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Date: July 1, 2007
With the pox still upon me, I'm still taking it easy during the day, and not really doing anything that requires a lot of energy or lifting. That means I did some stuff that I could do while sitting at my desk, or paint related work.
The main task I laid ahead of me today was to do some work on the front logic display. That's the little gizmo with all the white and blue LEDs in it. I am at the point where I need to think about how it's going to mount inside the dome. In order to get the two resin logic surrounds to line up properly with the dome piece that houses them, I concocted the idea of affixing the two surrounds together. The methodology involves two thin strips of aluminum that are bent to account for the contours of the dome.
Though this sounds pretty easy, it actually turned out to be highly problematic. This was also the first genuine incident of tool shortage syndrome. When I was working out of the shop in San Fran, I had every tool I could ever imagine at my disposal. My garage... not so much. So I'm forced to make do with what I have. So where previously I would have milled out the aluminum strips to the precise length, I now had to file them down by hand to close approximations.
Not really a big deal or anything, but it did illustrate the point. Anyhow, after wrestling with the things for about 2 hours, I got them to line up perfectly inside the dome openings. Cool.
Bummer was, along the way, I trashed the paint job on the surrounds. I decided to strip them down and paint them again. This time, I sealed it all up with a clear coat, and gave it a day in the nice California sun to fully dry.
The other thing I did today was prep the remaining aluminum parts for primering. This basicaly involved sanding out any significant dings or whatever in the current paint. The pieces you see before you are now all set to be primered.
Though there's no picture for it, I also did some tests on the dome electronics. I'm curious about how I'm going to power them. I was originally planning on using a big honkin' SLA battery, but I think I might just go with off the shelf rechargeable 9v batteries. So I tested to see how long they electronics would run off a single battery. I used an off brand battery that had already seen some use, and I got about an hour and a half out of it. Not what I was hoping. I figure if I can get three hours out of a battery, I'll go with that idea. If an hour is the most I'm going to get, I'll have to figure something else out.
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