Sunday, May 8, 2016

Flux Suckerz Lite

I received my Carbon Filter material, and have been making filters for the exhaust side of the Flux Suckerz.  I've tried a double filter also.  One is good, two is a little too much back pressure for the low power fans, but the new fans seem to push through two filters fine.  Plus I am trying a new feature.  I have put various LEDs on the Flux Suckerz before, but these new ones illuminate the inside of the fan.  Its neat, check it out...
Notice you can't see much light through the Carbon Filter.  The two fans on the left have the filter installed, and the fan on the right doesn't.  One of my tasks is to cut the rest of the filter material into replacements.

Crawler Tuning

I found the eccentricity in the Motor Drive Pulley.  I had made an assumption that the set screws in the pulley were too short to engage the notch on the gear motor's drive shaft.  I pulled the set screw out, and measured it against the gear motor's shaft notch.  Turns out that it is long enough to engage the notch, and had a few threads left in the set screw hole.  This lets the outside radius of the shaft hold the pulley by its bore, eliminating the need for the little piece I made to fill the notch.  Now the drive train runs relatively smoothly, and with a load it is more stable.
Iz also wiring the brainz.  Wiring is always kind of a mess, and I start with leftover pieces of other projects from my multitudinous scrap buckets.    There was a time where I wired everything through a terminal block.  Now I am more PCB-centric, but still use those old phenolic blocks every once in a while.
Once you get the wires under control it starts looking better.  I have adapted these Brainz from another project so I will have to do some rework to make it compatible with what I am doing now.  I've got a better potentiometer for the speed control, so the green pot on the board is going.  Then I need to rewire the ICSP connector.  I've been using a PICKit3 lately, and the ICSP connector needs to conform to the pinout on the PICKit3.  Before I was using PWM as a signal to control a motor.  This time I want to modulate power.  So, I need to replace the bipolar 2n2222 transistor with a power MOSFET, probably a IRFZ44.
 Then I need to add connectivity to the wireless module.  We picked Bluetooth, so there is one interface.  Then there is the sensor which is another serial peripheral type device.  There is also another structural piece, a place to mount the sensor.  I'm thinking about making a bent piece with thin (0.032") Aluminum, still musing tho...

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Flux Suckerz (TM)...

This is my latest adventure into Solder Smoke Suckers, Flux Suckerz (TM)...  I've got a fleet of Flux Suckerz (TM)... in manufacturing, while developing the technology.  I get feedback from people who solder all day long, every day.  They are testing them well too, and I get good feedback.  I've got one operator that even managed to break one by accidentally jabbing something into it.  Here are the latest Flux Suckerz (TM)...
I had some complaints about lack of power, which I had sacrificed for low noise.  OK, this time I bent it the other direction, Mo Power.  Three times more powerful.  They still have the switched potentiometer, so you can dial them down.  The totally minimized design on the right is the current one.  The one with the black box was an earlier revision.  Here is a look at the evolution of Flux Suckerz (TM)...