Recycled Soap #4

I made another batch of recycled soap. I started with small bars of soap from hotels, and then shaved them into tiny pieces with a knife. I added food coloring and water, and then pressed the soap together to make two large blocks and a small one. It reminds my mom of a cupcake. I used a 1 ounce plastic sauce cup as the mold. This counts as batch #4, because batch #3 failed. It was a small batch, but the soap chips didn't stick together and fell apart after using the block once.

Component-Level TV Repair (From the archives)

Back in 2016, My dad was watching TV, and he heard a loud pop and then the TV stopped working. No lights turned on whatsoever, which meant it might be a problem with the power supply. It was a 42 inch TV, and would probably cost over $300 to buy a new TV.

My dad decided that we could try to fix it because it was already broken and I couldn't make it any worse. When we opened it up, I saw a bulged capacitor and a soot stain around a chip on the power supply board. I told my dad which parts to buy on Amazon and Ebay, and I also needed a desoldering tool.

I practiced with the desoldering tool on some scrap circuit boards before I started on the repair. First, I removed the old chip and the old capacitor. The new capacitor was too tall to fit in the case, so I had to extend the leads and attach it sideways. The other solution would have been to drill a hole in the case, but that would have looked messy. I added a socket for the chip, which means that it will be easier to replace if it ever fails again.

The cost of the repair, including the capacitor, chip, set of IC sockets, and the desoldering tool was less than $25. The hardest part of the repair was removing the TV from the wall mount. The repair was successful, and has continued to work for over 2 years now.

 The black square in the middle is the chip.

This is the capacitor.

Amazon Affiliate link for the IC sockets I used: https://amzn.to/2LUCy4a

Amazon Affiliate link for the de-soldering tool: https://amzn.to/2uUWqxj

Power Supply Underglow

I purchased an LED light strip from the clearance department of Walmart. It's the type that is designed for cars, which runs on approximately 14 volts. I added it to the underside of the main deck of my power supply. I'm running it off the 9-Volt rail with a resistor to make it less obnoxiously bright and to save power. 

 It looks really good in a dark room.

I don't really need it, but it looks cool. I was bored because my VR controller is being repaired.

Dollar Store Timer Battery Upgrade

 This digital timer from the dollar store uses a button cell battery. We have plenty of spare AA batteries, but no AG3 batteries. So I modified it to use a AA battery instead. Here are the steps I went through.

remove back cover

strip wire

tin wire

attach wires

done

Why Bad GFCI Plugs Shouldn't be Donated

Griffin recently spotted a GFCI plug at a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. It was a good price, so he bought it. But you can't tell at this type of store whether electrical items are good or not. Griffin at least has the advantage that he knows to expect some of the items to be bad, and has a way to test them. He worries that the average person, just looking for items for their home, wouldn't know this and might buy one of these unreliable items and accidentally start a fire or electrocute someone.

This GFCI outlet, apparently was fried on the inside, which made it stuck ON. So it wouldn't cut the power in an emergency, which is what it was designed to do. It is supposed to cut the power if there's a situation like the classic "dropped a hairdryer in the bathtub".  

Because it was already broken, Griffin took it apart to find out what was wrong on the inside. If you can see from one of these three pictures, there is soot on the circuitboard at the bottom center of the picture. The solenoid coil that actually does the switching has overheated and melted. This would not have been something Griffin could fix.   

So Griffin says, If you are replacing failed GFCI outlets or broken switches, Please do not donate them to Habitat or other resale shops!