Dough Proofer Box

 My family like to buy frozen balls of pizza dough. This is a cheap way to make pizza which tastes good and can be customized. To use the frozen dough, it has to be thawed in the fridge overnight and then set out to rise at room temperature for 6 hours. But room temperature during the winter can be too cold for dough. Setting the dough on top of the DVR helps keep it warm, but I thought of a better solution.

I had a small electric cooler. It's like a tiny fridge, but uses peltier cooling. It's not very efficient and is only advertised for keeping drinks cool, not for safe food refrigeration. It has no temperature controls, just runs at full power all the time it's plugged in. I knew that it's simple to reverse peltier cooling to make a heater. Then I just needed a way to regulate the temperature. I needed a way to automatically turn it off if it gets too hot, and turn it back on if it gets too cool.

I found a thermostat that would work. It's the kind you might find on the wall to control your air conditioning or heat. It has an easy-to-read dial to set a temperature and show the current temperature. It's ridiculously large for this project, but it was on sale for only $2. I looked at the simplicity of the description and pictures on the box and incorrectly assumed it was an old school mechanical thermostat. It turned out to be a newer one, requiring a CR2450 battery plus 24 volts AC all the time.

It took some experimenting with power supplies to figure out how to get it to turn on and send signals. Then I needed to add a relay. I ordered one from Amazon, but it took longer to ship than I wanted. I finished all the other parts of mounting a project enclosure box, transformer, fuse, fan, and heat sink, then testing to make sure the thermostat measured temperatures accurately, and making sure the peltier produced heat well when run in reverse. 

I used metal strips to hold the project box onto the cooler. I also added a small board with red and green LEDs to show the status of whether the heater was on (not at correct temperature) or off (up to temperature).

I was very impatient for the relay shipment to arrive because I had finished everything else I could on this project.

Amazon Affiliate link for the relay: https://amzn.to/3qk6cpP

Finally, the relay arrived, and it took less than half an hour to install it. It worked perfectly. I haven't tested the dough proofer with dough yet, but we did use it to melt chocolate.

If you need a dough proofer, there are commercial solutions out there. Some ovens might even have a low temperature setting for this. There are probably easier ways to convert a cooler to a proofer, or at least with a smaller thermostat. But this project was good because it helped me learn about thermostats without having to spend much money.

Turning Two Broken Drills into One Working Drill

 

We had a Worx "switchdriver" that had a feature of switching quickly between two different bits by rotating the front half. This was convenient for putting a drillbit in one half and a screwdriver bit in the other, and switching back and forth quickly. Here's an Amazon Affiliate link to that drill: https://amzn.to/330y3mh

Picture from Amazon.com

Unfortunately, this drill stopped working. Griffin looked inside, but didn't want to completely take it apart until his dad figured out if it could be replaced under any type of warranty. So he put it on a shelf for about a year. When he took another look at it recently, he figured out that motor was fine but the speed controller failed.

Today, Griffin tried to use another cordless drill to help replace the handle on a garden rake. But when he started drilling, smoke came out of the motor of the cordless drill. He figured out that the motor of that Craftsman drill had burned out. 

So now Griffin had two broken drills- one with a good motor and bad controller, and another one with a good controller and bad motor. He wondered if he could combine the good parts from each to make one working drill.

At first glance, the motors looked identical. They were exactly the same size, and the gear on the motor shaft looked like it was the same size too.

 Griffin tried to fit the good motor into the other drill. First, he swapped the plastic coverplate that needed to lock onto the gearbox. 

The gearboxes did look different- one had five gears that surrounded the gear on the motor shaft, and the other had three. But that shouldn't matter if the motor shaft gear of each motor was identical. He tried and tried to get the motor to fit, but something was wrong.

Mom took a look and noticed that one gear had 11 teeth and the other had 12. Oh no! The only way to make this work would be to swap the gears from the motor shafts. Unfortunately, these gears weren't designed to come off. How frustrating!

Griffin used pliers, screwdrivers, hammers, crowbars, and a vise to pry the gear off the good motor. He got it off without damaging the motor. Next, he had to get the gear he needed off the bad motor. Unfortunately, the entire shaft came out of the motor with the gear. He was able to hammer the shaft out of the gear using a nailset. 

He transferred the correct gear to the good motor shaft, and then reattached the plastic coverplate. Success! The gears meshed together correctly and the plastic coverplate locked the gearbox on. 

Then he soldered the wires to the motor and screwed the housing back on. Success! The drill works great now. It sounds slightly rougher than it used to and the light does not work

Shoe Repair

Griffin has been walking over 10,000 steps a day as a college student on campus. This has caused him to wear out many pairs of shoes. Although the upper part of the shoes look relatively new, the soles have worn. In some pairs, the sole has cracked in half in the center. In other pairs, the heels have worn away.

Griffin decided to try repairing the newest pair to try getting more life out of them. He considered filling in the worn-away heel with hot glue, foam, wood, or rubber. Rubber seemed like a good choice (as we have seen people create soles from old tires). He finally decided to use wire insulation (probably plastic, not rubber). 

He had a scrap of 1.25" diameter wire insulation that he found on the sidewalk near a telecom box. The outside was smooth, and the inside was grooved. He flattened the wire insulation with his heat gun, and then used a pattern to cut a shape out of the plastic. Then he hot glued the plastic to the heel of the shoe. He did the same thing for the second shoe.

Now to experiment and see how long the repair will last. Which will fail first- the hot glue, the new plastic patch, or the rest of the shoe? 

Edited to add the results- it was the hot glue that failed. It didn't stick very well to the bottom of the shoe. It fell off after a couple of weeks. Another issue was that the plastic was too slippery to be a good heel material. Griffin ended up buying new sandals, steel-toed Keens that have lasted longer.

Air Compressor Regulator Repair

Our air compressor came with a regulator. My dad was using it with a nail gun to fix the fence when he noticed that the regulator wasn't working. The pressure gauge did work, but the regulator kept sticking and leaking and wouldn't stay at the correct pressure. My dad turned it up to add more pressure, and then turned it off until it ran out of air. I told him he should stop using it because it isn't safe, but he wanted to finish the fence to keep out people and dogs and coyotes. 

After making sure that the tank was completely de-pressurized and safely unplugged, I removed the regulator. I took apart the regulator to see if I could figure out why it was sticking. I noticed that there was rust on the pin. I used a dremel-type bit in my drill press to polish away the rust off the tip of the pin. Now the regulator works without sticking and leaking.

Pink Elephant Spray Bottle

 I like to use a simple mix of water and dish soap to clean around the house. It's cheap and less toxic and scented than some other cleaners. The only problem is I need to buy my own spray bottle for it. I always make sure to label the bottle because I learned in Chemistry class that's a good safety practice. I've bought several spray bottles from the dollar store, but they are a bad design and poor quality. Today, I bought a new spray bottle at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store. I had a choice of a standard bottle with lines on the side, or a fun pink elephant shaped bottle. I chose the pink elephant. It was missing an eye sticker, so I hot glued a googly eye on to fix it.

Foam Sculpture Toy- from the archives

One year, Griffin got an activity kit for Christmas with foam pieces that you can stick together with water to make sculptures. He had fun with it, but had to be careful not to add too much water. The pieces would dissolve into messy goo when soaked in water.

Griffin figured out that these cheetoh-like foam nuggets are similar to biodegradable foam packing peanuts, with colors added. Some foam packing peanuts are made of cornstarch or other materials that dissolve in water, so they won't take up so much space in landfills or cause problems if they blow away outside. He recently found a company selling fun shapes of packing peanuts- and advertising that they are fun for crafts too! So next time you get a package with biodegradable foam pellets, you can try building a sculpture with them.

Amazon Affiliate link to a product like this sold as a toy: https://amzn.to/3mivcvx

Amazon Affiliate link to fun shaped packing pellets: https://amzn.to/30OjJw9

Homemade Beef Jerky

We bought a new air fryer/toaster/dehydrator combination machine. I decided to try making my own beef jerky. I frequently buy jerky from Buc-ees, but it's a long drive from home. I wanted to find out how difficult it is to make, and how the cost compares. 

First, I bought eye of round for $6.79/lb. The recipes I looked up said to use lean beef. I bought almost a pound of meat that was already sliced thin. Next, I marinated it overnight in a mixture of soy sauce, Worcester sauce, pineapple juice, fresh garlic, and other spices. 

After the meat marinated overnight in the fridge, I took it out and drained it. (I saved 1/4 of the meat and the marinade for another project.) Even though the meat was already sliced thin, I pounded it flatter between two pieces of plastic wrap to make sure it was evenly thin.

Then I sliced the meat into 1-inch strips and arranged it on the mesh tray. It wouldn't all fit so I used the wire rack too. Then I used the dehydrator function at the highest setting, 175F (79C). I set it for 5 hours, but it only took 4 and a half hours. I left the house for a couple of hours, which stopped me from eating all the jerky before it was ready.

When the jerky was done, it had shrunk from 12 oz (not including the marinade) to just over 4 oz. So in total, not counting the small cost of the marinade or electricity, I spent $5. The same weight of jerky at Buc-ees would have cost $9. Plus my jerky was drier, making the price difference more significant.

The leftover marinade and 1/4 of the meat that I saved was perfect as part of a stir fry for lunch. The meat was sliced into very thin short pieces and cooked with about 2 cups of bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, and the remaining marinade.

Ingredients- eye of round, fresh garlic, soy sauce, onion powder, Worcester sauce, pineapple juice, homemade tabasco salt, smoked paprika, black pepper.

Amazon Affiliate link for the oven: https://amzn.to/3q7L05b

Tape Dispenser

 

I built a new tape dispenser for my desk. I used pallet wood for the base, oak flooring for the arm, a metal rod from a printer, and an old hacksaw blade. 

Can you use a saw blade to cut a saw blade? I didn't have to find out because I used an angle grinder to cut the rod and hacksaw blade. 

This tape dispenser is large enough that it would probably work with a large roll of duct tape, packing tape, or foam tape.

Capacitor Replacement

The arcade I work at has laser tag. The players wear vests with sensors. The laser tag vests plug in and hang up on chargers whenever they're not in use. However, the power supply wires are a little bit too big for the terminals, which causes the wires to come undone sometimes. While I was away, my boss tried to repair one of them but he reversed the copper and silver leads. This caused a tantalum capacitor to fail violently. 

I took off the plastic cover to see the board, and found a burned capacitor. I took it home and found a replacement aluminum electrolytic capacitor with the same value and sufficient voltage. 

My drawer of capacitors

I have my drawer of capacitors organized in a way that works for me, but might look messy on first glance. The handwritten number on each label is the voltage. The top number is the measured value of the capacitor, and the 2nd one is what it should be (nominal), and the 3rd number is the ratio. 

I desoldered the old capacitor and put the new one on. It was larger than the old one, but there was plenty of space under the cover. I forgot to clean off the flux residue, or cross off the sticker that said "lead-free".

I took the charger back and it worked perfectly.

From the Archives- Umbrella Recycled into Haircut Cape

Many years ago, I had an old umbrella with cartoon characters on it but it was broken. I pulled the fabric off the frame and saved it to recycle. It ended up with a hole in the middle, so I couldn't turn it into an umbrella hat, but I still tried sticking my head through it. 

That gave me the idea to turn it into a haircut cape. I had my mom sew knit fabric around the hole. Adding some elastic or velcro could make it fit better, but I never bothered.

When I was little and used to get haircuts at home, this cape helped keep the cut hairs from getting on my shirt. And because it was made from an umbrella- it was completely washable.