Here’s the fruits of today’s work. I’ve built an adapter board (the silver thing inside the mainboard cover door, on the right bottom of the picture) that allows a new style display to work on an old style laser. The old style displays are hard to come by, and this will allow for easier replacement of that design. I found two pins shorted on my board. Apparently, the non-conductive solder flux became conductive. Wack.
The weekend is here. I don’t have any plans really, I might get on the bike tomorrow or Sunday and go off on my own and explore a bit. I’m enjoying being out here, but I am rather looking forward to moving on down the road a ways.
Rainy here today. Supposedly more rain to come this weekend. Work is proceeding well, despite my string of mess ups and failure to make things work first time around today. I liked the grey day today, however, cooled things off. Picture was taken from the laser shop, looking west. The mountains are on the other side of the Great Salt Lake somewhere. They didn’t have that much snow yesterday.
So, things are going pretty well here in Utah. I’ve been really busy with a couple of different projects. I messed up a board today, and let out the magic smoke, but I have the problem in check and moving forward. Nice to have a full machine shop to play in too.
I even uploaded this before the day ended, but I didn’t get the blog updated in time. Ah well.
This is a truck I built back when I was 14 or 15. Not from a kit or anything, just something I kinda built one day. I saw this big rig kit in a Lego flyer once and really wanted it, but of course it was way expensive. I got the idea to emulate it one day, and this was the result. The trailer is way less impressive, but I was also running out of coherent building blocks by then. Yes, there is a steering wheel on the top of the truck and the tires turn. Good stuff eh?
So, tonight I got started on building a custom mount for a top case on my motorcycle. I need a little more solid storage for my long trip to Utah and beyond that is coming up next week. I’ve had these two SKB cases for a while, and I rather like them. They are mil spec tough and waterproof, and I have traveled with them before. As such, I got to thinking: What if I mounted one on the back of the bike? Welp, being a cheapskate that I am, I sat forth to design a mount. Trying my best to use factory mounting holes, I came up with a simple idea. Basically, I am going to mount two 1 inch square tubes onto the package tray on the back of the bike, one on the front, and one on the back. Then, I am going to build a square frame that fits between them. One end of the frame will have hooks that will lock into holes on one of the tubes, the other tube will have a lock cylinder. You place the top case on, push it down so it seats against the rubber bumpers, and turn the key lock to fasten it securely. Simple enough.
I got the square frame welded, and I have one of the tubes complete with end caps. I had to call it a night as I was running out of light and didn’t want to wake the neighborhood grinding down welds. Tomorrow I will finish the other tube and clean up the rest of the welds, finish the lock mechanism, test, and paint. I’ll post more photos as it evolves.
If you want to see more photos, go here.