guzziguy

Modern Marvels It's the Distilleries episode.

Finger sandwiches.

Happy Birthday :prettyprincess:

I Married a Witch

Congratulations! You got there on one of the three days a year it doesn't rain. It looks like you had a good time.

Have you tried milspec LEDs? You can probably get some from a local amp manufacturer.

You mean that it smells dank and musty? What is this magic flux?

A slider is an icon that allows a user to reposition what is displayed. They only show up when a picture, text, etc. is too wide or tall to entirely fit on a screen. For example, there is almost certainly a slider on the right side of your browser while you peruse HC. Normally, an application allows the browser to provide the slider. That's because a browser does it better than an application inside the browser. Unfortunately, the people who wrote vBulletin must have decided that they can do it better than the browser as the default setting seems to be for vBulletin to provide them when pictures are too large to display. More unfortunately, those people are wrong. When you have a series of pictures, to scroll back and forth you have to use the browser slider to go lower in the message, use the vBulletin slider to reposition the picture that you can no longer see and then use the browser slider to go back to the pictures. It's a real PITA. The good news is that there seems to be a way to turn this "feature" off. Someone did it after the last update. I sure hope that person or someone else can do it again. Edit: I just saw Salty's post. I have a 23" monitor and it's not near large enough. I doubt that there is a monitor large enough to handle some of the posts in the photography thread. Of course, having vBulletin do vertical scrolling isn't as painful as having it do horizontal scrolling.

I think that I'd like to get some flux to make things like tinning wires (in a solder pot) and soldering to connectors, etc. more easy. So could you please answer the following questions: 1. Do you use flux? 2. If so, in what form factor? Paste? Pen? Other? Thanks for putting up with my total DIY ignorance and for helping me out.

They're baaa-aack. I'm guessing that somebody recently updated the forum software. Could someone please get rid of the sliders again? I'd be eternally grateful, or until the sliders reappear, whichever comes first.

I'll probably come up for the meet. Would anybody be able to put up a fellow HC'er for a night or maybe two? The room would have to be soundproofed as I'm a terrific snorer. Otherwise I'll find an inexpensive motel nearby.

x2. Great job, Nate.

Mine arrived today. Thanks Justin.

Is there any other kind? Congrats on the LCD-2s. Enjoy them.

That makes sense.

Happy Belated Birthday, Wayne. :prettyprincess: I hope that you had a great one.

Nevermind. I looked again at the cord in better light and, indeed, one side has 1 rib on it. The rib side is neutral, the middle is ground and the smooth side is hot (looking this up confirmed that this is the normal convention). So I'll just follow the instructions.

I'm on to the next set of kit questions. It involves the 3 wire power cord. In the instructions, it refers to a "smooth side" and a "ribbed side". The "smooth side" is connected to the fuse and the "ribbed side" is connected to the switch. Since the instructions are specific about this, I'm assuming that that the polarity is important. The problem is that in the included cord, both sides are smooth. So I have the following questions: 1. Is the polarity that important? It is AC coming in. So only the phase would be different. Does it really matter how I hook up the non-ground wires? 2. In the schematic diagram on page 18, what is the perspective of the AC male plug? Are we looking from the front of the plug (i.e. at the pins) or are we looking at the wires coming out the back of the plug? Elenco XP-720K manual

You mean it's kind of like this?

Congrats Dinny. Way to go. Nice pics Jeff.

I've never heard of Ghostland Observatory but I've been to Grasslands Observatory.

@Scott - Thanks, I hadn't seen that web page. The pictures are useful. I haven't soldered the wires to the board yet, but probably will ahead of time per the instructions. The board is mounted into the chassis by the time you get to this step, so it shouldn't be very hard to solder the wires to the mounted TO-220 packages. @Birgir - Thanks for the tip about putting shrink wrap in them. I'll to that upgrade.

I'm in the process of putting together an Elenco XP-720K bench power supply kit. The kit has 3 ICs and 1 transistor in T0-220 package format. The instructions have the builder bending the legs 90 degrees and then mounting the devices on the heat sink. This seems normal enough. However, to hook wires up to the devices, the instructions instruct the builder to tin the wire and solder it to the correct leg. The instructions are here: Elenco XP-720K manual To me, this approach seems likely to result in a fragile device. Is this a normal thing to do? I assume that there are connectors I could use. Would it be better to use connectors. Or can you suggest yet another approach? All suggestions are appreciated.

Oscar thought it was pretty amusing. He started laughing about halfway through it.

Yep. Two down, four to go. It's actually pretty easy.