David Gessel
Safety wire
Today I learned how to safety wire. Nothing like learning in a confined space. I even drilled the bolt heads….
The hovercraft really flies on the new motor.
Little Arm
This is mark controlling the little arm with an anthropomorphic controller. He moves his arm, the little arm moves to follow. “little” is relative.
Gas tank
I had to make mounts to support the gas tank, mounts for the finger screen and supplemental supports for the exhaust system, and a few other bits and installed them all.
Almost hovering
Today nothing all that photogenic… I mounted the fuel tank on some jaunty spars I made and got the crap guard cut out and installed. Now for wiring up the motor and testing it…
Fun!
More turning fun, more giant radial arm drill fun, more welding fun… Mr’s Satan’s hands…
Possum!
At the top middle of the picture is a possum at the shop. It came up to me twice then skittered away after an squinty “Oh My!” look. I suppose it got a few feet away and thought “huh, why am I going this way? I thought I was going the other way.” Mark made it go away.
Overkill
Final modifications to the hovercraft engine mounting plate… drilling four 3/8″ holes in 1/2″ of aluminum… a cordless hand drill would have worked fine. But that’s not The Way. Ultimately I had to correct for a bad OEM drawing of the plate on the bridgeport, but the new hovercraft engine is is ready to assemble.
Inverting SSR
This is part of a cooling system for the cabinet. This relatively inexpensive (on ebay) Watlow series 900 temperature controller has a single output and two alarm relays. The output and one of the alarm relays have snubbers inside and can trip fans on their own. The second output was NC and needed a relay to invert it. I used a solid state relay (SSR) to do it and it is currently controlling the halogen light. It turns on if the temperature goes over 81. Woo! Three more simple wiring harnesses to fabricate and then the whole mess to install in the cabinet. The concept is that a set of filtered fans will run full-time to drive fresh air into the cabinet (not quite working yet) to achieve ambient temp, say below 85 or 90 degrees. If the temperature goes above that, a single extraction fan will turn on. If it goes up another 5 degrees a second extraction fan will turn on, and 5 degrees above that a third, honking big fan will turn on. The extraction fans will probably suck in some dust, but better that than melting down.