasionally autosuggest stuff got inserted even without the use of any arrow keys. Google failure.

I tried turning off Google Instant, and the description says: predictions and results appear while typing

That sounds like, when turned off, it should stop the annoying behavior. No dice. It turns off the automatic results display, but not the automatic suggestions about what you are typing.

More digging found that adding the parameter complete=0 to the URL turns off the annoyances, and that works well for my home page, which is now:

http://www.google.com/?complete=0

The issue is that it still autosuggests in the firefox search box. That took a bit more digging, as FireFox wants you to download new search engines, but doesn't appear to let you make your own through any of the settings dialogs. I created a file in c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins named unstupidgoogle.xml and put the following contents in it:

----------------------------------------------------------
<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Unstupid Google</ShortName>
<Description>Google Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/png;base64,AAABAAEAEBAAAAEAGABoAwAAFgAAACgAAAAQAAAAIAAAAAEAGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADs9Pt8xetPtu9FsfFNtu%2BTzvb2%2B%2Fne4dFJeBw0egA%2FfAJAfAA8ewBBegAAAAD%2B%2FPtft98Mp%2BwWsfAVsvEbs%2FQeqvF8xO7%2F%2F%2F63yqkxdgM7gwE%2FggM%2BfQA%2BegBDeQDe7PIbotgQufcMufEPtfIPsvAbs%2FQvq%2Bfz%2Bf%2F%2B%2B%2FZKhR05hgBBhQI8hgBAgAI9ewD0%2B%2Fg3pswAtO8Cxf4Kw%2FsJvvYAqupKsNv%2B%2Fv7%2F%2FP5VkSU0iQA7jQA9hgBDgQU%2BfQH%2F%2Ff%2FQ6fM4sM4KsN8AteMCruIqqdbZ7PH8%2Fv%2Fg6Nc%2Fhg05kAA8jAM9iQI%2BhQA%2BgQDQu6b97uv%2F%2F%2F7V8Pqw3eiWz97q8%2Ff%2F%2F%2F%2F7%2FPptpkkqjQE4kwA7kAA5iwI8iAA8hQCOSSKdXjiyflbAkG7u2s%2F%2B%2F%2F39%2F%2F7r8utrqEYtjQE8lgA7kwA7kwA9jwA9igA9hACiWSekVRyeSgiYSBHx6N%2F%2B%2Fv7k7OFRmiYtlAA5lwI7lwI4lAA7kgI9jwE9iwI4iQCoVhWcTxCmb0K%2BooT8%2Fv%2F7%2F%2F%2FJ2r8fdwI1mwA3mQA3mgA8lAE8lAE4jwA9iwE%2BhwGfXifWvqz%2B%2Ff%2F58u%2Fev6Dt4tr%2B%2F%2F2ZuIUsggA7mgM6mAM3lgA5lgA6kQE%2FkwBChwHt4dv%2F%2F%2F728ei1bCi7VAC5XQ7kz7n%2F%2F%2F6bsZkgcB03lQA9lgM7kwA2iQktZToPK4r9%2F%2F%2F9%2F%2F%2FSqYK5UwDKZAS9WALIkFn%2B%2F%2F3%2F%2BP8oKccGGcIRJrERILYFEMwAAuEAAdX%2F%2Ff7%2F%2FP%2B%2BfDvGXQLIZgLEWgLOjlf7%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F9QU90EAPQAAf8DAP0AAfMAAOUDAtr%2F%2F%2F%2F7%2B%2Fu2bCTIYwDPZgDBWQDSr4P%2F%2Fv%2F%2F%2FP5GRuABAPkAA%2FwBAfkDAPAAAesAAN%2F%2F%2B%2Fz%2F%2F%2F64g1C5VwDMYwK8Yg7y5tz8%2Fv%2FV1PYKDOcAAP0DAf4AAf0AAfYEAOwAAuAAAAD%2F%2FPvi28ymXyChTATRrIb8%2F%2F3v8fk6P8MAAdUCAvoAAP0CAP0AAfYAAO4AAACAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACAAQAA</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search">
<Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
<Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
<Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
<Param name="aq" value="t"/>
<Param name="complete" value="0"/>

<Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
<MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.google.com/</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is essentially a copy of the google.xml file but with the stupid autosuggest removed both in the firefox search box and also in the search entry that comes up at the top of the results. After you restart firefox, it will show up in the list of possible search engines as "Unstupid Google".

My first completely useful casting!

2011-05-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've been casting aluminum for a while, but haven't made a whole lot of actually useful things. Recently, Chief Tard asked if I could copy a latch handle from his snow machine, but put a hex opening where his has a splined opening. This allows him to use the latch pieces from a different year to repair his machine.

The handle was cast using my new oil-bonded sand. It came out awesome. It even has the original part numbers on it! I just taped up the splined hole when I made the mold, so it was completely solid with no hole when I cast it.

Making the hex hole was the difficult part. I don't have a rotary broach, so I made a hand tool to do the job.

I made the tool from W-1 drill rod, using my CNC machine to create the hex shape. Then I used a ball end mill to "cup" the center of the tool. This puts enough of an edge on the corners that they will cut. Then I heated it red hot and quenched it in water to harden it.

I drilled a small hole all the way through the handle, then a larger 5/16" hole (the hex is 5/16" across flats) most of the way through. Then I used a hammer and tapped the tool into the hole. The above photo is just after I started and it shows how the tool only cuts the sharp corners; the chips are visible.

Here is the finished hex hole. This fits on a hex shaft and there is a screw that goes on the other side of the handle to hold it in place.

Here's a photo of the handle and the tool. The handle was cleaned up with a grinder and wire wheel, and should fit nicely on the snow machine.

Making the Man Candle

2011-05-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

So... we saw this on the interwebs and thought it was an awesome idea. This is a manly candle, full of bacon flavor and odouriferousness. It's also a good recycling project as the only thing extra we bought was the wick.

Starting with a jar of saved bacon grease, a wick, and a drill....

Use the drill to make a hole in the middle of the grease. This is a bit messy.

Then install the wick. It took some trial and error to get the wick to stay in place.

Then just light and enjoy the wonderful smell of bacon, without actually having to cook anything!

USB Building Blocks

2011-04-29T09:02:00.000-07:00

Minion found an awesome and simple project on the interwebs for replacing the case of a USB thumb drive with one made from LEGO blocks. The people on the interwebs used an X-ACTO knife, but we have CNC machines at our disposal and decided to use those instead.

We started with an unassuming LEGO block. Minion liked this red one.

Minion took some basic measurements, and I used Dolphin PartMaster to generate some code to mill out the bottom and add an opening for the USB connector. I also thinned the walls of the block down to about 0.030 to make the thumb drive guts fit more easily.

We also made a bottom plate to cover things up, and had to remove two of the nubs to make room for the USB connector. Because we thinned the walls of the lego block, we will have to glue this on.

Only a little trimming with the X-Acto knife was required. Here are the pieces and tools ready for assembly.

A Sandisk 4GB thumb drive...

placed inside a lego block...

with the bottom plate glued on...

== awesomeness. We'll see if we can't get some pictures of the CNC machining next time when we make a blue one.

Brunch

2011-04-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

Looks like breakfast... but it's lunchtime!

Then lunch showed up from the grill...

bottom bun + burger + cheese + bacon + ketchup + egg + top bun

== delicious!

Making tools to make tools for my machine tools.

2011-03-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

I bought an independently adjustable 4-jaw chuck for my lathe. The chuck came with an adapter plate, but my lathe (Emco Compact 5 CNC) is a bit special and didn't fit the adapter plate. The bolt holes for my lathe were half in the center hole on the adapter plate. The solution? Another adapter plate, of course!

This adapter plate is made from some 2" aluminum round stock. It moves the bolt holes out in diameter just enough that they will hit the stock adapter plate that came with the chuck. When I went to machine the outer diameter, I discovered that my carriage doesn't go that close to the headstock. My toolchanger takes boring bars, but they all have the cutting edge on the wrong side. The solution, of course, is a custom tool!

I ground some drill rod to make a cutting edge, then heated it with a blowtorch and quenched it in water. Considering I'd never done any of those things before, it went very well. The tool is shown in the above picture ready to take its first cut. I should have ground the heel a bit more, but it did cut and I was able to cut the outer diameter properly.

The stock adapter plate also needed some modification. Remember how I said the bolt holes for the Emco headstock were half in the center hole of the stock adapter plate? Well, I need access to those bolts to tighten the whole thing to the lathe. The stock plate is cast iron, which I'd never machined before. I read up on it a bit, got out my boring bar (first time using this tool too!), and slowly cut openings in this adapter to allow access to the bolts on my adapter. I didn't use a boring head, as the diameter from the boring bar itself was exactly what I wanted.

Then I needed to drill and tap the other 4 holes for bolts that would hold the stock adapter to my adapter. I figured the best way to get the drilling lined up with my adapter would be to use a transfer punch... but I don't have any... so I built one!

I took some more drill rod, turned it down to just under the diameter of my bolt holes, and left a sharp pip on the end. After heating this up and quenching it, I had a brand new transfer punch!

This, of course, was immediately used to locate the drilling spots on the stock adapter plate that would be used to attach it to my adapter plate.

If you look closely in the next pic, you can see the center punch marks in the cast iron. They are in between the channels I bored out earlier.

I then drilled and tapped the holes. Cast iron is really easy to machine, although you have to spend some time cleaning all of the gritty powder off your machine and tools when you are done.

Success! These two adapter plates stay bolted together and essentially make one adapter. When I want to change to the new chuck, I just bolt these adapters to the lathe and then bolt the chuck on.

Flytrap

2011-03-07T15:23:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I bought a Venus Flytrap. It may be outside the range of technology or building, but I began this out of intrigue so it gets shared on the blog. Besides, I shared the cray fish (RIP Clamps.) I have no idea how to care for it or what to feed it, but I think it will be pretty cool to try and make it grow. I have had good luck with awesome plants in the past, specifically my Banana plant (dwarf cavendish) that is about 4'-5' tall, and hope that this works out similarly.
This is a picture of it. Earlier today we picked a spider off the ceiling and dropped it in. With a little nudging... Snap! 4 hours later the trap is closed extra tight. A little research has told me that the pod will actually hermetically seal and then becomes a little stomach, digesting the food and extracting the nutrients. Stay tuned for video of an attack in the future.

Packet Abounds

2011-02-12T21:35:00.000-08:00

We are working with a primitive 1200 baud RF data technology called packet. What is cool is that it would work even if the Internet was down. We'll be rounding this out over the coming weeks. If you are impatient lookup "ARISSat"

Here's a link:
http://www.arissat1.org/v3/

Milling Circuit Boards

2010-06-06T10:01:00.000-07:00

I purchased a Proxxon high-speed (20K RPM!) spindle for milling circuit boards. After devising a way to attach the spindle to my milling machine, I used eagle (and the pcb-gcode script) to generate the G-code for the following simple board. This board contains a microcontroller (the 8-lead device in the center), an 0805 resistor, and several pads to attach wires.

After running the g-code on the milling machine, I ended up with the following circuit board.

Then I installed some components and attached wires for power. The micro is programmed using the 4 surface mount pads between the micro and the wires. I wrote a program to blink out "HI" in Morse code on the LED.

Internet TV Broadcasting

2010-05-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

For a while at TardHaus we have been experimenting with different ways of sending a live feed. We are currently testing a new setup that seems to work better than others we've tried.

Here's an example of our feed:

Watch live video from tardsat on Justin.tv

You may want to try it in a at the main page to compare quality:
http://www.justin.tv/tardsat#r=CIQqPoU~&s=li

Casting Apples

2010-05-25T14:56:00.000-07:00

This apple was cast in Aluminum using a green sand mold and the "coping out" method. The parting line was placed at the largest diameter of the apple, about 3/4 of the way up. The flash has not been removed yet, so the parting line is clearly visible. The images below show the detail on the top and bottom of the casting. A real apple is also shown for comparison (not the same apple used to make the mold)

Computer Fixin's Part Deux, the Finale

2010-03-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

Today the screen came in. It was simple to install, with the hardest part being to remember where the screws go. Because of this I tried turning it on before adding the hardware, as can be seen below.
After I got it all put together it was fine. Hooray!

For the record, I bought the screen on Ebay. The supplier was in China, and the screen came from Shenzen, China via UPS. Total time on this project was about 1 hour.

Computer Fixin's Part Deux, Laptop Fixin's

2010-03-14T11:21:00.000-07:00

My sister bought a Laptop recently, it is a Gateway NV7802U. Not a bad machine, it has a 2.2GHz processor, 4 GB Ram, and a 500GB. Tiger Direct review. Last week, I was told there was a problem and I said I would take a look. Below, it is in its natural state.Unfortunately, when it is powered up, it is obvious what the problem is. She stepped on it and broke the screen. I found a replacement screen for the Laptop model on ebay for $149.99 but I thought if I might open it up I could find the model of the screen. The idea was, I might find the screen directly for less money somewhere.
After some fairly difficult figuring out, I was able to pull the screen out. It was a little funny as there is a webcam in the cover just above the screen. There was also two screws in the bottom of the laptop that had to come out.

After taking it out, I turned the screen over to find the model. Voila! Here it is, a Samsung LTN173kT01-A01. You may notice that the screen (and the laptop, for that matter) was very recently made. "0935" is a date-code meaning 2009, week 35. This puts it late August of 2009.
Unfortunately, my plan hit a wall when I could only find this type of screen for more than $149.99. It turns out that the replacement for the Gateway that I found on Ebay is not this model, but instead an LG LP173WD1-TLA1 and the LG is cheaper. It looks like the LG would fit, but I am currently doing research to conform. I can imagine that Gateway manufactured this laptop (and the rest during this run) with whatever parts they could get at the moment and this screen happened to be a Samsung. At other times, they might use the LG.

Stay tuned to see if I can fix it.

-Minion

Ground Loops

2010-03-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

Last week at work, we proved that ground loops with an oscilloscope can be a bad thing. Here is a description of what happened, but the pictures mostly speak for themselves. As I understand it (I was not present) the issue occurred when a setup involving 277 volts was present. Our oscilloscope was not plugged into earth ground through the third prong, which was supposed to help look at AC signals. Unfortunately, the 'scope was plugged into the PC via the serial port (to wave capture) and then the serial ground provided at path for potential disaster. Basically, all the grounds in the circuit should be at the same point (voltage), ours were not.This picture is from the serial port on the back of the 'scope. Notice anything odd?
Same board, different angle. In this picture you can almost see the lifted traces on the board as well. That trace goes from one of the pins on the DB9 to the chip. The yellow cap. next to the chip isn't looking great either.
As it turns out, since the loop was through the PC, it was not spared either. Shockingly similar failure to the 'scope. Lucky for all of us, the hard drive was spared any damage and a duplicate PC was located to replace this lost one. The 'scope, however, could not be replaced as easily.

Give him the Clamps!

2010-03-04T19:30:00.000-08:00

Last September, me and Freshman were in the Barre/Montpelier area to pick up some fireworks, and we stopped at R+L Archery to check out some more fun things. When there, I saw cray fish on sale for $0.50 each (as fish bait.) So what could I do? I picked up a few and I named them all clamps. Long story short, I have one left.

Notice the food to the right, and the electrical box in the back. He calls that home. Sometimes I don't see him for days while he is hiding. The point of this post is a new development. Recently, clamps molted, why not, and when he did, he came out with one less claw. Actually, he came out with the whole arm missing. The question is, will it come back?

Sno' Movin'

2010-02-27T07:16:00.000-08:00

We got some snow... 20+ inches... and then it changed to rain. The driveway was turning to slush, and the snow-blower was having trouble with the heavy wet snow. This, of course, means it's time to break out the big snow machine. Bill and Ollie got the battery hooked up and fired it up. The 3-53 runs like a champ!

Then we had to clean a path through the back yard so we could get the bucketloader into the parking lot.

By taking successive swipes with the bucket, we got the parking lot cleaned up to an acceptable level. We were worried that if the slush froze, it would leave 1 foot deep ruts in ice, making it difficult to get out of the parking lot. Here, we're just removing a lot of the slush and making a big pile across the road on the far side.

While the machine was out, we moved some snow around and made some little jumps in the backyard, which Ollie immediately took advantage of.

Computer Fixin's

2010-02-14T10:22:00.000-08:00

Here is a sad G5 iMac. It is so sad that it can't even make the frowny-mac face. When you try to power it up, it doesn't do anything. Careful listening reveals that it starts to power up but then powers down within 1 second.

This, of course, means it's time to take it apart. As suspected (because of its age), some of the electrolytic capacitors in the power supply section had failed. These things typically only have a 1000-2000 hour lifetime, so it's not uncommon to see failures in older electronics. A quick order to DigiKey (about $20 worth of parts), a bit of soldering to remove the old caps and install the new caps, and it was ready to put back together. The knife block in the picture was used to lean the motherboard against so I could heat the solder on one side and pull the cap off from the other side.

Yay! A happy mac! It's very satisfying to fix broken electronics.

2009-09-23T05:11:00.000-07:00

We finished putting up the frame with some help from my bucketloader. We used lag bolts at the top to attach to the frame of the garage. The goal is to have no support posts so that we can get the large ~~vehicles~~ toys (like bucketloaders and dump trucks) to the back yard. This video is our 2 hours of work squeezed into 2 minutes.

Fixin' up the garage

2009-09-19T15:54:00.001-07:00

We're adding a little roof to the side of the garage to protect the short walkway to the side door from falling ice/snow. The bucketloader is helping us out here, as this section of roof is heavy. The frame is made up of wood recycled from another roof that we dismantled. We have some metal roofing (also recycled from the other section of roof) that we will be mounting to this frame.

Fun with LEDs and CNC machines

2009-08-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

When my cousin Ian was here during the summer, he wanted to make something cool for a girl... It's amazing what boys will do for girls. He wanted to make something really cool and personalized. I, of course, saw this as the perfect opportunity to play with my CNC machine.

First, we used a super-tiny end mill (0.020 inches in diameter!) to engrave her name in a piece of acrylic.

Then we created a base from polyethylene. While it machines OK, it absolutely sucks to cut on the bandsaw (it just melts against the blade). It was so bad, I ended up using the mill to "cut" the piece from a larger block. Here, we've added an LED. This one is a green (because she likes green, of course) Avago 1W LED. We put one at each end facing towards the center where her name will go.
Here's a test of the unit. The green LEDs shine into the acrylic, and where it hits the engraving, it comes out the front. The picture is a little over-exposed. It looks way nicer in real life.We tucked all the wiring into the base and added a barrel plug in the back that hooks up to a miscellaneous DC "wall-wart" I had laying around. The barrel plug fit nicely into the hole we machined into the base, and there was a slot in the bottom for all of the wires and a resistor (to limit the current to the LEDs). The wires and resistor were kept securely in the base using H.G. technology (that's Hot Glue, for the unacronymned).

Tards repeated on 2 meter amateur radio

2009-08-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

Aaron has constructed a 2m receiver and we finished aligning it. Ollie duct-taped a dual band whip base station antenna to make it vertical and we connected it to a vhf/uhf duplexer. The UHF side was connected to a 448.500 MHz transmitter at about 1.5 Watts. The receiver was connected to the VHF side at 147.740. The units were linked with a small PIC microcontroller that Ollie helped me build during the long winter. This provides Morse code ID, tail, and tailbeep, as well as timeout functions. This is all the features you need for a ham repeater which allows you to be rebroadcast from a good vantage point. After a cranky solder joint on the transmitting crystal was identified, I did a road test with KB1FLG with my HT in the car. I was able to go 4.5 miles up route 12 before things got scratchy, not bad for an antenna laying the driveway. This could be the basis of a system that is remotely located and/or solar powered. (BTW, in case you care, the TX crystal was from a toy walkie talkie at 49.830 MHz, which x3 and x3 is 448.5)

Recycling

2009-07-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Here at TardHaus, we like to recycle our aluminum cans. In typical TardHaus style, we don't do it the same way most people do. Instead, we melt the aluminum (using a charcoal-powered blast furnace) and use green-sand molds to make whatever we want. The extra melted aluminum goes into a muffin pan to make "ingots" that can be remelted later and made into more stuff.

I took a couple of these ingots and decided to try them out on my CNC mill. It's an EMCO F1-CNC milling machine that was retrofitted by students from Vermont Technical College with new stepper motors, gecko drivers, and Mach 3 software.
After milling some flats on the sides so my vise could grip the ingot, I milled the face and then played with cutting a circular pocket.

Then I played with machining heatsink fins.

I plan to mount some high-power LEDs to this heat sink and make a more permanent lamp for the CNC machine. The current lamp is a single CREE X-Lamp star that Aaron hacked together for me. It does a good job, but I'd like more light.

Roofing

2009-07-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

How do you shingle your screened in porch in seven hours? Hire us. We've needed to do this for a while but it didn't leak so what was the rush? Unfortunately for us our hand was forced and we needed to get it done. The weather hasn't exactly been cooperating so when we finally got a nice day we went for it. The work was started at roughly 4:30pm and work completed at about 12:00am. Everyone chipped in to get this done and it doesn't look half bad.

We had the roof cleared of all the old debris at about 5:30pm.

I'm going to guess this was about 7:30pm or so, we had all the new tar paper in place.

The ground crew measuring and cutting everything we needed to make the install go smoothly.

At about 9:30 SamCo was showing me how to properly apply bug spray. Oh and we had fourish rows of shingles down.

Thanks to Minion for this picture at 12:10am or so. I couldn't have climbed the tower if my life depended on it.

Giant Plant

2009-07-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

Part of our lawn has been left to the wilds and we get some pretty weird things growing out there. This however has us baffled. We don't know what it is but it sure does like growing. That's SamCo for height reference.

Wood Fort Pictures

2009-07-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

Quick addition to the post from below. Some of you might not realize when we say a fort we really mean it. We don't really have any place to store 16 pallets of wood pellets besides our giant driveway. We still can't see who's parked in a few of our parking spots. Oh and by the way Shane was wrong, it has now been a week and there are still six pallets in our driveway. Fail.

Fort Tard

2009-07-10T23:35:00.000-07:00

We have received 16 pallets of pellets (Sally sells sea shells) wood pellets on wood pallets that is. The "Tard's Mahal" (garage) is primarily heated with a homemade pellet stove (made from a recycled washing machine and furnace). "Shane says" the ones that we don't own (we bought 4 of the 16 we unloaded) will be gone in a week. We'll see. The tall pallets make the driveway feel like a fort. It is cool. If it would stop raining for a few days we could do cool things with them since the forklift now has brakes that really work!

Signals from 22200 miles in the sky

2009-07-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

In June, 2005, the Tards braved great peril installing a 10 foot C-band antenna. Only a few days after successfully receiving NASA, the transition to digital occurred on Jul 1, 2005. An FTA receiver that could decode the new digital signals was purchased and was used to view the "return to space" mission (after Columbia was lost in February, 2003) on July 25, 2005. The satellite system has been down since the building of the new garage. With help from Aaron, one of Tardhaus's best summer residents, the satellite is again up and ready for the next launch July 11, 2009 (weather permitting). We currently have 4 NASA TV channels to choose from and are rebroadcasting on the Tardhaus video system on channel 125. The signals are being received on C-band at 4040 MHz from AMC 6 at 72.0 degrees W, almost directly South of the Tardhaus!. Imagine, the Tardhaus is receiving digital transmissions directly from NASA!

Tarden

2009-06-23T19:50:00.001-07:00

While all of us that live in the TH are known for being electronic minded, none of us are known for having a green thumb. We're still in the early stages of the Tarden but Ollie has gotten little green plants to sprout form the ground in a semi ordered fashion. We'll have to wait and see if things continue to go well as the summer progresses.

Busy Day

2009-06-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

Lots going on at the TH today. We had Hydrogen Rockets, which ended when the rocket ended up on the roof of the garage. Building a bare bones computer system, sill in process with that, see the "green screen of death" picture below. Lastly there was the cooking of fried dough in the fryer thingie. Sweet pics below.

Ok, so I just realized I don't have any photo editing software on my lappy yet. Minion tried to get me to use Paint to resize and crop my pictures. While he is correct that it can be done, he left out some steps when relying how it was done, so I ended up with a giant white background and a little picture. I'll update the pictures tomorrow.

Its tomorrow and I finished loading some real photo editing software onto my lappy. Makes things much easier. Speaking of making things easier theres gotta be a better way to create/edit these blog posts. This "compose" view blows, and the HTML isn't much better. Partly cause the window is so darn small. . Here are the pictures.

Tards making cookies

2009-05-31T00:03:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you have a 72 oz bag of chocolate chips? You make one giant batch of cookies. The giant batch is actually the recipe on the back of the bag x4. Making four batches of cookies sounds like a great idea cause you end up with tons of cookies. What we didn't realize was how long it would take to bake them. You might ask yourself what does a giant batch of chocolate chip cookies look like. Well it looks our sweet Kitchen Aid mixer overflowing with cookie dough. We were astonished at how much the bowl weighed so we went and measured it. Yea, 16lbs of cookie dough. How many cookies does that make? For us it made 188 cookies, there is a ginormous pile of them on our table. So if you want some cookies stop on by.

New Tards!

2009-05-09T14:04:00.001-07:00

Aaron (aka "Minion") has come to Tardhaus. He had so much stuff to bring down from VTC that I brought the dump truck up to pick him up.

Yardwork, Tardwork

2009-04-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend we continued the removal of brush and converting the yard for summer. We've lost more bank behind the garage, but we cut some ugly leaner trees and removed deadwood. Instead of burning the brush, we have piled it in gorges forming along the bank to provide a base of fill. The new toy (backhoe) ought to help speed the process once it is up and running. Sumac and wild chervil are trying to take over. It's war.

New Toy! New Toy!

2009-04-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

I just purchased a 1973 Michigan bucketloader/backhoe. It needs a little bit of work (although not as much as I was expecting), but I think a weekend or two at the Tardhaus should have it in tip-top shape. If there's anything we can't fix ourselves, there is a place about a mile down the road called Farm-All-Fix that works on such equipment for reasonable rates. I bought it today, but it would't fit in the car to bring it back to Tardhaus, and we don't have a low-boy trailer (yet), so we're probably going to get a trucking company to pick it up and deliver it for us sometime this week.

Dryer Fixin's

2009-04-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

Our dryer, a Maytag Neptune, has been drying clothes more and more slowly, and has needed multiple cycles to get clothes all the way dry. I had previously cleaned out the metal hose from the dryer to the outside of the house, but that didn't fix it. This, of course, means that it needs to be taken apart to be fixed. In my usual style, I didn't think about this until I was loading wet clothes into the dryer and decided I would fix it. With the wet clothes in the drum, I googled how to take apart this particular dryer, located the needed tools, and was off.

The culprit was a ton of lint that had made it past the lint trap and gathered up right in front of the blower motor that blows the air out the back of the unit. With this being clogged, the dryer just made steam in the dryer, but never blew much of it outside the house. With this problem resolved, I reassembled the dryer and ran my load of clothes, which dried nicely in a single cycle. Yay!

Life at Tardhaus

2009-04-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

The Tards (residents of Tardhaus) do a lot of interesting projects. This blog is an attempt to capture some of the projects we work on so we can show others what we do.