While I'd love to make it more visible, somehow an acrylic case over such beautiful vintage guts seems tacky. Leaded glass, maybe? On a completely unrelated (or uncharacteristically close to on-topic) note, I was poking around outside (this is unusual in itself) and had an odd thought (this is less unusual)... What sort of symptoms would be seen if a house lacked a ground rod (or had the wire to the rod cut & never replaced)? While I didn't do a particularly thorough survey, the two ground rods I found (one by the lines to the pole, and one not) both had only the severed remains of a wire attached. -Bats * hides wire cutters behind back *
Can you trace the bare ground leaving the bus at the breaker box? In theory it should go to the one you found by the weatherhead. If it doesn't go anywhere, you should be able to reattach it. Symptoms of a proper household earth include risk of electrocution and, er... A variety of EM-noise-related issues.
I might be able to - and probably should, for that matter... but haven't yet. For pretty much the same reason I didn't do a more thorough outdoor survey than "well, let's see where the beagle happens to lead us today". Yeah, kinda figured that bit... but I meant real problems. ...like those. I'm not sure whether it'd be immensely satisfying or immensely frustrating to discover that all these problems could be blamed on something - and someone - that had absolutely nothing to do with me. -Bats (satisfrating? frustifying?)
If you don't do this, I am not talking to you again. That would be beautiful! Let me get to ebay, I need copper tape (; for yet another "got to try that" project to sit on the shelf!
Hah! My cunning plan has succeeded! Now I'll never have to listen to Peter again! It really would. I especially like the idea of pulling off the olive drab steel carrying case to expose some sort of gorgeous art deco glasswork inside. What I'd really love is to get it working inside the glass - glowing tubes and all - even if it's just to show some meaningless lissajous designs (a clock would be even better, but that involves finding somewhere to hide the modern components... I wonder if there's room in the base?). That gets back into recapping, though - and, worse, sourcing vintage (or vintagey-looking) caps. I guess ebay's the way to go for new (very) old stock, but at $2-10 a pop, the "just recap everything" path is likely to cut into the glass budget. I think I may even have some already lying around somewhere... left over from that time I learned I'm really, really ty at leaded glass. Of course, I think at that point I think was hoping I could just pick up some tools and wing it, rather than, say, making a an effort to actually get half a ing clue what I'm doing. Still, it's likely to be a major project (at least if I were to do anything more than just replace the side panels with leaded-edge glass panels, which seems like a bit of a cop-out), and I'm having enough trouble getting the minor projects done (minor projects? hell - I can't even get the tools ready)... so unfortunately it's probably just as likely to sit on the shelf as the idea of restoring the damned thing. *sigh* Maybe once all the belated gifts are done. Say, 2040? -Bats (fast forward to 2040 ; zoom in on Belated Gifts List, now occupying four and a half volumes)
I recently got a hy 110v inverter and got my bb working without issues just by dropping an extension cord and plugging into another circuit. I did not change any setting on the inverter and have been controlling the inverter manually. Next step will be to wire up the inverter to the bb for spindle on off control.. thanks for the how to instructions. The noise appears to be traveling on the AC line and only when the spindle is actually running. On mine the bb would lose com with the usb/computer and everything would drop out. I tried wrapping the spindle-inverter cable with tin foil and it had no effect. If I didn't turn the spindle on and just let bb run the job with the bit off the surface there was no problem.. then just turning the spindle on manually killed the job within 30 sec.... just as if the USB cable had been pulled out. After that is when I tried another AC circuit. I can relate to someone smoking their hy inverter.. I did it to the first one I got. Apparently the device is just fine with being programmed to self destruct if you use incompatible settings. I was trying to follow some instructions from some web site (not this one) , poof the magic genie farted and the inverter turned into a brick. I'm not adjusting anything on the replacement for now which had a little tag on it that says 110v/1.5kW ( in other words it's already configured). When I hook up the bb to it I'll be very careful about any changes to control settings. I really like this back box. I have it running 10 hrs a day mostly without any unplanned interruptions. I did have to install a new cooling fan sometime ago due to bearing failure but otherwise it works very dependably.
Code: The noise appears to be traveling on the AC line a...... ha ha, no. every piece of wire is both a transmitter and receiver. Several bits of wire will be transmitting the noise the VFD generates, and all of them will be receiving the noise. Things like quality, short USB cables, STAR grounding, shielded cables, separating power and signal wires and so on will minimise both the transmission and reception of the noise. There is no single magic bullet, you have to follow ALL of the rules (-:
I understand but if the only variable changed (in my case) was the AC source, it would seem to have been the culprit. I do need to move the inverter away from the bb in any case.. too much dust. When I do I'll connect the bb-inverter control line and see if I can get software control of my spindle. Thanks much
Sorry I'm a little late in replying to this, but are you, by any chance, using the LED ring on your spindle? I discovered that mine, being wrapped right around the noisy spindle, was acting as a nice little antenna, and no amount of toroids or shielded wiring could clean it up. It's been a while since I've gotten to work on my machine, but I seem to remember the only solutions I found were unplugging the lights, or possibly using a dedicated power supply for the LEDs separate from the BB power. I don't remember (and possibly never entirely understood) the precise engineering details of it, but wrapping cables with foil doesn't tend to create useful shielding. Too many gaps, and no grounding, I think. -Bats (and that's only one of the many, many, many things I don't remember and never understood)
