Showing posts with label EL Wire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EL Wire. Show all posts

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Dash It All! Another Setback!

Well, it has been over two years since I updated the bally site. What can I say? Life sometimes deals one a rum hand, what.

Opportunities to show off the old Aetheric Neuralizer have become rather less of late, with the collapse of not one but two local "cons", and consequently one has not felt the drive to work on the outstanding issues overmuch. I am still doing concept drawings for the Moran Radium-Enhanced Sidearm, but haven't managed to get the aesthetics exactly right yet. I know how I'm going to get it all to work, I'm just not happy with the look of the bally thing yet, and so cannot get cracking.

There was another setback with the improved barrel mechanism of the Aetheric Neuralizer too. After several weeks of messing about with EL-Wire and programmable sequencers I came to the conclusion that construction and aesthetics were finalised but that the technology simply wasn't up to snuff.

I wanted the Aetheric Neuralizer to feature a helix of green light, slowly "screwing out" along the barrel at perhaps two revolutions per second. When the first trigger is pulled, I wanted the rate of revolutions to slowly increase to a crescendo of whirling threat display, the better to convey to the targets the peril in which they would be standing.

Much expense and thrashing about with electrons was done at the Moran Advanced Aetheric Physics Laboratory, only to end up concluding that the bally EL Wire upon which the effect was to be based is not luminous enough to do the job when placed next to the magnificent radiance of the linear resonator, the centre-piece of the Aetheric Neuralizer.

So I am currently researching an alternative using Light Emitting Diodes. I doubt I can achieve the same levels of sheer impressiveness the EL Wire promised while I was in the grip of whatever possessed me to consider it in the first place. The best I've been able to devise so far is a more linear effect, a sort of stroboscopic pulsing. This in turn may dictate a complete re-envisioning of the barrel assembly design.

It might just be better to cut my losses on the Aetheric Neuralizer and use this new effect on a completely different weapon.

Speaking of which, I've been doodling around trying to get to grips with how to best realise the Moran Precision Aetheric Rifle. I'm close, but not very close, to a final design.

This longarm for the modern man - and the more adventurous modern lady I might add - will feature the ultra-secret Moran Enhanced Disc Resonator, and such is the effectiveness of this device that it will not require one to lug around a Moran Aethero-Galvanic Exciter to make the bally rifle work either.

This alone will make the longarm more portable and more attractive to the fairer sex, who find it difficult to add a Moran Aethero-Galvanic Exciter to their already busy collection of handbags and whatnot, and who seeming cannot overcome the urge to attempt to store powder compacts in the case, often to disastrous effect.

It has also been noted by such luminaries as the solicitors in charge of the estate of the late Lord Kelper that the Aethero-Galvanic Exciter impedes one should the need for sudden and rapid retreat present itself to the hunter-explorer, although they do agree that Moran Laboratories are in no way liable for the late Lord Kelper's demise at the feet of a Venusian Brontostampus (or more precisely, a stampede of some thirty-four of the legendarily testy beasts), since the user's handbook specifically and clearly states in unambiguous terms that the device has only been tested on Mars and Earth, and that attempts to deploy it elsewhere must be considered experimental in nature and entirely at the wielder's own risk.

And so I close this report in the hope that I will soon be able to report a new era in Aetheric Armaments and Radium Enhanced technology.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Progress, Of Sorts

I received in the post on Thursday a replacement sequencer board for the EL Wire, and on Saturday night I retired to the lab to test it.

 I used my new variable heat soldering iron to close the "solder switch", in reality a pair of closely spaced tracks on the circuit board that you bridge with solder in order to bypass the part of the circuit that steps down the 12 volts of the supply (provided by the Moran Aethero-Galvanic Exciter) to around three volts for the inverter that powers the wire. I was using a 12 volt inverter and so didn't need this feature.

I plugged in the EL Wires I had made, attached the inverter and applied power and was treated to a display of flashing EL Wire in different colors, as expected.

Emboldened by this, I closed the solder switch on the original board (which I had closed with a temporary conductive clamp before) and connected it up and lo and behold, it was working too! My awful repair to the damaged board was holding!

So when I can find time I can move forward with the project to upgrade the Neuralizer's barrel pyrotechnics *and* the backpack of my spacesuit.

Saturday, October 26, 2013

New Technology Brings Fiasco

So what the Dickens happened? I report on exciting new technology deployment possibilities and then...not a dicky-bird for months.

Well, it all started in a very promising manner, with the acquisition of a few yards of Electroluminescent Wire (EL Wire in the vernacular) and a sequencer circuit to make them illuminate in patterns.

The first problem was that the EL Wire terminated in one sort of plug and the sequencer expected a different one. This was a trivial operation.

The second was that I had four two yard strands and I needed eight one yard strands, thus I was forced to become adept at terminating EL Wire (and acquire a few bits and bobs that are not part of the casual electrician's toolkit).

This involves cutting away some of the plastic cladding from the metal core wires, teasing out the two hair-fine "corona wires" without breaking them, winding copper tape around the plastic cladding at the cut-off point, soldering the corona wires to the tape, scraping off the phosphor coat on the protruding center wire and soldering the plug wires to the center wire and the tape. I only had to re-do two of them.

Then I discovered there was a design flaw in the sequencer. It could be worked around, but there was an upgraded circuit so I obtained one of them instead. Then I had to solder in so-called "headers" so the sequencer could be reprogrammed using my portable Babbage machine.

The new board could take 12 volts, which would be convenient for a number of reasons but required a new inverter, which had the wrong plugs and so on and so forth.

Eventually everything was sitting on the bench with the right plugs on the right wires. I connected up the various pieces and was rewarded with some rather strange flickerings that then settled down to the sequence I expected. It was a good start and I was just about to disconnect everything and retire to the living room for some reprogramming of the sequencer when there was a fizz and a puff of smoke and that was that for the sequencer.

It turned out one of the wire tracks on the circuit board had melted.

So, I retired in disgust from the laboratory and haven't gone back inside.