SMC Discussion Areas

I have these two barber poles by Rose Supply Company in my game room. I turn them on at parties usually. I've had them on the wall for about 8 years now and a light recently burned out in one of them. There has always been this annoying rattle that one of the spinning tubes would make intermittently. The bottom of the tube has a cast iron nipple that fits into a cup attachment on the motor at the bottom and the top has a fiber board piece screwed onto each side of the tube. Through the center of the fiber board is a shaft that has the light on the end of it. So every time I turned them on, this rattle would start around the fiber board and light shaft. If I put slight pressure on it, it would stop. So I glued a heavy fender washer to it thinking the weight would do the trick, but no - it came back shortly
So I was digging around for an idea of what to do. I opened up a small drawer - my oddball drawer as I call it. All of a sudden my eye caught this spring form. I knew exactly what it was as I had borrowed one from Ken B. to make one for my Ideal 35 coin mech. It was a spring for the coin return plunger. I guess I got it with a bunch of parts and never know what it was. So I take my newly found original spring out and put it on my 35 and I come back in with my duplicate and it hit me.
So I make a spring form to mount under a screw and bent slightly down to put some pressure on the spinning tube. It worked like a champ! I did it for both just for the heck of it. Also took the opportunity to wire them more user friendly. I wired them the way they were when I bought them with the wire nuts behind, which meant I had to take the whole thing off the wall to service it. Now I just remove the top cap to change the light bulb/tube or adjust pressure on the spring. Removing the bottom cap gives access to the motor. It is the way it was designed, but I didn't put much thought into it before.
Very happy with the way they are now! It is the little things that make us happy sometimes!

That's good stuff Tom, necessity is the mother of invention...my wife likes to remind me of how much junk I save in jars and boxes in the workshop, and I always remind her of every time I fix something with a piece from inside those jars...currently I'm winning the battle.