Home Built Science Stuff

[Lianachan]

Just wondering if any of you enterprising chaps have ever had a go at trying to Build Your Own Science?

There are a few things I've been wanting to try over the years, but have never managed quite to get off my arse and start up. I've particularly been wanting to try things like:

A Northern Lights Detector
A Solargraph

[Enzo]

Not in decades now.

I remember one I never quite pulled off as a kid. Lightning discharges can produce low frequency radio signals called Whistlers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler_(radio)

Like 50 years ago there was a project for a simple receiver for these. It involved draping coils of wire on a door in your home, like a closet door. Moving the door aimed it.

[tubeswell]

If you like mad science, I did a stand-alone 'pitching-shifting vibrato' unit with 5 dual triodes last year FWIW

Uses an AO47 Saturable Reactor unit from a Hammond organ vibrato unit, and 2 x 12AU7, 2 x 12AX7 and 1 x 12DW7.

(More knobs = more for confucius to ponder about)

[Lance]

I love the smell of rosin core solder in the morning...

[Heid the Ba]

That is a sweet looking doohickey. :D

[Enzo]

Yep, our boy Tubeswell has come a long way.



I recall from the 1950s, as a kid my dad signed me up for some sort of science kit subscription. Once a month of at least several times a year, I got some sort of science kit in the mail. Some were advanced. I had an "analog computer" kit.. Basically a few variable resistors (potentiometers) some batteries, and a little current/voltage meter. The experiments involved setting up some circuits or other and dialing the controls caused some reaction in the circuit which showed on the meter. There were some printed scales you could put around the controls and you set the controls to numbers, whwich teh circuit would electronically multiply or add or something. It did calculations. Really it was an electronic analog of a slide rule, in retrospect.

From that same series was this thing you built - a computer that played tic tac toe. There were these discs of pressed-board with hole patters. We installed little electrical contact bards in a pattern, then the disc mounted over another contact pattern on the base of the project. Turning the discs caused contacts to complete circuits. The wiring was such that you dialed in a "move" and it reacted with a response. It worked.


ROund about 1954, my dad got me a little crystal radio kit for Xmas. I built the thing. It was a square of pressboard with a paper template on it. We screwed down Fahnestock clips into which the few parts were mounted. The whole thing went into a cardboard box printed to look like a radio. I built it, and damned if it didn't work. That was fascinating. I got into reconfiguring it, seeing what I could leave out, and generally mucking with it. I have been involved in electronics ever since.

Fahnestock clips:
http://www.micromark.com/fahnestock-cli ... ,8941.html

[Lance]

I haven't seen those clips in years...

Edited: Typo

[Мастер]

I love the smell of rosin core solder in the morning...

Electrolysis Now

(I know it's not electrolysis, but I can't come up with anything else.)

[tubeswell]

This guys' thing is cool too.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200601726239090

[Enzo]

It won't let me look.

[tubeswell]

Must need a FB profile dammit. Its about video story about a guy who hand makes a miniature V12 engine (like that guy who handmade his own electron valves, but cool in a different way).

[Lianachan]

If you like mad science, I did a stand-alone 'pitching-shifting vibrato' unit with 5 dual triodes last year FWIW

Uses an AO47 Saturable Reactor unit from a Hammond organ vibrato unit, and 2 x 12AU7, 2 x 12AX7 and 1 x 12DW7.

(More knobs = more for confucius to ponder about)

That's extremely cool. Did you make the wooden case, too?

[tubeswell]

Yep. The front of the cab is a recycled drawer end from a piece of scandinavian furniture from a local tip.

[Enzo]

That really is nice looking work inside too.


Now if only there was a backlit logo.....

[Lianachan]

I doff my cap to thee, tubeswell. In fact, I'm probably going to have to go out and buy more caps and doff those too. Very nice work indeed.

[Arneb]

Fully agree. I bow my head in awe at your abilities

[Blue Monster 65]

Sound files, please Tubes!

[tubeswell]

I had an .mp3 file to upload but it was 2.4Mb and so alas it cannot be done