The dust is starting to clear but man, I still have more stuff to bring in and already, my man-cave is packed. Of course I can get some shelving mounted near to the ceiling but, finding suitable load bearing wood is not easy.
Anyway, I now have a small working table and, I was able to sit down and have another look at the PCB design. It is giving me problems where during every auto-routing process, the same vias needs to be re-routed. The board revision is already in v004C.
Revision 004C
In this version, I have decided to start all over again, starting with the four Cyclotron LEDs. At least two of them did not line up during a test-fit. Because they need to match the position of the Cyclotron windows, the correct measurement for the four LEDs comes first. After that, the whole circuit will be built around them. I realised this error when I was using Sketchup. All through the years, I was OK with the measurement since they did not extend to beyond any decimals. But for this 1/6th scale, the mistake as much as 10mm can make a huge difference.
Then changed the precision to 0.00mm instead of 0mm.
v004B vs v004C
Apart from the change of LED position and IC package, the additional change would be the physical layout of the circuit board. Right now, I have cut a small chunk away but maybe I’ll put it back again since in hindsight, it might be needed for support when I tread and solder the 9 wires to the PCB.
The Cyclotron Windows
Earlier on, I have changed the four Cyclotron resistors from SMD into the 1/4W version. The reason was because with the SketchUp measurement error, I though the Cyclotron window was only 4mm in diameter so a normal 3mm LED would suffice. Unfortunately, once I have the measurement adjusted, it turned out to be 4.42mm. Luckily, I was able to search for some 4mm LEDs which could more or less help. This was because in terms of through-hole LED sizes, they only come with 3mm or 5mm in diameter. So, a 4mm to suddenly exist was something short of a miracle.
But we’re not out of the woods yet. The 4mm LED is higher than a 3mm by about 0.8mm at 6mm. Let’s work backwards so you can see my problem. The depth of the Cyclotron windows is about 3.0mm. The problem now is how to shave off another 3mm or so. By changing to a 1/4W through-hole resistor which has a average diameter of 2.5mm, I now have eliminated 5.5mm in total, leaving 0.5mm. Once It arrives, I will do another round of measuring and if needs be, I will have to solder the resistor at least 1mm off the PCB.
Where to get what:
The 1/6th Proton Pack from TheNewHobbyist as used by Adam Savage
The Remixed Version of the above for Lighting by biho1
The simplified GB Wand by roadie3rd (but needs scaling to 8cm and has extended barrel)
