Recent Projects

[Jack Crow]

Hi all,
Been working on some more ham radio related projects.

One of the club guys wants me to make a 19 inch rack panel for his 'go kit'.

Not so easy.
According to the 'spec' a rack panel is over 450mm wide.
My printer fits items of about 150mm square.

The fix was to divide the panel into thirds and then print on the diagonal.
Worked out a simple 'tab and and grove' system so they would notch together.
Some bolts to hold them firm.
Not too floppy.

It more or less works.

Here are some of the results.

One of the first things he wanted was this 'meter panel'.
So this is the front view.
9-22-2017 002.JPG
This is the back view
9-22-2017 003.JPG

Now the close up.
This was one of those meters that has a shunt. The problem is the shunt has no insulator on it!
9-22-2017 004.JPG

Then the real world tosses in a few curves.
The meter module have no clue as to how it lights up.
Seems I had it in backwards aka it reads upside down.

Had to make a few adjustments.
And while I was at it, the client changed things so that the meter panel was a stand alone for a shelf, and not part of the rack mount system.
Italians call this Agita. A combination of heartburn and annoyance.
Re worked the panel to a shelf configuration and called it a day.
Mostly it was a matter of knocking off the tab and grove parts and filling in the holes.

Get through it all.

Had to add the wire work to light it up this time. Make sure I got it right.
Meter panel front
9-23-2017 001.JPG

That required re working the client generated (God Awful) wire work.
Meter panel rear
9-23-2017 002.JPG

That project is done.

Had to change colors, ran out of black with all the panels I was making.
To paraphrase Neil Young "From out of the black and into the blue".

He wanted a panel with two switches in it for 'lighting'.
Im presuming since the hand written notes were marked 'red' and 'white'.
This was to run some little lights in the go kit.
Worked a little gem.
And neglected to photograph it

The next mission impossible was this panel for an Anderson Connector power monitor module.
Normally most people would use four bolts and mount it to the front of a panel.
Anybody can do that, we can do better.
Made it flush mount installed from the back.
Then ran into a bucket full of production snags.

One must learn to overcome the limits of our skills and equipment.
I don't know everything, so I use what I do know.

For some reason Cura thought I wanted it printed flat, and at 155 mm it would not fit.
Rotate 90 degrees so that Im printing more in the V mode.
Then rotate 45 degrees to fit on the diagonal of my build area.

It is at this point that Cura went stupid and refused to generate any 'fill' for that big gap in the middle where the power panel would go.

Had to design in my own 'fill' to make that work. Total PITA.

9-24-2017 001.JPG
9-24-2017 015.JPG
9-24-2017 016.JPG

It all works after a fashion.
Little things don't fit right and had to make changes.
Have not hit my 97% right limit yet. Figure about 70% at the moment.

Ran right into a new snag.
The black PLA fused great.
The blue not so much.
Open to educational ideas if you can share.

The way Cura usually works is to make the 'fill ' lines at 45 degrees to the X.
Well now Im off the x by 45 degrees, and the sides and the fill parallel each other.
That and the blue not fusing well, resulted in a weaker part that tended to crack with minor loads placed upon it.

Adjusted the fill percentage to 50%.
That helped stiffen the part up bit.

Back to the cracking problem.
While Im waiting for things to print, I tend to watch stuff on YouTube.
One of the more interesting ones is Fran Lab.
She did a bit on plastic welding.
I had quite frankly forgotten about the technique. It is valid for what we do.

Her article's idea was to stick a small rod of compatible plastic in a rotary tool, rub that with the tools rotation in the join between the two parts you want to fuse.
Straightened out a length of PLA and it fits in the smaller of the Dremel collets.
The friction of that rotational rubbing was enough to make a small pocket of molten plastic that fused Part A to Part B.
This with good rigidity. Even fixed some 'cracks' that were threatening to ruin my part.

This method may save me a pile in hex cap screws.

The above is my excuse and Im sticking to it.

Hope all is well on your end.

Jack Crow aka Radio Mike in Virginia Beach