Looks great Mach, keep up the good work.
Looks great Mach, keep up the good work.
TBCS 5TB Club :: coilgun :: bench PSU :: mightyMite :: Zeus :: E15 Magna EVThat we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
--Benjamin Franklin
I think I am going to start referring to you as Machguyver.. you come up with the coolest tools/toys.
If you want a distressable black for brass, get a bottle of Birchwood & Casey Super Blue gun bluing. Works a treat.
lol, nice.
I've tried the Birchwood & Casey Brass Black with mixed results. It's fairly fragile and wears off if rubbed. I used the solution, and then coated it with black patinating wax. The meter case looked fairly good but the etched plate lost too much of the patina when I buffed it.
Attempting to mask off the patina with tape lifted the patina on the case. Sorry no pics before.
Looking at the remaining patina around the mounting stud. You can see it was fairly solid and even.
I'm looking for a solid background for the etched plate hence my efforts with the scale coat.
I'm waiting for a decent stretch of weather (high temps and low humidity) as the technique that I'm attempting oxidizes the brass quickly. It uses a salt crystal mask to mimic chipped and weathered paint so it has to be painted right after application.
http://www.scalemodelguide.com/guide...lt-weathering/
Yes the zombie worklog is back. Modding has very much been on the back burner. Real life, specifically work, has consumed most of the modding time.
I had been working on the meter painting but haven't much too show except for repeated fail. I must have stripped and re-painted the meter case 5 or 6 times. I also tried patina wax, liver of sulfur, and Brass Black.
I tried it so many times that the combination of ph Down and peroxide that I was using to remove the oxidation and put tooth on the brass started to etch the detail away after repeated dips.
So I took it as the opportunity to fix a couple of problems with the original face like the solder mess around the bezel. Unfortunately, it took a couple of tries. I tried electrolytic etching with copper sulfate as well as Sodium Bisfulate and peroxide but found the best etch was consistently with peroxide and muriatic acid.
The press and peel blue really gave me grief this time around but the addition of laminator soon fixed that too. This is a Royal Superguard Laminator Plus model. A little modding makes it perfect for etching PCB and brass sheet.
Opening up the laminator, see the resistor? A quarter turn there and the laminator heats up to 200F and works wonders for getting a good transfer after about 5 passes through.
The laminator also came in handy for another part of the project: the case wiring. This is the bread boarding that I've been doing. Its a continual work in progress as I'm learning about circuits and programming the Arduino.
What's all that do? Controls the lights and sounds in the case first. Also outputs reading to the meter including the water temperature sensor that goes in the reservoir. (no nothing is hooked up in this shot)
It'll make more sense when I shoot some video of it working. This is the BlinkM Maxm being triggered off the motion sensor. Like I said it'll make more sense with video.
Here's the first version of the control PCB (and my first PCB, homemade or otherwise). The laminator and press and peel blue worked beautifully.
But the case said redesign for size. Here's the second version (pre-etching). See how the toner transfer held up? Only a few small touchups.
And after etching and drilling. The black was done using fabric dye.
I've still got a lot to learn on using Eagle (still have a lot to learn period) and designing circuits but I've got a new inspiration on that front. Check this out. This is a circuit board for a Nixie clock designed by a gentleman in Hong Kong.
I recently discovered Nixie tubes, at least their modding potential. If the US government ever decides to allow mail in from western Europe, I hope to have something to show you. Let's call it another experiment in modding.
But that's for another day, here's the circuit board mounted on the base of the case. I put a piece of black styrene on the back side to avoid any shorts.
This will be where all the non-essential wiring terminates.
Up next is the case wiring and sleeving. Anyone ever experimented with using para-cord for sleeving?
To bring this all full circle, the meter. So today the weather finally cooperated for another try at the meter. Instead of trying to paint and then weather it, I'm doing it in stages. The first stage is the chipped paint on the meter case using this technique.
http://www.scalemodelguide.com/guide...lt-weathering/
Masked for painting
Margarita salt applied using a paint brush and water
Airbrush treatment and an hour baking session in the the paint oven. Chipped paint effect.
Next up is to paint the face using a very small brush. Here's the new bezel in place. Instead of soldering it, I made the bezel so it won't fall through once its mounted.
Waiting on brass parts to start on the water blocks again. Til then thanks for looking and many thanks to my sponsors!
Bitspower
Galaxy
HardwareLabs
As always, great work.
For the nixie tubes, I'm sure you can find a supplier in the US; they were pretty widely used at one time. What country is it that is the problem? As far as I know the US doesn't have an embargo on any countries in Europe.
Also, I ran across these vacuum fluorescent displays a while ago. They're not nixie's, but they're cheaper and easier to use (don't require high-voltage), and give a similar effect.
http://www.surplussales.com/Bulbs-In...acDisplay.html
TBCS 5TB Club :: coilgun :: bench PSU :: mightyMite :: Zeus :: E15 Magna EVThat we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
--Benjamin Franklin
Thanks x88x! No embargo but apparently a combination of weather and homeland security have caused a pile up of mail on the european side. I'm still waiting on packages from before Christmas.
Thanks for the tip on the multi-segment VFDs. I'm filing it away in the modding archive. I'm beyond the point of no return on the nixies though.
looking good!
Arctic Cat * Maximum Security * Cribbage Board * Rockin Case * Armor Redux
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Ok, subbed here. Don't you have a worklog on Bit-Tech, too?