CRX Rotary - 6th Annual BLF/ Old Lumens Contest Winner

It appears we have the exact same caliper.

Preparing the outer & inner core copper tubes to fit together.

I started off with two hours of fun, freehand filing some copper tube to reduce the diameter of the smaller tube as I want them friction fitted together.

The larger 21.96mm OD x 20.40mm ID copper tube is a cutting of plumbers pipe.
The smaller 21.22mm OD x 18.98mm ID tube, a comrade sent to me last year.

This tube needs to be reduced in diameter to fit inside the other.

Tube measurements prior to work:


Outer tube - Outer Diameter - 21.96mm
Outer tube - Inner Diameter - 20.40mm
Inner tube - Outer Diameter - 21.22mm

I filed evenly around the inner core tube using a hand file to reduce the diameter by about 0.84mm.


Pro Tip: Do not use left hand as filing guide Inner tube filed down, sanded, light polish and a comparison to an unworked tube.

Tube measurements after work:


Outer tube - Inner Diameter - 20.40mm
Inner tube - Outer Diameter - 20.38mm
Inner tube - Inner Diameter - 18.98mmNow we have two copper tubes fitting nicely together.

.

NC would still burn even after being soaked with blood?? Naaah.

Worst I ever did was sear off all the hairs on my forearm when I let a flame get a little too close to an “empty” bottle of IPA. Heard a nice slow “fwoooosh!” and… no more armhairs!

Ever since, I could never recreate my (unintentionally) improvised jet-engine.

That file was a real Bastard. :stuck_out_tongue:

Looks good! No doubt the finish product will be top quality.

True :laughing:
Before people mark you rude for sweary… File Types.

^ fun read. Barstead?

In NL we have “bastard sugar” (basterd suiker) which is a mix of fine and coarse grains of sugar.
The brown variant is most popular, it has some syrup / molasses mixed into it.

I recently had a mysterious bastard file on my SD card…
Very strange. 0 KB size mp3 file, and i had ‘no permission’ to delete it either…
So i deleted the folder it was in.
But that only worked after re inserting the SD card and not opening that folder first !!
Very odd… I suspect it was attached to some GIF i downloaded. Not sure. Weird…

Anyway, looking forward to more pics and progress of your build, CRX. :beer:

Making the copper pill.

Filed down a scrap piece of 20mm copper bar and brass ring to 18.92mm.

Parts soldered together.

Soldered the parts together with some copper sheet insert and copper wire using a dual flame jet lighter with the parts placed on a ceramic tile with solder paste in the joints.Cleaned up with wire wool, sandpaper then metal polish.

First a scrub all round with coarse wire wool then a rub on some 800 grit sandpaper, keeping the face flat down to finally a polish on some old newspaper with a dab of liquid polish on it.

Cleaned up.Showing the pill inside the inner core tube.

This will eventually be cut to shape and fixed in place. Showing preliminary core flashlight parts.

This is an old reflector used for checking fitment only.Pill inside inner core inside outer core with MCPCB & reflector in rough positions.

.

C.R.X.
Copper Rubbing X-cellence. :slight_smile:

:sunglasses: :+1:

I like how you simulated wood grain in the copper surface. :person_facepalming:

CRX is over-the-top with his sanding and polishing. I’m not that patient. :weary:

I’m sure this will be amazing as per usual for CRX. :slight_smile:
Where do you get your copper from?

It’s really only a quick three stages I do for shining the metal after filing - sandpaper, wire wool
then liquid polish on newspaper.
I’m not too fond of polishing, I’m more of a filing hacking & sawing kinda guy yi know :smiley:

The larger copper tube is standard 22mm plumbers pipe, the smaller stuff was sent to me by kiriba-ru a while ago. Same stuff I made this with.

I was just wondering if your metal supplier new what you did. :slight_smile:

Well the plumbers don’t as they probably wonder where their scrap pieces disappear to… unless they have a suspicion the spark on the job has a copper cutting fettish or something :smiley:

Making the mechanical rotary tail switch.

Copper washer.

Using a scrap piece of 0.3mm copper sheet I drilled a 4mm hole and filed the outer edge into rough shape with the file before switching to the finer stone then a quick polish.

Sprung brass switch contacts & enclosure supports.

I used an old brass Zippo flint stopper to make a switch contact.

Filed the brass rod down a little, sanded and soldered to a silver coated spring from an old clicky switch.

Cut two contact enclosures from 3mm x 0.5mm brass tube and filed down to 5mm length then neatened up with the fine stone & sandpaper.

Two sprung pieces, only one is for making the circuit, the other is made to balance the switch disc, is non conductive and also showing a 5mm x 4mm brass tube to be filed down to 3.8mm length for the central pillar support.

Some switch pieces.

Rotary switch contact boards.

Using the FR4 copper board again, I drilled, cut & filed an 18.92mm diameter disc with a 4mm centre hole.

Using the first as a template I sanded down the second using an M4 brass bolt & nut holding them together.

Now we have two equal contact discs

I marked six points on one as well as I could freehand.

Further marked, kapton tape applied to both sides then I cut out the tape roughly where marked with a scalpel blade.

I used ferric chloride to dissolve away the copper that was not covered with the tape, this takes a few minutes.

Pieces removed from the acid bath, cleaned and tape removed from boards to leave copper contact points hopefully where I want them.

A little more tidying up and ready for test assembly. It is not OSH Park quality but it is all hand made Order of how the parts go together. The brass contact enclosures will be soldered in place to the disc later.The steel washer is temporary to hold the contacts in place and will not be used when everything is soldered.

.

Amazing… :open_mouth:

Not clear to me what the purposes of the parts are though, but it’s clear you have a well thought out plan. :+1:

Thanks mate :beer:
There are still some components to go into it, but I ran out of solder paste, hopefully that will arrive within the next few days.