8 Mar 2013
Control Panel Continued
I am sure there must be a better way to do this...
I have ended up drilling more than 120 holes in the aluminium and the paper - and they have to line up!!
Here is the 1.5mm Aluminium and the paper with their holes in place...
In the unlikely event that you are a materials scientist looking for a material that will resist all attempts to glue it, then I strongly suggest the combination of waterproof paper and aluminium, they have resisted every attempt to glue them together - including, copydex, superglue, pva (all presumably fail because od the lack of air getting to the glue) - more surprising is that araldite failed as well - as this shouldn't need air having its own chemical fixer.
Anyway I have decided that the large number of switches and leds can be used to hold the paper in place. This does mean that I will need to use LED holders rather than just glue the LEDs into the bare holes - LED holders are a bit fiddly and are hard to get just right in terms of hole diameter - either too sloppy or require an industrial press to get the things in.
Anyway here is a test fit with some switches...
The final piece of the jigsaw is the box, which has two DTM30 boards from CML electronics. To make the connections easier - I have mounted a passive LocoHub4 board that I made up from a blank PCB provided by Huib Maaskant in the Nethernlands. This then connects to each DTM leaving two external facing ports.
I have made the box out of thin ply, a mistake I think and I am not happy with it for various reasons. I have used two M5 rivnuts mounted in aluminium offcuts and glued onto wooden holders to give me something to screw two roundhead M5 bolts into to secure the front panel.
