TK Brown

Posts

nVidia RTX 3090 Founder's Edition - Thermal Pad Modification

nVidia's RTX 3090 is a beast of a GPU featuring the latest Ampere architecture with 10,496 CUDA cores and 24GB GDDR6X. Like many products these days it's suffering from limited availability, but I finally managed to acquire one. The 3090 replaces my aging GTX 1070 Ti FTW2 as the primary gamer and boosts my daggerhashimoto rate for Ethereum mining. Unfortunately the 3090 cooling system is not well suited for mining workloads and upon firing up NiceHash, the VRAM temperature quickly reached 110C and began throttling due to excessive heat. Searching the web I found a solution - replacement of the stock thermal pads with higher efficiency aftermarket pads . There are two paths - replacement of all thermals pads front and back or replacement of just the back. I elected to do a full replacement (as it's not terribly difficult to continue once the card is torn apart) and followed CryptoAtHome's YouTube guide . -WARNING- This process may void the warranty of your GPU and carri

Automated Chicken Coop V4

I've kept chickens for ~7 years as of this writing and employed automation for the majority of those years. Chickens are great fun and one of the easiest animals to farm; the addition of automation eliminates some of the more mundane chores. I subscribe to a pasturing approach where chickens are given unrestricted access to my surrounding woodlands, meadows, and wetlands - there are a number of benefits to this system of management that I won't dive into here. Aside from fire mitigation, the property remains in a fairly wild and unaltered state and all active management centers around the coop - this is in contrast to other systems where birds are confined to cages, coops, and optionally attached runs in accordance with metrics on minimum cubic feet per bird. Motivation Over the last few months I've been mulling over a new design for my chicken coop automation system. It's been nearly 2 years since the last refresh and few new dynamics are in play for the 4th version:

Rheem Pronto Tankless Water Heater Repair

Appliance failure #2! The culprit was our Rheem Tankless Water Heater and took a fair amount of spelunking through the web, service documents, and a good old fashioned teardown to resolve the issues - plural as there were actually two error codes generated. Error Code "76" The first error code indicated communication failure between the "Remote" (HMI device which attaches to the wall next to the water heater) and "PCB" (as there is only one printed circuit board in the unit, Rheem refers to it as "PCB"). Upon examination of the PCB, I noted a few of the capacitors had bulged. Typically one would desolder and replace with comparably rated parts, but with 1/2" of potting compound encasing the board, it would be quite the operation to selectively remove and re-pot. I came across a random post on Amazon which mentioned resolving the issue by shorting the communication terminals with a capacitor - this implies that degradation of the capacitor(

GE Profile Microwave Oven - 3D Printed Turntable Wheel Repair

With the COVID-19 lockdowns in effect we're tapping our frozen reserves of past harvests and prepared foods more frequently. The microwave has certainly seen an uptick in meal prep. Unfortunately one of the turntable wheels on our GE Profile dislocated and became damaged beyond use which prevents rotation while cooking - game over for achieving reasonable cooking performance. Lengthy shipping delays and complete shutdown of business is the norm at the moment so I decided to 3D print a replacement. With such a simplistic part, reverse engineering one of the working wheels took only a few minutes as did whipping up a model in SolidWorks. Print took ~15 minutes then snapped on and rotated like an OEM part. For those in a similar situation, I'm releasing the STL file for fabrication on your own 3D printer - hopefully there's someone out there who's life got a tad easier during these crazy times. https://github.com/TKBrown/GE-Profile-Turntable-Wheel UPDATE: Over time th

Hardwood Propagation of Hybrid Willows

Our Hybrid Willow is one of my favorite trees - nectar source for the bees in the spring, cool shade in the summer, while keeping algae and cattail growth in check. I wanted to add a few more around the pond this year and decided to try my hand at hardwood propagation. Start off with branches of pencil thickness in the spring and cut down to ~6 inches in length. Place the clippings in cups and fill with 3 inches of water. Clippings release a hormone which promotes rooting, dense occupancy in the cup promotes rapid rooting. Within a few days roots will appear. Interesting observation - thinner cuttings root more rapidly. Keep a close eye as the roots may quickly become tangled. Once the roots reach a few inches in length they're ready for transfer to soil - add an inch of potting soil, careful place the clipping, then add the rest. Ensure the soil stays moist, but not waterlogged. I kept the these clippings in a grow tent with my other springs starts, but a sunny window should suffi

Building Custom Beeswax Molds with 3D Printed PETG and Silicone Resin

Through my beekeeping operation I accumulate dozens of spent frames from which I salvage beeswax. Until recently I created candles as a means of storage for refined wax, though it reached a point where candle creation exceeded consumption. I decided to cast the refined wax into blocks for long term storage and began the process of creating molds. I pursued a number of concepts before settling on one which fit my needs; this post is will hopefully save others a fair amount of time as little information is available on the web for fabricating custom beeswax molds. Guidelines for the project: Use materials on-hand: 3D Printed PLA or PETG Silicone Resin Must be capable of reliably imprinting fine detail; minor defects are acceptable so long as it fits within the definition of "rustic" Technique must be adaptable across a range of sizes: 1/4 Lb to 5 Lbs Preheating of molds prior to casting not required Mold release agent (silicon spray) not required PETG Mo