Day 41 7/2/13 (A tick o sickness, green screen, cleaning motors, dead 220 V sockets, fixing myself a proper chair, a dead diode, wherez mah light bulb?, a radiant warmer and thinking of starting a caster changing service)

Today started off very rough; with feeling sick and waking up to go to the bathroom at 4:30 AM. Eventually I had breakfast and I didn’t feel much better. In fact I had to walk all the way home from the hospital after about an hour because I felt so bad and because I needed to use the bathroom. The breakfast was good, but I’m not sure my body really absorbed any of the food but just passed it through. Also today I was tired for some reason (I think it was the waking up so early combined with the exhaustion of the day hitting me). Anyways I don’t really want to harp on being sick. So the work at the hospital was decent today. Slow but at least we had projects to work on for the entire day. One of the first projects I worked on was putting the projector back together as yesterday I had the cover off cleaning the unit. Today after I put the cover back on the temp sensor was fine and the unit actually worked (and showed an image on the wall (albeit a very green and slightly futzed up around the fringes image, but the image nonetheless)). I think the bulb is wearing out on that unit as it apparently has clocked like 360 hours and the edges of the screen are fritzing out with a mixture of repeated messed up text and green borders. Least the projector is working and can show the computer if need be. So fix on that one. Another project Dan and I were working on was those compressors that we sanded the rust off and are in the process of putting them back together. We want to paint them and I had to consult the paint-God (my dad) on the type of Rustoleum and other primer needed. Anyways the compressors are at a standstill for now as we have to acquire some paint. We also cleaned the contacts in the commutater Anyways when I got back after heading home quickly I continued working on the infant incubator to see if I could get the temperature working again. I decided to try it on the supposed 220 V line (the rating for the heater) outside by the trailers. I carried the controls out there and connected it with the adaptor to the 220 V supply outlet…and nothing happened. Back in the workshop I had reset the knob so that the top of the switch position was where the unit turned off (and the two sides related to hotter and less hot temperatures (no cooling)). I then grabbed my DMM and tested the outlet to see there was 0V across the terminals -.- . So apparently the breaker is off there which normally wouldn’t be a problem as you can just throw the breaker the other way and turn it on, but the guy with the key to the breaker panel is on vacation -.- . So more waiting on that one. It could be worse I suppose and the heater does somewhat work on the 110V, but would work better on the 220V, so I’ll probably have to clean the incubator controls and wait. Also Gato and Marlon said we might be able to tap into this random line and bring 220V down to this unconnected outlet (just a random line that appears to be on the same breaker, but I can hope I suppose). Besides that Dan and I got another balance to take a look at (after returning the last one) and this one was similar where the users said the scale was always reading .1 or .2 kg off the correct value. So Dan and I looked at the scale and eventually determined the problem was that the balance was not sitting on a level surface in the lab space and we told them such. When we eventually brought the balance back to them they just set if on this deformable foam on top of a bench to read measurements (that’s about as level as a waterbed after putting weight on the scale (as the balance will sink into the foam (as a note it was also missing one footie, so Gato helped by tapping a new screw hole and putting a new bolt in there (which we leveled out with the other feet)))). Lunch was at the hospital and was some chicken with tortillas and B&R for 45 Cord. After consulting with the paint man we headed back to work and I ended up snagging a chair that had been set out for trash as 3 of the 5 casters were broken off the base (I saw huge potential for this as we have several useable bases in the trash heaps between the trailers). After getting back I found a base with 4 or 5 casters on it and swapped the bases and oiled the bearing in the telescoping action to end up with another chair for the workshop! BAM! Another fix. Another project of the day was to go return the contact cleaner (that we had used on the commutator for the compressor) to Barney which brought us back into the AC secret supply room in the lab where several more pieces of equipment were waiting. This time we had a centrifuge that was spinning too slowly and a microscope that didn’t have any specified problem. Dan started taking apart the centrifuge and I started troubleshooting the microscope. The problem with the microscope was that it did not have a bulb in the base. That was all that was wrong. I checked the voltages and initially it didn’t seem to light the bulb until I found the pot knob on the side to change the brightness and the bulb light up (the one that Barney supplied). The problem with the centrifuge (which actually uses a cool stepper motor) is that a diode on the board was worn out (according to Barney a diode is supposed to drop 0.7V in either direction and have a finite resistance one way with an infinite the other way (it’s a one way component), but one of the diodes dropped like 1.1 volt one way and only like 0.1 V the other (which apparently is broken)). Anyways we unsoldered that diode and are in the process of trying to find another one. The microscope just needs some cleaning on the lenses. After this Dan and I wanted to start inventory, but we had heard about this one radiant warmer (basically a heater element above a bed for a newborn to keep the baby warm). The problem with this warmer was that apparently the temperature wasn’t warm enough down by the baby. We packed up our tools and shifted into the new born wing in the AC room with the birthing/gyno? station and the warmer and several other tables. At first we tried the warmer out and set the temperature at like 37 C and the warmer turned on the low temp alarm after trying to raise the temp about a couple of tenths of degrees from the probe temp. So we restarted the machine and tried touching the probe which immediately freaked out and threw up a probe error and the machine shutoff (the temp reading on the probe also jumped up to like 37 C (O.o)). We then powered down the machine and took the top off the heater and I very gently cleaned the connections from the power supply to the resistive element (which sits inside a glass tube with delicate wire connections through a ceramic element at either end). After that I put together the heater connections and Dan tightened the top back on the heater (while I walked back to the junk heap to find a new caster for the thoroughly dead that was completely snapped off on this one chair in the room (the new caster jump popped in and BAM! Another chair fixed! (for the baby room that is))). After I got back and fixed the chair, Dan was testing the heater and the probe. I joined him in that pursuit and we eventually realized that if we set the temperature more than a about a degree away from the probe temp, the low temperature alarm would sound and the machine would then shutoff. So we determined the heating element is old and antiquated and for this reason can’t heat the unit up as fast as when pristine, so the temperature must be set in increments of a degree or less and then time must be waited until the warmer heats to that temperature (and the iterative cycle repeats). The process is long, but it works well and the unit does become hot. Using this new process, the low temp alarm can be avoided and the heater will reach the required 37 degrees C mark (as the baby people had requested). I think the probe may also be damaged and I will check the wires tomorrow in addition to testing the temp with our baby incubator alarm that we made in lab and set to 37 degrees C. After that we pretty much left as it was 5 PM and time to head home. Back at home I was so exhausted that I took a 30-45 min nap and then thought that would help me feel a tad better, but it didn’t so I was unable to eat that much of my dinner (which was B&R, salad and this good custom hamburger thing and that oatmeal drank) and I felt so horrible telling the family I couldn’t eat any more (-.- // all the sickness). Anyways just trying to finish this up and get some extra sleep (hopefully I can make it through the night). Talk to you guys later! Hope you guys keep having good days and keep doing fantastic things! Peace!