Three chicks were nesting in the rain gutter attached to Mike's shed.
Before we got down to building, William, Mike and Russell sampled some of Russell's home-brewed Amber Ale. Some people work better under the influence.
Okay, now to my failed speed controller. We took it apart, and Matthew Henricks and David Annetta identified a blown-out MOSFET near the middle of the underside of the power board.
It left a nice scorch mark on the middle of the case as well.
So, it was time to rewire and install a new speed controller. For the moment, I am using another Vantec RDFR23, but I will likely switch to a different vendor. For whatever reason, I've had failures with this controller, but when I Google about it, I don't see anyone else having trouble. Still, I am unable to identify anything about my droid that would cause trouble.
David Annetta is an electrician at Disneyland, so he lent his soldering expertise several times during the day. I get wired with a little help from my friends.
Slowly but surely I got the new speed controller wired-up.
I gave it a spin. So far, so good. Let's hope it stays that way for a while.
In the meantime, the other guys kept busy. William worked on his 300mm styrene dome, while Russell worked on a center foot shell repair job.
When he was not helping me with soldering, David and the guys glued up his frame. (I wonder how many frames have been glued up on that table now?)
Finally, I've been unhappy about how my mist can is triggered. Mike's mist can uses a steel rod that is JB Welded to the trigger as a lever. A paper clip attaches the lever to the solenoid that is strapped to the can. Naturally, I wanted to copy that.
I had brought some 3/16" steel rod, which Mike ground down on one end in order to drill a hole for the paper clip shown above. Sparks!!
The rod was cut to size and a small hole drilled on the end. Then, the trigger mechanism was taken apart and the rod JB Welded into place.
Once the JB Weld has dried, I can try this out.
To top off the day, somehow, some way, I lost my car key. Mike busted into my car with a coat hanger to see if I had locked the key in the car, but so far the key is nowhere to be found.
I got a ride home, and I'll return with the spare key tomorrow, and continue the hunt for the missing key.
2 comments:
Looks like a good time! I would have loved to try some of that beer too. I just couldn't make it this time though.
Hopefully your Vantec will hope up!
-Eric
Thanks Eric!
And for those wondering about the saga of the car key, it turns out it got scooped up in the newspaper that was used during David's frame glue-up. The newspaper went home with him, as did the key. It was found and returned today (the following day).
-Victor
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