My DIY projects out there for the curious souls to see.

      I'm using a clone of a E3D V6 hotend on my homemade 3D printer and it's having problems with stability. Part of that instability is caused by part cooling as it seems my hotend is only capable of handling only the slightest breeze, otherwise it can't can't keep up and my PID loop goes wild.  So, inspired by Stefan from the CNC Kitchen YouTube channel, I decided to make my own.      Starting with the model of the block, I took a drawing of the heatblock I found online and made a copy of it in Fusion360. Then I created a new solid by offsetting the surface of the heatblock by 2mm, which is my desired thickness for the silicone sock. Then I cut out parts of the body where the nozzle, the heater and other components had to stick through, along with the holes for the screws. Next, the whole thing was placed in a block and a cavity within the block was created. After that the block was sliced into pieces and screw holes were added to clamp the assembl...

      I've built a few 4S lithium battery packs but I didn't have a charger. So I decided to make one by modifying a switch-mode power supply. The power supply I used had a special plug on it with three pins. One of them being a sense pin to change the voltage. On this plug an adapter would connect, which would have a resistor in it that would change the voltage on the output. This power supply is nothing special, though. All this wire does is go straight to the REF pin on the TL431 reference IC inside. How do I know that? Because I accidentally blew the TL431 and had to pull the power supply apart to replace it. If you're willing to pull apart a laptop power supply you can add this wire to the TL431 reference and you'll have basically the same thing I have.     Opening them can be a pain. Mike from mikeselectricstuff shared in one of his youtube videos that whacking the weld/glue seam on the power supply will crack the joint and the power supply will come apart...