Recent Blog Entries

“Instrumentation,” as a category, includes not only what one would expect— devices that gather information about temperature and similar parameters— but as well, devices that control, such as relays that turn on the pump for the HEx (heat exchange) units, or the electric heater.

In the case of [The_Cube], the situation is made more complex by the fact that we have two instrumentation systems, one developed (the “minimalist” system), and the second a more complex work-in-process that we will describe in another post.

SPN 20.x, Jigs: Keeping boards square while building stuff

If you've read very much about [The_Cube], one thing you know by now is that I use jigs, which are usually small and fairly simple assemblies intended to enable getting better results. Indeed, some assembly steps might be a practical impossiblity without jigs.

For the idea for this jig, I am indebted to Scott Mack who attended the Builder’s Biogas Workshop in North Carolina, in June of 2019. He took a router and put a piece of plywood over the bottom, then pegged the agitator strut boards onto a dowel in the plywood. The dowel then became a pivot so he could scribe the half-circles for the agitator cups (which are pipes cut in half) in the agitator struts. (More on all that in the blog about the agitator.)