The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Vacuum Tube LEDs: Improved Sockets

    All the sockets now sport channels in the bottom to capture the braid to the plate cap (whether or not the tube has a plate cap) and the wiring from the Arduino:

    Vacuum Tube Lights - Octal Socket - solid model
    Vacuum Tube Lights – Octal Socket – solid model

    The Slic3r preview shows the detail a bit better:

    Vaccum Tube Lights - Octal Socket - Slic3r preview
    Vaccum Tube Lights – Octal Socket – Slic3r preview

    The boss around the pins is now 25 mm OD and snaps neatly into the unpunched hub hole of a hard drive platter:

    0D3 Octal - 25 mm socket OD in platter
    0D3 Octal – 25 mm socket OD in platter

    I moved the mounting holes to 42 mm OC to give the button heads on those screws a bit more clearance from the base.

    Moving the knockoff Neopixel up to the top of the pipe leading to the tube base dramatically increases the amount of light going into the tube envelope:

    0D3 Octal - 25 mm socket - raised LED
    0D3 Octal – 25 mm socket – raised LED

    You can just barely see a strip of foam tape holding the LED PCB (loosely) into the too-large hole.

    The OpenSCAD source code also produces the improved base clamp; to get a socket, just set Layout = "Socket" and away you go. It doesn’t yet have the reduced-diameter hole down the middle; that’s in the nature of fine tuning.