Thursday, December 29, 2011

Cut More PVC & Drilled Dome Ring for Mike's Second Dome

Today was mostly a replay of September 29, 2010, as I drilled Mike's dome ring for his second droid.

Before getting started on that, I had just a little more PVC to cut, for the vertical supports for the PSIs, and the base plate for power distribution board. I also recut the DC/DC converter base plate to be a little larger.

I started with the small PVC rectangle for the power distribution board.



For the power distribution board, the pins on the back side prevent it from sitting flush on the strip of PVC.



I used the Dremel with the cutoff wheel attachment to cut a groove for these pins.



Now the board sits flush, and the pins are short enough that they won't poke through to touch the aluminum dome ring.



Speaking of the dome ring, it was time to start drilling the holes for all the base plates, having marked their locations yesterday. I used a #33 drill bit for the #4-40 1/2" screws I'm using to mount these base plates.



I also drilled the mounting holes for the battery holders. I have a 4-pack holder and another 2-pack holder for the six C battery cells that I plan to use, to provide 9 volts to the DC/DC converter board.



The front PSI base plate overlaps the front Rockler bearing hole, so I attached the base plate to the underside, and drilled through it where the #10 screw goes. Mike had already drilled the holes in the dome ring for the Rockler bearing.



Once I was done drilling these holes, I filed down the aluminum volcanoes that formed on the underside of the dome ring.



The last item of business was to drill holes on the vertical mounting board for the DC/DC converter board and the display controller. These will share the same piece of PVC, one board will be mounted on each side.



I'm using #6-32 nylon screws to attach the boards to the PVC holder. I drilled three holes total, each diagonally. One of the holes is shared by both boards, the other two are diagonal from it for each board.

No comments: