I've been busy since the semester ended
After finishing the treadmill motor conversion for my drill press I:
made a li-ion battery for one of my drills, have a very strong dislike for NiCd. I intended to use the PCB that came out of another 12V li-ion pack, but I screwed it up trying to get it to fit the case. Oh well.
the doohickey in my hand is a voltage monitor which reads out total and individual cell voltages. I check it before use and periodically during, although drill use tends not to hit these packs too hard. Also use it to balance charge the cells, so they stay nice and healthy.
next up, upgraded one of my workshop lights. It uses a nice 12V Cree XM-L LED, but it was woefully underdriven with the driver I put in it originally, something like 0.3A (= 4W at most). Ordered a 10W (0.9A) driver from Banggood and one from Buyincoins, each for the princely sum of $3, and added the first one that arrived to this light. It's now much brighter
The large CPU heatsink it's on gets reasonably toasty now too, compared to barely warm before, so it's doing its job
finally made a micrometer stop (courtesy of Middle.Road, thanks again!!) and DI holder for my lathe, so I can get some accurate length ways action going on. I need the DI one in particular for my next project. Absolutely loving my treadmill motor conversion!