The BLF DIY Forum First Annual Scratch made light contest - CONTEST IS DONE - WINNERS are Announced! in the OP

Rufusbduck suggestion about direct driving.
What sort off unrefined animal do you think I am. Yeah, ok I’m an unrefined Moose. But no direct drive where I live. I must have control off something. I don’t control anything else in my life so the control off the current is mine. All mine and no one can take that away from me. Oh the power.

Do you have maybe a dozen or so 7135’s?

Rufusbduck, I was out in the shed last night with that very idea off piggy backing chips again and again I failed miserably. I’m not sure whats going on with my meters. Both are measuring current low or every driver I have tested is dodgy, which points to my meters being wrong. I’m just going to get the light built and then worry about it. I’ve come to the conclusion that unless a miracle happens overnight I’m just a poor solderer full stop.

thats me! but i like to blame it on my cheap soldering iron that the rosin core seems to melt away my tips...

I’m not good at soldering but I go by thus rule: if it doesn’t work, don’t keep doing it the same way hoping for better results. Reading helps but melting things is set. I cheat now and use a temp controlled iron with 5 different tips. I close my eyes, flip a coin, and spin the knob. Oh, and use flux.

I need to get a decent soldering iron. I use flux too. My current soldering iron I got for like 4.99 at big lots, and it came with like 3 replacement tips. This last one refused to tin except for one tiny spot, and the flux seemed to eat that spot away. I keep meaning to get a new iron, but I always put it off. Now I have no tips I can actually solder with, so I mine as well get a new one.

Before this one I had a pretty expensive butane soldering iron, but that also sucked. When it ran good it was awesome. But I constantly had to adjust the flame control... And not just turn the slider up or down. I constantly had to adjust the adjustment range. Like adjusting an adjustable lighter to have a 2' flame. Take it apart and move the selector ring a few teeth this way or that...

I hear you and work on that principle all the time. I’m still trying but just cant crack it.

Man, wouldnt that be awesome?

a guy can dream, right? :P

Just a reminder, no pressure or anything like that.

It's now the 6th. of July.

The contest ends on the 15th.Wink

Panic attack. :Sp

I forgot to explain the concept of satisfaction and feedback reward when I gave the GDB 50BMG to my cousin. I have no idea if he’s enjoying it, if it’s still working, or if it blasted off for Mars. He hasn’t contacted me with any feedback.

07-07-2013 I wanted to let you all know that Illumination Supply has just become a Sponsor in this Contest. The pot gets larger and now there will be a couple (or more), gift certificates going out to "runners up".

I also posted this in the Sponsor post near the start of the thread.

Mine is done and dusted. I need a holiday now.

Subscribed.

cool news on IS coming on board, that’s really great.

I’ll be starting mine tomorrow and it shouldn’t take long. It won’t be anything much compared to the awesomeness on show so far, but I’ll at least have a light at the end of it :slight_smile:

Forum server has been down a bit lately. What happens if it’s down when I need to post beamshots? I’ve asked another member to verify the time stamp by email but that’s all I could think of.

You know how the internet is, deadlines are deadlines, LOL.

Yeah, it get’s a little frustrating sometimes doesn’t it? I was really really wanting to get on last night and it was not cooperating.

Wow! A USA supplier that thinks enough of their customers to help sponsor a contest on BLF!!! I didn't get to enter the contest due to workload and storms but..... That says a lot to me!

Thanks Calvin! Dan.

Sorry for the downtime. In the case of last night, the server was running flawlessly for about 5 days, but it suddenly crashed and I had to power cycle the server. It’s pretty hard to diagnose this stuff because a system crash doesn’t leave any log files to diagnose and debug. I’m currently waiting on a response from some of the higher level system engineers at the web host.

One way or another, I’m trying to make the site considerably more reliable that it has been during the past month. The bugs that were causing constantly poor performance and frequent web server lockups have been identified and fixed. Now, I’m trying to identify the cause of this crash, which occurred on different level than the previous issues.

Again, my apologies, and please hang in there while I continue to work on this.