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In a recent science fair project, I used a drill press as a press for strength testing. Drill presses are designed to exert fairly high forces while keeping the spindle perfectly straight. Pretty much all drill presses also have some provision to measure downwards travel, allowing the measurement of strain. Additionally, the self-holding Jacobs taper…
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This Repair Café occurred at the Central Park Library in Santa Clara. The first thing I worked on was a boom box from the 2000’s where the cassette player was playing very slowly and softly. As suspected, the belts inside were very loose, causing the capstans to turn slower than normal. There were no replacement…
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In this blog post, I detailed several ways of using backyard clay. The method that produced the best results was levigation, in which clay was suspended in water while impurities floated to the top or settled out. The clay-water was poured off and allowed to settle for a long time, after which the water was…
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Introduction I’m trying to get better at casting, and this involves building a proper furnace to melt metals like aluminium and copper instead of just ones that can melt on a stovetop, like zinc. This mainly involves two things: the furnace’s body, and a burner. There are a few different types of burners that are…
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I know I’m definitely not the first person to think of this, but I tried it yesterday and it works so well: using PVA glue (Elmer’s glue-all) to stiffen fabric. The back-story is this: I finally needed a proper wallet, so I made one myself using some denim from old jeans. Unfortunately, it was way…
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This was a fairly quiet event held at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. library at SJSU. I spent most of the time working on a Thinkpad W530 laptop that another fixer had salvaged from his neighbor’s garbage, wanting to save it from the landfill. He didn’t know how it failed. After running many, many…
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This Repair Café occurred at the Mountain View Senior Center from 11:00 to 3:00. The first item was a Presto heat dish that wouldn’t turn on; the bimetallic thermostat was completely destroyed. Unfortunately, an exact replacement was not to be found in the Repair Café’s store of spare supplies, so I took a thermostat with…
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This was my 2025 Synopsys Science Fair project. Regrettably, I didn’t get to spend as much time as I’d have liked on it. Introduction Clay is an extremely important material because it is cheap (often literally dirt on the ground), durable, and easy to work by pressing, casting, or forming. However, drying clay parts presents…
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A problem that I’ve had is that I keep forgetting to close the garage door at night, which lets in the elements (and also rats). After being pestered for some time by my parents to find a solution, I finally came up with this. The solution is to turn on the overhead lights any time…
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This repair was not completed at a Repair Café or Fixit Clinic, but it was kind of interesting so I’m writing a post about it. Machining often involves arithmetic on very precise numbers. This is very tedious, so having a small calculator is very helpful. Being of a helpful nature, my school’s machine-shop has a…
