another Spinner . 6th scale. printed
- Thread starter flimzy
- Start date
flimzy
Master Member
Ok so I've been doing the odd alternate project so I can learn techniques whiteout wasting money on this project, smoothon are a great help but there not cheep. I've been fighting hard against this humidity problem and just heating the workshop doesn't help because it also reduces my working time. So tomorrow I'm biting the bullet and buying a pressure pot. Fingers crossed this will get me back on track. At work we mold everything in a vacuum machine so there's never even a chance of bubbles. On a good note I've been getting better at arduino programming LEDs.
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drusselmeyer
Master Member
There are several people here who have casting experience. If you need info, just ask.
flimzy
Master Member
Thank you the problem isn't the molds or materials as such it's my workshop and its location ( and a lot to do with the time of year). humidity and very cold temperatures don't make a good environment for Urethane.
My little side project Hal 9000 seamed like the perfect way of working on these problems ie small part to mold unlike the huge blocks of silicone needed to finish the spinner.
rejects from various methods but the good news is I picked up the pressure pot yesterday and got my first bubble feer lens test out this morning
the one on the left may look like it has bubbles but that just the texture on the back of the real lens it's actually bubble-free
so now for the casings. I did think at one point of giving up and CNCing the lens's out of solid acrylic but the hole point was to get my workshop capable of molding better so I stopped
I'd already done the CNC part with the grills
Once this is craked I'll spend the money on the silicone for the rest of the spinner.
flimzy
Master Member
I when with 10 micro LEDs 12 would be better but 10 was a happy compromise. I tried miro motor but I can't get them to run slow enough and I'm happy with this. I'm going to work a bit more on the shape of the diffuser inside.
teslabe
Sr Member
Flimzy, here is the inverted pattern of what I posted in #186, it has three pixels on, one pixel off, as apposed to, one pixel on, three pixels off. There are a few drawbacks to this pattern, first, it draws more power, second, it gets much hotter and third, IMHO, it doesn't seem to have the right flow, again that's just me..... With Neopixels, the sky's the limit, you can do so much with these......
With Neopixels, the sky's the limit, you can do so much with these......
Flimzy, Still super impressed with your Spinner. Is that flipped image the British steering version? Anyway very inspiring for my build. Crazy, I think we were probably both working at Pinewood at the same time with Spinners on the back bench! Small weird universe...
teslabe
Sr Member
Flimzy sent me some of the parts that didn't turn out perfect but was more than usable for early testing of both an electronic version, the one I discussed in my earlier posts. I did make a mistake by building the Neo-Pixel strips before I had the parts and I don't like the spacing, I'll be redo them this week....
flimzy
Master Member
Great, can you reduce the speed to 1 revolution per second? Its deceptive but the actual old light are much slower. its the fact that there are 6 lights next to each other that give the hectic look. I'd tried this with miro phone motors at the beginning but gave up because I couldn't get it slow enough but I didn't know you could get stepper motors that small. :-0
teslabe
Sr Member
I will be doing two posts for flimzy on the subject of video screens, this first one is of the main dashboard and a suggestion I made about using a Pico Projector to do the effect from the rear. I call this the "proof of concept" video, it can only get better with enhancing the video's contrast, color saturation and resolution for the projectors capabilities and native resolution, also the lens could be improved for this layout and it might help if I could get an example of the vehicles cockpit and front end for placement and alignment, just a thought..... I'll post the next part when I get back from the post office/shopping
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I'll post the next part when I get back from the post office/shopping.
teslabe
Sr Member
This is the second part of my video demo for flimzy. It's the screen that showed altitude and landing information and was to the right of the pilot. It's hard to find a good selection of LCD/OLED displays and an easy way to run video files, yes, you could use a Raspberry Pi Zero, but they take sooooo long to boot and then load your player. The mp4 player I used is self contained and the display was easy to add a "flex-strip" so that only the display need be sealed in the enclosure and the main board placed in the body of the vehicle, just in case the Micro SD card craps out. This is just the first suggestion for what could be used, who knows, someone might come up with a better idea.
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teslabe
Sr Member
Thank you very much for the kind words, I hate doing the videos, I'm not good at them, but it does get the point across far better then just a description of what I had in mind.
teslabe
Sr Member
Since our phones can play music/videos and with far better screens, stand-alone mp4 players are becoming harder to find and the ones that are out there are just crap, for the most part, it does the job at a descant price and are easy to modify, you want to stay away form the ones with capacitive touch screens or buttons, they are harder to remote the function controls.....
