Second Power Strip, PSI Supports & Dome Bump Work on Mike's Second Dome

Work on Mike's second droid's dome continues.

I decided to add support for a second power distribution board. One board will supply 5 volts to Scott Gray's JEDI electronics, and the other will supply 9 volts to any 9 volt circuits that may be added.

The 9 volt board can serve two purposes. First, the JEDI DC/DC board will get its input from this 9 volt board, and output the 5 volts to the other power distribution board for the rest of the JEDI electronics. Second, it turns out that Mike already had PSI circuits with Scott's JEDI electronics, so he doesn't necessarily need the ones I wired up. But should we choose to use them, we'll have a 9 volt supply for them readily available.

So, I cut another small piece of PVC to host the small power distribution board.



And as was the case yesterday, I needed to cut a groove with the Dremel cutoff wheel to accommodate the pins on the underside of the board.




Now the board fits flush on the PVC. The pins are short enough that they do not poke through the bottom.



I also needed to drill the dome ring for this additional part, adjacent to the existing power distribution board.



Next, I moved on to the vertical supports for the PSIs. I needed to sand a curve at the top of them, to hug the piece of PVC pipe I'm using to house the PSI circuits. I used a drum sander attachment on the drill press to get this started.




Unfortunately, when it came to fitting everything together, I found that I needed to make an adjustment. The right support needed to be recut, in order to move it closer to the bottom of the pipe in order to avoid the mounting screw on the base plate. I need to sand the curve into this new piece. Poor planning on my part, even though I copied what worked on my second droid!



Finally, I returned to the drum sander to sand the square bezel of the dome switches to be circular.



I also needed to sand the threads off the switch, otherwise the switch would not fit through the holes in the dome.



The switches are pretty circular, but I may try to get them even rounder, if my inner perfectionist prevails. My inner pragmatic may tell me to leave them alone.



Later I used acetone to remove the white dots.

I wanted to get a lot further today, but other commitments prevented that. Tomorrow may not be much better.