Attention "The Polishers"

[AL Ursich]

My machine arrived today, THANK YOU !!!!

AL

[Mike Christen]

Just received my unit, where is everyone getting there methyl alcohol from, or maybe purchasing it under a different name.

[Jack Harper]

I just used denatured alcohol and it works fine.

[Tom Cole]

Methanol is Methyl Alcohol. You can get it from chemical supply houses for about $22.00 a pint, or you may be able to get it from an auto supply house that sponsors race cars. My local buys it in 55 gallon drums for their car and charged me $8 for a gallon.

[Dan Hintz]

Hmmm, I thought I had answered all of this, but it looks like it was actually sent as private emails directly to Jack When I get home I'll try to transcribe what I sent to Jack here for everyone's benefit.

[Martin Reynolds]

Mine arrives Monday. Seems that you can use several different organic "boosters" with this type of polisher. Of course, I cannot find the table now, but I think that this was about the order of temperature, with acetone being the coolest. Denatured alcohol is going to be like methyl aclohol.

The extra fuel guarantees that the flame will not oxidise your work.

Acetone
MEK
Methyl alcohol

[Anthony Scira]

Again thanks Jack for all you have done to get this thing done.

Got mine fired up and it works great. I also used the denatured alcohol.

For anyone who needs to hook up the new plug cap the wires are as follows.

green - ground - green screw
brown - line (120) - gold screw
blue - neutral - silver screw

And they really should have some warnings in the documentation about their special powder ! To an un-expecting person that could be disastrous.

[Dan Hintz]

Aw, man... mine came in boring white, not that cool multi-color blue/yellow Whatever grease they used on the threads of the fill cup is gooood stuff... I washed my hands at least 5 times with a heavy rubbing on a paper towel each time before my fingers no longer felt slick. Either that, or here was some lye on there already and it was just my skin sloughing off...

[Mike Christen]

hello all

I will be starting mine up today, what did you use to mix the solution in, from what i've read here it gets very hot, and other unknown reactions. I was thinking of using a glass jar, is this safe???

Here is a good manual for another generator, not the same but im sure much of what it says also applys to our generators

http://www.tiptemp.com/assets/17/CFmanual.pdf

[Jack Harper]

Again thanks Jack for all you have done to get this thing done. ...

You, and everyone else are quite welcome, it was my pleasure to help out.

Mike - I just used a plastic paint mixing cup. While it got surprisingly hot, it was still not too hot to melt the cup.

[Mike Christen]

I used a large glass mug, no problems. started unit and it works great. Now to learn the fine art of flame polishing. Already found out to close and flame on

[Dave Lock]

Looking forward to all you guys letting us know how you get on with these and showing us some pics of the results.

One of our laser suppliers is about to have some of theses polishers delivered and I may just find myself wanting one.

Cheers

Dave.

[Dan Hintz]

A side note on the power cord... if the sign on the back of the machine is correct (500W), a 15A cord is perfectly acceptable. That's less than 4.5A @ 120V, so that's nothing a standard jack can't handle.

A side note on the machine itself... I contacted a guy who mentioned on his website (one of those wacko "Brown's gas" machine sites for increasing your gas mileage ) he does custom designs. The one listed on his site was about $8k, but it also put out like 1600 L/hr, so I requested something a little more reasonable, like 100-150 L/hr. The response was essentially "It won't be financially feasible to custom build such a small machine." Well, sure, if you're used to getting $8k for a machine that could be built for 1/10th that! Anyway, I tried to get a local (USA) guy to build small machines for us, but he simply wasn't interested...

[Martin Reynolds]

Only mix the solution by slowly adding the powder to the water. The big mistake is to pour water onto the powder - this will have undesirable results like hot caustic liquid spitting out of the jar.

Gloves, goggles and a coat are not a bad idea when mixing this stuff. It will turn your flesh into soap.

[Dan Hintz]

To those who have not yet modified theirs to the proper cord...

I finally had an opportunity to sit down and crack this thing open for the conversion. In typical Chinese fashion, the build was done with maximized penny-pinching in effect... hot glue holding down colored acrylic slabs with PCBs on them, using the case itself as a power conduit (neutral), zip ties out the yin yang with dubious purpose, etc. I expect it and have no qualms about what I ordered, but here's my attempt to make it just a little bit safer.

I picked up a 14 gauge, 9 ft, 15A grounded cable from Home Depot (about $10). Anthony already listed the connections, but for those not electrically inclined, I'm adding in the US-version of line colors:

Chinese | USA    | Type
==========================
Brown     Black    Line
Blue      White    Neutral
Green     Green    Ground

(Why the US adopted black for line when black is often associated with ground is beyond my comprehension )

Reroute ground to another screw, or add in a screw to the case specifically for it. Sand away the powder coating under the screw and use a star washer to make a solid connection. The screw they use is attached to a plastic fan, which prevents any real solid pressure from being applied, and the bracket is powder coated itself, so it's not an ideal connection. Ground is extremely important and will save your A$$ if something should leak, and is doubly important in this case as the halfwits are using the case itself as the neutral/return.

For line (brown wire), they soldered to a circuit breaker designed to use a spade connector, and they didn't do a very good job of soldering it in the first place. If you have the tools, remove the crappy solder and reconnect your new black wire with a proper female spade connector that has a plastic cover (if you don't have the kind with covers, at least use some more heat shrink tubing).

The neutral (blue wire) is just fine and should be a simple replacement with the white wire and a lug connector, similar to what's on the blue already.

I'm surprised they used a bus strip instead of connecting the wires together to save money... the strip costs money itself, not to mention the lug connectors and the installation time. The transformer is quite large for the application, but I'm sure it was sitting on someone's shelf.

Still haven't plugged mine in yet...