Serenity - March 18 2007
I was putting it off for the longest time but I finally had to tackle the second antenna array. One of the antennas has a dish on it. A small one. I was not sure about making a master and casting it. First off I was not sure how to make a master since the dish is so small. I was thinking of making a dome shape and using that to pound some material over it. I then looked at my punch and the non punch end was actually cone shaped. I would reverse my punch and use that. Out came the Coke can and a section was cut off to use
Close up of the cone shape of the punch
Terrible results as the aluminum tears. I find this odd as the aluminum can is basically stretched aluminum to the final shape. I don't know if they do something to the material after it is formed or not but it does not want to stretch.
After much thinking about other methods I decide to give some brass sheet a try. Now brass is much harder then the aluminum. I also could not find thin brass sheet so had to settle for some thicker stuff then I wanted. This meant trying to punch the brass sheet require quite a bit more effort, The result was a slight injury and some scraped skin
Thank goodness the blood was worth it as the resulting disk looks perfect. The edges are slightly burred so it need some delicate cleanup
Soon I have 3 dishes. Woot
Using a small drill the same size as the brass rod I have been using to make the antenna I drill holes into the centers of the dishes. Not too hard but I had to me careful I didn't drill into myself as I held the tiny dish with my fingers as I drilled
I tin and profile the end of the brass rod to get ready to solder the dish on
Now it was a bt harder then I thought to get the dish lined up . I seemed to love to be all over the place. NOTE: looking back now I shold have used a smaller drill bit so the fit would be snug and the dish could not flop all over the place. Once I made sure the solder connection was clean I cut to length and mounted my new dish
And newly mounted ot the array
Various views to try and show off the new dish antenna
The other small brass rod added was also slightly profiled but not to a point as I didn't want to create a poking hazard
The second dish is being prepared and you can see how off it is here
Second array is done and various angles to show the finished array and how the 2 antenna are lined up
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