The UV curing box main circuit board is trimmed and cleaned:
UVbox20.JPG


Next it takes a short bath in liquid tin:
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Now it's shiny silver instead of shiny copper:
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The next mask is prepared for something I've always wanted to try out:
UVbox23.JPG


The mask image looks distorted at the edges but that's just due to the camera angle. During exposure it will be pressed against the board and UV light will be more direct than a photography aperture. That will have to wait until the weekend when I'm home during the daytime.
 
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UV curable solder mask epoxy:
UVbox24.JPG


I am not impressed with the results:
UVbox25.JPG


Getting a consistent thickness was difficult, it's very messy stuff, due to being liquid it seeped into all the holes which now need to be opened back up, and I don't know if I simply exposed it for too long or what (no instructions came with the product), but several of the solder pads didn't open up after cleaning so now I get to carefully scrape away epoxy from the pads. I was going to print labels on the board's components side, just for fun to see how it would turn out, but based on the copper side results I've changed my mind about that. I don't really need labels anyway. It was my first time trying something like this, and the next time I make a board I'm going to try a different approach using dry film instead.
 
UVbox27.JPG

UVbox28.JPG


What, you say it looks homemade? Well that's because it is homemade, complete with the requisite quantity of cat hair. Can't test it for functionality until the wiring harness is assembled, and honestly I'm going to focus now on the cabinet shell instead for hopefully getting it primed and painted before the weather gets too cold.
 
Does anybody have a can of Krylon 8813 Gloss Sky Blue they'd be willing to part with? It's a discontinued color and the last one for me to source. Can't find it for sale anywhere!
I have acquired 6 cans of the vintage Krylon 8813 Gloss Sky Blue, so now I can compare it against Peekable Blue. All 8 vintage paint colors for the desktop rocker switches are now here! :D

The UV curing box shell is nearly all assembled and I'm hoping to start priming and sanding this weekend, but it's started raining here today.
 
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Alright, some significant progress made today. First on the agenda was installing the oversized keyboard tray. You'd think Maverick would have had this all worked out, since I bought the desk and keyboard tray at the same time - obviously I intended to use the larger tray in place of the standard one. But my cardboard template for the bracket locations revealed a big problem:
View attachment 1413383

In the tray's optimal location one of the desk's metal brackets for connecting the right side interferes with one of the tray's brackets. Dang it. Since there was no way I was drilling two holes through 1/8" hardened steel the only workable solution was push the tray back:
View attachment 1413390

The bad news about this is now the tray doesn't extend as far as it's meant to:
View attachment 1413391

For what this desk cost, the expectations were a lot higher than the shoddy manufacturing I'm seeing. Luckily my ergo-keyboard is large enough that I can just pull it back while working, but really - at $3,500 I shouldn't have to be doing that.
View attachment 1413392

After another seemingly daily trip to a home-improvement store getting replacement drawer sliders for another customization, I finally got all the pieces assembled from the initial furniture delivery and after 3 months of working from the kitchen table I get to start working from my new desk tomorrow:
View attachment 1413393

And now a brief up-close "tour" beginning with how most of today was spent, left-side customizations:
View attachment 1413397
Up top is an office drawer so I don't need to keep all my pens, stapler, USB drives, etc on the desk anymore. Under that is a roll-out paper shelf for utilizing the space between the top drawer and laser printer, which was a good use of the standard keyboard tray that came with the desk (but needed its width trimmed 1/8" to fit the opening). At the bottom is a roll-out printer shelf, handy for accessing a flatbed scanner on top of the machine. And yes, all the work was done with my typical attention to detail:
View attachment 1413399

Here's why I wanted an oversized keyboard tray (the TRON mousepad probably isn't Starfleet regulation):
View attachment 1413400

Lastly, hidden under the desk beside the right-side drawers is a PC shelf:
View attachment 1413401

Although my job remote-work system uses an HP notebook and I use a MacBook Pro for anything "serious", an ancient 32-bit Windoze PC is needed for interfacing with my Alps printer, so this shelf provides a nice out-of-the-way place for that computer.

The next few days will be mostly just "moving in" work (populating the cabinets and drawers) and finishing the gray transformation of the long shelf going above the closet doors. I'm also ready to start working out the desk intercom location and assigning functions to the 8 rocker switches. Each switch will be functional, such as activating the monitors (I mean, viewscreens...), the old PC (so I don't need to reach under the desk), a KVM switch (for the two PC's to share the same keyboard, mouse, and monitors), hutch lighting, colored accent lighting in the room, etc.
$3,500?!!? Jeebus
 
$3,500?!!? Jeebus
Have you priced office furniture? I'm not talking about the cheap Walmart plastic-coated MDF stuff, I mean the good stuff. That price includes not only the desk, but also the filing drawers, roll-out printer shelf, over-sized keyboard tray, PC tower shelf, utility drawer, overhead hutch with tackboard, customized add-ons they made for me, and freight cost. Total cost was actually significantly lower than others I looked at, and few were available in the color scheme I wanted. Add to that the customizations they were happy to work with me on and overall I'm happy with the purchase. I've had that cheap furniture all my life (1/2" particle-board desktop) and this is way better - 1" solid wood with waterproof thermally-fused melamine surfaces.

Yesterday I was successful at participating in the pre-launch sale price for an Elegoo Jupiter 3D printer.

I've also been on the wait list a couple months for another 1:1 scale makeover project coming up. Here is a hint:
EmblemPrototype.png
 
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I don't think any priming is going to get done this weekend despite the nice weather outside - JB Weld takes a long time to cure and I want the magnets for attaching the control panel glued before painting. (Vinyl discs will mask the magnet surfaces during painting.) All the wood assembly is now done, along with the obvious filling and sanding needed. If the weather holds up I may be able to prime during the week after work.

UVbox29.JPG


10-pound weights are keeping the ends held down, and thin cellophane plastic is between the magnets (so they don't get JB Weld'ed together). There was a very slight bow to the 1/4" MDF after drilling the switch holes, so it's been misted with water and hopefully will end up holding this flat shape after drying. All electronics installation and speaker holes are pre-drilled, so the next time you see this it should be primer-gray.
 
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I tested two glues for attaching the resin domes to the switch covers.

UVbox31.JPG


Clear Gorilla Glue does not bond to polycarbonate. A two-part epoxy from Hobby Lobby bonds extremely well (I cannot separate the parts using my bare hands) but will take some care to not have air bubbles in the mix. So now I can start prepping the buttons while waiting for glazing putty to cure between sanding sessions on the cabinet.
 
Bondo and dry-sanding with 180 before the next primer coat, and proof it was once a mess in case it turns out looking halfway decent when finished.

UVbox32.JPG


Second primer coat is a product I haven't used before, a sealer primer which I thought might be good since this is made of wood.

UVbox33.JPG


Next it will get wet-sanded with 320 before either another primer coat or the first color coat.
 
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Well, much seems to be on hold at the moment. Don't have the painted closet doors back yet, don't have the next furniture delivery, and don't have any volunteers to help with the wall electronics, but I do finally have all 3 pieces of glass (been waiting since November) so it's now time for an analysis and hopefully some feedback.

I've got 3 different glass types:
A = Concave 7/8" Clear Reed (which is what's professed to be the "correct" reed spacing by Trek "experts")
B = Concave 1" Clear Reed (which in reality is not quite 1")
C = Convex 1" Krystal Textured Flutex (which is the only reeded glass having a texture)
View attachment 1415739

Each piece is oversized by 1" (in hindsight it should have been only 1/2"), and I think the 7/8" reed can be eliminated because it simply has too many "bars" on the glass (space between the reeds). There are 17 bars on the glass (resulting in 16 inside the frame), but screenshots clearly show 12~14 bars with 12 being the most prevalent:
View attachment 1415749
View attachment 1415750
View attachment 1415748

Having selected 6"x12" for my panel's inside dimensions and being there are 12 visible bars on the glass, it makes sense that this would be 1" reeded glass. I've searched and searched, and the largest reed pattern available is 1" but not many places stock it, and even fewer offer shipping or retail sales. Glass B is 1" reed but the spacing is not 1", more like 13/16" resulting in 15 bars (which would yield 14 inside the frame):
View attachment 1415754

Glass C has 13 bars, being the closest to the target 1" spacing since there would be 12 bars inside the frame:
View attachment 1415755

With A eliminated, comparing B and C they each have pros and cons. B is a thinner glass (5/16") and thus weighs significantly less than the much thicker C (3/8" and heavy!), but visually C looks more like what I'm seeing in many screenshots like the ones above.
View attachment 1415740
View attachment 1415742
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Next I did a "phaser test" to see which of the two glasses looks more like "The Conscience of the King" scene:View attachment 1415751
View attachment 1415744
View attachment 1415745

In this experiment B clearly (no pun) wins, confirming the reeds should be concave and not convex. Keep in mind, a red gel filter isn't behind the glass yet which will diffuse it.

Thus, comparing the overall look (and weight, which is important considering how it's to be hung on the wall) B has characteristics in its favor, and in some regards C looks better (despite it weighing like a brick). I'm favoring glass B. Opinions?
B hands down.
 
The sealer primer was wet-sanded with 400 and then a 3rd primer coat of the high-build was put on. This was wet-sanded with 600 and now the first color coat is on. I chose Krylon Pewter Gray for the color.

UVbox34.JPG


It looks a bit splotchy in the photo because of shadows cast by overhead trees and the paint not being completely dried yet. I will need to cover the painting area with clean plastic for the final color coat to keep crud from being kicked up into the paint. This coat will be wet-sanded with 600 before a final (hopefully) top coat.

And the two-part epoxy also did not hold to the polycarbonate button caps (besides also yellowing after a week), so next I'm going to try Loctite Plastic Bonding System which I have a lot of leftover from another project.
 
The day job has been very busy lately, overreaching into evenings and weekends resulting in less Me Time. The weather has also turned less-than-ideal for painting, so that's been moved into the garage for getting this thing done (because it's already taken more time to complete than it should have). Painting continues with just the door and buttons face remaining for UV-protecting clear top coats. (Not because it's a UV curing box, haha, but to help against the color fading over time from sunlight through the window, and it helps protect the color coats. Plus, the gray is a gloss finish and that just doesn't look right, so the clear coat is a satin finish.)

Regarding the resin buttons (a PITA some plastics are to work with - the epoxy ended up not adhering permanently either), I've found an adhesive that permanently bonds the resin domes to the polycarbonate switch covers:
UVbox35.JPG


There is no separating the two without busting one of them. The bad news is, the bond is instantaneous, so each dome will need to be positioned EXACTLY centered on its cap with the first go - there are no re-do's. (Out of the 150 resin buttons I received, it was quite the challenge finding 6 without casting defects, roughly the same height, in the colors that I want. Poor product quality. So there are no spare domes if one of them goes awry.)

Now it's time to stop procrastinating on cutting the LED mounting panels.
 
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Really starting to hate Krylon paint. Krylon primer, Krylon gray color, Krylon clear coat, proper drying time, prep and cleaning, ambient temperature/humidity, etc....yet this crap still keeps happening, setting me back because it now gets sanded down yet again:

UVbox36.JPG


#%&$!!!!!!!
 
Krylon now officially S U C K S. I've lost count now the number of times this part has been sanded down, re-cleaned, re-painted (which looks good, just too glossy), and then a clear satin coat goes all to hell, and it's the same damned paint brand. Unbelievable.

UVbox37.JPG


I wet-sand with 1500-grit between the color coat and the clear coat to remove all the surface defects from the paint surface, wash, and let air dry for a full day before clear coat, and this is happening every time. Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it.
 
I wet-sand with 1500-grit between the color coat and the clear coat to remove all the surface defects from the paint surface, wash, and let air dry for a full day before clear coat, and this is happening every time. Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it.

Okay, it *IS* wood, right? Is there perhaps (just spitballing) something unusual about the wood, or conditions where it is in?

If the wood has moisture, and is anywhere in the sun, the wood could be expanding and contracting in some way where it is destroying the paint.

All the cracking is in IDENTICAL areas each time. [from your pictures] If it was purely from poor paint, the cracking would be more likely to be random. Always being in the same spot implies that it is the material itself that is somehow affecting the paint.
 

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