I’ve noticed before that this build has some issues with scale, but now it’s really hitting home. Some of the details are ridiculously fiddly.
Starting with the faux vacuum tubes; Not too bad, just smaller than any real vacuum tubes would be, and even then they aren’t actually fully shown from behind the grill.
The small gauge on top of the device wasn’t too bad to work with, but it is _tiny_. The numbers on the scale are 1mm tall.
The base of the gauge is a piece of 3mm thick polystyrene, browned up with some watercolours. The scale is printed on an overhead projector transparency, and the needle is a length of piano wire coloured black with a permanent marker.
The connectors next to the red buttons were a real pain. I originally thought I’d just use the smallest ring crimp connectors I can find, but it ended up they were way too big:
This build is incredible. Will you share the 3D files once you are all done? I’d love to make one as well. Amazing work definitely the best one I have seen by FAR.
Thanks! I am planning on releasing the 3D files once I’m done. I don’t know how long that’ll take, as I’ve been working on other projects.
Will def keep this project bookmarked. It’s amazing. I would definitely buy the 3D printed parts as like a kit or something as well if you’d ever offer it up.
Clever use with the test tubes; I was wondering what you had used!
How many LEDs and what size of resistor and how how did you get the LEDs to fit
There are two “vacuum tubes” in the finished build, so two LEDs.
I can’t remember the resistor value I used, but based on the photos of resistors they’re brown/black/black/orange/gold, so 100K ohm.
How I got them to fit? The LEDs themselves basically set the scale of the “vacuum tubes”, so everything else was built around them.
What size are these test tubes? I’ve been slowly building this for a couple of weeks and am struggling to find a good option for these.
My test tubes are 15mm diameter, 100mm length. Searching for “15mm plastic test tubes” on ebay works for me.
Please leave a link to your build once you’re done. I’d love to see someone else’s take on this!
Just an FYI about the vacuum tubes;
You say that your faux tubes are smaller than any real tube would be. Vacuum tubes come in a range of sizes, with the smallest being just under 2cm long & ~3mm in diameter.
TIL! That’s quite interesting. I did try to look for smaller tubes when I was doing the original build, but could only find the bigger ones that would commonly be found in old radios or guitar amplifiers.