Lords of the Ring

[gn0stik]

hi does anybody know if the bottles also have to be inside the ring?
it is a bit difficult and i cannot see if the field rotates.
Turbo

clap clap clap.

Nice work, man.

You always do nice work.

[weri812]

 hi all

@turbo

is that a harddrive cable in the middle of that tpu

wer

[Rosphere]

sweet. I gots ta find me some of those cheapo function generators.

Bee careful with Elenco SM-9600K function generator!

Elenco had reworked the end of the plastic Bredblox Switch Knob, 666506, to allow the Contact Plate, 666505, to fit over the end and maintain axial freedom.

Unfortunately, they removed plastic from the wrong places.  The plate fits on the knob and slides up and down now, like they wanted.  However, the lions share of the material was removed from the side of the knob that aligns with the main contact point.

This, and the slight offset of the knob hole--within tolerance I am sure--centered between the six capacitor contact pads, had the effect of rendering three of my six frequency ranges inoperable.

I took the liberty, and time, of filling in the removed material with epoxy.  Yes, I am talking about only three grains of sand worth of epoxy here.  Not easy, but doable and done.

Undoing Elenco's rework, I found that I too was unable to fit the contact plate over the switch knob.  But instead of re-removing the material from the spot where Elenco had, I removed even less original material from the two flat sides of the shaft near the end by carefully whittling down the flat sides out to the end of the shaft with a #11 Exact-o blade.

It appeared, to me, that the knob was removed from the mold before cooling completely and the end of the knob had mushroomed out slightly making it impossible to insert it onto the contact plate.

Success! I removed far less material than Elenco by shaving the flat side near the end of the shaft and the contact point stays on all pads now.

EDIT: Detail added: See the isosceles triangle shaped hole below.  The shaft profile should be this shape until the center nub at the end.  If yours looks funny, (mine still had rework flashing on it,) then go get some epoxy.  Cut 1/4" wide, 1" long or more paper tape.  Wrap once around the shaft up to the bottom of the center nub, making a cup for the epoxy.  (The uncut shape forms the tape in the right shape over the missing part.)  Fill-in the cup with epoxy, use 30 AWG wire to poke out the air bubble at the bottom.  Final shape, trim, and clean with a razor and tweezers.  (This undoes the bad Elenco rework.)  Now, use your brain and shape it correctly with a #11 blade.

Also, if I had to do it over again I would painfully align and solder the eight Bredblox Clips on the board BEFORE inserting into the case assembly.  Use a paper business card to help line them up because it will not absorb much heat during soldering.  Doing it the Elenco way melts the clips into the case and you will have a hell of a time taking the thing apart to diagnose and repair it, as I had to.  (The switch worked fine until it was aligned in the case and I sealed it all up.)

The clips adhere better to the melted plastic than the solder exactly half the time.  When I pried mine apart, to find the Elenco switch issue, four of the eight clips broke free from the solder and the other four slid out of the plastic.

I had to cut away the melted plastic so that I could reassemble my unit.  My unit looks ugly now, but it works.

Rosphere ==|--------

[Rosphere]

I have the same exact unit, and just finished getting it together and ran into the same problem as you did...

I've got to fire it up tonite and test the ranges. When you powered your unit, did you just use the 5+ & gnd? or did you also supply the 5- ?

I went to bed the other night wondering where I was going to go to purchase two five volt batteries.  I would hook them in series and take "GND" from the node between them, -5 from the negative side of the pair, and +5 from the positive side.

Then I wondered if I could take the 5V from my PC; maybe use diodes to make it "look like" two batteries and wire them up as above.

Yesterday morning I awoke and searched the web for, "voltage divider."

I found this: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/voldiv.html

I used two 10 k-ohm resistors.  The "GND" is connected between them, the +5, (+4.5 actually,) is on the +9V node, and the -4.5 is on the -9V node.  Simple.

Rosphere ==|-------- "Makin' it work!"

[gn0stik]

Gah, bummer deal man, that really sux, but for less than 40 bucks you got a working micro function gen, that works, if not pretty. Hell, you weren't trying to pick up chicks with it anyway, right? Nonetheless, it sounds like it was a pain, and stole from a night of TPU'ing.

I'll look out for that. I've seen some other kits, that I've wondered about as well. Every kit I've ever ordered has never been just, build it like they tell you. Always, something comes up. And it's usually something to do with the case.

Adiu,
Rich