Budget Scratch Build

Don't know how I managed to miss this thread. Nice work on the rangefinder, very neat. Looks like I'll be off to Maplins soon. I will be sure to refer back to this thread later on in my build. Not quite at your stage yet, STILL sanding my dome. It looks like it's been snowing in my garage!!

goodus10 said:

It looks like it's been snowing in my garage!!

Click to expand...

Yeah you can mistake that stuff for icing sugar (until you try to eat it)

Luckily I'm done with all the sanding an now I'm about to start my paint up, once I work out the kinks with my budget airbrush set up.

Should I put the Paint-up in a new thread?

Any progress on this moe? I'm doing my own cardboard bucket so this is really helpful.

Unless I missed it, you didn't fibreglass the dome did you? Do you think it'll be necessary? I still need to put filler on the dome but I'm wondering whether to glass it first.

Sorry there's been no progress, I'm back at Uni and I haven't had any spare time to start spray testing.

I haven't used fibreglass, I don't think it's necessary for this. The dome is solid and there's no chance of it collapsing in on itself.
If it takes a knock you will get dents, so if you're going to be wearing it a lot then you may want to glass it to protect the surface.

looks great! that dent really turned out well!

another year's gone by with no work on the bucket. But I'm back for the summer and have been experimenting with picaxe integrated circuits.

Whilst an IC is really overkill for making two lights alternate, by using a chip for my rangefinder circuit I can make my circuits really small and simple.

Today I set up a simple circuit that flashes the red leds in the right sequence. powers up* an internal bright led and then after a short delay flashes a simple message inside the rangefinder. e.g. 'targeting'

all the work is done by a tiny 8 pin IC with 4 leds attached.
I also wanted to add a piezo speaker to make a power up sound (like when you charge the flash on a camera)

I haven't had time for pics/ video tonight, but hopefully tomorrow I can post some pictures to make it clear what I'm talking about


*when I say powers up I mean it goes from dim to light, giving the impression that the rangefinder is booting up or something.

hey moe im very new to this. actually just joined a few days ago and let me say that ur thread has giving me confidence that i can make a cool lid inexpensively. i wanted to know if u put any kind of pads or like a hard hat piece on the inside so it fits snug on your head or wat?

At the moment there isn't any permanent padding, but if you are gonna wear this you will need some.

I've been using foam temporarily, easier to cut to size and install.

But a well placed hard hat type thing would be less hot and probably better.

Thanx alot! Im sure that foam would get pretty hot.

Im sure i could install an adjustable hard hat piece with little dificulty.

THanx again for the help and thread. Iv just started my set of armor and will definetly learn from this.