Pushed myself to get something working in time for Hackers. Got Calliope Mod #3 done and actually working, woohoo! That’s behind me, so now I’m working on Mod #4 of the Calliope Project. Have decided that having two parallel manifolds and a seperate array of whistles in Mod #3 was a cumbersome arrangement; i.e. good for prototyping but not so good for a stylin’ finished piece of work. Went to Reliable Hardware in SR and had ‘em bend up a section of 2″ thick-wall tube (not pipe tho) into a ‘donut’ about 18″ dia and will use this for the next manifold. I’ll probably add tabs to it, so’s I can bolt/unbolt it from a swoopy looking plinth of some sort. I’ll add welded-on 1/4″ pipe bushings at 30 degree intervals, then thread on the kewl all-stainless solenoid valves. Whistles will be threaded directly onto these, eliminating all of the quick-connect fitting nonsense and making the whole thing fireproof to boot.
The solenoid valves were free; can’t beat the price! But they’re wired 220vAC, which was a problem. I called the mfr, Parker, and ordered 12 replacement 24vDC coils which means I’ll be able to ‘recycle’ the electronics from Mod #3, altho I hope to get a real circuit board made to increase robustness of system. I’ll build a more compact and weather-resistant housing for it too. Photos as soon as I actually do something.
Melanie, my avatar
In loving memory, gone too soon. Shit.
October 15th, 2008 in
Uncategorized |
2 Comments
Lucid fantasy!
–No, not the one about making Noelle bark like a dog in the hot tub; I was riding ‘shotgun’ in someone’s car. We were heading North towards the City, down around Millbrae, then getting to South City. We were cresting a rise (that isn’t really there) and turning the corner onto that stretch that goes over the water. At the top of the rise the highway was cut by a swath of asphalt with radical scratch marks along its length. As we slowed, approaching this thing, suddenly a river freighter shot across the freeway, skidding on this patch, then continued sliding off of the road on the right, where it turned left and plopped into the water of a system of locks, ready to descend to the level of the bay. The thing that got me was that although I’d never seen this before it seemed like such a logically kewl way to solve a problem. The person driving the car said ‘oh yeah it’s been like that for ages’. Still I was so intrigued I determined to get on the freighter at its next stop and follow it along its route.
And then there was this railroad. The ship travelled down thru locks that were set up like some crazy roller coaster: narrow and linear, all downhill to a lake at the bottom. I got off the boat and got onto a really short train: two cars long. Neat old RR that took us to several stations, all small, one with a dining room (I musta been hungry) but we didn’t eat. Interesting architecture. Got off the train, went up a ski lift to get back on the boat, which had somehow gotten back uphill, to the height of the freeway. Weird dream, yes?
October 14th, 2008 in
Uncategorized | tags:
dream |
No Comments
Here I is and Noelle is trying to get me to NOT use my lame-ass old html editor and to use something modern and kewl but not overly complex like Pagemaker. Sounds good to me!
October 10th, 2008 in
Uncategorized |
No Comments
Still trying to get the hang of this editor but have yet to figure out how to access everything a viewer can see!!
Ooookayyyy… Guess Noelle posted the ‘October’ thing so let’s see if I can write some stuff here and add a few photos to boot.
10/09: Latest project: made a fixture to fit the Sherline cnc Rotary Table. With it I can radius the ends of a shitload of little parts that I’m making for Bryan Mumford. Here’s a photo of the setup ready to go on the Bridgeport:
In other news I’m working on yadayada and here are photos of that.
Photo #1: Timer Clamp Radiusing Jig
October 8th, 2008 in
Uncategorized |
No Comments
For those curious about previous work on Short John Silver you can click over to The Art Car Project, which archives back to the genesis in 2005 or thereabouts.
Recent work is still in the camera, but all major structural changes (which involved welding, machining and painting a couple of contraptions) are done and installed. Hope to start festooning hull with EL again today.
–It’s ‘too hot to fuck’ weather so I’m working early morning a bit and late at night a lot. Gotta skip tonight due to Second Tuesday gathering so am posting photos for show-and-tell.
First up: here are the new gunports getting their final treatment B4 mounting:
Photo #1: Gooey gunports
–And here are the gunports screwed in place and painted:
Photo #2: Gun ports
–And here are the gunports screwed in place and painted:
Photo #3: Towing hitch
–Have also built and installed a trailer hitch that works with the little two-seater wagon. Have tested it and it works well. I can make sharp turns without binding, too.
Life has been mooey crazy. Emergency vet run with Ringo on Saturday; he was at death’s door but we got the little guy back At first we were afraid he’d had a stroke but after many tests it turns out his thyroid is outta whack and to make matters worse he had trouble breathing what with all the smoke from the fires and him having chronic bronchitis. Glad he’s on the mend. And natch, I didn’t have my cellphone because a pal accidentally took it home with him.
Have also had not one but two computers go down; primary laptop and secondary desktop. Desktop finally set to rights but my brand new Panasonic Toughbook (a resounding two thumbs down!!) is in the shop for the second time. This time it’s getting a complete reinstall of the OS (remember when XP used to be stable? Not if you get the Vista ‘downgrade’ it ain’t!). Trouble is, it’s barfing it back up! Toughbook my ass.
Between catastrophes and with Gothalot doing all the machining I managed to connect the dots and weld up the roof-mounted propane storage rack for the Blood Vessel. Still gotta do all the propane plumbing but that’s fairly straightforward, if a little time intensive. Photos soon.
Sadly I’ve had to lay down the tools on the calliope project as there’s only one week to prove to DMV that I’m doing ‘due diligence’ on Short John Silver. Although I intend for the calliope to be an active part of the thing I can’t spend all of my time tinkering; gotta get a bucket and slap some paint on the old MV, so to speak…
Amongst other things I’ve decided that Short John Silver’s gunports are just too ugly, being basically ‘faux’ ports made by sticking black paper onto the painted hull. See what I mean?
Starboard gunports as they are now; pretty dreadful...
I spent today prepping new gunports that will include new hatch covers that will appear to be flipped back, exposing little stubby (black PVC) gun barrels. Can’t have anything too long or folks will bash into ‘em so I’m making them more like bas-relief dioramas. Here’s a shot of the twelve hatches, which measure 5″ x 5″:
Somewhere around step 2 of 7
And here’s a shot of the first piece to be glued on. Tomorrow I’ll bore a hole in the plywood, insert a short piece of PVC and then attach the “hatch cover” to the wedge to complete the assembly.
In other news I’m busy soldering up EL wire to replace the broken bits that have accumulated over time. I’ve got plenty of the yellow on hand but I’m going to orger a bunch of green (sea grass) and some other colors (fauna to go with the subsea flora). Combining my order with those of Heidi and Gothalot we should qualify for the bulk price break and the Burner price break too. Oh, and thumbnails aren’t quite lined up with text because I have yet to figure out how to make that happen! More later..
Have been working on various projects evenings, as it’s been too damn hot during the day. Here are a few photos of that mess on the electronics workbench. Happy to say Calliope has made it out of the machine shop hopefully for the last time, so everything else should be software and electronic-related stuff that happens in the ‘dog free’ room, heh.
Here’s a shot of the circuit board that I built to allow my laptop to “talk” to the calliope’s solenoid valves. The widget in the foreground is the BS-II Basic Stamp from Parallax.com
Photo #1: circuit board
Here’s another shot of the circuit board. Kinda messy, yes? The big aluminum piece is covering the transformer that’s converting 110vAC (used to run Stamp’s ‘wall wart’) to 24vDC to run the solenoid valves. I couldn’t find a ‘kit box’ big enough, so I’ve still got to make sides for the enclosure. Two switches, one for each voltage, seemed the right way to lay it out. Distribution of power to various bits was made simpler thanks to a power bus (the brass-and-black thing) available from Napa Auto Parts
Photo #2: wiring
And finally here’s a shot of the 12 whistle ‘octave’ (including the black keys, so to speak), nested now between two rows of 6 solenoid valves. This arrangement was a little more compact than discrete components, but it’s getting heavy. Definitely a two-guy job to get it up and down the stairs now. Note threaded whistle caps: these have been remade long enough to allow whistle tuning over a fairly large range. I’ve found that very small atmospheric changes can throw whistles off-key. If there isn’t sufficient provision for adjustment they can be un-tunable.
Photo #3: Octave
Well here we go with another test of the whole magilla, minus photos until I can figure out how to upload them. Some of the following is pasted from Arachnophilia; let’s see if this works..
June 6: Well this morning I finally hooked the towing hitch up to the tractor, moved the steamboat out of the way and, with Gothalot’s help, we got Short John Silver moved under the carport. While I cleaned the carburetor he got the big-ass battery transferred from the truck to the electronics bay, then got the sparkplug de-gunked. This evening just at twilight I powered up the various lighting circuits and to my delight I only had two problems: the one caused by the too-sharp radius bend on the starboard side’s yellow outline and the lack of two channels on the waves, due to the lame 3-channel sequencer. I can fix the yellow with a new strand and a widget I’m going to machine to ease the sharp bend. But I’ve gotta find a new source for sequencers as Cool Neon doesn’t carry that brand any more.
After the superficial stuff is fixed I’ll set to the problem of adding extra carrying capacity. The DMV has ruled that “personal transport” is veboten now and taxis are the ‘preferred embodiment’ for mutant vehicles. Well, in the words of Edmund Blackadder “I’ve got a cunning plan”, heh. By towing a cart I can increase my carrying capacity by about 66% so I’m in the process of creating a “dinghy” that can be towed by Short John. Gotta get more EL wire it seems. I also plan to carry the ‘waves’ aft but for the ‘water line’ to be the same I’ll have to lower them on the main vehicle. This means I’ll have to scrap my plans to add flora and fauna below the waterline, which means I won’t be able to increase the artsy-fartsy aspects of the project as I would have preferred. Ah, well, DMV gets what DMV wants and I get to save a bundle I would have had to spend.
Spent most of yesterday making Delrin widgets that will allow EL wire to turn fairly sharp corners without endangering the skinny wires inside the colored jacket. Started with 1-1/2″ rod but also turned some down to 1-1/4″ and finally 1″dia. Groove is about .130″ wide and about .050″ deep, which allows the EL to nest nicely, but still be visible. Holes in the centers were drilled 11/64″; i.e. clearance for a #8 screw. I’ll mount 4 of them up near the bow today, using hex head sheetmetal screws, which I favor.
Meanwhile back at the ranch the calliope has reached a point where it’s totally out of the workshop and residing on the electronics bench upstairs. next project will be tuning, but that’s a little hard with my brand new Panasonic Toughbook on the fritz with not one, but two software/hardware issues ongoing and unfixable until I can get hold of a techie to fix it.Once that’s sorted out I’ll hook up the microphone and do the whistle tuning. Once tuned I’ve still gotta finish wiring the last three whistle solenoid circuits that wouldn’t fit onto the only available size circuit board I could find. Aside: had to order new proto boards from Radio Shack as none of the three extremely lame local RS stores didn’t have any in stock. 4 have arrived and should provide spares as needed on short notice. I’ve also snagged a variety of standoffs from HSC so I can piggyback the original 9 circuits to the remaining 3 in a fairly compact arrangement.
June 14: DMV has been wanting some photos of Mutant Vehicle progress so here goes!
Delrin widgets so EL can turn a corner under tension.
Photo #1: EL
Same thing only different. This one’s located on the bow, portside, at the “water” line.
Photo #2: Same thing only different.
Shot of one of two new faux kerosene lanterns. They’re solar powered so there is no further electrical wiring.
Photo #3: Stern Lantern
Learned my lesson in years past and finally got around to swapping out conventional roller chain for stainless roller chain. Big difference and no gummy chain clogged with Playa dust!
Photo #4: Steering mods
Waiting for glue to dry on pairs of plywood risers. These will support swivel stools on the “dinghy” that will be towed by Short John.
Photo #5: Waiting for glue to dry
Shot of “dinghy”. Still a long way to go but it’ll be shipshape in plenty of time! Next up: bolt stools thru plywood riser donuts to steel reinforced cart deck, then a painted canvas “hull” will be attached to frame, followed by EL accents and sequenced, rolling waves beneath.
Photo #5: Dinghy seating
Initial lash-up of dinghy and Short John Silver, to get an idea of geometries for tow hitch. Connecting the dinghy hitch directly to the lower rung of the boarding ladder (which is steel and bolted to the frame) solves several problems. In addition to a hitch there will be a power umbilical to run EL and CCFl stuff off of Short John’s monster battery. Metal hitch bar will be ‘twined’ with yellow EL, to make it resemble a rope.
Photo #6: Coupling
