Replies

Next project has to do with pulleys and come-alongs to stabilize the actual BARN because through the years it has shifted about 8” to the south.

That reminds me of a house I rented from a fireman. It was an old railroad town neighborhood, the predecessor to subdivisions I suppose. It had that layout of two roads with a drive-able easement in between to have a back way in which I've always thought was kinda cool. Back access + neighbor buffer + no visible utility poles on the real roads.

The house had a shed barely big enough for a small car and it had similar lean to it. I went in with come-alongs and chains and chain binders, ran big lags screws into the corners to hook to and slowly straightened it up and then cross braced it.

The fireman/landlord came by one day and saw it. He was in awe and said; How did you do that? He said he was scared to even go in there.

Almost got a job straitening up a cool looking old barn near here several years ago. In that case, I would have worked from the outside to keep it from falling before I messed around inside because it was leaning pretty hard and had less framing than the little garage. Would have tagged it to a big tree or two with chains.

ANYWAY. Fireflies are out tonight.

Got the linear actuator today. Nice looking unit. Will be interesting to compare it with the cheaper ones I get.

Mechanically, it's the same as a hydraulic jack/cylinder. This one's electric and there are air cylinders too. All are Linear Actuators. (action in a linear motion aka straight line in/out)

Retracted

extended

Attaches with a pin through each end hole like a hydraulic cylinder. Took a reading at both extents and set it electrically to the mid point. Didn't measure but it looked like 20% extended to me. Will have to play with it some more

Pollard: HA! Just saw that you changed your tagline. :)

We are hitting the road this morning. Cabela’s for some VERY SPECIFIC fishing line Beau needs for the Canada trip, The Shoebox for some boot repair for him and some BROWSING for ME, lunch somewhere and Harbor Freight - for who knows what and Home Depot to replace two cordless drill-related things.

Then, back home for him to accomplish my brake job (I can drive his cr@p-tastic hunting truck if need be while he’s gone) and his LONG list of ‘Honey-Do’ items before he hits the road at dawn, tomorrow.

A perfect way to spend the day. :)

Got the mowing done yesterday, so that’s caught up. Pulled all the mulch away from my long-suffering tomatoes - but it rained AGAIN last night. We’re at 6.5” now in 10 days. UNCLE!

Success with the linear actuator. Once I measured the right combo of two possibilities of three wires, red and black or red and white, I get a reading that makes sense.

Last night when I used the red and black wires, it made no mathematical sense. 50% on voltage was about 20% extended on the actuator. Of course there’s no instructions that tell you which pair of wires to take readings from. They may have info or schematics for electrical engineers.

In either case I had a range of about a 6 volt reading through a potentiometer/resistor from a 12 volt input. In the case of reading between the red and white wires, 5 - 11 vdc with the half way point being 8 vdc because 5+3=8 and 11-3=8.

Extended the actuator half way and it read 8 vdc. Now I can figure out any position from there. Half of 6 is 3 and half of that is 1.5. If 8 vdc is 50%, take 1.5 away and 6.5 is 25%. Add 1.5 and 9.5 is 75%. Works for me.

I’m not getting into the math of 6 vdc = 100% of travel because 6 is a crappy number for that. Lots of .33333333 and .66666666 type numbers.

Knowing this

0% open (5.0vdc)
25% open (6.5vdc)
50% open (8.0vdc)
75% open (9.5vdc)
100% open (11vdc)

Close enough and observation will do from there.