Power, lathes, wings

Reprap prototype PSU is done and ready for the stepper controllers to arrive now. All boxed up nicely. If memory serves, it didn’t have a fan when it was in the fax machine, so should be fine in the enclosure. At worse I might have to drill it some extra air holes.
Mains lamp, some (vintage) terminal posts, switch and IEC C14 socket.

Even took the engraver to the front panel to mark out the various terminals and added a couple of ferrite beads to the lines to be on the safe side, and used some cable wrap to keep the wires tidy.

Today I also finally removed the piston and cam off the old compressor pump, and filed down a pully to fit. I’ve hooked this up to the 3rd party headstock from the Black and Decker extruded aluminium wood lathe I found last year. It’s meant to be run by a type of drill they no longer make, so the compressor motor should be easily powerful enough. Currently getting a head speed of about 3200rpm, so it’s currently about twice as fast as it needs to be. Will see about swapping the headstock pully for something larger (I have one, but getting the old one off will be a pain).
It’s not urgent, but it’s sitting around and there’s a friend who should be able to use it once it’s basically working.
Also made a control box for it, currently a simple latching safety power switch (see background of first image) from a broken garden shredder and an old RS project box. If I find a spare suitably rated rheostat I may add a limited speed controller.

Also the sewing for the set of “Navi” wings was mostly done today, but one of the blue plastic rods snapped while trying to flex it into it’s “pocket”.
After some considerable swearing and therapeutic angle-grinder time (see above compressor pump), I will tomorrow attempt to construct a coupler out of clear perspex rod and use it to join the two broken ends, as the stress on them will likely be more than any other repair would take. this may mean purposefully breaking and repairing the opposite wing to match.

[20/06/2010: Amalgamating old posts from “Dreamwidth Creative Blog” into sci-fi-fox.com to re-purpose DW blog account.]