u/kevysaysbenice

It’s distracting and annoying

Hello! I live in a MCOL city in the Midwest. I want to put in a 16' privacy fence along the alley in the back of our house, using 6' dog ear wooden pickets.

The 16' span includes a 8' driveway, and I've requested a 9' steel gate be included in the quote. I asked for a quote with and without an automatic opener ("operator" is the term they used?). The quote for the fence alone: 3k With an automatic opener/operator: 10K

I was expecting a few grand perhaps for the automatic opener install, but not 2-3 times the price of the gate itself. I'm wondering if this is to be expected, or what I might be missing?

One thing I'd love opinions / info on, is perhaps the issue is that it's a privacy fence - I was thinking about buying a Ghost Controls opener, and I realize on their website they specifically say that they acn't be used for privacy fences because of the wind load (https://ghostcontrols.com/pages/have-a-solid-panel-or-privacy-gate). Maybe a gate opener for this sort of situation is a completely different beast and to make sure it can be opened/closed during windy days perhaps we're looking at a completely different class of opener? Any recommendations on this for a DIYer?

Thanks for your time!

Hi! I'm a hobby potter, I fire at home in my basement but do have a properly installed downdraft (EnviroVent 2 from Skutt).

I absolutely hate brushing on wax resist on my pots (I dip 99% of my pots) and finally got around to trying a hot plate with paraffin wax. I used a bit of mineral oil to try to thin out the wax (possibly too much, possibly not enough?).

I have three issues:

1. The smell during firing, despite my properly installed downdraft vent (I confirmed negative pressure), the smell is quite strong. It's certainly tolerable, but I'd be concerned about long term health impacts I think (I only do a glaze firing every other month, so it's not like I'm doing this daily or anything, but still).

2. This is somewhat weird, but when I took the pots out of the wax I ended up with a very uneven surface in the wax - I wish I had taken photos, but the bottom ilne is there were very small little undercuts in places, and in the end what happened is those undercuts trapped small bits of glaze. Not enough to cause any of my pots to stick to the kiln shelf, but enough that I now have a ton of pots with little specs of glaze on the underside. We're talking mugs here with not particularly deep or complex feet. I care a LOT about the bottoms of my pots, so this is actually a huge problem for me because it means I have to try to now sand down all of the little bits of glaze that stuck. The problem with the undercut nature of these is that I couldn't just wipe the bottom of the pots to get the glaze out, it was sort of stuck in little pockets.

I suspect the wax is just too thick or something, or my pots are too cold and the wax is "freezing" to the bottom too quickly, or something? Should I try adding more mineral oil? I'm hoping somebody has had this experience and can share what they did to fix it.

3. Bonus, and possibly related to #2, but I actually don't feel like the glaze lines with my wax method are quite as straight as I feel like they could be. I'm fairly careful when I put the pots in the wax, but I still get areas where the glaze rises up a bit more, possibly due to capillary action or something? I'll be even more careful next time around, but I partially wonder if the wax is just too viscous and doesn't "flow" well enough to keep things even. To be honest this is perhaps a non-issue, you can't REALLY tell this is a problem unless you're looking very very carefully.

Also, in case it helps anybody in the future, here is the exact wax + mineral oil I'm CURRENTLY using:

Equate Mineral Oil - sorry Walmart link Gulf Wax Household Paraffin Wax - sorry another Walmart link

Pic: https://imgur.com/a/fGrRWBA

I'm a very part time hobbyist so sorry if this is a strange / bad question. I'm working with what to me is a very small little IC (TLV320 - a VQFN (RGE) package apparently - anyway, there isn't a ton of space (for me) to work with and I have a number of pins that need to be connected to ground.

There is a ground pad in the center of the IC, and I'm wondering if I can just connect the ground pins to the pad like I have in the attached photo, or if there is an issue with that for some reason (in which case I'd love to understand what the reason is).

Thanks for your time!

Sorry I know the title of this is impossible to understand, but here are pictures:

https://imgur.com/a/6FC7rn7

I just chose one component (the LD39200PUR) to show this, but across the entire pcb layout +3.3V is labeled AVDD - I understand that effectively it's all the same connect / wire / "net" (is that the right word?), i.e. AVDD and +3.3V are electrically connected.

Still, I'd prefer (because it's easier for me, a newb, to reason about) that everything was labeled +3.3V because AVDD seems arbitrary. There are other pins on other ICs that take in +3.3V, but the entire connection isn't named after them.

Can anybody explain what I'm doing wrong, or how I should go about getting my PCB layout to show +3.3V where the +3.3V power is being routed on my board instead of AVDD?

Thank you!