Weird, I posted this in LJ, and not in MT -- this was definitely meant as an MT post! Ah well, you get a duplicate. Whee!
No spark for me. I'm trundling through the bring-up instructions, interspersed by crimp connectors, hole drilling, tapping, soldering, and various other cleanups (everything works fine! No, that's not true, see below) and then I see "power up the advanced modulator." Crap. I forgot about that. Oh well, time to solder that board together! Should be a breeze, but it means I won't get through the rest today... so no sparks for me.
During my tests, for the display board, I heard a "crick, crick, crick" sound... like... heat expansion! Crap! Click off and feel around, my 15-volt regulator is TOASTY. And putting out about 2 volts. That means... dead short. Somewhere.
Maybe I did something stupid with the jumper cable, like connected 15-volts to ground. I futz around with that some, and no, even though the topology of IDC ribbon cables hurts my brain, it's all good.
Test the power board, and it's powerful. No problems there.
Test the display board and yup, 15-volts is shorted to ground! But where? Out comes the jeweler's loupe, for a detailed inspection. While I don't approve of many of the things Daniel did with this layout (e.g. soldering directly to power planes SUCKS and is avoidable; needs larger dead spaces around pads in the middle of power planes; weird connector placement, etc etc), it's all good under magnification.
So, resistors. Nope, they are resisting. Diodes? Diode-rific! The IC? Pull it! Nope. The capacitors. Well, I can't really test those, they read as shorts anyway, since they bridge 15v and ground (being there to give the system that old stiff upper lip, what what).
Fortunately, there are only two caps, a 10uF and a 0.1uF, so I pull them and whaddya know! No short. It was the 10uF cap that was the problem, dead short through the device. Bastards.
I find another 0.1 and drop it in, and I'm clean out of 10s so I get one an order of magnitude smaller (whatever, it will be fine) and put it in. All is good, and the display works now, with no burning sensations coming from the power supply.
The next sphincter moment is when I calibrate the current feedback display, which is a bar-chart showing 0 to 1,000 Amps in 100A increments. 1,000 Amps is represented by 12 volts at a particular place in the system, so I bring out my variable power supply and wire it up to that sensor point.
Twiddle twiddle, peg! The supply pegs at 1A (it's limit) at just about a volt. I can get it it twitch up to maybe two volts before it clamps. Hmmmm.
I get out the HEFTY power supply, see what 10 amps does heheheheheh (yes, I realize I'm not thinking clearly here, it was my afternoon brain slump, clearly). What it _does_ it get fiendishly hot, I can tell by the smell. Oh look, here's a 1.6 ohm, 3-watt resistor! Taking 12 volts across it, that what, 7 amps or so, around 90 watts of dissipation? Yeah, that's not good -- and to make it even MORE embarassing, I read about some OTHER guy frying his resistor in the forums. Derrrr.
So I attach the signal generator and get NEARLY 8 volts peak to peak out of it when loaded, zapping pulses into the sensor. This works pretty darned good and I get it rough-tuned with that.
To fine tune, I dial the monster power up to 12 volts (again) and just TAP the sensor with it; 90 watts in short bursts is fine. Tuned up and happy, now I can indicate 1,000 amps of fancy tesla goodness during operation. Yayy! Overcurrent is set to about a third of that for startup, but we can change this in time.
In other news, I remembered that I don't _do_ finances on Sunday, but on Monday -- since Mondays already suck, I just throw more suck into it and I don't really notice. I still have to do taxes next weekend, either that, or get hit by a truck or something. People keep going, "Oh, I just hand it off to the accountant..." well yeah, but doing the actual tax stuff isn't my hassle (I love Turbo Tax, even if I do enter the data manually and not via Quickbooks)... no, it's the polishing and buffing (or, perhaps. nine months of data entry) on the biz account that is looming like dark clouds on my horizon.
Ah well. Maybe THIS year I'll keep that account up to date. I haven't been SO FAR but hey, the year is young.
Ugh.
Being a responsible adult really runs against my grain. I should go out and be an artist in the woods or something.
And I would too! Except then I couldn't afford parts. Tesla coils can be spendy.
I love crimp connectors; lug ends and spade ends and slip fittings and all kinds of stuff. Much nicer than frayed wire. Mmmm, crimps.
I've avoided all kinds of distraction this week as I bulled ahead on my daily work, trying to catch up. I would be in sight of parity now, if it weren't for NI Tech or Week or whatever the hell it is... internal tech conference, fun stuff, but it will eat a day or two of my catch-up time.
That focused effort, though, cost me; I was even crabby at the poor Shanghai guy. Next week should be better, unless random people decide we have to support fancy features that they said we would not support this release (the root of my crabbiness). Make up your minds, guys; we ship pretty damn soon.
This weekend, I did stuff in welding class, and now I'm going through the "bring-up" checklist for the Tesla coil. Later, I'll solder up the "advanced modulator" circuit to drive it. I've got most of the other electronic and/or mechanical aspects well in hand, so I may even see sparks tomorrow.
Tomorrow also has me doing some house finances (I've been putting it off), some laundry (out of undies!), and starting a new cherry cider (I hope! Gotta mix me some booze!).
Next weekend, salvaging my business accounts (neglected through most of last year) and taxes. Whee.
Oh, and working the yard, I stabbed a finger and a thumb with hidden prickly pear cactus, the bastards.
The finger I stabbed is warm... all the other fingers were cold from the workshop, but the stabbed one was not!
Weird.
So welding class was good Saturday, started what will probably be an ill-fated "topper" for one of my fire effects. I also plan on making a hammered-steel toroid for a Tesla top-load (4" minor by 13" major diameter toroid). The teacher clearly thought I was insane once he realized what I wanted to do...
Then, after class, a brief nap (I was all worn out) and then working on the Tesla stuff. Mostly mechanical stuff with the box and supports and stuff, though I wound the primary coil out of 1/4" copper pipe, and a strike-rail out of 3/8" copper pipe. The primary was hard work! The copper pipe kept binding in the supports. But I eventually beat it into submission, though I was also totally beat by the end.
This morning, yardwork for a couple hours! I used the leaf blower that I bought for the fire effect (since I haven't hacked it yet) to blow leaves and acorns. Yeah yeah, using a tool for its stated purpose, boring! But it worked really well, and it was very quiet! Neat stuff! Once I got the leaves a little bit airborn, our strong morning winds carried most of 'em off down the street. Ah well.
If anyone wants acorns, we have about ten thousand or so...
This evening, more layout, drilling, tapping, random Tesla stuff, and I wound the primary. This is a thousand turns or so of 30 gauge (very fine) wire, on the new winding jig.
My ad-hoc pulleys couldn't cope with the resistance I was giving them while winding, so I ended up turning the jig by hand... so now my left hand/arm/muscle/tendon system is pretty much fed up with me, between holding stuff in metal class and turning the primary jig all evening.
On the bright side, the primary coil is beautiful! Very nice. And I'm just about ready to wire everything together and begin testing. Next weekend I should see sparks... hopefully the GOOD kind.
Before long I need to spend one of my weekends in doing taxes. I am so avoiding that. Ugh. My business account is a mess and I need to tidy it up first, it will take all day.
Opened the other cider, marked '1', last night... flat flat flat, like Texas. Or Kansas. Or one of those other flat places. So, definitely, in the ciders, I have to change yeasts to carbonate, or bottle before the secondary fermentation is done. This one was also quite dry, but without the dry mouthfeel you get in a wine; sort of a smooth wet dryness. No sugar! But no tannins, of course. And no hint of ginger, at least not compared to the cider marked '0' which was actually the second one bottled that night.
I'm not sure which is which, but I think '1' is the difficult cider and '0' is the second batch, just based on the ginger-factors. I'll have to review my notes to be sure.
Not bad, still, but the other one was much better!
I'll have to whip up a new cherry version this weekend, I think, too.
Mmmmmmmm. Cider.
Okay, yesterday I chilled two full (and two half, 'cause I could) bottles of the batch-0 and batch-1 ginger ciders.
Today, I popped a batch-0 cider to find it... completely still. No fizz! Argh! Of course, this was a difficult cider to begin with, so I guess I'm not surprised. I'll now about batch-1 when I open it... tomorrow? Tonight? We'll see.
It's still quite tasty, and the ginger (in this MILD version) gives it a bit of the bite that carbonation would have added.
I still haven't decided to re-inoculate the cherry cider or this batch now, to make fizz. It would be a pain to do so, but I -like- fizz. But I like these still, too, in spite of not liking other still ciders.
We'll see.
Nik, my son, has been playing with labels for me. Here is a preview of the cherry label that is awesome, though in color (needs conversion to B&W for easier use in my limited world):
http://www.simreal.com/sahara_cherry.jpg
He is working on some ginger ideas too, and has something for the Odd Brewery Collective (I told him he was a fallback in case our primary artist comes up blank). I'm liking it so far! I hope he scans the new works soon.
So, the rotozip on the jigsaw base does respectable work, even though it's 1 7/16" from the edge to the "blade"... just a TINY LITTLE MORE EFFORT and it could have been 1 1/2" instead. Lame!
Also, a beveled edge on the jigsaw base means a THIN straight edge slips under the bevel by 1/32" or so, while a thick edge doesn't. Annoying, but survivable.
I finished cutting out my Tesla base parts tonight, and they look pretty good.
Work was also less brutal today, thank goodness, and I made progress and _everything_.
Here's to hoping that tomorrow is good!
So, spent four hours outside today, in the fine Texas cloudshine, moving an improbable quantity of flats, pallets, and various other wood-shaped things. So I'm a bit sore now, but not crippled. That will come tomorrow. As a result of this fine fresh air, I changed color a bit on all my exposed bits.
Yesterday I finished the soldering on the Tesla boards. Might even work! For a change of pace, I put a picture up on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718661/
Yesterday and this morning I built up a nice coil-winding jig with a few neat features:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718647/
The chucks that will hold the tube are Longworth Chucks, made poorly with my brand-new rotozip and it's truly craptastic circle jig. A fix for the circle jig that helped SOME was to give it some friction in its joint by super-gluing 100-grit sandpaper into it. That seemed to help, but the flimsy plastic parts still flexed too much. Anyway, here's a closeup:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718635/
I also rigged a pedometer as a counter, so it will (I hope) count each revolution of the coil form. Automatic winding counter!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718625/
And, with that same rotozip, I made four sticks out of 1" PVC sheet. I started with a truly ineffective edge guide on the 'zip, but then moved over to the jigsaw attachment (which is pretty solid) and a solid bar clamped over the work.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718657/
And finally, the oil lamp thingy (which may or may not dangerously leak oil, I should find out...) from welding class:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338730425/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338730419/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718651/
Been slacking off these last few nights, trying to regain my sanity and or energy...
Work is still being fairly brutal, but I hope to be out of this particular crunch at the end of the week, or at least early next week.
Then I can transition into the next crunch! But I'm hoping it will be less draining.
Looks like I won't have the plastics in for the Tesla base this weekend, which is unfortunate (slow, slow people. Sigh). But the electronics and the coil should be good to go.
Been looking for cheap, 3-jaw lathe scroll-chucks to make a coil winder, and apparently there is no such thing, let along such a thing in Austin. Right now I'm dithering between making a Longworth Chuck (I need a router and a circle-cutting swing arm to do that), or slapping together a 4-jaw independent chuck out of allthread and bits of metal.
I hope to decide during today's suffering.
Went to Sampaio tonight with Matt and Susan (and Marla, of course), mmmm good! Oh yeah. And had a truly lovely Malbec wine too, gonna have to find that one in the store.
Prior to that, I slept in as noted before, making a short day. Spent a few hours in the garage while the weather was beautiful -- put a finish on my dished metal project, making it into what should be an oil lamp (if it doesn't leak, gotta test that still). Pictures are in the camera, I'll put 'em up later.
Also fiddled with some metal poles wrt: tensegrity tower. And did a special fitting for Matt for the butane tank -- the brass ones totally didn't cooperate today so I fabricated one from scratch from a length of steel bar. The hole is a bit off-center, but for the most part it turned out well!
Weird, I must have just been putzing around out there, I don't really know _what_ I did. Never did poke at the fire thingy or the blower.
Then, came inside and cut the circuit boards apart for the Tesla -- THAT was annoying. And I soldered a few parts on 'em too, that was fun. Also, I ordered some new parts to avoid the annoying hack, and ordered some things for Marla for a glowing bracelet thingy.
This coming week I'll buy some plastic and this and that for the Tesla mechanics. And probably do Taxes (ominous "dun dun DUN" music here). Perhaps some house cleaning.
Last night, getting ready for the Dorkbot/SxSW etc show, I stubbed the living bejesus out of one of my toes -- and during the night, it got more and more sore. Upon taking my shoe off last night, my toe had turned interesting colors, mostly in shades of red and black, and I was pretty much crippled. Which kind of puts the kabosh on dancing tomorrow. I have pictures of THAT, too, but I'll probably spare you those.
And now, sleep. It feels like Saturday though. I need another weekend day. Ah well.
Ugh, a combination of tiredness and a time shift (Spring Forward!) have conspired to have me sleep in until 10:00 am today. So there's a chunk of day behind me!
No welding class next Saturday, so I plan on making a winding jig and winding my big Tesla Coil primary next weekend! I'll have to buy parts during the week, but I got a royalty check and a check for an article last week, so Simreal has cash. Yay!
Today, a little monkeying around in the shop with fire, maybe fiddle with my new blower for the fire tripod, and the bulk of the day assigned to soldering up those tesla driver boards.
I have one horrible HACK that I need to rectify already, I have one chip in surface mount that should be through-hole (they were out of stock). But we are using sockets. My plan was to solder wires to the SMT for now. I've waited long enough, though, that the proper part is probably in stock so I should order that instead!
We'll see.
I always get nervous before a show, no matter how minor my role in it is.
Saturday March 8th, I'll have a small corner of Brush Square Park near the convention center, a table at the SxSW/Dorkbot/Make Magazine/Amaze/IGDA party with some of my newest creations and some old ones as well to pad it out.
It should be fun! Or something.
So tonight I'll be getting ready for that, making (hopefully) a box to keep my dust in place for the Chladni, and selecting the various bits and pieces I'll need to fill out a table. Oh, and I must remember the hanging rack for Albert's Brain. And a power cord and firestarter (er. plug expander). And stuff. No burning here, it would make people too nervous.
Speaking of burning, I need to study for my Fire Effects license. Grrrr.
And work. Gotta work hard today. Deadlines approaching.
Oh man, last night I so did not want to go to Tai Chi. It was all I could do to drag myself there, and then all I could do to STAY and not leave before it started. I didn't even stretch, just sat there.
Once it had started, though, as usual, the mood passed and I felt much better by the end.
No project time yet, but tonight, we may or may not go dancing (mambo, meh; and bolero, one we haven't spent much time in)... so maybe shop time.
It would be handy to make an acrylic case for my Chladni, so that I am wind-proofed and it would dampen its annoying sound some. We'll see.
Or, soldering on Tesla.
Or, my vacuum chamber!
Or, there are a bunch of pictures I've been meaning to take for the last year or so.
Or, or, or...
I'm for Obama. I don't like the tone of the Hillary's campaign... and here's an interesting video from Lawrence Lessig that explores some of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdDzvmY1XPo
Yeah, spent last night being a responsible adult -- did a bunch of accounting and financial stuff. Things are in decent shape...
No Tai Chi... I've been using Mondays instead to catch up on my house responsibilities.
Tonight, voting and, if I really want to piss away the evening, caucusing. Probably go to a movie instead. The Texas primary system is retarded.
Also, tonight, tooth cleanings. Yay.
I need more project time. The real world is annoying.
Good, solid weekend. Marla is driving home from the airport as I type this, and should be here any second now. Yesterday I was so busy, so tired, but I definitely missed her at night.
Today, missed her more, but still, kept active. Had a very nice, productive day in the lab.
Did NOT do any Tesla circuit work (laggard!) but I did hit milestones on several other projects. Significant points, as in, the projects are now showing fruit.
Linked here is the evidence...
This vibrating plate thingy is what I finished the article on Friday. It's a brilliant little design, if I must say so myself (and it's Plan B, since my first build failed). Good results, easy to make:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bvnyot6T-QQ
You can't see it in this video very well, but the fire changes color from, ummm, fire colored to a bright shiny red (will ultimately have three colors or effect changes). Look at the reflections in the truck to see it. Some weird stuff in the audio - I think the current iMovie is a bit twitchy:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZNg0_sO9lDY
I just finished this today, too. The pointy metal cage is from the art welding class. The brain and electrics are my "found objects". Hey! I found 'em! (in my garage):
http://www.youtube.com/v/eSaQBp7m-Lk
Oh, and here's an old one... smoke rings! I don't remember linking it:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eX4-lI0B3SE
I love Fall/Spring weather -- the cool wind, the overcast, the sense of change.
I went out this morning to get some Diatomaceous Earth to act as a carrier for color chemicals in the fire tripod, and the weather outside could not have been more perfect (for me, at least).
Slow start this morning, and it's nice. Had coffee today (missed it yesterday), hung around online, went to the store, now I'm back.
Later tonight I'll fire up the fire thingy if it's not raining.
This afternoon, puts in the shop some, tidy some, do some soldering hopefully. Laundry. Accounting perhaps. We'll see. I should work on my winding jig, too, but I may put that off for next week.
Feeling pretty mellow, so that's nice.
Oh, and that cherry cider? Had a short glass of it last night, dang, that stuff carries a big punch. And so very drinkable. Yum!