Last day of work this week due to our impending trip to PA.
Cleaned up a couple of parts grown overnight. I wanted to do another engine block, but I had forgotten how I oriented it on the platen and did it upside down from the most successful ways and it lost connection to the platen near the end so one corner didn't grow properly. But I grew a perfect back end which is really what I was looking for. I also grew the rest of the engine parts. I'm striving to make a perfect one. It's not easy since I then to break stuff during the cleanup process.
I found a color that looks similar to that which EMD used on many of their power plants… kind of a light gray green. Tamiya has a color called "Sky" that could work. This was a reject engine that I glued together. Notice the warped exhaust muffler. I'm going to do a plain block with the access ports open and open cylinder slots. I might be cool to have it in back lot.
I finished painting the radial drill and the surface grinder. I added three separately grown hand wheels to the surface grinder and one to the radial drill.
I added a little wash to the drill press base.
In this shot I haven't painted the hand wheels yet. I did that tonight while waiting for some other parts to get finished. I printed the first parts of the wheel lathe: the pinion-geared cross-shaft.
Here it is sitting in the machine shop. I keep forgetting to paint that reinforcing strip in the corner...
And then I started installing all the outdoor lighting. Of course I have one longer than the others for the front three. I set them on the roof so the heads all seem to lie at the same level. I started with the machine shop light. I made a roof prop for the machine shop roof so I could hold it open while working. I also permanently fastened the gutter to the building. I thought, for the machine power I would just solder the + and - leads to the copper foil after the CL2N3 driver thinking that the entire circuit would be at LED current-limited value. I drilled a 17/64" hole for the 1/4" base post. I didn't want a press fit letting the urethane glue to hold it in place. I soldered the wires, turned on the track power, the light lit brightly for a moment and then "POOF!", burned out! I'm not sure why that happened. Unless there was something about putting it in parallel with the series LED circuit. I was able to pull the old LED and wiring out of the light assembly, make up a new one and thread it back through. That surprised me!
This time I didn't take any chances and put its own LED driver in series with the LED and then soldered it to the existing foil path, and here's the result.
It's plenty light and the three at the front will do just fine.
Here are the three in front and you can just see the side light drying with a pair of cutters resting on the base to keep it flat down while the glue dries.
Here they are hanging over the front. I didn't want to do any wiring until the glue fully cured. That will be next week. I'm also starting to work on the Sikorsky restoration. I don't want to do that project when the weather turns colder. Did I mention that they're asking me to strip the paint and then leave the model in its native bronze. That makes it easier in one regard; not having to paint it, but makes my work harder since the soldering has to be impeccable.
I'll be back in the shop on Wednesday.
