Two small shop upgrades

Feb 01, 2010 1 Replies

Really too small to mention, but it's been a slow day.


1: Ever since we bought the ironworker the area where the shear blades live has been shrouded in darkness. Setting up a cut was something of a braille exercise.

I finally made a mount for a swing-arm lamp to go onto it - a bit of



1/4" x 2" bar stock bent to a 90 with a press-fit piece of round stock bored for the lamp mount. Hooked it up to one hot and the ground (yeah, I know, bad electrical, but easy to do because I didn't have any 220 volt bulbs) Voila! Let there be light!

A side benefit - setting the lamp off to the side of the punch station to illuminate it obliquely makes center punch marks really stand out and speeds hole punching immensely.


2: We just got a cheapo HF fold-up hydraulic 2 ton engine hoist (cherry picker) - Good sale price, plus a 20% off coupon. OK...

It's the one with holes in the boom for 1/2-, 1-, 1 1/2- and 2-Ton lifting capacity that align with a hole in the telescoping boom arm .



Sliding the boom in and out and finding the alignment to get the locking pin into the hole was a visual challenge - a black hole with a black telescoping arm.... So I pulled the arm out and painted a 1" white space on both sides of the hole in the extension arm. Now I can see the alignment clearly while sliding the arm in and out.



Another small annoyance conquered!


Carla



Vocabulary word for the day: Liquidity: When you look at your investments and wet your pants.


Neat! When you have "problems" like aligning holes, or any nuisance kind of thing, a major step to improving it is just realizing that it's a nuisance that you CAN do something about. Often/usually you just go on living with the nuisance. Of course, having the insight/imagination to see a neat (simple, easy, effective) solution is the real satisfying part.

Bob

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