I've been working on Retromod off and on.
New hardware....tasty!
A few posts back, I made mention of an idea for the Phidgets board (www.phidgets.com).
It's an input / output control board that has a USB interface and it's easy to program. I was thinking about using it for touch sensors and to automate lights, etc but enough jaw-jaw.
Remember this from the original radio tear down?
Those are brass gears and assorted steampunk goodness. It had to be done.
Still need to add the end glow acrylic and leds to the shaft holes but pretty spiffy.
I'm looking to mount it vertically between the video card and the tubes on the left.
So I needed to desolder the USB connector and add header pins for clearance on the bottom of the case.
I was sweating it a little that I had mucked it up but it tested fine.
I started positioning all the parts to cut the brass mounting panel and the mica. I realized that I've avoided the door long enough. It's really gotten to the point that I can't move forward unless I get it sorted. If you're joining this saga late, I'm trying to create a retractable door from brass and copper ala Crimson's Doom3 mod.
Here's where the latest (4th or 5th) iteration has taken me.
I revisited how Crimson and Wannabemodder did theirs and tried to do the same. I wrapped a strip of brass around an oak jig, offset it with aluminum strips and then another strip of brass.
Then I put solder paste along the edges for soldering. Much heat applied but no luck, I just couldn't get enough brass contact to make a good joint. :dead:
After testing another idea in styrene, plan E is in the works. I'm going to cut out the shapes that I need from plexi. It's not brass but if it works, I'll consider water cutting. A scrollsaw is enroute and vacation is booked for October...stay tuned.
Oh yeah, how do you like the new knobs?
