H2O Mop Take 3: The Capitulation

Project:
Fix that bloody H2O mop. Again!

Process:
This is a follow-up post to two earlier posts:

1. Fixing Melanie's H2O Steam Mop

2. H20 Mop Take 2: The Rebellion

Last week I was getting ready to mop the floors for Mel and after a few minutes the mop didn't seem to produce any steam. I realized that the epoxy glue I used on the blue water filter a year ago or so had dissolved with the vinegar I used to de-calcify the mop and because of that a little bit of air was able to get sucked into the machine which essentially stopped the vacuum required to suck water through to create steam.

I went out in the shop and took the filter apart again, cleaned out all the glue and ended up trying to plastic-weld it back together with the acetylene torch instead of using glue. It didn't really work until I resorted to the soldering gun with a flat attachment. All put back together I realized that the initial oxy/acetylene "heat-treatment" warped the intake fitting. After drilling it out and exchanging some o-rings I got it semi-working except for the water tank kept creeping up and because of it kept leaking some water onto the floor.

Fed up with the ugly concoction I capitulated and ordered two replacement filters online for $20 bucks. In retrospect I should have probably done that from the beginning. Lesson learned: Fixing is NOT always the best option. Unless of course you want to know how everything works. In that case, taking stuff apart is absolutely essential.

Pictures:

The ugly filter after plastic-welding it together with my soldering gun

You can see how the oxy/acetylene attempt at plastic-welding warped the round fitting at the top

Brand spanking new water filter. Oh, so pretty and only $20 bucks for two of them

Looks a lot nicer and actually works!

The beauty in all its glory

Close-up of the replaced filter

Tools:
Oxy/Acetylene torch, soldering gun

Materials:

Cleaning supplies, replacement filters

Cost:
$20.00

Time:
1hr

Savings:
none

Conclusion:
In Nathaniel's words: I guess I learned something today

Magnus Chord Organ

Project:
About two months ago when Moncton had their annual spring clean day Melanie, Nate and I went (as they say in Ontario) "Junking". As we were driving by this one house Melanie saw an organ and exclaimed: "Hey, my friend had one of those and I've always wanted one." So I stopped and picked it off the side of the road and loaded it into our van

After having it sit around my shop for several months I finally worked up the courage to tackle this project. It ended up being a lot simpler than I thought.

Process:
First I wanted to figure out whether it even worked. I had tried it briefly a couple of months ago and it didn't seem to work so now that I had a closer look at it I realized that there was a small little switch on the side of the organ. Once I turned it on it started whirring and to my surprise it actually worked.

First thing I did was take it all apart. It was actually really easy. A couple of screws at the bottom and a few marretts to disconnect the chord and I could open it up. Then a few more screws, a little c-clip and I could slide out the plastic keys of the keyboard.

After grinding off some of the rust on a couple of brackets and a good "deep-clean" of all the plastic parts I put it all back together, sanded off the rust on the brass feet on the legs of the organ and put it all back together. After many long-lasting and sometimes frustrating projects, this was a nice and quick and enjoyable restoration project.

Pictures:

The Major and Minor Chord keys

The true ugly beauty. Just the way we found "her"

Close-up of the keys

Springs put pressure on the keys to keep the reed holes closed

Some water must have gotten into the organ and started rusting the brackets and the steel rods that allow the keys to pivot on

Side view after the main keys were all taken off.

The keys after they were all individually scrubbed with soap and water

All the parts that I had taken off, cleaned. The rusted brackets were wire brushed and painted black

Half-way through the re-assembly

Ready to put the shell back on

The finished produc

Tools:
Screw driver, grinder, brushes

Materials:
Some paint, soap and water

Cost:
$0.00

Time:
3hr

Savings:
$50.00

Conclusion:
Very enjoyable unless Nate plays it, which he loves to do!

Cappuccino Maker Leak

Project:
Fixing the leaking DeLonghi EAM4500 cappuccino machine

Process:
Other blog post/fixes for the same model cappuccino machine:

• Fixing my Coffee Machine - May 2013
• Cappuccino Maker Leak - Jun 2012
• Final Cappucino Maker Fix (Hopefully) - Jul 2013
• Fixing a Delonghi Magnifica EAM4500 Cappuccino Machine - Jan 2017

It’s been almost exactly 5 years since I’ve taken on a couple of extra jobs so I could buy the ridiculously expensive ($900) but yet so wonderfully beloved cappuccino machine. I had originally calculated that the savings in Tim Horton’s coffee would pay off the machine within a couple of years and seeing as though we made about 7500 cups of coffee with that cappuccino maker since I bought it, the actual savings (if we had gotten a large coffee at Tim’s each time we made one with the machine) are over $11,000! Yes, that’s eleven THOUSAND dollars. Not like we would have actually spent that much at Tim’s but it looks darn good for the business case side of things.

About two years ago the gasket in the boiler unit started to leak a bit so I temporarily fixed it by making a gasket out of card stock and placing it under the silicone rubber gasket to give it a bit more thickness. However, now, two years later it completely dissolved and I had to find a more permanent fix. Unfortunately, the cappuccino distributers don’t have just the replacement gasket for the heating unit and I was left with either buying a brand new heating element ($250) or finding a way to fix it.

Once I dismantled the case I discovered that the leaking water had completely corroded the screws and brackets near the heating unit. After some prodding I finally removed it all and took it to the shop. Unfortunately, two of the screws were so rusted that they snapped off which meant I had to drill them out and re-tap the aluminum heating unit. Not much fun!

Another challenge was trying to find suitable material for the gasket. It had to be heat resistant and more importantly, it had to be food grade. After all, I wouldn’t want to be responsible for slowly poisoning my family or any guests we might have. So after much thinking I came to a McGyver-ish idea (thanks dad!). What if I took a silicone bake pan and cut my gasket out in the proper shape. It all made sense since those baking sheets/pans are heat resistant up to about 450 degrees (F) or 230 deg (C) AND they were food-grade.

So off I went to Canadian tire where they just happened to be on sale for 5 bucks. Bought one, brought it home, cut it up, shaved it to the right size (that was a bit time-consuming), put it all back together, greased it up with some high temp aluminum grease and turned it on. Soon I realized that the heat-resistant grease gave off a lot of fumes so I relocated the machine out to the garage and after keeping the machine on and heated up for an hour all the fumes stopped and I was ready to try making some java.

It’s been a couple of days now, the machine is put back together and on our countertop and I must say that $5 bucks plus a couple of hours were worth it and most certainly beat the $400 buck repair (element plus labor) it would have cost otherwise.

In summary, each cup of coffee cost us an average of about 20 cents and with the quality of the flavour you just can’t beat that!

Pictures:

The heating unit with the rusted bracket and the leaking gaskets

Inside of the heating unit: the water runs through the spiral and heats up

The top of the heating unit with the missing gasket; it disintegrated when I took it apart

The cut up 9" by 9" silicone baking pan

I used engineer's blue to print the outline of the heating unit top on the silicone material so I knew where to cut out the final gasket

The finally cut out gaskets (big one and two round ones in the middle)

The newly put together heating element with the new bracket and the replaced gaskets

 Tools:Screwdriver, small pliers, socket set, sand paper, elbow grease, engineer’s blue, scissors
Materials:Silicone baking pan, high-temp grease, a couple of nitrile o-rings
Cost:$5.00
Time:5hrs

Savings:$300.00

Conclusion:I see many more wonderful coffees ahead!!!

Plasma Scooter, Clamps, Umbrella And A Chair Leg

Project:
Fixing a whole bunch of things:

1. Nate broke his plasma scooter
2. Nate broke a chair leg
3. The wind broke the sun screen umbrella
4. I broke two clamps
5. I accidentally melted a clamp during aluminum pouring

Process:
1. Fiberglass is my friend
2. Polyurethane glue is my friend
3-5. The foundry DOES have a purpose, MELANIE! :)

Pictures:

Plasma Scooter (aka Nate's "Zoomer")

Lining the underside with fiberglass mesh and resin

Nate also managed to break the support arm so the plasma scooter doesn't tip over when steering hard left or right so the fiberglass mesh and resin got thoroughly applied

Another view of the fixed support leg

This is what it looked like from the outside once it was fixed. I think it's acceptable. Not pretty, but acceptable and Nate doesn't care, as long as he can zoom around with his "zoomer"

Chair Leg

Yep, Nate managed to break another leg! At least it wasn't his own this time. This was an easy fix: Apply some polyurethane glue and put it in the vise for an hour and we're good as new

And, because it is all hidden underneath the chair, nobody will ever know that it was fixed

Clamp

During the molten aluminum pour for another project, some of the aluminum spilled over onto my clamp and because the bracket was also aluminum it melted it completely

I took a good clamp to make an imprint, then used the original screwy handle thing (you can see how the paint was burned during the "accident") as a core around the new part. I also used a custom cut piece of metal as a core for where the actual clamp goes afterwards

Here's what it looked like when it came out. The left vertical column is the sprue and the right one is the riser

After hammering out the metal core, cleaning up the fins/edges and loosening up the screwy handle I put it on the clamp that it originally came off. I only saved about 5 bucks, but it was worth gaining the experience on how to do it

More Clamps

About a year ago I broke the handles off of two clamps because I was a bit too forceful. I kept them just in case any of the others broke so that I could use these parts to fix the others, but then I thought why not make new handles out of aluminum. In the above picture you can see the triangular part that tightens the clamp that used to be connected to the handle that broke off

I took off the handles of the other two clamps that I had managed NOT to break yet and used them to create a mold for the replicates

Here they are in the drag to make one half of the mold cavity

After they cooled down enough to take out of the flasks

After they were broken off the feeder but still with all the fins and sharp edges on them

After they were cleaned out and drilled for the metal pin

Putting them on the broken clamp

Both clamps fixed. They were each about $20 bucks so it was worth doing it and they most certainly won't ever break again!

Patio Umbrella Pivot Part

We bought a swingable patio shade umbrella but during a very windy day it actually snapped right off. Since this was an injection molding created part it couldn't be glued or plastic welded so I put it aside to make a duplicate out of aluminum. However, because the injection molding process used three movable molds I had to improvise somehow to make the ribs at the bottom

First I had to drill a 1" hole at the bottom of the part and fit a piece of dowel into it. This dowel was then mounted on a piece of wood

I bent a piece of flashing around the dowel to allow enough room to make a negative imprint of the ribs

Here is the old (broken) part and the form for making the ribs

I put the original part over the dowel and filled the space with reo-flex two component polyurethane rubber and let it cure for 24 hours

This is what it looked like after I removed the original broken part

Now I could fill up the new cavity that the old part left with another batch of rubber and let it cure for another 24 hours

After I removed the created rubber replica of the ribs, I cut the original ribs off, stuck a dowel into the hole and put the rubber replica onto the dowel. I also cut the original part in half with the band saw so that I could have my split pattern for making the mold. The reason I created the rubber ribs was so that once I pulled the hard part out of the sand I could bend the rubber ribs inwards and gently pull them straight out without damaging the impressions these rubber ribs left in the sand

After the cast was pulled out of the flask and cleaned up

Add a little bit of paint

And there it is. Now, instead of throwing out a completely useless umbrella we can either use it again or sell it for $50 bucks. And, this time the part will certainly never break again

Tools:
Scissors, grinder, drill press, metal file, foundry, vise, band saw

Materials:
Green sand, aluminum, polyurethane glue, dowel, fiberglass, 2-componenet reo-flex polyurethane (shore hardness: A60)

Cost:
$2.00

Time:
3hrs

Savings:
$142.39

Conclusion:
Success