Scratch Build – In Progress Metaversa 02: Ada

Agreed. I still have my huge tub of Lego.

 

Yeah, it is really nice to have acces to one

Okay! Just a heads up, 6082 is considered quite poor when it comes to decorative anodizing.

"Decorative Anodizing can be a challenge due to crystal growth in the material."
http://www.alumeco.dk/Admin/Public/...es/Filer/Alumeco/datasheet/Alumeco_EN6082.pdf

More good info on the subject for those interested: http://www.alumeco.com/Knowledge-and-Technique/Useful-Info--and-Tips/Alloy-Choice.aspx

 

Thanks for the heads up. I was thinking of glass bead blasting as it creates a lovely satin finish, but old fashioned brushing works well too.

 

Yes, that looks very nice! Just did not want you to send all that work to anodizing and then having it be ruined

 

I'd be like:

 

Thought about engine turning?

 

I have been experimenting with that actually. It's a lot of work... can't see myself doing large surfaces with it.

 

I love the precision and finish... awesome job, man.

 

I love that switch assembly.

 

oh, a tasty progress update.

 

The switch gear is finally complete and installed.

When the London Science Museum built Babbage's Difference Engine no. 2 in 1991, there was a tortuous process of making sure that all the thousands of parts and the huge metal frame housing the mechanism was in exact alignment. If the frame was even slightly warped, or one of the many, many cogs and levers was slightly out of position, the whole mechanism would jam. The first number of trials would often end with an abrupt crunch and a chilling >plink!< as a small part snapped and flew across the room like shrapnel, or worse, ricocheted around the mechanism to get stuck and cause a jam somewhere else. The engineering team then spent several hours trying to find the piece and also the broken part from whence it came, and then faced another few hours disassembling the mechanism, replacing the broken part and assembling it again to try again (oft with the same result all over again).

I felt a bit like that engineering team, as what had been meticulously made to the tenth of the millimetre still was slightly out here and there. Luckily very little adjustment was required --almost nothing, really-- but the difficulty was finding out where the snag was. But in the end, it all came together --and my multimeter tells me the switches close as required. The whole thing has a fairly satisfying lever action.



Close-up:



Full frontal:





The rectangular open space is where the four nixie tubes will reside.

 

Are you sure you are building a PC.

Looks more like a city electrical power station only much cooler.

mal

 

Er... Let me check my plans... I may have gone off track a bit...

 

Never store your computer and death-ray plans in the same folder.

 

Ah. That explains a few things...

 

This is just a pure piece of engineering art I love it!!!

 

Is there an update yet to this beautifull build ?!?!

 

There will be... work has been a bit of a distraction. Meanwhile I have been using my tools to make more tools... such as this mill stop:



This will allow me to "mark" the position of a work piece in the vice, so that when I take it out I can put it back in the exact same position. Also useful for performing the same operation on a number of identical pieces.

I have also been redesigning the circuit board for the nixies a bit. Using the Ogi Lumen kit is just a bit too awkward. The circuit is built around four Russian K511ID1 driver ICs and two 74HC595 shift register ICs, and takes up a lot of space...





(I was going to redesign the top boards for the IN-14/19 nixes rather than the IN-12A nixies that come as standard.)

The problem is that this circuit does not do decimal points (unlike the IN-14, which has two, the IN-12A has none) so I'd have to reserve some ports on the Arduino to drive these separately via a transistor, and I then have to find somewhere to accommodate an Arduino and a nixie power supply... even if I use the Arduino Nano that would be a squeeze:



However in my many travels on the web I came across the HV5530 high-voltage driver chip. This petite little item (9.8mm square in 44-pin PQFP package) has 32 outputs and can drive up to three nixies. Two of these can drive all three IN-14 digit nixies plus their decimals and the IN-19 symbol nixie with ports to spare and talk directly to the Arduino, no additional parts needed (although the spec sheet says that its logic gates operate on 12V, various electronics geeks on the internet say that in practice the 5V Arduino channels work just fine).

So, two of these chips would allow me to squeeze the nixie circuit in a single PCB and bolt the Arduino Nano and a small nixie PSU underneath as a second PCB.

Now all I have to do is design the circuit, write the code... I have some work to do.

 

Who are you guy and whatchoo doin posting in this thread?

 

I'm hoping you put together a full tutorial with circuit maps and code.
...The more paint I inhale, the less I feel like I can handle that stuff on my own.

I like the workstop, but a block mounted on the mill do the same for the cheap.