{"id":4608,"date":"2014-11-28T16:31:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-28T22:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2014-11-28T16:40:31","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T22:40:31","slug":"metal-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=4608","title":{"rendered":"Metal work"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Today’s run: nothing]<\/p>\n

A few years ago I had made an L\/C meter\u00a0 (Inductance\/Capacitance… don’t ask me why they use ‘L’ for inductance) from a plan on the internet<\/a> by VK3BHR.\u00a0 The thing works pretty well when I have\u00a0 a fresh 9 volt battery in it.\u00a0 I am running the LCD backlight, and it drains a battery pretty fast.\u00a0 But I’ve been living with that for a few years.<\/p>\n

I had mounted it in a plastic box that I picked up at a ham fest.\u00a0 I don’t really like the box, particularly since I have to open it up frequently to put in a new battery.\u00a0 Having recently finished a DDS-VFO and gotten it boxed up nicely, I’m thinking I will do the same with the L\/C meter.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the line I have accumulated 2-3 of these small size aluminum chassis boxes.\u00a0 The one I used on the DDS-VFO is 4″ x 6″ x 1-1\/2″.\u00a0 This one I’m looking at for the L\/C meter is slightly larger: 5″ x 7″ x 2″.<\/p>\n

I use the box as the case and I then have to make a front cover.\u00a0 I’m going to repeat the process that I used on the DDS-VFO.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20141128_160559_297\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have a top-cover piece from an old HP frequency counter.\u00a0 It is a soft aluminum with some sort of textured vinyl coating on it.\u00a0 On the metal side, I layed out the size I needed by putting the box down and tracing around it with a sharp steel scratch awl.\u00a0 I then used these yellow-handled snips.\u00a0 Leaving about half an inch outside of my line, I cut two slices about half an inch apart.\u00a0 doing that I could alternate sides for each snip and then cut out a slice of aluminum.\u00a0 I made a half inch wide cut around the 3 sides\u00a0 (for one side I used the edge of the piece).<\/p>\n

After that was cut out I then could use the snips again and carefully slice off most of the fat margin I had left.\u00a0 By taking just a quarter inch or so at a time I could get it to curl away and not bend up the main piece which I wanted to remain flat.<\/p>\n

Then I was down to about an eighth of an inch.\u00a0 I used a rasp to take that down to the marked line and then touched it up just a bit with the file.\u00a0 I also filed a couple of strokes on each flat side to ease the edge a bit and to peel back the vinyl just a touch.\u00a0 I did that procedure on all three of the sides I had marked.\u00a0 Now I have a nice green vinyl covered piece which fits nicely over my box.<\/p>\n

I’ll have to lay out the position for my little LCD screen and a couple of switches, making sure to leave enough room around the margin for the lip of the box, about 3\/8ths of an inch.<\/p>\n

You can see the end result in my previously posted picture of the DDS-VFO
\n\"IMG_20141009_205327_600\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Today’s run: nothing] A few years ago I had made an L\/C meter\u00a0 (Inductance\/Capacitance… don’t ask me why they use ‘L’ for inductance) from a plan on the internet by VK3BHR.\u00a0 The thing works pretty well when I have\u00a0 a fresh 9 volt battery in it.\u00a0 I am running the LCD backlight, and it drains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4608"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4613,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4608\/revisions\/4613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}