Old defibrillator, IV bag + stand, and a red pumpkin.
I can't decide whether to call it "Mama told me to make some friends, so I am" or just "I heart Halloween".
I put veins on the red pumpkin with some hot glue gun glue. That worked out well. I had a jammed glue gun and was spraying the glue onto a paper towel to unclog it--then I realized it'll be better to put that on the pumpkin.
These locks have: a big shackle to attach the lock, and a small drawer that opens and gives the real estate agent a key to the house so they can show it to potential buyers.
These locks are digital, and though they have a removable keypad you need to update a PAID subscription service to get the keypad to actually interact with the lock. There are cool reporting functions (what agent got the key out, when they did, when they put it back, etc.).
I have the manual, the keypad, a new odd battery for the keypad and the actual lock. No good. This is a bypass...with a hammer.
The lock still functioned (locked) afterward and I can do this over and over and still lock the shackle. It take a good wack or three on the side of the lock, near the top to open the shackle because it is spring retained.
I was using a lead hammer, but one of the transparent yellow plastic headed hammers would probably work better since you're trying to basically vibrate the metal components against the spring tension to pop it open.
This little drawer can be defeated by hitting the lock, near the bottom (but on the side) with a plastic headed hammer.
So, making wristwatch parts requires teeny-tiny little drill bits (0.3mm). For fun I took my mini cylindrical drill, a drill press stand and a magnifying LED light with clamp and made my own micro precision drill press.
I shopped around: a USED micro drill press is close to $8000. A crappy one is $350. This cast iron beast was way, way, way less than all that.
Feast your beady little eyes on my sub-millimeter hole shooter (explanations after the photos):
This stand is fantastic. I added a "micro drill" to it instead of a corded drill. This is for micro drilling. I'm using drill bits with diameters of LESS than a millimeter usually. Watchmaking 0.3mm to 2.4mm bits usually. Some of them are literally thinner than a human hair. Most people buy these for CORDED drills with clamping collars (i.e., most corded Milwaukee, Metabo and Wen drills).
This stand is VERY heavy for its size due to its cast iron base (I checked it with a magnet). The magnet stuck to all the green parts. The magnet did NOT stick to the yellow part (the moving dovetail part of the head and the drill collar clamp part). The magnet also stuck to the actual column, meaning it's steel and not aluminum. The rotating part of the head is green and steel. I'm not using that function, but it's still nice.
The jibs (part that the dovetails rub against) are replaceable copper strips. The dovetail tightness can be adjusted by screws. Yes, you can fine tune this thing just like a lathe or milling machine. That simple thing is a HEAVY DUTY feature in any machine.
The spring is fairly hard to pull down without a drill in it. I'm assuming once you put a heavy corded drill in there it will pull down easily. My cylindrical drill is very light comparatively--so there is a little extra pressure needed. Although it's not bad. If it was a problem you just unhook the bottom of the spring, and pull it up out the top and replace it with a weaker (or stronger) spring to suit your taste. I'm just happy that the flat pinion rack (flat part of metal that engages with the gear when you pull the lever down) is nice and smooth. VERY smooth.
Here's a tip: if you don't want to bolt this to a bench top you can bolt three rectangular blocks of wood to the underside of the base. The left/right support the press on a table/shelf for storage. Then when you want to use this thing you clamp the center block of wood into a vise. I have that on some mini-vises that can clamp into bigger vises like Ukrainian nesting dolls. LOL! Anyway, YOU NEED TO CLAMP/BOLT/SCREW this to a work surface--it's not super tippy, but when you pull down on the lever it will be. The base has holes in tabs in all four corners (plus one huge hole in center).
When open the circular hole that you clamp on your drill collar is 43mm. My cylindrical drill has a diameter of 40mm. I needed one of the (three or four) plastic sleeves they give you to assist clamping smaller collars. That 3mm thick sleeve really made a difference.
In my photos I show a 1mm drill bit in my drill--but shown through the magnifying lamp I added. My intention is to add a wooden base with a couple drawers for tiny drill bits--and then mount the speed control for my drill (0-13,000 RPM) to the LEFT side of the cabinet. That way I can adjust the drill speed with my left hand while pulling down with my right.
Things I would change:
It comes with FOUR Allen key/wrenches because they used FOUR different sized Allen bolts. One of the keys only fits the bolt for the arrow pointer head thingy on the depth gauge. It doesn't matter to me, but they'd have to buy/store/track 1 less bolt size, 1 less nut size, and give away 1 less Allen key if they just settled on THREE sizes of bolts. They could probably just use TWO sizes.
The depth gauge has "6" at the top and "0" at the bottom. That means as you pull down on the drill your depth gauge is reading backwards. A two centimeter deep drilling hole goes from 6 to 4--instead of 0 to 2. I've seen that on other tools, and it's annoying.
The cap on the top of the column has a little hook for the drill power cord. It's very open and the cord can fall out. No big deal, it's probably loose so the cord doesn't catch and the drill moves down--but maybe a "V" shape that contains the cord and let's it move rather than a "C" shape that lets it fall out. With that said, my drill cord and my magnifying light cord seem pretty happy--and I can always zip-tie them loosely if need be.
Why did I do this when I have other BIG drill presses, lathe, etc.? I'm playing around with a couple of wristwatch movements and wanted to drill REALLY small holes. I started looking at tiny drill presses: garbage plasticy ones for $80; garbage plastically ones for $350; nice ones at about $1000. Really nice ones up to $15,000. Yes, the price of a car--for a teeny tiny drill press. Look up used "Precision drill press" and you'll be amazed. No thanks.
There is a somewhat similar drilling stand which looks cooler (all steel) but it looks like it has rack and pinion metal-strips pop riveted together as it's movement mechanism. Lots of sideways jiggle and non-repeatable drilling (can't hit the same hole twice). No thanks.
To be clear: the magnifying light and cylinder micro drill DO NOT COME WITH THIS THING.
Anyway, I would go this route versus a sub-$1000 precision drill press. Anything under $1000 is going to be trash. Make your own setup with this.
M1K3 FR0M D3TR01T
AIPHONE C-ML Intercom and magnetic door unlock wiring system.
Outside the building a delivery person presses the doorbell button on the LE-D unit and lets go. This rings a loud bell on the C-ML.
Inside a security person presses and holds the microphone flip switch on the C-ML and talks into it "how may I help you?" and then lets go of the switch-which in turn activates a microphone on the outdoor LE-D unit.
The outside delivery person has a few seconds to speak "your sandwiches are here!"
The indoor security person can then press the little black door unlock button which cuts power to the magnet holding the door open for a few seconds allowing sandwich to be delivered.
Alternately, a person can swipe a magnetic swipe card in the REI reader, or type in a code on the REI keypad and the door magnet will unlock for a few seconds.
With short runs of wire during testing only 3vDC was needed for the intercom and doorbell to work. I also have a 16.5vAC Revere wall wart that might work on parts of this system-possibly feeding the keyboard logic boards and magnet lock "brain" (still playing around).
"Just slide the sandwiches under the truck...meow."
Updating the BIOS on an ancient Acer Aspire One KAV10 AOD150-1322 laptop running Linux Mint 19.3 to get rid of a problem when it was booting up and shutting down it would go to sleep multiple times during these processes. I had to keep hitting the space bar and sometimes the power button to wake up the laptop so it could continue shutting down or booting up.
The problem would go away if I went into F2 on boot up and turned off the fast start/quick start/ready start quick boot up feature. But then it would loose this change after one or two boots. So I decided to flash the BIOS to the latest version available (a version from way back in 2012!).
The only reason I did this (it took about 3 hours to get past all the wrong advice online) was because the laptop kept going into sleep/hibernate in the middle booting or shutting down. Only attempt to update BIOS on any machine if there is a need. If it goes wrong BIOS problems tend to be unfixable and you can just throw the computer in the trash!
To do this I needed:
-USB stick.
-The Acer Bios files from the ACER website only (comes with Windows and DOS folder--you have to use the DOS folder files).
-Unetbootin program loaded.
-GParted program loaded.
-Disks (or Disk Management) program loaded.
Many of the online tutorials are WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!! in their steps. Specifically they tell you: the wrong FAT system, the wrong BIOS file to choose, and a couple other wrong things.
After downloading the BIOS files from Acer and loading the Linux Mint programs on the laptop I was ready to begin.
Formatting the USB stick. First off, many tutorials say to use FAT16 but that never worked for me so I used FAT32. When you name your USB make sure to use 8 or less letters in the name. I named mine "CrazyUSB". Keep the name short or else some of these old DOS things will have an issue!
Also when using the programs you MUST make sure you've selected your USB thumb drive and NOT your computer's hard drive. These programs ALL default to your computers hard drive and then you have to select the USB stick (green selection in upper right corner in the photo).
The only reason I did this (it took about 3 hours to get past all the wrong advice online) was because the laptop kept going into sleep/hibernate in the middle booting or shutting down. Only attempt to update BIOS on any machine if there is a need. If it goes wrong BIOS problems tend to be unfixable and you can just throw the computer in the trash!