Making Fun

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So, I made a bike...

Somewhere between today and that sketchy aluminum welding below (a year back!), I made a bike.  With the exception of the fork, I welded all the red bits above, then stole a bunch of components off a donor bike that I bought in a “black friday” sale.  Chromoly tubing, disc brakes, the 1X configuration I’ve wanted for so long... mmm, it’s awesome!

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Back From The Dead ... Welding

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Whoa.

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“First Light”

Whenever I power something up (fo’ realz) for the first time, I think of it as “first light” ... the first in situ test, the machine running on its own power supply.  Astronomers use the phrase for similar situations as telescopes come online.  I like to think that laser operators do too.

In this case, on first power-up, three of my Arduino Pro Minis caught fire.  First light, indeed!

Ok, that’s overstating it a bit: I powered the channels up one at a time; three worked fine, one let out the magic smoke, and only two outright caught fire.  Clearly a bad batch of $1.80/ea Arduino Pro Minis.

If I’m being honest with myself, I would admit that I should stop buying cloned Chinese parts on eBay from the lowest cost suppliers.  (I mean, really: in full reel quantities, Mouser charges $1.71/unit for just the atmega328p-aur.  Does the extra $0.10/unit cover the board, jellybeans, assembly, listing, and shipping/fees?  Clearly corners are being cut everywhere.)

At the same time, I’m not sure how this insane project could get funded without cut-rate parts and dodgy suppliers.  And sometimes self-honesty just needs to shut the hell up for a while.

And, as for pic related: here’s me putting pins on another 10 Arduinos, three of which worked fine this morning.  But all of which will be sitting in a spares bin on The Big Day.  Maybe a fire extinguisher, too.

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Yo dawg, I heard you like boards…

A board (acrylic) for mounting (circuit) boards on which are mounted daughter boards (Arduino Pro Minis/EasyDrivers.)

Xzibit would be proud.

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Channels In Frame

Down to the final month or so before The Big Day.  Channels mounted in the frame of machine 1.

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Speedloader #1

Ultimately the ends were changed somewhat.  No more welded-on nuts, just some notched cross-bars to hold the tines together.  I have no idea if this is going to work.

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Out Of Gas

After all the welding on the #topsecretworkproject, my argon bottle is empty.  I guess I’ll have to top it up soon.  Though I’m pleased to say that principal welding is complete as of last night.  Just some brazing to do and then I’ve earned some time off of projects.  Though I do have an idea for a couple I might do next...

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Interruption

New position sensors: photo-interruptors. They seem to work much better than the magnets and hall effect sensors.  I’ve not yet figured out how best to attach these to the baskets, but they sure are great at sensing position.  Almost like they were made to do that or something.

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Power Rails

Getting the DIN rail terminal blocks set up. That’s a lot of power connections! I’m going to need some good wire management come assembly time.

57 days to go…

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Redshift

Carriages for machine 1 (yellow labels on discs) are complete.  Onwards to machine 2 and its red-labeled discs!  I only have enough torque arms to make 4-5 carriages... I’m planning to pick up some more flat bar tomorrow.

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Sensor Bundles

Bundles of empty sensors for the #topsecretworkproject -- IR transmitters and receivers.

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Sensor Porn

The hall effect sensor for the #topsecretworkproject.  Turns out it’s a wee bit more sensitive than I’d prefer, and the sensor reads the magnet in about a 20 degree arc of rotation.  Which makes position sensing a wee bit imprecise.  I’ve not yet started troubleshooting this yet.  What are the chances that if I pull the sensor back, it’ll narrow down to a point normal to the magnet’s surface (which is flush with the black disc), where I’d sort of expect the field to be strongest?  We’ll see, I suppose.  Magnets... how do they work?

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2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Baskets 2-6 sit complete on an upper shelf, waiting for their steppers & other parts.

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Carriage Works

Making carriages.  Where am I going to keep all this stuff once it’s built and assembled???

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Red & Yellow

Discs for the #topsecretworkproject’s important mechanical bits.

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Basket Design (#4)

Huge props to Ponoko for getting me welding jig design #4 with a quick turnaround.  I was worried that I was going to lose the weekend due to a stupid design mistake that I’d noticed only Thursday night.  I sent them an updated design late that night, and received the new jigs on Saturday.  Wow.  Weekend saved.

And that let me finish (re-do) baskets 1, 2, and 3 this weekend -- aided by some pre-cut vertical bars and the plethora of flawless stabilizing bands in the previous post.  Here I’m checking final dimensions of the carriage shaft, since I’m due to weld one of those in the next week.