Projects

My latest project has been managing and moving money from my 401 K retirement and pension. I've been trying to accomplish this for over a year but hit a banner day where everything came together. Got seven phone calls...all productive.

Not much writing but it is constantly in my head. I need to add oomph to the scene where Airen gets transported to the top of Faulter's Pass. She gets left alone for a while, but the tension is there. There is a plan re destroying the Black Staff. She realizes it will work, but the consequences (If Faulter lives) are pretty deadly. They know that the last city Faulter touched turned into a death trap. And her husband and kids are in the city

It took almost six months to get SSI to stop double paying us for the kids.patience is the key

Projects?  Well, I'm still working on my little Sparky monster.  Unfortunately Photobucket wants money to let me embed photos.  I need another service, free.  (Suggestions?)

I had hoped to spend this last week putting the circuit sections together but there's a part that needs to be tested first.  (And I've been trying to figure out how to mount things so the 'main' output transistors sit at different heights on their heatsink.  I'll use adhesive thermal mounting tape to create the cooling path from the transistors.)

Those transistors don't take the brunt of the heat; the bootstrap transistors on the big heatsinks do.  (Photo needed).  Those are small monsters, FLJ4315 and FLJ4215.  (There are several part numbers for each, and they are a complementary pair--see below.)

Besides that, there's a part of the circuit(s (positive and negative)) that I need to test independently, to be sure it will work over the whole voltage range.  But that range is beyond the capacity of my bench supplies, so I need test tools.  I've spent much of the past week sketching out--and dreaming over--designs.  But each of them is a Big Project in itself, so as much as I like them, they go off into the indefinite future.  I've got a design that will let me do the basic test.

The thing to be tested is a constant current supply circuit, and I need to test it both positive and negative.  Since I have several projects stacked up, and almost all involve a constant current supply (or a constant voltage supply of similar design) I'll test the bunch.  They differ in the values of the resistors, the polarity of transistors, and the number of stages in the stabilizing circuit.  BUT ...

I need to test them over a wide range, and I need something to test that.   I've got a fairly minimal design that I can hang off an existing tool, and test first on its own, driven by a stack of AAA cells.  Oh, but I need to order the multiple holders for said cells, and I need a switch arrangement so I can cut blocks of cells in and out.  Straghtforward, but it takes time.  Oh, and I'm low on the switches I use for the purpose.  (Alkaline AAAs to be bought from Harbor Freight at $7 for 24.  And they're about 95% of the name brands.)  I can test this on its own.  It needs to track the input voltage and to limit the output current to about 150 milliamps so I can't burn the transistors up.  Guess what--the current limiting is done with a circuit very like the constant current circuit.

And there is still some cutting, etc., for the minimal design.  Plastic, mostly, a nice change from the steel I've been drilling, and been cutting with cutoff wheels in the Dremel.  I don't have separate physical and electronic lab, and everything is covered in steel dust.  Whenever I work, my hands come away smelling of iron.  (And the Dremel work created a fair amount of brown iron oxide, even though I tried not to let stuff get hot enough to throw sparks.)

Meanwhile, the present tool design depends on the same transistors as the 'main output' transistor bank: 2SA2040's (PNP) and 2SC5707's (NPN).  These are 'complementary' types, which means they are supposed to be (almost) identical except for polarity.  The NPN's take a positive current at the base terminal; the PNP's a negative current.  Thing is, they can't be perfect mirror images of each other.  (Read about electrons and holes around semiconductor junctions)  So I need to test the two polarities of supply seperately.  (I'm using another complementary pair: KSC1845 and KSA992.  Same caveat.)

I went to look for my stock of the 2040s and 5707s.  They're shipped in sealed, static-protective envelopes.  I found two full orders and one partially used order of the 2040s, but only one of the 5707s--with just a few in it.  Not enough for the projects at hand, and it was after 6:00 PM on Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  Well, my two suppliers are in Central and Mountain time, and I rushed to place orders to both of them.  (They are about $0.65 in qty 10.)  Probably not in time.

Then I found another seven or eight 5707s in another envelope.  Enough to get me though the weekend, I hope.

I REALLY want to finish up for the present and spend June writing.

Not that kind of sparky.

I'm still quietly working on the rewrites of Breathing *sigh*. Got some active comments back from Angela (my agent) so I am incorporating them and itching to get back to book 2. In other news I had some very dodgy blood results back, and am concentrating my energies on losing weight, getting my liver back into some kind of non-fatty order and tidying up my life. We are decorating the front living room, and so I am painting a large display unit cream, from its now redundant mahogany.
I've not had the right mindset for reviewing. I open stuff and can't find anything positive to say, so I shut it again.

thanks Amy.  I don't think my experience gets in the way, tbh. My perfectionism, maybe, but my expertise was in selling rights rather than editing, so I have nothing to unlearn
I have now pared it down past it's optimum, so now I'm going through putting back some texture and character that I've inadvertantly cut. I think the construction and pacing is much better than the first time round. I'll post the dropbox link here for anyone that fancies checking out the newest version when I've finished this work through. 
Oh, and I have a query of you all... I'll pop it on my own thread.
Thank you also for your comment about my review. I do try to be honest. I prefer working with more experienced writers whose genres I can understand, where I feel I have something pertinent to add. I am not a natural teacher, and my honesty is hard for total newbies to take.

He needs to finish it so he gets time to write. Priorities