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05-09-2024, 04:53 AM
Drilled a few more holes for the voltage doubler bridge, and swaged all the eyelets I've drilled for so far.
It took some doing to figure out how to get a good swage without folding the edge of the eyelet in, collapsing it, or anything like that. I'm using Keystone's #44 eyelets and staking tool #1715 from Keystone. Initially just using the tool and a hammer it was near impossible to get a good swage. I attribute this to the fact that the 1715 tool is just barely big enough for the 44 eyelets, so unless I have everything perfectly square when tapping on the hammer the rolling portion of the tool surface contacts the edge of the eyelet before the conical section of the tool can flare out the eyelet so that the rolling surface actually rolls down the eyelet instead of collapsing or folding the wall inwards. I tried using a hand press I picked up cheap, but it seems like there is too much slop in it to keep things perfectly square, so the same issues occurred. I found that using a center punch of the right diameter, I could pre-flare the eyelets enough that when I use the staking tool manually the eyelet walls will cleanly roll down if the initial pre-flare is good. The hand-press worked too with this method, though it took some manual pre-swaging before it worked well. Finally, today I picked up a larger diameter center punch (1/4") since the previous one could nearly fit inside the eyelet and now swaging just involves one good thwack of the hammer on the center punch to pre-flare then sticking the board in my hand-press and cranking until the roll is finished but the eyelet is not squashed. Nice! Picture below of a recent eyelet using the new process:
Perhaps this isn't that interesting for those of you who got the london power circuit card kit with instructions, however I bought the (presumably comparable) components separately off digikey to save on shipping from Canada so I've had to experiment with things myself to figure out the process. I've probably burned through around $3-$6 in eyelets by now, plus much more in time, so perhaps I didn't save money after all.
Anyhow, here are pictures of the test fit for the bridge. I have formed the leads but not trimmed them yet, so the diodes won't actually stick up that far. In hindsight I should have left more space to work in, once I add the wires it will be a tight squeeze working with the soldering iron 'n stuff.
It took some doing to figure out how to get a good swage without folding the edge of the eyelet in, collapsing it, or anything like that. I'm using Keystone's #44 eyelets and staking tool #1715 from Keystone. Initially just using the tool and a hammer it was near impossible to get a good swage. I attribute this to the fact that the 1715 tool is just barely big enough for the 44 eyelets, so unless I have everything perfectly square when tapping on the hammer the rolling portion of the tool surface contacts the edge of the eyelet before the conical section of the tool can flare out the eyelet so that the rolling surface actually rolls down the eyelet instead of collapsing or folding the wall inwards. I tried using a hand press I picked up cheap, but it seems like there is too much slop in it to keep things perfectly square, so the same issues occurred. I found that using a center punch of the right diameter, I could pre-flare the eyelets enough that when I use the staking tool manually the eyelet walls will cleanly roll down if the initial pre-flare is good. The hand-press worked too with this method, though it took some manual pre-swaging before it worked well. Finally, today I picked up a larger diameter center punch (1/4") since the previous one could nearly fit inside the eyelet and now swaging just involves one good thwack of the hammer on the center punch to pre-flare then sticking the board in my hand-press and cranking until the roll is finished but the eyelet is not squashed. Nice! Picture below of a recent eyelet using the new process:
Perhaps this isn't that interesting for those of you who got the london power circuit card kit with instructions, however I bought the (presumably comparable) components separately off digikey to save on shipping from Canada so I've had to experiment with things myself to figure out the process. I've probably burned through around $3-$6 in eyelets by now, plus much more in time, so perhaps I didn't save money after all.
Anyhow, here are pictures of the test fit for the bridge. I have formed the leads but not trimmed them yet, so the diodes won't actually stick up that far. In hindsight I should have left more space to work in, once I add the wires it will be a tight squeeze working with the soldering iron 'n stuff.
