Fenchurch*Org

Triac test jig

fenchurch — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 04:44:12 +0000

A old piece of hardware used for testing triac code.

Quince greets the new Robot Overlords

fenchurch — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:25:18 +0000

We may have missed the March Seattle Robotics Society meeting, but there is no stopping Quince from finding a robot to wave at.

View through the new B&L scope

fenchurch — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:19:04 +0000

Bought a new Bausch & Lomb Stereo Zoom 4 microscope from goodwill.

(Ok, so it’s a little older) Just had a little bit of dirt on it, and some loose adjustments, took a couple minutes to tighten and clean the optics, now it works just as it did when new!

Came with 10X WF occulars. In combination with the 0.7X – 3X objective gives a 7X – 30X magnification.

All I have to do now is add a ring light and it will be good to go.

From cleaning it, I can guess that its previous owner probably used it for winding guitar pickups. There were several pieces of very fine magnet wire in the adjustments. As well as obvious signs of glues and soldering irons hitting the knobs. He or She was also a smoker and right handed. That probably didn’t interest anyone though.

Copier Switch Hack

fenchurch — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:00:33 +0000

The Sequim City Band has had this old copier for a while. We replaced it with a faster unit last year, but this one still gets used for occasional copying, well it had been until its buttons stopped working. It had been repaired before by swapping the cancel buttons plunger with the copy plunger, but the little flag on the plunger that actually struck the tact switch had once again broken. Just a poor design, needed some vertical stress relief. Not wanting to do ABS welding to make the flags last a little longer, I replaced both the copy and cancel buttons with some military grade push switches. With a little oil on the gear train it should last the band now another few years. The switches will now outlast everything else in the unit, they are probably rated for >1Million actuations.

Hacked a power switch onto the kit built with li+ charger. Now it doesn’t run all the time.

fenchurch — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 07:50:24 +0000

Huhu helps to put kits together.

fenchurch — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:21:42 +0000

All part have arrived. Just a little bit to polish on the presentation and I will be ready for Saturday

fenchurch — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:01:51 +0000

Quince on Monday Night Robot Chat

fenchurch — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:59:25 +0000

Quince joining in on Seattle Robotics IRC robot Chat

SMT Class Progress

fenchurch — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:45:56 +0000

I finally got a couple of the prototype boards built up. Just enough to test the supplies and get the USB to ding up. Hopefully I will have enough time to test some firmware on them before I order the bulk of the boards for the kits.

SMT board progress

fenchurch — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:30:31 +0000

SMT class prototype boards are in. Now just to find the time to test them!