What is this? A mystery. It looks like a meal gone terribly wrong. But is it?
Figure 1: What is this? A plate of delicious vitreous jelly?
Enlarge Photo 
I am vacuuming my bedroom right now. "Well," you say, "not exactly right now because right now you're typing on your computer." No, I am actually vacuuming my bedroom exactly right now as I type this. Or I should say, my bedroom is being vacuumed by my iRobot Roomba 560 vacuum cleaner. Figures 1 through 3 depict debris recovered from my floor by the robot after about four cleaning missions.
I'm very happy with the robot. After using it for six months on tile and thick carpet, I can definitely say that I am impressed with it. When I first got it, I spent more time watching it than I would have spent actually vacumming the floor myself, but now I try to make a point to either be gone when he's working or to do something else productive at the same time.
The other thing about the robot is, it's sort of like a hobby. I spend almost as much time cleaning the iRobot Roomba 560 as I used to spend vacuuming. That's OK, though, because I hardly used to vacuum at all and my floor was kind of dusty, but now I use the Roomba a few times a week at least, so even with all the robot maintenance, I'm only spending as much time as I used to on the subject of vacuuming, but my house is a lot cleaner. Especially under the bed, which I'd be lucky to hit every six months but which gets cleaned every time I vacuum my bedroom with the Roomba. Plus, performing robot maintenance is way cooler than spending time vacuuming.
Figure 4: The accumulation of capillaceous debris near the flexible beater brush bearing.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 5: The debris has been cleared from one end of the flexible beater brush.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 6: Heavy debris accumulation on the bristle brush. Try removing the beater brushes from your regular vaccuum cleaner. You can't get them out on many models, but they get just as dirty.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 7: The bristle brush bearings are a lot easier to clean than the flexible beater brush because these yellow end caps come off. The tangled hair just slips off of the bristle brush in a ring. I wonder why the flexible beater brush doesn't have the same kind of removable end caps.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 8: All cleaned off. Almost as good as new after six months.
Enlarge Photo Labels: devices, images, unsolicited opinions
I ended up renovating a brand new Chinese motorcycle. Its chief complaint was a broken fuel tank. The petcock mounts to a three-inch stalk of polyethylene that is plastic welded to the main tank, and the plastic weld failed after 240 miles.
I looked around on the Internet to find a replacement tank, but parts are not so easy to find for a Chinese motorcycle, especially when you don't know the trick. So then I researched adhesives to bond the stalk back on, but they were almost as expensive as a plastic welder, which was way more money than a plastic fuel tank should cost.
Then I learned the trick of Chinese motorcycles. Many of them are the same or close enough to have interchangeable parts, even though they're made by different manufacturers. That makes it easier to find parts for them. I was used to thinking that any given model of motorcycle would be made by only one manufacturer. Like the way cars are. Only the manufacturer Toyota makes the model Camry. Only Mazda makes the model RX-8.
Chinese motorcycles aren't like that, though. There are a whole bunch of manufacturers for a particular model. For instance, what I was working with was a HiSun 200GY. If you go to look for parts for a HiSun 200GY, good luck. You won't find them. But the model 200GY is actually made by a ton of different manufacturers, so if you widen your search for just 200GY parts, then parts are available, though not conveniently.
I eventually found a fuel tank that has a long built-in metal petcock stalk that bolts directly to the tank instead of having a plastic stalk at all, and even though it was for a bike made by a different manufacturer, it pretty much almost fit with minimal effort.
Figure 1: This is the gas tank. It has been taken off of the bike. The right side of this photo would be toward the rear of the bike as assembled, the left side toward the front. The top of this photo is the top of the gas tank. So we are looking at the left side of the tank as it would be mounted.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 2: Notice that the petcock is mounted to an approximately three-inch black polyethylene stalk that is plastic welded to the polyethylene tank itself. This tank failed at that plastic weld.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 3: You can see the stalk separating from the tank.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 4: You can see one of the fuel filters poking up out of the stalk.
Enlarge Photo 
Figure 5: This joint was made with polyethylene plastic welding rod. There are only a couple of adhesives available for bonding polyethylene. One of them is made by 3M. It is very expensive but it seems like the one that would be most likely to work on this joint.
Enlarge Photo Labels: Chinese motorcycles, devices, images, projects, serious