xiphmont

Because dragonflies aren't bugs. But they are glinty in the sunlight!

There are millions of dragonflies of every size and color around right now, bouncing off the windows all day. This guy just held still while I had my camera.

The tack welds for the bend, hinge, and closure are in. It's time for a test fit.

Hmmm.

Not too bad, not perfect. I started the half-inch-radius bend in the front just a smidge too far up the hatch so there's a 1/16" or so mismatch backward and up.

Also, I had a little trouble with one of the tack welds for the right hinge fitting. It's angled up slightly to put the pin at the right height, so it's not actually sitting flat against the 22ga steel the hatch is made of. The not-quite-a-lap-weld Just Would Not Bridge.

Cranking the amps up to somewhere between Righteous Fury and Raining Hellfire did the trick, but thank goodness for the aluminum chill strip or I'd have punched a dime size hole right through. As it is, it's nothing a grinder can't fix.

I think I'm going with this. It's not like the OEM enclosure is exactly precision manufacture either.

The bending brake has added a third dimension!

Not a perfect job, but not atrocious either.

I didn't notice till after I'd finished that the bend depth adjustment had slipped, so the bends are a little rounder than I'd have liked, but meh. Let's tack weld it and see how well it fits before complaining too hard.

Got out of the shower, reached for a towel and... oh hi there.

Hey Fox, which one is this?

That also reminds me, I need to figure out how all those fireflies got into the house. They're awesome, sure, but they keep freaking me out in the middle of the night.

Given the two laser control panels and the design comparison, what's the actual goal here?

The first goal is functional: I need to add a number of new control and status functions.

Second: I am a vain man, and I want this tool to look a little less hokey. Not entirely, just a little. I mean, I gotta be me.

The biggest addition will be a software control for the laser. I somewhat arbitrarily decided to go with a rebranded Anywells controller from LightObject-- I'll find out later if that was a good idea or not.

The huge, spread-out, not-calibrated-to-anything digital PWM laser current control gets replaced by a thumbwheel implementing a Kelvin ladder. And instead of a 7-segment LED display that simply goes from 0-100, I'll use a good-old analog meter that measures actual milliampres.

While we're at it, a matching analog meter reads cooling water temperature.

Like on the American control panel, the key switch is the only power on-off, and the emergency stop will be a real immediate-stop interlock.

I have an onboard air assist, so that needs a switch too, along with a lighting switch and two switched laser pointers, one a centering beam and another for focus.

And, why not steal the tube runtime meter from the nifty panel as well? :-)

Last of all, arrange it in a more 'American' style: functions grouped together, consistent labeling, and no angry color salad. And just one or two inside jokes, because the tool is still a bit hokey.

For contrast with the Chinese control panel posted earlier, here's a mid-80's control panel for an American-made laser supply.

It's about the same size, and roughly comparable, though there's more diagnostic functionality here than on the laser cutter.

Although I do think it's better overall, the big difference is really the aesthetic design. This is an unabashedly '80s American instrument panel. It fills an American geek with warm fuzzies.

BTW, thanks for the panel Taylor! :-) And thanks to me partner Fox for bringing it home for me.

I'm about to get an official press release together, but in the meantime, I'm pleased to announce we've released Opus 1.2!

Quoting Jean-Marc Valin, the Opus lead developer:

Opus gets another major upgrade with the release of version 1.2. This release brings quality improvements to both speech and music, while remaining fully compatible with RFC 6716. There are also optimizations, new options, as well as many bug fixes. This Opus 1.2 demo describes a few of the upgrades that users and implementers will care about the most. You can download the code from the Opus website.

It tries so hard to look like an Olympus SZ series, but no.... not quite.

It's not actually terrible, it's fairly decent. But it's not the real thing either.

The ThinkPad LED backlight kits consist of two major pieces; an LED strip and an LED driver. The driver boards are designed to fit onto existing CCFL inverter boards after removing the CCFL step-up coil.

For good measure, I pull off the CCFL driver chip as well. Simply disabling it doesn't keep it from drawing a [very small] amount of current.

Removing the driver chip also opens up additional possibilities for reusing traces on the existing PCB. I don't like running long wires across the width of the inverter when hooking up the LED driver board. They'd need to be glued down to avoid accidental snagging, and that's a complication I don't need.

Instead, I re-route power, ground and the ENA and DIM signals through the original board, using solder bridges and 0-ohm bridge resistors where possible. On most boards, one or two jumpers are still needed, though a few boards I can get away without using any.

This work is most definitely all done under the microscope.

That also reminds me-- I need to get my library of reference modification pictures up somewhere.

The LED strips are the big reason I still pick-and-place everything by hand. My tolerances here are just a few mils, and I've machined myself steel-and-aluminum templates to make the placement easier.

The idea is actually to place with looser tolerances, dropping the LEDs into the trough where the strip is clamped the check spacing and orientation with the microscope before reflow.

During reflow I tighten the guides on the jig and level the LEDs using a little precision squeegee I made out of aluminum and high-temp silicone.

Once the strip cools, I can pull it out of the jig, remove excess solder beads under the microscope, check for obvious defects, test on a power supply, and wash down with flux remover. Then it's on to applying the teflon layer, soldering pigtails, an up-to-temperature burn-in and flex test, and finally packaging.