My condensation management setup worked!

Im excited to set up my shop i have tons of projects planned my biggest thing will be getting materials now to do this (sigh) i guess it will be a bit longer to realy get going.
I know that feeling all too well. I find Clickspring hugely inspiring, for example, but that guy uses aluminum glue arbors like paper plates. Aluminum is probably the cheapest metal, but the cost goes up exponentially with the diameter, and some of the stuff I've seen is over $100 for ONE INCH. This is probably why everybody seems to have an aluminum foundry and sand casting setup.

It's just a shame this doesn't work on brass. I've done knives with steel furniture and knives with brass. Brass makes a big impact. Look at this thing:knife.jpg
It just wouldn't be the same with steel, but the brass was $$EXPENSIVE$$.

It's also really addictive to work on a lathe. Damn but brass shapes easy compared to steel. Especially compared to high carbon drill rod, which is the other thing I turn most of the time, to make fasteners and such.

Heh, I'm off the rails off topic hijacking my own thread. It doesn't really get the thread back on topic, but I turned the pommel on that knife on my lathe. You can barely tell after all the work I did with a grinder, and it wasn't at all an efficient use of material.
 
@JDS77 i was just saying hw im the same way im doing it for the fun of it and to possibly grow and make it into a side job. But from buying the machines and such im low on cash to buy materials i need to do projects now.
 
@JDS77 i was just saying hw im the same way im doing it for the fun of it and to possibly grow and make it into a side job. But from buying the machines and such im low on cash to buy materials i need to do projects now.
This is a source of stress for me every day as well. I went all in, and my budget just didn't go far enough. My machine purchases included a cheap home vinyl cutter to do masks for etching. I used the cutter to produce a nice big sign for the back window of my pickup truck, and everywhere I go I'm pointing people to a website that doesn't even exist yet, because I don't have the money to set up the site I expected to have running two months ago. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

I have $6.41 in my disposable income account right now. Whooooeeeeee! Take that out in pennies so I can jingle while I walk.

My real bills are covered though. That's the main thing. Really, I'm just having to return to my roots. When I first got into making stuff, I was a broke kid with two babies to feed, and I had to dig through a lot of trash to find materials I could use. I actually used some of that trash to make a stand for my anvil 20 years later. It was a waterbed frame somebody threw out in the '90s. Good yellow pine I was saving for a suitable project. This is why I'm a hoarder. I always use my junk eventually!

I'm better off than I was, and I'm going to be fine in the long run. It took me years to replace my lousy railroad track with a real anvil, and that anvil cost almost $1,000. OUCH!!!! But it was all worth it. I don't really care if I make a dime at any of this. Man, I can make pretty damn nice looking knives now, I can make knobs, I can make jigs and fixtures that are retailing for hundreds of dollars, I can make funky specialized screws, and I have just barely scratched the surface of what I can do with this shop. I once tried to make a macro focusing rail for a camera using pop rivet and hardware store bolt level technology. Put my mind to that problem now, and I bet I could fabricate something wicked.
 
Man more power to you i never had kids to worry about didn't get married till after 40 i always worked on things motorcycles cars and everything in between first became a machinist in early 80,s because of racing then lost my job because of racing go figure but there's always a lathe and a MILL somewhere close moved around alot chasing my racing dream but screwed that up moved back to my home state of Nebraska to restart went from making 24 a hr and up to about min wage took a longtime to get where life was right and all of suden i am old
But now i have a nice little shop a pm835s mill and a couple of craftsman lathes plus other much needed tools and i am trying hard to put them to work to make me right with the world again it's not about money it's about feeling good
 
Now then, this thread is a good read.
We need a rating system to cover an entire thread. :cool:
 
Ever been a third party listening to a conversation that is interesting, and then they start talking in a foreign language. Then they start back up in English again, and your left wondering what just happenedo_O. Neat idea though.......:encourage:
 
As I got ready to go out into the blizzard to knock the snow off the flimsy roof, my son said, "Oh yeah! You need to make sure your system is working."

I told him I wasn't worried about condensation under these circumstances, and that wasn't my reason for heading out there. As it happened, this day had exactly the sort of conditions that could have resulted in condensation, and I didn't even think about it. Temperature 32, dew point 32, 99% relative humidity.

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I found no condensation on anything. The heaters had been doing their thing, and the equipment was just warm enough. Sweet!

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It is always very satisfying when something works the way it was envisioned, planned and built.
 
Now that I have Dewbane in the house and hooked back up to the computer, it seems like a good time for a little update.

It turns out a typical night in the mountains of Virginia during much of the warm part of the year is a temperature of 68 F and a dew point of 68 F with 99% relative humidity. These conditions resulted in the heaters cycling constantly, without ever managing to get the equipment up high enough to register being higher than the dew point on the display. All the equipment continued rusting. It's a very light rust, almost more of a hazy discoloration, but it's continuing to form.

My first move was adding more heaters to the mill, because the tables definitely needed more help. I cut some 1/4" plates, lapped one side pretty flat, glued a heater to each of those, and laid them on the X table on either side of the vise. The idea is that I will be able to move them around as I reposition the vise from time to time, or move them out of the way if I ever run into a work holding situation where I can't use the vise. So far, that seems viable.

Now I'm editing the code, mulling over what I can do to improve things. I started by reading back through this whole thread. I might end up with different relays and a PID algorithm, but the first thing I'm trying is a longer polling time, and keeping the heaters on for a minimum of five minutes whenever they turn on. Also, I'm shooting for 2.5 C over the dew point rather than 1.0 C. The thinking is better to spend money on running the heaters than time cleaning flash rust off the equipment. I've got that coded up and installed on the board, so I'm getting ready to go bolt it all back up and see where this gets me. I can only do so much on the bench, seeing as how the sensor array this depends on is all wired up at this point, and I really want to leave that spaghetti bowl exactly where it is.

Whenever I'm satisfied with this, I need to build a second system for my workbench, to keep my tool drawers warm. I'm having a lot of trouble with my measuring tools flash rusting too. I bought the components for a second system, but I misplaced the box in the shuffle when my wife left me out of the blue. I won't be building anything better than a dirt floor anytime in the foreseeable future. I've got to pay for the divorce, and then I just have the one income, so a better shop probably just ain't happening.

Could be a lot worse. I got to keep my shop, which is more than I ever figured on getting if we ever split up. Crappy is way better than nothing.
 
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