Fenestration and Debauchery

I went to Chicago last weekend for the premiere performance of my sister’s latest musical project, Nylon Radio (My sister is doing a doctorate in Music, um, Theory? at the University of Chicago).

All of the pictures were taken with my Panasonic G1 with 20mm/f1.7 lens.  It’s a digital camera, and a good one, but I feel like something has been lost with the switch to digital photography.  With film media, you have this really fascinating and unpredictable interaction between the type of film stock/processing and the environment that you were trying to capture when you opened the shutter.  When I shot on film, this was usually very, very frustrating, as you could do everything right and still end up with a bad shot, due to some quirk of the processing or stock or spectral distribution of the ambient light or measurement error in the metering or whatever the hell else.  But I find that digital cameras, especially high end ones, can render the scene so neutrally that the results are nice enough but boring.

So I was presented with something of an opportunity when I loaded the SD card into my laptop on the plane back to San Francisco.  I had to shoot nearly all of the shots wide open at f1.7 at 800-3200 ISO– there was no light, except for some ambient bounce that didn’t give any modeling and some LED music stand lights that look like death warmed over on skin tones.  If I was going to have anything usable, it was all going to be in post-process.  I decided that rather than trying to make a purse out of a sows ear, I’d instead play around with all of the fun ways you can abuse the Camera Raw filters, and let taste be no object.  Here are some of my favorites, with a quick description of the techniques used in each.

Cheap Photoshop trick #1: the automated panorama stitcher. I really love the look of these.  While the automated stitcher routine does a pretty good job of adjusting for different exposures, I set the exposure lock before I took the set, in order to have distinct light areas and dark areas in the picture.  I pulled the color temperature slider way down, but subjectively this was the feel of the lighting at the event.

You damn kids won't remember assembling these by hand prior to CS

Most of the really objectionable noise was in the color rather than luminance, so a lot of the remedies involve removing the color before applying some sort of false color process.  In the above picture, I also grabbed the midranges and pushed them into the highlight range, which had the effect of popping the band out from the brick wall behind them.

Here’s the warm-up act.  There really wasn’t any light on them at all, this was shot at 3200 ISO with the aperture wide open.  I compensated by shifting to the left until the guy was standing in front of the lamp, which at least popped him out from the background.

The original was a solid mess of color noise, so I desaturated the image completely and replaced the highlights with an orange tone, and the shadows with a lavender tone.

Here, I nibbled away at the saturation by color and value of everything but the central figure (my sister, Marcy).  You can do the same thing in half the time by using a mask and a saturation layer, but I find that this gives a more organic feel.

I’m still working at getting better at portraiture.  I got into photography as a matter of necessity, because I needed good photos of my shows for my portfolio, and the production photographer tends to shoot close-ups without any regard for preserving the look of the lighting (don’t shoot with a flash, please), if there’s a photo call at all.  I didn’t want to get right up in people’s grill while a performance was going on, so I don’t have a lot of close-ups for this shoot, but here’s one I quite like.

New in this Version:

• Tested and working in Arduino 0018.

That’s it!  As per usual, you will have to replace the stock HardwareSerial.cpp in C:\Program Files (x86)\arduino-0018\hardware\arduino\cores\arduino with the modified version included in the zip file.  Get it here!

Edwin Dolby at Laser Productions had an elegant idea to address this, namely that you could use the constrain function to map out of bounds values to the correct 0-511 range.  However, I have decided not to implement this by default, as without some kind of numerical readout I think the values should just be set to what you set them.  But, easy to implement if you decide you want it!

Cutoff is dead.  Long live Cutoff. Most lighting designers are somewhat familiar with the Cutoff classification system for fixtures.  It’s a measure of how well an area or roadway luminaire controls its output, preventing glare from high-angle brightness and wasted polluting light that goes directly up into the atmosphere.

Well. The Illumination Engineering Society (IES) recently deprecated the familiar Full Cutoff/Cutoff/Semi-Cutoff/Non-Cutoff system in favor of BUG ratings.  And what, you might ask, in entomological hell are BUG ratings?  Briefly, the Backlight-Uplight-Glare rating is a set of three numbers which describe how well a fixture controls and directs the light it emits.  It provides a more granular classification of a fixtures performance, correctly scales for LED luminaires that use absolute photometry, and in conjunction with the forthcoming Model Lighting Ordinance addresses excessive lumen packages.  Very exciting, but we’ll first look at some examples to explain the motivation for the change.

A Review of prior art: The basic idea of the Cutoff classification is that for a given lamp lumen output, the fixture should not emit excessive candela above a certain threshold in the upper angles.  Cutoff attempts to address uplight (light pollution) and high angle brightness (glare) within a single classification.  For example, in order to be Cutoff, the fixture would have to emit no more than 25 candela per 1000 lamp lumens above the horizontal line (uplight), and no more than 100 candela per 1000 lamp lumens between 80 degrees and horizontal (glare).

Let’s get into the weeds: Recall that candela is a spot measurement of luminous intensity in a given direction, whereas the lumen is a measurement of luminous flux over a given section of a sphere around the source.  In calculus terms, lumens are derived by integrating (‘summing’) the candela value function over the angular domain we are interested in.  So we have here a ratio between the maximum allowable spot intensity and the total lighting output of the lamp.  The advantage of using a ratio like this is that it scales for different lamp wattages, so that the same fixture will have the same cutoff classification for a 150W lamp as a 250W lamp, as the ratio between the spot intensity at 90 degrees (candela)  and the total output of the lamp (lumens) is the same.

Still with me? Here are the four Cutoff classifications, and an example of each:

Full Cutoff: A luminaire light distribution where zero candela intensity occurs at an angle of 90° above nadir, and at all greater angles from nadir. Additionally, the candela per 1000 lamp lumens does not numerically exceed 100 (10%) at vertical angle of 80° above nadir. This applies to all lateral angles around the luminaire.¹ For our example, we’ll use the Kim Lighting Warp9 with 250W PSMH lamp and type III distribution.  The part number would be something along the lines of WP9LE3-250PMH(Volt)-(Finish)-1A.

Lamp lumens (as shown in IES file): 22,000 ²

Max candela above 90 degrees: 0

Candela per 1000 lumens above 90: 0 / 22,000 = 0 / 1000, which is ≤ the required 0 candela / 1000 lumens

Max candela between 80 and 90 degrees: 1143

Candela per lumens between 80 and 90: 1143 / 22,000 = 52 / 1000, which is ≤ 100 candela / 1000 lumens

So this fixture has a classification of Full Cutoff.  Full roadway photometric report may be downloaded here.

Cutoff: A luminaire light distribution where the candela per 1000 lamp lumens does not numerically exceed 25 (2.5%) at an angle of 90° above nadir, and 100 (10%) at a vertical angle of 80° above nadir. This applies to all lateral angles around the luminaire. The new Louis Poulsen LP Nest is an excellent example of this, with a configured part number for this example of LPNEST-PT-1x70W HIT G12 HF-(Finish)-(Class).

Lamp lumens (as shown in IES file): 6288

Max candela above 90 degrees: 8

Candela per 1000 lumens above 90: 8 / 6288 = 1.3 / 1000, which is ≤ the required 25 candela / 1000 lumens

Max candela between 80 and 90 degrees: 1143

Candela per lumens between 80 and 90: 134 / 6288 = 21 / 1000, which is ≤ 100 candela / 1000 lumens

So this fixture has a classification of Cutoff.  Full roadway photometric report may be downloaded here.

Semi-Cutoff: A luminaire light distribution where the candela per 1000 lamp lumens does not numerically exceed 50 (5%) at an angle of 90° above nadir, and 200 (20%) at a vertical angle of 80° above nadir. This applies to all lateral angles around the luminaire. For an example of this, we’ll use the Architectural Area Lighting Federal Globe.  I’m not a big fan of acorn style luminaires generally, because I think they look stupid, but if you have to use one the AAL version has best-in-class optical control.   Configured part number FGL-SGL-CCO-150PSMH-ASY.

Lamp lumens (as shown in IES file): 14,000

Max candela above 90 degrees: 282

Candela per 1000 lumens above 90: 282 / 14000 = 20.1 / 1000, which is ≤ the required 50 candela / 1000 lumens

Max candela between 80 and 90 degrees: 615

Candela per lumens between 80 and 90: 615 / 14000 = 44 / 1000, which is ≤ 200 candela / 1000 lumens

So this fixture has a classification of Semi-Cutoff.  Full roadway photometric report may be downloaded here.

Non-Cutoff: A luminaire light distribution where there is no candela limitation in the zone above maximum candela. There are any number of fixtures that fail to be Full/Semi/Cutoff in uninteresting ways, by having poor optics.  But as a nice segue into talking about BUG ratings, let’s take an example that fails in an interesting way:

This is the Beta Edge, configured part number ARE-EDG-3M-DA-12-C-(VOLT)-(Finish).  I chose this fixture because it’s about a 1:1 equivalent for most applications to the Full-Cutoff Warp9 HID used in the first example.  The zonal lumen summaries are nearly identical, and show good optical control in the 80-90 degree zone, and no lumens above the 90 degree line.  If you want to take a look at the these templates I made for the Warp9 and Edge, you’ll see that they show equivalent spacing (for a standard parking lot with a .2fc minimum).  The Edge fixture is even approved by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) as being particularly dark-sky friendly.  So what’s the deal?

Once More into the Weeds: The two fixtures perform so differently on the cutoff classification because the IES files that contain their photometric data are structured fundamentally differently.  For many years, we’ve used what’s called relative photometry, which uses the product of the lamp lumen output and a matrix of multipliers to derive the candela values in any given direction.  This allows you to easily adjust the input lumens to account for different lamp options, such as when the photometrics were run with a 32W T8 and you want to use a 25W super-saver T8.

The problem comes in applying this paradigm to LEDs, wherein the source diode and optical assembly are typically integral—there’s no easy way to separate out the lumen output of the source and the multipliers to derive the candela values.  Also, some less-reputable LED manufacturers were playing all sorts of cute games with the input lumens to make their fixtures appear to perform better—the specification lumens given by the diode manufacturer are not representative of the real-world output.

LM-79: Recognizing these problems, in 2008 the IES released document LM-79, “Electrical and Photometric Measurements of Solid-State Lighting Products.” Instead of measuring the photometrics relative to a reference lamp, the candela values for LED fixtures are ‘baked in’ to the matrix multipliers.  This is an entirely sensible innovation, but it plays havoc with the Cutoff system.  Not having a reference lumen value of the lamp to compare to, the candela ratio is done relative to the total fixture output lumens, and as such we end up with:

Luminaire lumens: 9892

Max candela above 90 degrees: 0

Candela per 1000 lumens above 90: 0 / 9892 = 0 / 1000, which is ≤ the required 0 candela / 1000 lumens

Max candela between 80 and 90 degrees: 2104

Candela per lumens between 80 and 90: 2104 / 9892 = 211 / 1000, which is ≥ 200 candela / 1000 lumens

And so we end up with a designation of Non-Cutoff, when really this fixture has a very dark-sky friendly profile.

But here’s the real problem. The IES could have re-scaled the Cutoff system relative to total fixture lumens, which would have presented relative and absolute photometries on equal footing.  But what the Cutoff system doesn’t address is proper lamp lumen selection relative to the application.  Putting a 250W lamp on a 12′ pole is going to be a glare bomb whatever the Cutoff classification of the fixture, and a parking lot full of 250W lamps is going to cause sky glow in a rural area, whatever the pole height.

Consider our first and third examples, the Kim Warp9 at 250W and the AAL Federal Globe at 150W.  Let’s assume that all of the downlight out of the fixture falls on concrete with a reflectance of 10%.  The Warp9 is emitting 16783 lumens in the downward direction, but 10% of that is going to be reflected up into the atmosphere, for 1678 upward lumens.  The Semi-Cutoff FG has an upward component of 1259 lumens plus 4255 * .10 reflected lumens for 1301 lumens emitted into the atmosphere, less than the Full Cutoff Warp9.  And don’t even get me started on the retail sites that put up 400W heads because they think it’ll sell more washing machines or whatever.

Hence, the BUG: In the original TM-15-07:  “Luminaire Classification System for Outdoor Luminaires” (a real page-turner, yech), the sphere of output around the fixture was divided into:

• Front: between nadir and 90° vertically, and -90° to 90° horizontally (where the fixture is aligned to 0°).
• Back: between nadir and 90° vertically, and 90° to -90° horizontally.
• Up: anything above 80° vertically.

The Front and back zones were further divided into:

• Low: nadir to 30° vertical.
• Middle: 30° to 60° vertical.
• High: 60° to 80° vertical.
• Very High: 80° to 90° vertical.

Whereas the uplight zone is divided into:

• Low: 90° to 100° vertical.
• High: above 100° vertical.

Here is a graphic that will make this clear:

Rather than using a ratio to limit the maximum spot candela to input lamp lumens, BUG is based on the absolute fixture output lumens within a given set of zones.  For example, for the backlight zones:

A fixtures Backlight rating is determined by the highest (worst) classification in each of the zones.  For the Beta LED fixture in the example above, we have:

BH – Back-High (60°-80°): 1212.8 < 2500 lumens, so B3
BM – Back-Medium (30°-60°): 1835.4 < 2500 lumens, so B2
BL – Back-Low (0°-30°): 375.1 < 500 lumens, so B1

The overall backlight rating for the fixture is the worst of the three scores, B3.

The classification tables for Uplight and Glare are as follows:

Then the Uplight rating is:

UH – Uplight-High (100°-180°): 0.0 ≤ 0 lumens, so U0

UL – Uplight-Low (90°-100°): 0.0 ≤ 0 lumens, so U0

FVH – Front-Very High (80°-90°): 196.8 > 150 lumens, so U3

BVH – Back-Very High (80°-90°): 36.2 < 75 lumens, so U1

so the Uplight rating is U3.  For the glare ratings,

FVH – Front-Very High (80°-90°): 196.8 < 250, so G1

BVH – Back-Very High (80°-90°): 36.2 < 250, so G1

FH – Front-High (60°-80°): 2787.4 < 5000, so G2

BH – Back-High (60°-80°): 1212.8 < 2500, so G3

Then the glare rating is G3, for a total rating of B3-U3-G3.

What about Type V? The Glare component values are slightly different for fixtures with a symmetric distribution, as these do not have a Backlight component per se.  For the record, a symmetrical fixture is defined as:

• A Type V luminaire is one with a distribution that has circular symmetry, defined by the IESNA as being essentially the same at all lateral angles around the luminaire.
• A Type VS luminaire is one where the zonal lumens for each of the eight horizontal octants (0-45, 45-90, 90-135, 135-180, 180-225, 225-270, 270-315, 315-360) are within ±10 percent of the average zonal lumens of all octants.³

Symmetric fixtures use glare ratings from the following table of values, and while the Backlight component is still calculated, it is obviously identical to any other 180° section of horizontal output.

The Bug ratings for all four fixtures are:

Kim Warp9 250W: B3-U1-G3

Poulsen LP Nest 70W: B1-U2-G1

AAL Federal Globe 150W: B2-U5-G2

Beta Edge 120LED: B3-U3-G3

In the future there will be the Robot Armageddon, and also the Model Lighting Ordinance (MLO): The International Dark Sky Association has begun work on model code for municipalities, which would attempt to better curtail light pollution and trespass from fixtures with poor output control and inappropriately high wattages.   The MLO is currently being revised following a period of public comment, and the latest work-in-progress draft of ’60%’ provides the option of two approaches to compliance, a prescriptive approach based on lumens per square foot, and a performance approach that relies on BUG ratings.  The latter works as follows:

The municipality or parts within it are declared as one of the five lighting zones, LZ0, LZ1, LZ2, LZ3, or LZ4.  These zones will be familiar to anyone who has dealt with a LEED or California Title 24 project, as they are incorporated into those standards, but here they are if you need a refresher:

• LZ0: No ambient lighting.  Areas where the natural environment will be seriously and adversely affected by lighting. Impacts include disturbing the biological cycles of flora and fauna and/or detracting from human enjoyment and appreciation of the natural environment. Human activity is subordinate in importance to nature. The vision of human residents and users is adapted to the total darkness, and they expect to see little or no lighting. When not needed, lighting should be extinguished.
• LZ1: Low ambient lighting.  Areas where lighting might adversely affect flora and fauna or disturb the character of the area. The vision of human residents and users is adapted to low light levels. Lighting may be used for safety, security and/or convenience but it is not necessarily uniform or continuous. After curfew, most lighting should be extinguished or reduced as activity levels decline.
• LZ2: Moderate ambient lighting.  Areas of human activity where the vision of human residents and users is adapted to moderate light levels. Lighting may typically be used for safety, security and/or convenience but it is not necessarily uniform or continuous. After curfew, lighting may be extinguished or reduced as activity levels decline.
• LZ3: Moderately high ambient lighting. Areas of human activity where the vision of human residents and users is adapted to moderately high light levels. Lighting is generally desired for safety, security and/or convenience and it is often uniform and/or continuous. After curfew, lighting may be extinguished or reduced in most areas as activity levels decline.
• LZ4: High ambient lighting. Areas of human activity where the vision of human residents and users is adapted to high light levels. Lighting is generally considered necessary for safety, security and/or convenience and it is mostly uniform and/or continuous. After curfew, lighting may be extinguished or reduced in some areas as activity levels decline.⁴

The maximum allowable BUG ratings are a function of the Lighting Zone and the distance to the property line, as shown in the following table:

Maximum Allowed BUG ratings in the MLO
	LZ0	LZ1	LZ2	LZ3	LZ4
Allowed Backlight Rating
>2 mounting heights from property line	B0	B1	B2	B3	B4
1 to 2 mounting hieghts from property line and properly oriented*	B0	B1	B2	B3	B3
.5 to 1 mounting hieghts from property line and properly oriented*	B0	B0	B1	B2	B2
< .5 mounting hieghts from property line adjacent to a street and properly oriented*	B0	B0	B1	B2	B2
<.5 mounting hieghts from property line and properly oriented*	B0	B0	B0	B1	B1
Allowed Uplight Rating	U0	U1	U2	U3	U4
Allowed Glare Rating	G0	G1	G2	G3	G4
*Backlight must be pointing towards property line.

This can be a little hard to visualize, so here is a graphic for LZ2:

Conclusion, and Remarks: I think this is a generally sensible approach, although it seems like they could consolidate a few rows from the Backlight table, e.g. the maximum ratings between .5 and 1 MH and 1 to 2 MH are only different for zone LZ4, and there are currently exactly zero LZ4s in California.  Adoption of this code would be a very different approach from that taken by most municipalities currently, in which minimum site footcandle levels are set (often much higher than needed for visibility and security), and glare, uplight, and trespass are addressed imprecisely or not at all.

Compliance is much easier when every municipality is not re-inventing the wheel.  Title 24, while a challenging energy efficiency standard to meet, is at least the same on every job.  Where compliance becomes difficult and time-consuming is when I have to spend hours familiarizing myself with the particular zoning requirements of Catbutt, Wyoming or whatever.  Wholesale adoption of the MLO has the potential standardize the approach to site lighting, and standardize it to a better standard than exists currently.

Hey by the way: I’m considering writing more posts along these lines because there isn’t a lot out there that goes in depth on these issues.  If this was helpful for you or there is a particular issue you’d like covered, drop me a line in the comments and let me know!

Footnotes:

1. All cutoff definitions from the IES Lighting Handbook, 9th edition, p. 7-8.

2. All photometric calculations generated via Photometric Toolbox v1.75, the latest version at the time of posting.

3. Addendum A to IES TM-15-07, Backlight, Uplight, and Glare (BUG) Ratings

4. IESNA RP-33, Lighting for Exterior Environments

I was walking home and these were just laying out on the street.  I think they were slats in a bed, maybe?  Anyway, they’re nice clean pine with no knots or fasteners.  I need a new cutting board, so I think I’ll use some of them for that.

A couple weeks ago, I lost my cufflinks. They were nothing special, but about half of the shirts I own have a French cuff, so I took a quick spin through what was available online to buy some replacements.  And here is what I have learned about cufflinks:

If you want shamrock cufflinks picked out in ersatz emeralds, you can find them.  If you want a winking pirate, or matching male and female symbols, or a Mercedes logo (in diamonds, natch), you can find all of those.  In fact, nothing I can tell you will prepare you for how gaudy and ostentatious the selection will be.  You remember that jackass boss you had at that shitty job?  Apparently, he went on to sell cufflinks for a living, because this is exactly his taste in accoutrement.

Put on The Smiths and fire up the etching tank. These are what I came up with, using the process described in my prior post here.  I threw together some artwork in about twenty minutes, and finished the parts the same weekend.  I did two sets, one using Sierpinski triangles and one using the tracks made by subatomic particles in a cloud chamber

It’s right about the smallest detail I can get with the process I’m using right now, and for this and many other reasons I need to find a better way to do the resist stage than toner transfer.  I bought the backings on the bay of e, and painted it once with black paint, then took steel wool to it to remove the raised portion.  Then everything got a clear coat to keep the zinc from oxidizing.

Sometimes the quick projects are the most satisfying, and I’m pretty happy with the results.

My Friday nights are 23% more awesome by molarity than yours.

You win some, You lose some. This is actually a post about a failure to achieve what I was trying to do, but it’s an interesting failure.  I was making some zinc etchings (see my earlier post about that) and I thought it would be great if I could then plate the exposed parts of the etching not covered by the resist with copper, which, when the resist was removed, would give me a two-tone metallic effect.

I had been putting a pad of steel wool into the bath to remove the copper from it prior to pouring it down the drain, for environmental reasons.  The copper would plate out onto it just fine, but it didn’t have any adhesion— if you weren’t careful taking the steel wool out, the copper would fall right off it.  So it seemed that I was close to my goal, if I could just get the copper to adhere to the plates.

Some hours of internet research later, I had a partial success.  Commercial copper plating processes use a complex process with very precise parameters of solution strength, electricity, and temperature, as well as proprietary processes such as strike baths and commercial brighteners.  There are internet forums devoted to the finer points of this, and I really should have paid more attention in high school chemistry because I can’t follow most of it.  But the underlying process is pretty simple.

Dissolve some copper into an acid bath, connect your anode (+) to a copper donor part, and your work piece to the cathode (-).  The positively charged copper will attach itself to the negatively charged work piece.  The acid is there to help the copper dissolve in the solution, I think.

For my copper anode, I used about a foot of stranded copper wire, with the insulation jacket removed, of course.  I used vinegar (acetic acid) for my acid solution, and also added about 3 tablespoons of copper sulfate crystals.  I think this is what made the plating work so quickly despite using a weak acid, as otherwise you would have to wait for copper atoms to be pulled off the copper part, transported across the medium, and deposited onto the work piece.  For a constant supply of voltage, I used a car battery charger.  The 12-14V it supplies is too much voltage, so I used several light bulbs of various denominations to make a voltage divider, with the voltage across the bath between 1 and 2 volts.

The acid will be consumed in the process, so you’ll have to keep adding more to keep the PH down.  Also, if you are seeing bubbles or black soot forming on the workpiece, you’re trying to plate too fast– you should reduce the voltage, make the mixture less conductive, or increase the amount of copper dissolved in the bath.  An apparently common maxim of plating is that you can’t plate material faster than you put it into the solution.  Also, without brighteners you’ll need to immediately clearcoat the copper plate after polishing it if you want it to stay shiny.

Plating onto (steel) quarters.

The process works pretty well for plating copper or zinc onto steel, but I was completely unsuccessful at plating copper onto zinc.  The acid just attacked the zinc and I got a lot of bubbling and soot deposits, but no copper.  In the picture below, you can see the bubbles of hydrogen gas coming off the zinc plate.

Fail!

More research:  So I spent a lot of time reading about this, mostly from patents because it turns out copper plating onto zinc is sort of a Thing.  Commercial processes involve a cyanide bath, which is not something I can attempt at home due to the fact that it would kill me.

The other mode of attack I’ve been thinking about would be to plate the zinc in an alkaline bath with some other metal, one that would allow me to then plate the copper using the acid bath process.  From what I’ve been reading sodium carbonate might work for an alkaline bath, but I’m not sure what metal I would plate with or whether that would really work.  Also, we’re getting pretty well outside my grasp of chemistry here.

Story Time. So, in Los Angeles I lived in this comically tiny studio apartment.  There, I did all my projects on this 3′ x 3′ table, which was also pre-landfill staging for junk mail and whatever else I was holding when I walked through my apartment door.  Here is it in action:

15% of surface area unusable due to feline possession.

Over time this table, which was never exactly heirloom quality to begin with, became so covered with assorted solder/glue/paint, burn marks (thermal and chemical), and power tool ‘oops’ Events, as to be only an article of furniture by virtue of its horizontality.

When I moved into my  spacious Portland apartment, I decided that I wanted a proper workbench, with room for cat storage and a soldering iron.  Specifically, I wanted to be able to work with a 4′ wide sheet of material, and something sturdy enough that it wouldn’t jump around when I used power tools, with storage for all the little necessaries like sharpies…

The tracks running perpendicular to the vise allow me to lock down any size material up to the length of the bench (6′).  It also has a compartment in the center to hold sandpaper, etc.   Here’s an exploded view (top and bottom) showing how it all goes together— the top is detachable to allow it to fit through a standard door.*

The Feet: I ordered the foot hardware from McMasterCarr, part #62805K42.  Then I took some 1/8″ thick steel plate, drilled a hole in it and tapped threads to screw the foot in.  I put a nut with an integral washer on it so that the weight of the bench would be distributed across the plate rather than resting on that 1/8″ worth of thread.  Here’s a picture to help make this clear:

Detail from the bottom of the foot hardware. This was taken while only the primer coat was on, before I did the red topcoat. Which looks fucking hot, IMO.

This has proven to be very sturdy.  The bench itself weighs about 150lbs I would guess, and I’ve stood/sat on it several times to work on something.

The Vise:  I used maple because I really like maple, and Rockler had an offal block of it that they let go for cheap.  It was subsequently pointed out to me that woodworking blocks are typically made out of a soft wood, to avoid marking up the work piece.  So take that under advisement, I guess.  The guides are just 1″ diameter pipe with flanges that I painted gloss black.  It looks really nice with the stainless steel screws.  The crank was made from a veneer clamp I got at Rockler.  The set screw that comes on the end part of the crank is some really odd thread size, and if you over-tighten the vise it will break the set screw.  If I was doing it again, I would drill out the hole, tap it with a more standard sized thread, and replace the set screw with grade 8 hardware.  But it hasn’t been such a problem that I would consider taking the whole thing apart to get at it.

Remark the First: It’s really goddamn heavy, y’all–mostly due to the layer of MDF on top.  This is good because it doesn’t jump around when you use power tools on it, but if you may consider using 1/2″ MDF on top and one-by framing material if that’s a concern for you.

Remark the Second: Having the vise in the middle of the front like it is has proven to be less than ideal.  I find that when I lock something down to work on it I would rather have it near the corner for ergonomic reasons.  You may consider moving the vise to one side or the other.

Remark the Third (*): It will fit through a standard 32″ door by detaching the top, standing the frame vertical, taking off the feet, and passing it through the door that way.  It will pass through a 30″ door if you have enough space to rotate the first legs through, then the second (and probably take the door off the hinges).  In my new San Francisco apartment, I have 29.5″ doors at the end of a narrow hallway, and I wasn’t able to get the frame through the door.

I modified the frame so that it is 30″ wide instead of 38″ to get it through the apartment door, which also had the advantage of moving the vise to one corner where it will be more useful, I think.

Plan downloads are available in Autocad DWG and Adobe PDF format.

Today is 12 July.  There are 21 days left to study. I’ve decided to go up for my LEED GA accreditation exam on my own dime, to try an make myself a more competitive candidate if and when there are jobs again, anywhere, ever.  If you’re not familiar with it, LEED is a sustainable building program developed by the US Green Building Council.  I think it’s pretty great, because it addresses two problems I have with sustainable development as practiced today:

• Greenwashing. Often, a company that wants to build some green cred will do something ostentatious like installing photovoltaics on their building.  It makes for great press releases, but for what they spent on solar cells (they’re insanely expensive, if you didn’t know), the company could have improved the insulation and windows, added daylighting controls, upgraded the outdated and inefficient HVAC system, retrofitted the plumbing fixtures with low-flow valves, instituted incentives for carpooling, and on and on and on.  The cumulative environmental effect of these small changes, many of which have short-term economic payback, far outweigh the big-dollar measures we associate with Green.  LEED requires a whole-building, life-cycle cost approach.
• In the Future, there will be Robots. Media coverage of sustainable efforts tends to focus on Blue Sky research.  Cold Fusion.  Electrical power generation from sentient dirigibles.  Cars made out of sewage.  Fine and funding-deserving research all, I’m sure, but it leads to the impression that sustainability is something we will do in the Future, with Future Technology.  The thing is, LEED certified buildings have, on average, 13% lower maintenance costs, use 26% less energy, have 27% higher levels of occupant satisfaction, and emit 33% less CO₂, right now, today.  While LEED rewards innovation, the majority of credits must come from existing, proven, cost effective technologies.

Anyway, I’ve been studying for about a week now, and have three more weeks to go.  The study materials cover a lot of subjects that are well outside my comfort zone: construction materials, plumbing, HVAC, sustainable purchasing.  As I alluded to in the post title, some of these subjects are more interesting to me than others.  But in the end I think it’s going to make me a much better lighting designer, in giving me some awareness of the trade-offs other disciplines deal with, and how my choices affect them.  If you’re interested, here are the primary exam materials and the secondary materials that seemed particularly interesting or relevant:

• LEED for Operations & Maintenance Reference Guide-Introduction (U.S. Green Building Council, 2008)
• LEED for Operations & Maintenance Reference Guide-Glossary (U.S. Green Building Council, 2008)
• LEED for Homes Rating System (U.S. Green Building Council, 2008)
• Cost of Green Revisited, by Davis Langdon (2007)
• Sustainable Building Technical Manual: Part II, by Anthony Bernheim and William Reed (1996)
• The Treatment by LEED® of the Environmental Impact of HVAC Refrigerants (LEED Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee, 2004)
• Guidance on Innovation & Design (ID) Credits (US Green Building Council, 2004)
• Guidelines for CIR Customers (US Green Building Council, 2007)
• Green Building & LEED Core Concepts Guide, 1st Edition (US Green Building Council, 2009)
• AIA Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide (www.aia.org)
• LEED for Operations & Maintenance Reference Guide-Introduction (U.S. Green Building Council, 2008)
• LEED for Operations & Maintenance Reference Guide-Glossary (U.S. Green Building Council, 2008)
• LEED for Homes Rating System (U.S. Green Building Council, 2008)
• Cost of Green Revisited, by Davis Langdon (2007)
• Sustainable Building Technical Manual: Part II, by Anthony Bernheim and William Reed (1996)
• The Treatment by LEED® of the Environmental Impact of HVAC Refrigerants (LEED Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee, 2004)
• Guidance on Innovation & Design (ID) Credits (US Green Building Council, 2004)
• Guidelines for CIR Customers (US Green Building Council, 2007)
• Energy Performance of LEED® for New Construction Buildings: Final Report, by Cathy Turner and Mark Frankel (2008)
• Guide to Purchasing Green Power (Environmental Protection Agency, 2004)

Book of Sorrows, 4th Ed.

My exam is on the 3rd, wish me luck!

Update: I passed!  I’m now a LEED Green Associate.

New in this version:

• Tested and working with IDE version 0016.
• The number of channels to receive is now easily user-configurable.
• Replaced static variables with #define statements for RAM optimization (+48 bytes, woot!).

You can grab it here or mosey on over to the original post for the instructions.

I bought this gamma ray counter for $15 from Surplus Gizmos, intending to use it as an enclosure for another project.  Any ideas?  It appears to be from the late sixties, and has a tube inside to amplify the signal from the particle chamber.

Thing is, it still works.  As near as I can tell anyway, not having a source of gamma rays to test it against.  And the quality of design and construction is so nice, now I feel bad about Frankensteining it.  In the coming zombie apocalypse, I’m sure it’ll come in useful.

brainsss....