Luer Lock - Applicator Tips and Dispensers Have A Name

Those precision applicator tips for glue bottles, syringes and dispensers have a name. They are called LUER LOCK, or at least that's the famous brand name. (affiliate) Just searching for the name gets me better results for tips and bottles and syringes.

I used them all the time in college, but never knew their name until now. When I was making architectural models I used them to apply thin streams of glue to the foam-core walls and cardboard roofs. The precise tips let me get clean builds easily. Several shops in that town sold them in a variety of sizes. But it was a college town, so they sold hundreds every semester and the clerks knew what I was looking for when I described the tips or task that I needed them for.

When I moved to a non-college town, I could never find them. I asked for them, described them and offered to buy a case if the store could find them. But all I got was weird looks. Looking for "large bore syringes" or "applicator nozzles" on the net got me no closer. I thought I had Amazon, Ebay and Google trained well enough they would give craft-related items automatically, but no...

Then I forgot about them for years because I worked my way out of internship and because I also moved on to 3d printing and CNC. I no longer needed to do paper and foam mock-ups.

Recently however, I found Eric Strebel's excellent YouTube channel. He does wonderful tutorials on traditional model making and mock-up techniques. I started watching for the feel-good memories but kept watching because the techniques are still useful.

One of his videos described his favorite tools and LUER LOCK dispensers were one of them. (affiliate) So, I made a note of the name and wrote this blog post so I won't forget and because maybe you might find them useful also.

You can get adapters for existing syringes or as complete packages in a variety of sizes.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Also find me on:
FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

Skin Safe Silicone Rubber for 3d Prints

I needed to find some skin-safe and food-safe silicone casting material for my projects. I knew about a food safe silicone putty for making chocolate molds, but it wasn't sturdy enough to make cases and jewelry with. If I wanted to make wearable electronic sensors and jewelry, then I needed to find a pourable liquid version that would be safe to wear next to the skin for hours.

Sure, I can design and 3d print a case - been doing it for a while. But the surfaces are rough, they aren't very flexible, and I don't trust the plastics. I've read too many stories about rashes and reactions to mystery plastics. I wanted something that I could wear and that I felt safe giving to other people to wear, something that wasn't rough or toxic or irritating to the skin.

Think of Fit-Bit cases, Swatch watchbands, Croc shoes or even that Cosplay costume that you wear to every convention. I'm okay with a few VOCs and weird plastics touching my skin occasionally. But if I'm going to wear a product all day, seven days a week then I want to know it's safe. And I want my customers to be safe. So, I did some research and wound up finding the same company I've used for years.

I've used Smooth-On casting plastics for years, (affiliate) but I found out they also make a huge line of other products including a wide selection of food and skin safe silicones. They all have special characteristics that make them good for wearing next to the skin and some for making food with. And they all make good molds for casting resin in, so I could always use them for producing other items.

So, I made a quick list of the various food/skin safe materials (NOTE: Food-safe and Skin-safe are not the same thing.)

You Might Be An Old Drafter If

You might be an old drafter if: 

• You remember the sounds of singing cables and pneumatics at crunch time
• You can tell if it was a triangle or a compass being put down just by the sound
• You nostrils still burn when you hear a vent fan come on
• You remember dry fingers from folding binding strips for doc sets
• You have scars from 2" staples from the same doc sets
• Ever used a Sweets volume as a doorstop
• Ever been tearfully grateful to both Ramsey and Sleeper
• You still twirl your pencil
• Still have a strong opinion about plastic vs paper
• Saved your faulty Rapidographs for rendering
• Felt both fear and joy when watching a large format plotter work for the first time

Also find me on:
FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

Find Retro Forrest Mims and 500-in-1 Manuals

Just found a great site that has the manuals from a lot of the 500-in-1 Electronics kits from Radio Shack. They bring back a lot of pleasant memories as well as frustrations.

http://www.zpag.net/Electroniques/Kit/Electronic_Kit.htm

I owned one of these kits twice, once as a very young child and then a second time after college. I was too young the first time and there was no one to help me troubleshoot the circuits. Anyone who has spent hours debugging a breadboarded circuit only to find out they have one resistor leg in the wrong slot or two leads touching can relate to my frustration.

I did learn a lot, but I would have learned more if I had been mentored in how to track down errors and correct them. The successes were sweet, but I had too many failures and I could not dependably make a circuit work, so the kit went into deep storage.

Yes I still have one of the manuals that came with my Radio Shack 500-in-1 Electronics Lab kit. I don't use it very often but the circuits are still valid today.

But the seeds for electronic tinkering had been planted. When the whole Arduino (and LEGO Mindstorms) thing exploded onto the scene I bought a second kit from Radio Shack. This time it went a lot better for me. I knew more about troubleshooting, both because of my experience with software design, and because I knew a few tinkerers who helped me identify the most common breadboarding errors.

I never went much beyond making basic sensors for my robots and UNOs, but exploring the wide variety of circuits helped cement some core concepts in my brain. These circuits are still fun and it's great to have them all in one place. Some days I don't feel like coding, so a nice, simple, all passives project might be fun.

They also have a lot of the Forrest Mims notebooks. These classic booklets started many a child's (or adult's) electronics journey. Still classics and still referenced by lots of people as inspiration. You might not know Mims work, but the people who run the companies you buy your kits from will know his name, and may (like me) still have an original booklet.

Also find me on:
FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks

Tricked by Trigonometry

HYPOCRITE ALERT: I just wasted half a day of my life trying to code basic kinematics without making a single sketch, note-to-self or pseudocode. Bad idea!!!

Yet I blather on about planning and thinking ahead on this blog all the time. In my defense, I was figuring it out as I went along, watching YouTube and reviewing basic trig functions. I was doing okay until I hit a wall at the third joint and realized that I was still trying to base my calculations on the first joint because my brain was so muddy I was just blindly copying code instead of thinking about it.

I took a nice long break then came back and sketched it out complete with names and arrows and reminders. My brain might be mush, but paper and pencil are eternal.

Also find me on:

FACEBOOK -or- INSTRUCTABLES -or- YOUTUBE

Follow @tangoofthegeeks