Stainless steel conical beer fermenter Pt.4

Today I built a three-legged support structure to hold the beer fermenter. My original design called for welding three square cross-section tubes to the sides of the conical tank. I decided against this method because I wanted to ability to remove the tank from the stand, and I was also a little worried about having inadequate argon coverage on the weld backside (in the tank).



The three legs are only held together by the welds near the ground. The tank just rests on top of the legs. I may add some strapping to prevent the legs from splaying outward from the conical tank, but so far, this doesn't seem to be much of a problem. The legs are all 304 stainless steel - same as the tank.


I was surprised how little filler rod I needed for these welds. Next time, I will make my tack welds much smaller, because the weld bead itself was very tight, and the globs of filler from the tack welds were annoyingly large.


I welded some stainless nuts to small sheet metal structures, then welded the assemblies to either side of the copper heat block. The two nuts will allow me to sandwhich the Peltier between a large heatsink and the copper block. I'll use nylon screws to prevent heat transfer and also to make the compression on the Peltier more gentle and balanced.

Quickly tapping (threading) holes in plastic

For my day job, I often have to tap (cut threads into) holes in plastic that will receive screws. This can be done by hand with a standard tap wrench, but it's also possible to do with a hand drill. I bought a small 3/8" square drive adapter that has a 1/4" hex shank. This was intended for use in cordless screwdrivers which accept hex shanks, but a drill chuck will grab the hexagon just fine. I also bought a set of adjustable tap chucks that have a 3/8" square drive hole.
The smaller chuck goes from #2 taps up to about #10, and the larger for #10 up to 3/8".

For plastic, I use lots of distilled water as coolant. If I am tapping a blind hole, I usually just fill it up with water. The nice thing about using distilled water is that it leaves no residue after being blown clean with compressed air.

Tapping a hole with the hand drill works best for a certain range of sizes:

In ABS, I would use the drill for any size #2 through 1/4"

In acrylic or Delrin, I would probably only use the drill for #6 through 1/4"

The really small taps sometimes clog up, even with coolant, and the drill doesn't provide enough sensitivity to avoid snapping the tap. ABS is so soft, a clog would just be pushed away, whereas in acrylic or Delrin, it might jam.

For sizes larger than 1/4", I would probably use a tap wrench because they take a lot of torque, and it's difficult to keep the drill straight and have it deliver enough torque to spin the tap.

I like using the chrome-plated taps because the finish will not rust (a concern since I use water as a coolant), and the chrome is supposed to have a lower friction coefficient than bare high-speed steel.

For sizes smaller than 1/4", I would only use a bottoming tap in plastic. There is no reason to use a plug or taper tap because the bottoming tap makes a cleaner cut, and actually produces less friction and heat than plug or taper taps. In harder materials it makes sense to cut gradually, but plastic is so soft, it will just melt if the tap keeps making light passes that rub against the surface.

Google Checkout is making PayPal look good

This post is definitely off-topic for my blog, but I am extremely disappointed with Google Checkout's Merchant services, and I want to publicize the difficulty.

I have a customer that placed an order on my website and paid with Google Checkout. Her credit card was listed as "declined", so she called her credit card company to find out why. The credit card company responded that they had no record of the Google Checkout transaction at all, and there were no declined transactions on the account.

Of course, Google Checkout has no support phone number. Apparently they recently removed their support email address and online support contact form.

UPDATE: I found the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page, which allows merchants to enter an order number and request assistance, but there is no text entry box to actually describe the exact problem.



So now I am stuck with a very frustrated customer and perhaps a lost order. Worse, I have no way of fixing the situation because Google Checkout has no way of being contacted with details about the problem. Thanks, Google.


Here's some links to others who have had problems all stemming from the complete lack of merchant support.

http://www.shaftek.org/blog/2009/03/04/contact-phone-number-for-google-checkout/

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/checkout-merchants/thread?tid=1c4ddc2e27f4ec72&hl=en

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-341375.html

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/checkout-merchants/thread?tid=67e6e5c02c6f3233&hl=en

Telescope magnification

A friend recently asked me about telescopes, and it made me think about the pictures that I took with my telescope which I haven't looked at in years. This series of photos was a test of the range of magnifications possible with a couple camera lenses and the telescope.

These photos were shot with a Nikon FE2, with some run-of-the-mill 400ASA color film. The photos were developed and printed 4x6 at a 1-hour photo place. I scanned the photos with a flatbed scanner.

50mm Nikon lens. This is essentially the field of view that normal human vision has.

135mm Vivitar lens.

2032mm Celestron Nextar 8" SCT telescope. Prime focus. The ceramic insulator is just visible in the lower right corner.

The same telescope using eyepiece projection -- I forget the focal length of the eyepiece. The white halo in the center of the image is an artifact of my shoddily-mounted eyepiece setup.

A shorter focal length eyepiece increases the magnification even more. This is probably a 6mm eyepiece, giving 2032/6 = 338x magnification. The photo is blurry, but this is mainly due to tiny vibrations in the 'scope and camera. When viewing this directly through the eyepiece, the image is pretty sharp since human eyes and brains have better image processing than cameras.

Stainless steel conical beer fermenter Pt.3

I just finished welding together the stainles racking cane for the beer fermenter project.

Even though this may not look like much, I am quite proud. It is a 5/8" dia stainless tube, but the wall thickness is only .020". I sliced it on my new metal band saw, reoriented the pieces to make an elbow, then tacked it in two places, and welded all the way around. It's air-tight. The trick is to get the tacks done really quickly. I only used filler (.035") to make the tacks, then just fusion welded it in very short sections (a few seconds at a time). I blew through it once, and had to repair it with filler.

Here's the tube welded to a tri-clamp plate, which is welded to one side of a three-piece ball valve.

Here's the other side of the ball valve welded to a hose barb.

The complete assembly is attached to the tri-clamp port on the side of the tank. The purpose of all this hardware is to be able to rotate the racking cane while draining beer from the tank. Thus, the height at which the beer is drawn can be adjusted. This allows the maximum amount of clear beer to be drawn from the tank without getting any cloudy beer that has settled to the bottom.

Inside the tank.