How I made all this amp nonsense relevant to work.

[beasleybodyshop]

So at my job, one of the things I do is develop new exhibits for the summer camps and traveling exhibits at my museum. This summer we are doing an exhibit called "BIG", stands for "Build it Garage". Kids can do many things from build a pinewood derby car to race on our gargantuan 50 foot long build and launch paper rockets and airplanes, and create designs on a 25X6 foot LED cube wall.

For an airplane launcher, i stole some ideas from a tennis ball launcher and used 2 12 volt DC motors to power it. I also developed a preset speed control (using a few components im sure you will be familiar with lol) so it could be set to low/medium/high.

The LED wall is composed of about a thousand 4 color led cubes we built out of frosted plexiglass, so the light would disperse better. it took us months to build this thing - we used flat strips of metal on the back side as buss bars, and attached magnets to perforated holes so that when you attach a cube, it firmly attaches in place. you can rotate the cube to get 4 different colors - red/blue/green/white. I had no idea how it was really going to look after we put it all together.

I guess the point to all this is, all the little things I have learned here about electronics, lead dress, and troubleshoot have really made these projects I do possible. I can't thank those of you who have been patient with my questions enough

Thanks again everybody!

[eniam rognab]

hey bease, that look super cool and fun!!! i would love that job, if i liked kids sweet gig bro, i love museums, science and art.

i repair battery chargers for my monies (less cool), tube amp skills come in handy ALL over the place, things i have specifically learned on this forum i successfully implemented at work. burned/lifted trace repair, signal tracing, general troubleshooting, that i didnt get in school

so yeah, its a great product-full hobby we have

i HATE it when i show people my work and they say "wow you must have SO much time on your hands!" this drives me up a wall, like i somehow magically control time. its what you choose to do with it!! ->rant over

enjoy that gig buddy, looks like you're doing a great job!!

here is a picture of the units i work on everyday, in case anybody's interested... those two big black caps will give you quite a shock!! 3000uF charged to rectified line voltage, bad news, big sparks!

edit: 'member those EMI filters you found? these are shown in the picture i posted, capable of 20 amps. just thought you might find it interesting, what is inside your filters

[beasleybodyshop]

Woah, thats cool! I bet its an under appreciated gig though....the way every day people see electronics as disposable really makes it difficult for the average joe to appreciate that kind of work.

[xtian]

Really bitchin' job, Beas. Teach those kids to love larnin'.

[eniam rognab]

yeah, disposable is right! we dont repair the chinese units we sell, we cant! they goop the shit out of everything! and they are cheap enough that the cost of repair is not that far from a new one.

the italian units are awesome though, they are made to be repairable, with pigtail fuses so some guy cant put tinfoil in there and if the fuse blows it HAS to come back to us, usually because something else went wrong too. mostly has to do with the logic board power supply. the brain that controls the whole thing, including our 'special' charging curves

how'd you like to troubleshoot one of these? we dont hahaha, there is a simple test to see if its good or bad. but i did swap those trimpots though, they took a hit of some kind...

yup, edumacate those kids for all of our sake's