Here is a small update for anybody who might be interested. It might seem as though I have been skipping around to different things (well, that's because I have been!) but there is rationale for this:
- The closet doors floor guide is modeled and ready to print, but I want to print this in nylon which should have a special setup for ideal printing (a fully-enclosed filament path). I've got my PrintDry filament dryer upgraded to 3 polyethylene chambers and to each one I've attached a 48" bowden tube, and next is to connect the other end of the tubes to the back of the Pharaoh. For this I've modeled a special rubber grommet holder to 3D print from PLA and then attach to the back of the printer. I just haven't gotten around to printing those yet because I've been working on a UV curing box.
- The desktop rocker switches cannot be painted yet because it's still too cold and wet outside, and enamel spray painting simply is not being done indoors.
- The desktop intercom is to be printed in resin on the Saturn, and that printer isn't ready to go yet. Technically, yes I could power up the printer today and start printing, but that's not how I operate. I'm in agreement that a screen protector would be wise to have on the printer, and my Mach5ive protector arrived just yesterday. But I still prefer to have a UV cure box and vat drainer ready before the first resin print.
- The red alert panel and wall intercom combo are waiting for resin-printed parts, and I haven't finalized the electronics yet for this (not because they're complicated - I simply haven't started thinking seriously on it yet).
So, that's why I've been focusing lately on the UV curing box, but even that is getting dragged out due to waiting on component shipments. It's all fine though because before the box can begin having electronics installed it will be painted, and again spraying is not happening indoors so I've got time to work through design refinements whilst waiting for warmer weather.
The box's "control panel" switch placements have been revised to accommodate dry-transfer labels, which the closest font match I could find is Futura Medium. It's not an exact match for every character but it's very close, especially for the characters I'll be using. The revised box layout (with increased dimensions) now looks like:
No, it's not a canon design, it's intended to have the "ambiance" of TOS Trek and coordinate with the room's theming. The resin buttons are replicas from TrekPropsAndStuff, which come in a random assortment of 50 round and 50 square:
The batch I received contained a lot of opaque ones and there are inconsistencies in the colors. Also, as seen in the photo above, several of the buttons have air bubbles, scratches, defects, and inconsistent height (they're not cast very well) so I've got two more sets ordered. With 150 round buttons to choose from, I'm hoping to pick out 6 that pass my inspection. The rest will probably get used on future projects.
I bought a shuttlecraft-load of sound boards from BigDawgs Greeting Cards initially planning them for the sound effects, but each board has only 1 or 3 buttons (depending on the board) so it would take at least two boards to handle all the buttons. I want only one speaker on the box and don't want to mess around with an audio mixer for just button sound effects (its function is UV curing, not sound playback) so these will just end up getting used with future model kit builds:
That brings me to the present state of the electronics, with a couple of the components still not yet finalized (and I see now I've got the timer's box upside down in the photo, oops):
These parts are:
- 7" battery-operated turntable from Amazon (upper left). It features two speeds, a slow speed and an even slower speed. I will be connecting the battery terminals instead to a 3VDC supply (shown right of it).
- Digital kitchen timer from Amazon (upper center). This has been disassembled and its battery terminals also connected to the 3VDC supply (shown beneath it). The tactile switches will be removed from the board and the terminals instead wired to push-button switches on the control panel.
- 12VDC UV LED strip lights, 24W, 600 lights from Amazon (lower left). These are powered by a 12VDC AC adapter (lower center) and will be distributed around the interior behind mirror-chrome vinyl (with holes for the LEDs cut out with our Silhouette Cameo). The LED "map" is already drawn up in Silhouette Studio.
- 12VDC-to-3VDC converter. This will convert the 12VDC AC adapter output to 3VDC for the turntable and timer.
- 8' power cord (lower center) because I'd rather have the wall-wart inside the box and a more-robust power cord coming out the back of the box. It will connect to the box using a strain-relief cord buckle (shown left of it).
- Button sound effects will be provided by an Adafruit FX Mini board (upper center), the same type of board that will be used for the wall intercom. This doesn't have enough power to drive a speaker so an Adafruit Mono 2.5W Class D Audio Amplifier is shown above it. Both of these boards run on 5VDC, so a 5VDC regulator board from Amazon (shown below it) will supply power from the 12VDC adaptor.
- I've narrowed the speaker selection down to two Adafruit products (upper right), a 40mm 4 Ohm 3W metal speaker or an enclosed 4 Ohm 3W speaker. One of these will be chosen after hearing how each sounds.
- A black toggle switch from TrekPropsAndStuff will turn the turntable on/off (upper right). There is no need for two speeds, so this flat-handled toggle switch will simply turn it on and off.
- I was originally planning to use LED tactile switches behind the resin button replicas (upper right), but they are made only as momentary switches and one of them needs to turn the UV LEDs on/off. I don't want to mess with a custom flip/flop circuit to turn the lights on/off from a momentary switch when there exists maintained push-button switches (center right). The first batch of "regular" push-button switches that arrived were 12mm diameter because it was the largest I could find, but after contacting the seller I've now got 16mm ordered which is a better fit for the resin buttons. (It turns out the switch diameter spec is referring to the panel hole size and not the button size.) The switch LEDs run at 12VDC with a resistor already built into the switch body, so these will be powered off the 12VDC supply. Both momentary and maintained switches are ordered, so all 6 buttons will have the same body type.
- The main power switch comes from Auber Instruments and features an illuminated red ring powered by 110VAC (center right), which is another reason for having an AC line into the box so the wall-wart can be switched on/off from the house power.
- The control panel will be attached by magnets at the corners so it's removable if any components need replacing later. For increased convenience, all the panel's wiring will use PCB connectors (lower right) and for mounting the various electronics boards inside the box I also got a set of nylon stand-offs (lower right).
So as you can see, a lot of different components needed to be sorted out for building an appliance-like curing cabinet. A red acrylic lens has been glued into the control panel and first pass of filler putty sanded smooth. Holes for the switches are drilled, but the resin button's holes still need enlarging to 35/64" (and the bit for this has been ordered):
Parts are installed on the door's backside for sliding in a red acrylic panel, but holes for the handle still need to be drilled:
The turntable took some figuring out to learn how to open up without breaking it, but that's been sorted out and now it will be easy replacing the switch and changing the power source:
Next up will be getting the sound effects added to the Adafruit board and checking that all the parts "play nice" with each other. I've already tested everything separately, so I'm not expecting any fires when it's all connected together.
Hmmm, so much for this being a "small" update.