Something doesn't making sense. There is a massive push towards a greener way of living yet it seems as though everything in life more disposable than ever. Rather than being reusable, or more importantly repairable, it's much easier to simply dispose of the old and buy new. This is a great shame because it's always better to fix than to throw.
From out of nowhere, the usually dependable K40 C02 laser started making An unnerving sound like it’d been possessed by a poltergeist. When your laser sounds like it’s from a horror movie, something ain’t right. While I had my suspicions about the cause, what follows was the process used to diagnose and resolve the problem. The following is a blog post about the pain-in-the-arse experience I went through to eventually fix this misbehaving K40. Hopefully this may help out anyone else who might experience a similar issue.
For seasoned readers to this humble blog, you will have noticed there’s been a dry spell of content recently. While there has been every intention to bring you more new things and to keep the flow of updates chugging along, unfortunately those ‘something more important’ occasions have a way of ruining our best laid plans – mine included.
Formula E revealed its 3rd generation car that will be used for the forthcoming 2022-23 season. While it will be faster, lighter, and promises to provide more frantic racing, the new design is radical to say the least. It’s so radical in fact, its fugly. How could it have ended up looking like this?
An ebike wouldn't be an ebike without the electrical bits and pieces that assist in pushing bike and rider along. After all, it’s the electricity that puts the 'E' in ebike. At this stage of the project Mixt-E build I have been able to source the majority of parts that would normally go into a bolt-on DIY kit. But instead of simply buying a complete off-the-shelf kit, I did it the way any unorganised person would - one piece at a time. There was reason behind this round-a-bout way of cobbling together a kit. Put simply, the specific electric motor for the build wasn’t available in any off-the-shelf kit - or at least I couldn’t find one… However, while my erratic stockpiling of parts wasn't the way a sensible person would have gone about it, it did give me an opportunity to gain an understanding of all the componentry that makes up the electrical system of an ebike.
Balancing a classic style with modern ideas is tricky to get right and something not everyone can pull off. When I started the rebuild on this neglected Raleigh Sprite 5, with the intention of turning it into an ebike, I was hoping not to fall into the same trap. Starting with just a bare frame, everything would need rebuilding from the ground up. There are many steps in the process and many square pegs that would need fitting into round holes. While in my mind I could envision something wonderful, would it turn out this way in reality?
There's a funny thing about company provided service vehicles - rarely do you get a say in what you end up with, that’s up to the fleet/purchasing manager after all. The one I ended up with would not have been my first choice of make and model, nor even my second, but somehow I have ended up with this tonne and a half of station-wagon packed with annoying, interventionist technology. It would seem then that for the next four years at least, me and this chunk of steel will have to learn to get along else it’s going to be a long quadrennial.
With so much new tech and innovation going into electric vehicles it is understandable for one to become overwhelmed with everything that’s happening. There are obvious examples you see every day and are easily recognisable, like how the inner city is teeming with Teslas. However, with the ludicrous rate of EV development, have you ever simply pondered "technically what is an EV?". Before everything goes plaid, it’s worth understanding the fundamentals of what makes an EV an EV. As you'll find out there's so much more to electric cars, bikes, and everything else than simply batteries and electric motors.
We've all been at that stage. Where seemingly there is so much going on all at once and simply not enough hours in a day. It gets to a point of saturation where we can no longer work efficiently or to our fullest potential. This is how I was feeling towards the end of 2021, so before things really got too much, I had to take a break for a little while.
First impression of the K40 C02 Laser Cutter, its features and specs that have made the K40 one of the worlds most popular desktop machines.
