Saturday, September 6, 2014

Falcon to Eagle to Pigeons

I may have to back-burner my Tomb Raider fanfic "Day of the Falcon." (Falcons so far; Horus, the falcon-headed Egyptian god, the Tribute of the Falcon of the Knights of Malta, and a rival tomb raider calling himself Juan Carlos "el" Halcon...)

I'm trying to throw together the 0.5 version of the Duck Light, despite funds being tight for ordering parts. Started laying out the PCB in Fritzing, which may actually work for my needs, but I've been meaning to learn the free version of EagleCAD. Oh, yeah -- and there's a nice-looking open-source freeware option called KiCad that is worth checking out.

In re learning software packages, I still haven't gotten facile with Blender, which means I'm starting work on the Jubal Early with Carrara. Sigh. I've been introduced to the slicing and tool path tools I need to turn it into g-code the CNC milling machine can use, but that's going to be a learning curve as well.

I'm very worried I won't have enough time to properly repair microphones before I have to start Feeding the Birds -- aka mixing Mary Poppins. And I'm renting out my own gear over the same time period, which at least will relieve some of the financial stress.

And the KP/-31 receiver is still sitting on my desk. Which isn't bird-related at all, sorry. I read through a thread at a gunsmithing forum and that just underlined how many operations there are to machine the thing from scratch. 3d printing would also be expensive, and the shapes are wrong for CNC milling (not all in one piece, anyhow). Very possibly making a master model and casting that would be the most efficient, despite my worries about the strength of the result.

So I'm looking again at welding. I'll take a grinder to the parts and see how that goes first...

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