I filled and sanded the UHR walls. I then clamped the floor in place and glued it with thin CA, run as a bead on the inside on a surface pre-treated with accelerator. My work table is a piece that I bought from IKEA in Venlo, the Netherlands, when we lived in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1999 to 2002. I put on a cork tile surface. On top of that is a piece of Corian that is the sink space slug removed from the counter top in our current home. Corian is a great work surface. It’s dead flat, smooth, and impervious to every solvent we use. I normally then cover it with a cutting matt, but when I want to align something for gluing I work directly on the Corian… like I did today when I wanted the bottom to be fully flush with all four sides before gluing.
I also final fit the roof and ring support. It needed some triming for clearance of one of the legs so it would center properly. I marked the position for the lighting and installed them via the copper tape method. One girder was a little long and needed some light sanding.
Lighting Install:
This image shows the tape arrangement with the gaps cut for the SMLEDs. The distance from the anode and cathode terminals is just about a millimeter so you can have to very precise in setting the LED in place for soldering.
I test the LEDs before soldering, after soldering each LED and then ther entire circuit. This was the circuit test. After the test I put some Tamiya masking tape tabs on each in prep for paint.
I put the lid on the box and looked at the light produced. Un-painted, the light leaks through the semi-translucent resin walls. There will be two coats of paint on inside and outside: white primer and gloss white inside and gray primer and haze gray on the outside. I don’t think the light will leak then.
This is another series circuit with three LEDs so the +/- string daisy chains to the starting point. I will combine all the black leads back to the circuit board, and all the red leads will have their own CL2N3 on the board to drive them. That cuts down the absolute number of leads that has to go below. The entire circuit is operating at 20 milliamps so current loading is not a problem. I could have run the entire circut with copper tape, but the opennings through each girder would meant the tape be folded to get through and I wasn’t going to attempt that.
To comlete the gun house for paint I decided to put the open doors back on. This time with wire reinforcement. I used a very fine, 0.012" carbide. Believe it or not, I didn’t break this one at all. I used 0.012 brass wire for the small cartridge discharge door, but it was too flexible. I changed to guitar string of the same gauge for the big door. I used Xuron hard wire cutters for the music wire. I have a 40 year old pair of Channellock long nose pliers with a wire cutter in the handle end to cut hardened wire and it doesn’t do anything to them. When I use other cutters like Xuron regular cutters or any Chinese cutters, they get a semi-circular divots in the cutting edges and it ruins them.
This images shows the holes in the wall side. The holes are so small that I can’t really see them without the Opti-visor.
The wired doors are much stronger. I also broke and fixed at least three ladder rungs and there’s still a few more to do. The problem is every time I grab it or put it down on the bench, I’m hitting them. I may reprint more and not post-harden them quite so much so they aren’t quite so britte.
I wanted to test fit the GH on the frame and got some surprises. First I had to measure and cut off the telescope ends so I could slip the GH down over the lower part. I test fit the cutoff ends into the blisters on the GH side and they were too long and needed a little more trim to bring them flush with the inside wall. This is necessary so when assembled both parts look like they’re contiguous.
That wasn’t surprising since I could see on my drawings that the telescopes would prevent assembly and that they seemed too long. The surprise came when the frame impinged on the floor mount rib at the bottom. I either had to shorten the ribs or cut relief into the wall. I chose the latter, but this was delicated since I had to hold it while using the router. One slip and I would have been in a world of hurt. Even though I could reprint a new back wall, it was completely attached to the side walls, and filled. I was able to successfully make the cuts. There is a some trimming needed on the front piece where the corner angles are in the way, but that’s not as difficult as doing the rear wall.
While a bit dark, you can see the interference. I’m not sure why I didn’t detect this during the design phase and draw the reliefs in. It would have been much more precise.
I took a picture with the work completed so far perched on the UHR. As I noted, there’s still some work that needs to be done. Right now the floor seems to want to sit below the gun house walls. I think it’s supposed to fit inside them.
We’ll get there.
All your primed parts look very nice.
