\"Pink\" pages from color printer...

[Mike Coon]

In article <su2nps$ook$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

On 2/10/2022 2:39 AM, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su1f7f$pk9$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

On 2/9/2022 10:40 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 09/02/2022 15:27, Don Y wrote:
On 2/9/2022 4:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

How pink did it get? Could be the paper is reacting to going through the
fuser and so printing a blank page would suffer the same fate.

Only the \"exposed\" side was discolored. It was a diffuse pink (instead of
a bold/solid pink). But, very noticeable. If I left the sheets on a
table, you would notice the discoloration from across the room.

Ask them if you can take a clean sheet away and then try ironing it and if that
doesn\'t work torture it a bit with a heat shrink wrap gun.

I happened to have one from my first \"encounter\" -- I had removed several
sheets from the \"tray\" and manually fed through the sheet feeder option
to see if there was something in the paper path that might apply (the
paper tray being a foot or more below the actual printer)

ISTR you could sometimes get badly washed paper going a sort of pale lemon
yellow when heated if there was too much trace acid like lemon or onion juice
to make the wood pulp fibres discolour.

One of the easier natural invisible inks much safer than cobalt chloride which
is now very much discouraged as a probable carcinogen.

I\'ve not heard of one that turns paper magenta on heat exposure but it is just
possible.

I inquired as to the printer\'s status:

\"Oh, it\'s fixed!\"

\"Yes, but what was the PROBLEM?\"

\"I don\'t know\" (lack of curiosity is underwhelming!)

\"Did they *do* anything to the printer? Or, just change the paper?\"

\"Oh, yes, they did something to the printer! It had this problem
once before\"

(and you STILL weren\'t sufficiently curious to inquire as to the
CAUSE????!)

Years ago (pre-web and thus pre-wikipedia) a colleague mentioned in
conversation that he had bought a clock with a chain fusee. Being a
clock nerd I responded \"ingenious mechanism\". But he had no idea what it
was, just a buzz-phrase...

 

[Clive Arthur]

On 10/02/2022 11:07, Mike Coon wrote:

<snip>

Years ago (pre-web and thus pre-wikipedia) a colleague mentioned in
conversation that he had bought a clock with a chain fusee. Being a
clock nerd I responded \"ingenious mechanism\". But he had no idea what it
was, just a buzz-phrase...

And now, thanks to the web and Wikipedia, and probably along with most
readers here, I join the ranks of those who know what it is.

--
Cheers
Clive

 

[Carlos E.R.]

On 2022-02-10 12:38, Clive Arthur wrote:

On 10/02/2022 11:07, Mike Coon wrote:

snip

Years ago (pre-web and thus pre-wikipedia) a colleague mentioned in
conversation that he had bought a clock with a chain fusee. Being a
clock nerd I responded \"ingenious mechanism\". But he had no idea what it
was, just a buzz-phrase...

And now, thanks to the web and Wikipedia, and probably along with most
readers here, I join the ranks of those who know what it is.

Yep

--
Cheers, Carlos.

 

[Don Y]

On 2/10/2022 4:07 AM, Mike Coon wrote:

In article <su2nps$ook$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

On 2/10/2022 2:39 AM, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su1f7f$pk9$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

On 2/9/2022 10:40 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 09/02/2022 15:27, Don Y wrote:
On 2/9/2022 4:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

How pink did it get? Could be the paper is reacting to going through the
fuser and so printing a blank page would suffer the same fate.

Only the \"exposed\" side was discolored. It was a diffuse pink (instead of
a bold/solid pink). But, very noticeable. If I left the sheets on a
table, you would notice the discoloration from across the room.

Ask them if you can take a clean sheet away and then try ironing it and if that
doesn\'t work torture it a bit with a heat shrink wrap gun.

I happened to have one from my first \"encounter\" -- I had removed several
sheets from the \"tray\" and manually fed through the sheet feeder option
to see if there was something in the paper path that might apply (the
paper tray being a foot or more below the actual printer)

ISTR you could sometimes get badly washed paper going a sort of pale lemon
yellow when heated if there was too much trace acid like lemon or onion juice
to make the wood pulp fibres discolour.

One of the easier natural invisible inks much safer than cobalt chloride which
is now very much discouraged as a probable carcinogen.

I\'ve not heard of one that turns paper magenta on heat exposure but it is just
possible.

I inquired as to the printer\'s status:

\"Oh, it\'s fixed!\"

\"Yes, but what was the PROBLEM?\"

\"I don\'t know\" (lack of curiosity is underwhelming!)

\"Did they *do* anything to the printer? Or, just change the paper?\"

\"Oh, yes, they did something to the printer! It had this problem
once before\"

(and you STILL weren\'t sufficiently curious to inquire as to the
CAUSE????!)


Years ago (pre-web and thus pre-wikipedia) a colleague mentioned in
conversation that he had bought a clock with a chain fusee. Being a
clock nerd I responded \"ingenious mechanism\". But he had no idea what it
was, just a buzz-phrase...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver. And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver. And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html>

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ>

 

[Don Y]

On 2/11/2022 2:08 AM, Mike Coon wrote:

In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver. And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I try to make \"unique\" pieces -- i.e., quantity 1 -- often as gifts.
Purchasing something that you could likely find in someone else\'s
home/office doesn\'t cut it.

I like it if you can\'t figure out that you are \"in the presence of\"
a timepiece. Even moreso if you can\'t figure out how to tell
time by it!

(e.g., my sundial tells time at night, too!)

Lately, I am trying to make the *mechanism* \"invisible\". E.g., the
kinematic (Rube Goldberg) clock is driven by water power. The *timekeeping*
is accomplished by a servo controlling the speed of the pump -- with the
loop having an incredible lag (so, the control is challenging, in addition
to the mechanism design/fabrication).

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ

Display mechanisms are hard enough (for me); tackling a *timekeeping* mechanism
mechanically would just be a huge effort. Kudos! I\'m clueless about how to
design the sundial mechanism so it will survive \"the elements\" and still
function, as intended!

My first (electronic) clock (~1977) was a simple hack on a COTS NatSemi \"clock
chip\": demultiplexing the outputs to drive rings of 60 and 12 LEDs,
respectively, for minutes and hour display (seconds was presented on the same
ring as minutes to save on LEDs).

A friend urged me to sell it -- completely missing the point that it was
intended as a (unique) gift... for my future in-laws. Some years later,
he bought me a commercial version of a similar design -- no doubt to
drive home the fact that *I* could have been manufacturing these.

<shrug>

Once you consider putting a processor into the box, you get all sorts of
\"display\" possibilities (the timekeeping is trivial, disciplined to
the AC mains over the long term; newer designs use PTP for \"ludicrous\"
synchronization -- to paraphrase Mel Brooks).

I have Worlds-of-Wonder animatronic \"toys\" that speak the time (when
asked), moving their mouth/eyes in sync with the uttered speech,

<https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cd/0/ce/cd0dce0166a34eecb29381036435ff38.jpg>
<https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ab/8c/c0/ab8cc04bf188558ab4afee7a28c277bf.jpg>
<https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/j-4AAOSw3O9geg3b/s-l300.jpg>
<https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/nUwAAOSw~bxfyXju/s-l300.jpg>
(they synchronize their mechanisms to *whatever* they are tasked with speaking)

the braille display, talking telephone/alarm clock (also keeps track
of holidays and adjusts its messaging accordingly -- speech being a
relatively cheap \"display\" mechanism that isn\'t constrained by size
or shape), plus a bunch of oddball displays that are hard to characterize,
etc.

I\'d like to use *glass* more in my displays (e.g., a mirror-faced version of
that first clock design) but am learning that it is *really* hard to work
with! Of course, that\'s part of the appeal (imagine drilling a ring of
tightly spaced holes in a mirrored-glass face without cracking the glass!)

It\'s fun to consider different ways of indicating the time that are easy to
read (cuz you don\'t want to have to STUDY a display to sort out what it
is indicating -- you just GLANCE at a typical clock!) and yet cryptic or
aesthetically \"appealing\" in other ways.

I\'m redesigning the WoW \"displays\" so I can also incorporate CCTV cameras
(instead of having cameras that are annoyingly visible in a room) and
replacing the battery power (and connectivity) with PoE. After that,
I\'m hoping to fit the electronics packages in Furby\'s (cuz they are
*so* much smaller and require considerably less power to animate)

[\"Vision\" gives me a more precise way of identifying the positions of
occupants in a room]

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 2/11/2022 11:08, Mike Coon wrote:

In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver. And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ

How on Earth did you build it with no digital circuitry? Or do you
mean no 74xx etc., just transistors? I remember a table-top
calculator (serially) built here in Bulgaria in the 60-s, it was
the size of a largish typewriter (not as wide but much longer)
which was built only on transistors, must have been a zillion
KT315 inside (a popular Soviet transistor).

 

[Don Y]

On 2/11/2022 11:44 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 2/11/2022 11:08, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver. And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ


How on Earth did you build it with no digital circuitry? Or do you
mean no 74xx etc., just transistors? I remember a table-top
calculator (serially) built here in Bulgaria in the 60-s, it was
the size of a largish typewriter (not as wide but much longer)
which was built only on transistors, must have been a zillion
KT315 inside (a popular Soviet transistor).

It was a common \"exercise\", in school, to build counters out of
\"logic\" made from discrete transistors, etc. A multidecade
counter would often resemble a large \"waffle\" -- layer upon
layer of perf-board populated with discretes. Almost more
*mechanical* wonders than anything else (getting them to
stay together as an assembly that could be \"handled\")

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 2/11/2022 21:20, Don Y wrote:

On 2/11/2022 11:44 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:08, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver.  And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute.  :<  (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ


How on Earth did you build it with no digital circuitry? Or do you
mean no 74xx etc., just transistors? I remember a table-top
calculator (serially) built here in Bulgaria in the 60-s, it was
the size of a largish typewriter (not as wide but much longer)
which was built only on transistors, must have been a zillion
KT315 inside (a popular Soviet transistor).

It was a common \"exercise\", in school, to build counters out of
\"logic\" made from discrete transistors, etc.  A multidecade
counter would often resemble a large \"waffle\" -- layer upon
layer of perf-board populated with discretes.  Almost more
*mechanical* wonders than anything else (getting them to
stay together as an assembly that could be \"handled\")

Well I can see that, I think I did that myself at some point
(not sure if I built the counter or just read how it worked).

I remember trying to make a reversible counter with 7400-s and
it sort of worked (I was literally learning to walk); I wanted to
synchronize an 8mm projector with a tape recorder, the counter
was supposed to buffer the lag this or that way.
IIRC by the time when I discovered the fact that the
switches from both sensors must be debounced I had already
been into other things... It was some learning exercise though.

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <su6eib$6hg$1@dont-email.me>, dp@tgi-sci.com says...

On 2/11/2022 21:20, Don Y wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:44 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:08, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver.  And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute.  :<  (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ


How on Earth did you build it with no digital circuitry? Or do you
mean no 74xx etc., just transistors? I remember a table-top
calculator (serially) built here in Bulgaria in the 60-s, it was
the size of a largish typewriter (not as wide but much longer)
which was built only on transistors, must have been a zillion
KT315 inside (a popular Soviet transistor).

It was a common \"exercise\", in school, to build counters out of
\"logic\" made from discrete transistors, etc.  A multidecade
counter would often resemble a large \"waffle\" -- layer upon
layer of perf-board populated with discretes.  Almost more
*mechanical* wonders than anything else (getting them to

My \"digital\" (display only) clock was an apprentice project so had to be
properly documented, which I have somewhere...

IIRC the crystal (in a constant-temperature oven) ran at 200kHz. The
first four decade division was done via four free-running transistor
multivibrators with a modified circuit:
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R4xHYMQoU6KTfPpdgV4lmR5L0Z0uplcy/view?
usp=sharing>

Then there were several dekatrons. And the display neon lamps were lit
via a diode matrix that encoded the digit shapes with the matrix input
supplied by several Strowger-type (I think) pulse-driven relays
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch>

So nothing that could be considered digital or even real logic circuits!

 

[Dimiter_Popoff]

On 2/12/2022 0:02, Mike Coon wrote:

In article <su6eib$6hg$1@dont-email.me>, dp@tgi-sci.com says...

On 2/11/2022 21:20, Don Y wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:44 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:08, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver.  And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute.  :<  (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ


How on Earth did you build it with no digital circuitry? Or do you
mean no 74xx etc., just transistors? I remember a table-top
calculator (serially) built here in Bulgaria in the 60-s, it was
the size of a largish typewriter (not as wide but much longer)
which was built only on transistors, must have been a zillion
KT315 inside (a popular Soviet transistor).

It was a common \"exercise\", in school, to build counters out of
\"logic\" made from discrete transistors, etc.  A multidecade
counter would often resemble a large \"waffle\" -- layer upon
layer of perf-board populated with discretes.  Almost more
*mechanical* wonders than anything else (getting them to

My \"digital\" (display only) clock was an apprentice project so had to be
properly documented, which I have somewhere...

IIRC the crystal (in a constant-temperature oven) ran at 200kHz. The
first four decade division was done via four free-running transistor
multivibrators with a modified circuit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R4xHYMQoU6KTfPpdgV4lmR5L0Z0uplcy/view?
usp=sharing

Then there were several dekatrons. And the display neon lamps were lit
via a diode matrix that encoded the digit shapes with the matrix input
supplied by several Strowger-type (I think) pulse-driven relays
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch

So nothing that could be considered digital or even real logic circuits!

Whoa. I would not have thought of such a division method, my instincts
are purely digital when it comes to that sort of things.
Of course at the time you did this (60-s?) I did not know what a
transistor was, my first attempts to put something together were
at the end of the 60-s/early 70-s. Back then my mom worked at a
shop for diplomats (real currency only, no Bulgarian) and they had
disposable wooden crates of Johnnie Walker... These were my source of
material to build things, I built a tape-recorder (player, rather,
recording never worked really) using spare parts I could buy
for the mechanics... Contributed a lot of noise to the neighbourhood,
I must have been 15. But I could not really design the preamp,
I just put together things from a book (some Russian book for
amateurs IIRC).

 

[Don Y]

On 2/11/2022 12:48 PM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:

On 2/11/2022 21:20, Don Y wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:44 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
On 2/11/2022 11:08, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver. And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute. :< (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ


How on Earth did you build it with no digital circuitry? Or do you
mean no 74xx etc., just transistors? I remember a table-top
calculator (serially) built here in Bulgaria in the 60-s, it was
the size of a largish typewriter (not as wide but much longer)
which was built only on transistors, must have been a zillion
KT315 inside (a popular Soviet transistor).

It was a common \"exercise\", in school, to build counters out of
\"logic\" made from discrete transistors, etc. A multidecade
counter would often resemble a large \"waffle\" -- layer upon
layer of perf-board populated with discretes. Almost more
*mechanical* wonders than anything else (getting them to
stay together as an assembly that could be \"handled\")

Well I can see that, I think I did that myself at some point
(not sure if I built the counter or just read how it worked).

I remember trying to make a reversible counter with 7400-s and
it sort of worked (I was literally learning to walk); I wanted to
synchronize an 8mm projector with a tape recorder, the counter
was supposed to buffer the lag this or that way.
IIRC by the time when I discovered the fact that the
switches from both sensors must be debounced I had already
been into other things... It was some learning exercise though.

As a young kid, I used relays (and score-motors) from pinball
machines to make \"logic circuits\". *Loud*! :>

In high school, graduated to \"analog computers\" (school district
didn\'t own a digital computer -- just a Wang programmable calculator)
which was ... interesting.

I much prefer being able to make really small devices and not have
to worry about burnishing contacts, switches, etc.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 08/02/2022 18:31, Don Y wrote:

On 2/8/2022 1:30 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 08/02/2022 04:44, Don Y wrote:

I could understand if some unintended color had appeared in
the output immediately after being delivered by the printer.
But, can\'t imagine what sort of \"process\" allows a color to
gradually manifest after-the-fact.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The only plausible one I can think of but it more usually affects
inkjets is that the paper is some horrible grade that still has way
too much alkali or acid on its fibres. The result is that the
dye/pigment changes colour slightly as it dries or sets. Solid
reactions are very much slower so it could be that is what was happening.

Note that there should have been no pigment applied in these parts
of the page (the other, identical, printer left them white as intended).

So, you\'re thinking that the exposure to the Magenta toner left enough
of an \"invisible\" (to the fuser!) layer of toner that it eventually
\"bloomed\"?

I\'m begining to wonder if they have loaded the photocopier with paper
intended for a blueprint copier laced with ferocyanide. That\'s a bit
pink but is from the outset. Printing a blank page should be definitive.

Try taking some decent quality A4 paper into the library and see if
using that makes a difference. If I didn\'t know you lived in a desert
my other guess would have been high humidity messing up the colours.

Note that the other printer -- located about 15 feet from the problem
printer -- likely was stocked with the same paper (and toner cartridges)
as the problem printer.  Recall, this is a branch library so they don\'t
have a variety of different paper/toner stocks on hand to mix up...

So there are two identical printers one does it and one doesn\'t?

(again mostly affecting inkjets making them bleed)

[We verified this with different users printing different
source material from different sources:  remote PC app vs.
directly from the printer\'s USB port]

AFAICT, these are color lasers so the pigment should have been
fused prior to output.  Instead, they were perfectly white in
the areas that were expected to be (and remain!) white.

I\'ll make note of the make/model when next I visit the library
to see if I can get any information from manufacturer, search
engines, etc.

\'Tis a puzzlement...

My money would be on the paper it is printed onto followed by the
wrong sort of toners in the printer (but that usually result in an
immediately obvious colour cast right out of the printer).

Had the discoloration been present \"from the start\", I could have imagined
a light leak or other problem in the processing.  The fact that it \"grew\"
on the pages -- like watching an image appear on an old Polaroid -- is
the puzzling part.

That hints at chemistry of some sort going on in the still warm toner
and paper interface. What exactly I don\'t know. It is even weirder if it
can affect the areas of the paper that have no toner on.

[While troubleshooting this, another patron used the printer to print
some text documents -- despite being advised of the problem.  As he
finished, I asked him how they looked.  He happened to have the most
recent document in his hand and held it up for us to see:  \"Fine!\"
Then, thumbed through the rest of them and noticed that they were
turning various shades of pink, based on time since processed.
\"Oh, well.  I\'m sending this stuff to the IRS so let them deal
with it!\"  (I don\'t recall any prohibition against sending in tax
documents on pink paper!)]

How pink did it get? Could be the paper is reacting to going through the
fuser and so printing a blank page would suffer the same fate.

I have generally found colour lasers to be incredibly stable. I have a
Dell 1320C which was one of the first cheap to run decently close to
photo real lasers. On the right media it can still give a pretty good
output even by todays standards. Inkjet is better for photos and
optical printing onto Fuji crystal mark archive is better still.

I had a pair of (solid ink) Phasers that loved.  But, each time I
fired one up, the house smelled of \"burnt crayons\".  And, there is
a significant startup cost (in ink) associated with this.

I remember those. We were used to calibrate them for Western skin
immediately before Western VIP visits when in Japan. The default
settings otherwise made them look very drunk with bright pink faces.

I had a color laser (also labeled a \"Phaser\") that didn\'t produce nearly
the vibrant colors that the solid ink Phasers produced (output from
them felt like glossy pages out of a magazine).

Plus, a couple of wide-body ink jets.  But, ink would always dry up and
risk clogging the heads (heads weren\'t replaced with the ink supply
like on the HP units).

The Dell can do photoreal well enough for small runs if used with
exactly the right paper to match its toner texture. I find the HP
colourchoice 120gsm ideal for promotional materials.

My trusty Canon i6500 A3 has survived nearly 2 years of barely being
used and still printed OK recently when I needed it. Admittedly it did
need a deep cleaning cycle before all the jets were working.

And, a little Sony thermal-dye-transfer \"postcard printer\" that I use
to print photos.  It\'s tiny so I can keep it in a desk drawer!

I decided that I could better spend the time *walking* to the local
service bureau and having things printed there than messing around with
maintaining my own (color) printers.

[I have a pair of B&W, low-temperature lasers that suffice for printing
\"disposable\" stuff]

I have a Samsung 2550 duplex for bulk mono and the Dell for colour.

I queue up the stuff that needs to be \"professionally\" printed and
handle it all in one visit -- every few months, or so.  (I have
just such a trip planned for this afternoon for some greeting cards
I\'ve made -- Valentine\'s Day and other assorted holidays/events)

Exhibition quality printing Fuji crystal mark paper is the bees knees I
have stuff printed for a centenary in 2006 that still hasn\'t faded and
has been on display in diffuse ever since. By comparison laser tone that
has been in direct sunlight for a couple of years now is showing some
degradation of the magenta and especially yellow. Absorbing blue photons
is a tough call for any organic pigment. Inkjet fails even faster I can
see signs of fade on inkjet posters up for just a couple of months.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Don Y]

On 2/9/2022 4:21 AM, Martin Brown wrote:

On 08/02/2022 18:31, Don Y wrote:

Note that there should have been no pigment applied in these parts
of the page (the other, identical, printer left them white as intended).

So, you\'re thinking that the exposure to the Magenta toner left enough
of an \"invisible\" (to the fuser!) layer of toner that it eventually \"bloomed\"?

I\'m begining to wonder if they have loaded the photocopier with paper intended
for a blueprint copier laced with ferocyanide. That\'s a bit pink but is from
the outset. Printing a blank page should be definitive.

Again, it\'s a branch library, not a print shop, etc. The only paper they
are likely to have on hand is paper that the main library has supplied.
The main library similarly has \"vanilla\" printing needs.

So, THEY would have had to acquired it \"by accident\" and passed it along.

*And*, the local branch would have had to have installed it in ONLY that
one printer/copier. (possible if something like a single ream)

I am hoping to stop by, today, to order a couple of technical documents
through their inter-library borrowing procedure. (doing so in person
tends to have better results than using their web interface). I will
inquire as to whether or not the problem has been fixed and, if so, how.
Depending on who is \"on staff\", today, they may let me tinker with it
(e.g., take some paper from the good printer and run through the bad one;
and paper from the bad to run through the good)

[Of course, *asking* them what was wrong will likely be met with an
incomprehensible explanation -- whatever they captured from the
servicing technician\'s explanation of the problem]

Try taking some decent quality A4 paper into the library and see if using
that makes a difference. If I didn\'t know you lived in a desert my other
guess would have been high humidity messing up the colours.

Note that the other printer -- located about 15 feet from the problem
printer -- likely was stocked with the same paper (and toner cartridges)
as the problem printer. Recall, this is a branch library so they don\'t
have a variety of different paper/toner stocks on hand to mix up...

So there are two identical printers one does it and one doesn\'t?

Yes. Within feet of each other, working off the same image files from
the server.

The printers also allow printing direct from a thumb drive. The guy that
I mentioned who printed his tax documents used that interface with the
same \"pink\" results.

My curiosity is also piqued to note if a similar \"process\" might be
at work in the future; imagine the pink \"developing\" after hours or
*days! THAT would truly be frustrating!

(again mostly affecting inkjets making them bleed)

[We verified this with different users printing different
source material from different sources: remote PC app vs.
directly from the printer\'s USB port]

AFAICT, these are color lasers so the pigment should have been
fused prior to output. Instead, they were perfectly white in
the areas that were expected to be (and remain!) white.

I\'ll make note of the make/model when next I visit the library
to see if I can get any information from manufacturer, search
engines, etc.

\'Tis a puzzlement...

My money would be on the paper it is printed onto followed by the wrong sort
of toners in the printer (but that usually result in an immediately obvious
colour cast right out of the printer).

Had the discoloration been present \"from the start\", I could have imagined
a light leak or other problem in the processing. The fact that it \"grew\"
on the pages -- like watching an image appear on an old Polaroid -- is
the puzzling part.

That hints at chemistry of some sort going on in the still warm toner and paper
interface. What exactly I don\'t know. It is even weirder if it can affect the
areas of the paper that have no toner on.

Well, technically, there can be tiny amounts of toner everywhere. Just
never enough to rise to the point of being visible. So, something else was
responsible for \"developing\" it.

[While troubleshooting this, another patron used the printer to print
some text documents -- despite being advised of the problem. As he
finished, I asked him how they looked. He happened to have the most
recent document in his hand and held it up for us to see: \"Fine!\"
Then, thumbed through the rest of them and noticed that they were
turning various shades of pink, based on time since processed.
\"Oh, well. I\'m sending this stuff to the IRS so let them deal
with it!\" (I don\'t recall any prohibition against sending in tax
documents on pink paper!)]

How pink did it get? Could be the paper is reacting to going through the fuser
and so printing a blank page would suffer the same fate.

Only the \"exposed\" side was discolored. It was a diffuse pink (instead of
a bold/solid pink). But, very noticeable. If I left the sheets on a
table, you would notice the discoloration from across the room.

I have generally found colour lasers to be incredibly stable. I have a Dell
1320C which was one of the first cheap to run decently close to photo real
lasers. On the right media it can still give a pretty good output even by
todays standards. Inkjet is better for photos and optical printing onto Fuji
crystal mark archive is better still.

I had a pair of (solid ink) Phasers that loved. But, each time I
fired one up, the house smelled of \"burnt crayons\". And, there is
a significant startup cost (in ink) associated with this.

I remember those. We were used to calibrate them for Western skin immediately
before Western VIP visits when in Japan. The default settings otherwise made
them look very drunk with bright pink faces.

I had built custom ICM profiles for my printers, scanner and monitors to
best approximate the \"real\" colors I was printing. Yet another aspect of
printing color that wasted a lot of time! Now, I use the published
profiles from the service bureau and tweek as necessary.

I\'m not trying to publish as much as making sure that when things *are*
published, there are no surprises (amateur hour)

I had a color laser (also labeled a \"Phaser\") that didn\'t produce nearly
the vibrant colors that the solid ink Phasers produced (output from
them felt like glossy pages out of a magazine).

Plus, a couple of wide-body ink jets. But, ink would always dry up and
risk clogging the heads (heads weren\'t replaced with the ink supply
like on the HP units).

The Dell can do photoreal well enough for small runs if used with exactly the
right paper to match its toner texture. I find the HP colourchoice 120gsm ideal
for promotional materials.

My trusty Canon i6500 A3 has survived nearly 2 years of barely being used and
still printed OK recently when I needed it. Admittedly it did need a deep
cleaning cycle before all the jets were working.

If I truly want photo real, I have photos printed. But, that is seldom the
case. Even SWMBOs photos (the point of this exercise) are just intended to
show the progression of a design and not be perfect representations.
(there is more interest in consistency from print to print than in faithful
color reproduction). She crops them to a smaller size and \"pastes\" (poor
choice of word) them into a book where she can annotate and chronicle her
work.

The library only charges a dime per page (service bureau is closer to 70c)
and it is typically more convenient to access -- this visit being an
exception!

And, a little Sony thermal-dye-transfer \"postcard printer\" that I use
to print photos. It\'s tiny so I can keep it in a desk drawer!

I decided that I could better spend the time *walking* to the local
service bureau and having things printed there than messing around with
maintaining my own (color) printers.

[I have a pair of B&W, low-temperature lasers that suffice for printing
\"disposable\" stuff]

I have a Samsung 2550 duplex for bulk mono and the Dell for colour.

I used to have a LaserJet 4MP+ w/duplexer for high volume monochrome printing.
But, I so rarely print more than a sheet (or ten) that it wasn\'t worth the
space it took up. The phasers also had duplexers -- and were considerably
larger than the LJ!

(while I miss having that capability on hand, I don\'t miss the *responsibility*
for keeping it \"available\"!)

I queue up the stuff that needs to be \"professionally\" printed and
handle it all in one visit -- every few months, or so. (I have
just such a trip planned for this afternoon for some greeting cards
I\'ve made -- Valentine\'s Day and other assorted holidays/events)

Exhibition quality printing Fuji crystal mark paper is the bees knees I have
stuff printed for a centenary in 2006 that still hasn\'t faded and has been on
display in diffuse ever since. By comparison laser tone that has been in direct
sunlight for a couple of years now is showing some degradation of the magenta
and especially yellow. Absorbing blue photons is a tough call for any organic
pigment. Inkjet fails even faster I can see signs of fade on inkjet posters up
for just a couple of months.

My goal is more temporary: \"how will this look when I send it to the printer
for reproduction, binding and distribution?\"

Having said that, I *do* keep the \"pre-proofs\" that I create -- in a sealed box
away from light and heat. But, that\'s really just a sense of \"false valuation\"
as I no longer *need* them; just hesitant to discard something that took
effort to prepare.

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <su6tvt$cbj$1@dont-email.me>, dp@tgi-sci.com says...

Whoa. I would not have thought of such a division method, my instincts
are purely digital when it comes to that sort of things.
Of course at the time you did this (60-s?) I did not know what a
transistor was, my first attempts to put something together were
at the end of the 60-s/early 70-s. Back then my mom worked at a
shop for diplomats (real currency only, no Bulgarian) and they had
disposable wooden crates of Johnnie Walker... These were my source of
material to build things, I built a tape-recorder (player, rather,
recording never worked really) using spare parts I could buy
for the mechanics... Contributed a lot of noise to the neighbourhood,
I must have been 15. But I could not really design the preamp,
I just put together things from a book (some Russian book for
amateurs IIRC).

Yes, it was 1964. At the time my employer (International Computers and
Tabulators = ICT) was building commercial computers
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICT_1301>) from discrete transistors,
which I had a go at programming in the test bay.

There were interesting early Russian computers too...

 

[Martin Brown]

On 11/02/2022 17:27, Don Y wrote:

On 2/11/2022 2:08 AM, Mike Coon wrote:
In article <su40jt$299$1@dont-email.me>, blockedofcourse@foo.invalid
says...

I\'m more interested in \"presentation means\" than in mechanisms.

E.g., I have a clock that displays the time on an LED display
that represents braille cells (the joke, of course, being that
the typical person who would understand braille wouldn\'t be able
to see the emitted light!)

I have a dial telephone that announces the time when you lift
the receiver.  And, \"rings\" when the alarm time arrives.

I\'ve drawn up a design for a sundial that has 24 equally spaced
hourly indications.

And, I\'m stretching my imagination to come up with a suitable
\"Rube Goldberg\" display/mechanism for a yard sculpture
(water driven, from an \"infinite well\")

I\'ve yet to sort out how to levitate bowling balls to display the
current hour/minute.  :<  (if not genuine bowling balls, the
display is without value)

Ah, then you might be more interested than me in advertisements I keep
seeing for these products: <https://www.tarquingroup.com/home-
learning/equipment/mobius-strip-clock.html

I try to make \"unique\" pieces -- i.e., quantity 1 -- often as gifts.
Purchasing something that you could likely find in someone else\'s
home/office doesn\'t cut it.

I like it if you can\'t figure out that you are \"in the presence of\"
a timepiece.  Even moreso if you can\'t figure out how to tell
time by it!

(e.g., my sundial tells time at night, too!)

My favourite hyper modern sundial has a digital display made possible by
additive manufacturing. You can print it on a 3D printer. It has the
advantage of the classical sundials that adjustment for daylight saving
time is easy. Just rotate it by 15 degrees. eg

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1068443
(other brands are available)

Lately, I am trying to make the *mechanism* \"invisible\".  E.g., the
kinematic (Rube Goldberg) clock is driven by water power.  The
*timekeeping*
is accomplished by a servo controlling the speed of the pump -- with the
loop having an incredible lag (so, the control is challenging, in addition
to the mechanism design/fabrication).

I once made a fairly accurate water clock for a lecture demo as the
cylinder of revolution of a parabola cast in acrylic. If I had thought
about it a little more carefully I would have made a triangular
reservoir between two parallel sides instead (like the ancients did).

It beat calibrated candles hands down!

I built my first mechanical clock in the 1950s and this electronic (but
with no digital circuitry) one in 1960s:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1kJlQ9ypjtLYllqUnljYTR2UHc/view?
usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAKldV-iwCQo3nMdjOUyDQ

Display mechanisms are hard enough (for me); tackling a *timekeeping*
mechanism
mechanically would just be a huge effort.  Kudos!  I\'m clueless about
how to
design the sundial mechanism so it will survive \"the elements\" and still
function, as intended!

My first (electronic) clock (~1977) was a simple hack on a COTS NatSemi
\"clock
chip\":  demultiplexing the outputs to drive rings of 60 and 12 LEDs,
respectively, for minutes and hour display (seconds was presented on the
same
ring as minutes to save on LEDs).

My dad built one from components mostly salvaged from scrap ICL1900
boards TI 74 series ICs with display drivers for the nixie tubes. It was
surprising compact although it ran a bit warm to leave on continuously.
I reckon it was probably in about 1972-3.

A friend urged me to sell it -- completely missing the point that it was
intended as a (unique) gift... for my future in-laws.  Some years later,
he bought me a commercial version of a similar design -- no doubt to
drive home the fact that *I* could have been manufacturing these.

My friend - a very keen amateur astronomer had a digital clock custom
built to keep sidereal time when digital LEDs first became available. It
even had internal battery backup so it could be moved. It was a bit
power hungry though. Had it been a couple of years later using CMOS and
LCD rather than TTL and LEDs it would have been a lot easier to use!

My own sidereal clock is based on a PIC 16877 which has just enough pins
to bare metal drive a 4 segment LCD display and runs off a standard
32768Hz watch crystal with digital adjustment to get the offset.

These days any mobile phone or tablet has an app to show you the sky,
satellite predictions and sidereal time so it is kind of redundant.

It\'s fun to consider different ways of indicating the time that are easy to
read (cuz you don\'t want to have to STUDY a display to sort out what it
is indicating -- you just GLANCE at a typical clock!) and yet cryptic or
aesthetically \"appealing\" in other ways.

If you like interesting time pieces the Corpus Clock in Cambridge UK on
King\'s Parade is well worth seeing. It is a Chronophage with a large
scale grasshopper escapement and a very unusual pendulum motion.

https://www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/about/corpus-clock/introduction-corpus-clock

https://www.corpus.cam.ac.uk/articles/secrets-corpus-clock

It is truly hypnotic to watch. Keeps perfect time but the pendulum
motion is not a regular amplitude and the display idiosyncratic.

There is a twin/cousin somewhere that was being made for the Chinese
market but the timing of the recession meant that it may not have been
completed. It\'s grasshopper escapement is in the form of a dragon.

It was designed by engineer Dr John Taylor best known as inventor of the
bimetallic kettle switch and various other interesting electromechanical
devices.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown