Ok, got a few pics of some things I've been working on
First, Dust washers. I was ok, with my hand painted black plastic washers
I thought I'd posted pics of them, but I guess I never did. Here's a close up.
It's ok, but. meh.
Anyway, I was surfing ebay a few weeks ago for bits and pieced and came across a guy blowing out as set of these antique brass knob back plates at about .25c each, so I figured I certainly could use em for something.
When I got them, and starting looking at em, they looked to me to be almost perfect Dust washers for my cab, and I had 20 to play with.
Pull out the Drill press and dremel to cut the hole bigger and polish it out nicely, and presto, late 1800's arcade dust washer goodness!
I also picked up an old brass Barometer and an industrial ammeter that reads to 2500 amps!
The Barometer is going in, pretty much unchanged except I'm making a new casing for it.
The Ammeter is getting a new casing as well, plus it's being repurposed as an actual working gauge to show the CPU utilization. Essentially. I'm running one of my LED wiz outputs through a trim pot and then directly into the ammeter as if it was a Voltmeter. With the right resistance, it'll read 0-5v across it's entire range. Write a little service to convert CPU usage to an LEDWiz output color, say, 5-10 times per second and presto!
Here's a shot of the Ammeter in progress. It still needs some finishing, plus the brass bolts and copper lugs that'll connect the LEDWiz signal to it (all via cloth covered wired), but that's not quite done yet. The brass lamps in the background are a couple french antiques I picked up on a whim a few days ago. They just looked too cool to pass up, though I'm not sure what I'll do with em yet.
I also chopped into my CP top's formica to fashion up the brass inlay that'll go around the flight stick.
I'd already cut the inlay, so here's a pic of the cut out formica, the inlay, and the brass grommet that will trim it all off.
And finally, I actually wrote about doing something like this way back here
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=88515.msg972839#msg972839But, recently, I stumbled on a site that was blowing out those very car plasma balls for 5$ or so, so I was hooked.
First, I practiced drilling out the holes on some scrap (I'd be drilling into my stained and finished CP, so I knew I'd better get it right or I'd really be kicking myself).
Next, I scrounged around for something to trim it out. I ended up finding a nice assortment of clock bezels, 3 of which, in combination (along with some epoxy), worked perfect.
I polished the bezels up and they looked far better
Then I breathed deep and took the plunge
Finished out the hole
I cut a short piece of 3 inch PVC pipe and glued it to the backside of the hole then stuck industrial velcro to the outside of the tube and to the back of the plasma ball itself. That way, I can easily pop the ball out and replace it if it fails.
End result?
No18's Computational Ganglion
I dimmed the lights a bit for the photo, but believe it or not, that plasma ball is completely visible in full sun.
It's 12v, so I've got a little 12v supply powering it right now, but eventually, I plan on hooking it up via an SSR to my LED wiz so I can make it pulse or change it's activity rate in sync with something going on on the computer proper. It's actually kind of cool. If you drop the voltage, you get fewer of those plasma spikes, at 12v, a LOT of them, at 9, quite a few fewer, at 5, fewer still, at 2v, only a few spikes. I don't THINK there'd be any electrical issues with that.... but till I clear that up, I'm leaving it just powered at 12v, just like it would be in your car.
Well, that's it for right now. Lots of little stuff, lots of pieces in flux, but I least I finished out the plasma ball install. Those brass bezels really make it look like it's actually there for a purpose
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