How to Drill a Hole in a Golf Ball Perfectly

1935 South Bend Heavy 9x48

Holding a golf ball for drilling is pretty difficult with common tools. The ball wants to pop out of clamps and vises. One quick and dirty solution is to drill a hole smaller than the diameter of the ball in a board and hold the ball in place using the board and your foot.

You can also build a small box to easily hold a ball for drilling at the bench vise or drill press using this concept. If you are able to hit the center of the portion of the ball exposed by the hole you will get a decent hole.

But if you want a perfectly balanced ball, you want a dead center hole. And the easiest way to drill a dead center hole is hold the ball in a three jaw chuck in a lathe. I cranked down pretty tightly on the chuck and the ball still wanted to pull out of the jaws unless the lathe was in reverse when withdrawing the drill bit. There just isn't very much contact surface.

Be sure to get solid core balls for safety, liquid core balls can eject liquid under high pressure.

Precise Installation of a Drawer Knob on a Shaker Style Drawer Front in 6 Steps

Step 1 - Set a machinist adjustable parallel to half the vertical height: 1 1/4".

Step 2 - Use the parallel to mark the horizontal center line.

Step 3 - Use a machinist's 6" scale to mark the vertical center line.

Step 4 - Use an awl to make a center punch mark.

Step 5 - Use a brad point drill and a power drill to drill a clearance hole.

Cover the drill fixture will masking tape to protect the finish.

Step 6 - Install knob. Repeat N times.

NOTE - The drill fixture shown is a PORTALIGN from Sears. These have not been made in decades. It really creates a terrific portable drill press. All of the adjustable products that available today that look similar are complete junk. Taking off the drill chuck is pretty difficult so this Sears industrial 3/8" drill made by DeWalt is dedicated to the PORTALIGN.

Samsung SyncMaster 204B Power Supply Repair

Samsung SyncMaster 204B PSU PCB

The SyncMaster 204B is a very nice 20.1" UXGA (1600x1200) panel circa 2006.
I really like this aspect ratio but everything has gone widescreen and a monitor like this is basically no longer available.

The CapXon caps bulge and fail and before complete failure the monitor flickers more and more since the caps are on the switching power supply that powers the backlights. I think only the three caps after the chopper were bulging on this unit.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Opening the monitor is a PITA and you don't want to do it twice so replace all the caps the first time. Use flush cutting side cutters to cut away as much of the leads and solder as you can. Solder wick rubbed with flux and pressed into what remains will loosen the caps to the extent that they will almost fall off the PCB.

More info:

http://tinymicros.com/wiki/Samsung_SyncMaster_204B_LCD_Repair

A proper parts list is a stumbling block for some people. These parts are perfect for my board rev 0.1 as of December 2011. These are not the cheapest possible parts but the parts with the longest lifetime ratings.

Digi-key part numbers