(Continued from previous numbered post) I took the tower and my ideas to my husband so we could talk out wiring possibilities. He likes to make it complicated and I like the KISS principle so we often find an interesting, workable middle ground. The tower is upside down to temporarily power it. Also, priming/painting the whole tower in and out really matters.
We decided to cut out the rear corners from the lowest ramp to feed the wires through. The hole currently in the middle of the ramp, that the wires feed through in the picture above, is an accident. The cathode (positive) wires will go down one side and the anode (negative) wires down the other side, the shortest distance possible, snug to the wood. There is a forth ramp, not inserted in the picture above, that needs to be navigated. We decided to glue the three ramps, shown above, to one side and the back. The missing ramp is glued to the other side, leaving the front unglued for now. This should leave access for securing the wires and boards. I also glued in felt to deaden the sound of the rolling dice.
The side with the single ramp will then be closed up and secured with masking tape. This will allow it to be opened like a book before securing the rest of the wires. Then the tower can be permanently glued shut. I used low temp hot glue for securing the boards and wires. The wires should be long enough to solder the power pack in later.
Speaking of the power pack, as I was testing the fit I noticed the way the battery holder opens, to replace the batteries, wouldn't work well in this tower unless its removable. I'm placing the power pack under the lowest ramp so it will be hidden and out of the way. This particular pack has the lid securing screw on one side and the switch on the other side. The lips on each half also made it odd to slide off but were very secure. It might not even need the screw but I wasn't going to take the chance.
I bought one 3 cell AAA and one 3 cell AA battery pack at a small independent electronics part store in Houston. I know I can get them cheaper for 10 online but the cost was good since I didn't know what size would fit and, for me, this is a hands on thing. I now know what to look for and won't get stuck with 10 that are not what I need/want.
My solution was, once again, Velcro. You can see above I've placed the soft side on the lid of the battery pack and the hard side, shown in the first image, is under the lowest ramp. Now I've got more wiring choices. Do I make the wires long enough so battery replacement is easy when the pack is removed or do I make the battery pack completely removable by using a two wire connector between the LED wires and the pack wires? That decision can come later. It's time to install the lights.
It's a bit of a hot glue mess
but I plan to hit it with a blow dryer before sealing it up so at least the strings are gone. The next side is going on but just with masking tape. Then it's going to be opened back up like a book.
That's not how it went when I actually got into it. I couldn't guide the wires along the side at all because I would have too much slack. I ended up cutting a notch in the corner on the open side of the second from the top ramp. I guided the two black upper wires down to the third black wire. I had to remove the glue on the third wire and then stuck them all together. The upper wires were hanging in the air before gluing the side in place. The two upper black wires were going to be exposed and hot glue would look ugly. We decided to use some solvent based adhesive instead on the exposed areas of those wires.
I talked over the battery holder problem with my husband. We decided that the holder should not be removable because it would put too much stress on the wires. I ended up removing the switch from the battery holder, unsoldering it and attaching the wire back to the battery spring. Then I closed the little switch compartment back up with hot glue. I ended up soldering all the wires to the switch and battery holder. That little switch was hard to handle. I used my ceramic tweezers to hold it in place to solder. I placed the switch in the positive wires, cut out a hole in the back side of the tower and hot glued that in place. I used some small widths of Kapton tape to secure the batter holder wires to the sides of the holder so they could join the LED wires and switch and be secure.
I hot glued the battery holder in place instead of using Velcro. It looked really good. I then glued the tower closed, installed batteries and flipped the switch. It lighted great and gave the look we wanted.
The tower electronics went together well and the way the LED boards were placed hid all the ugly hot glue except at the underside where the battery compartment was. The light was the brightness I wanted and the spread was good. I learned a lot about wire placement on the board and running them inside of the tower. Putting something together is very different than just imagining how it will go together.
There are some improvements that need to happen for the next one. I will find a way to make the boards tighter. I have a couple ideas, including some SMD resistors in the correct value. I would run all the wires down just one side where I'm going to glue the corners together. I would need to notch out the second from the top and the lower ramp only on that side. This would make assembly much simpler. I placed the lower single board in the orientation it had to be because of the wires on the board being so wide. Next time, I'm fairly sure there will be one, I would rotate the board 90 degrees and be more careful with it's placement. The light from those LEDs were hitting high up and we lost a bit of the glow from that. This project could also be easily achievable with a string of battery operated LEDs but what kind of fun would that be?
That's it for the electronics in this project. The finished tower will be in Laser Cutter #008.
Happy Making!
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