Recent content by pete

Success, after two days of struggling I worked it out with help from you guys, in particular Tom in the last post pointed out that burning the wires was coating them in a residue that made it harder for the solder to stick. This and his advice to separate and remove the synthetic fibres sent me...

It did help

Thanks for taking the time to help with this. I'm back at it today. The wire from the PTT attachment on the hands-free kit is 2mm with two tiny cores, about 0.4 mm, one red and one copper coloured. I've got bits of other cables like this that I've salvaged mostly from old audio kit like...

Thanks for taking the time. I'm struggling on with this today. I don't know how I would check if it's a shorting switch/jack on the connection, it is an audio cable extension through only a 3.5 mm one. How would I check to see if it is?

I have a Yaesu VX-6 Radio. Perfect for my needs but I need a hands free PTT kit. Very difficult to find but I hunted about and finally found a US-based company that had hands free kits made up to order in China and I bought one of their kits. When it arrived I plugged it all in and it worked...

A brief contemplation of designing a fusee pully for any given system, especially one like this where the output can be adopted by the user for different loads and lengths. Just the thought of trying to work out the circumference... I don't even know the word for it, the length of the path on a...

I hadn't really thought of it like that. I guess I just thought by vacuum you meant low pressure, so increasing the chamber would lower it still and decreasing the chamber would increase it but if there's nothing there at all then that means the pull would be the same no matter how much you...

I understand the fusee pully now. I'm confused, I know nothing about hydraulics but given that there must be a sealed cylinder as it needs to maintain pressure then I would think compressing or expanding air would give a gradient in the force along the length of the spring. How could it give a...

I can find no decent description of how this jigger works online but I think it's a set of pulley blocks with a hydraulic ram between them replacing the weight. This is an interesting idea but to bring the device down to a manageable size my travell couldn't be beyond about 30cm. It still might...

They do but I have a 20kg load at the top end. There are larger ones but I doubt ball chain would outperform Dyneema or timing belts. It seems to be marketed as a lanyard or retention chain of some kind. My other concern is noise, I want the mechanism to be silent. That aside the mechanism you...

I'll have a look into the hydraulic jigger but I must say it sounds complicated. I don't want to have motors or electronics in this design. I'm curious about the pully system thought. I did think of the bead chain and pully for another design some time ago. I found metal ones but when I looked...

A Fuse pully accommodates for fall off in spring tension as I understand but it did give me an idea. As the cable is so thin I could cut a helical groove from one end of the barrel to the other for the cable to sit in. Do it the same way you'd thread on a lathe but with a tiny "U" groove form...

Sorry about the delay. I had to go away there briefly. I had a close look at the spinning reels. amazing design. A guide on a threaded shaft with the pitch matched to the diameter of the thread is the idea I'm working on at present. The variables for the test are appreciated too, I hadn't...

I will have to make something up and test it to see exactly what the problem looks like, maybe it will lay down in a neat row every time naturally, but I doubt it. The diameter of the take-up drum dictates the counterbalance load so is fixed. If the cable moves from one side to the other...

Adding friction would work but I really want to keep the friction low, it's important it moves freely. It's relative to the drum size, as the diameter increases the force for any variation on the diameter decreases. Stronger springs help but these are expensive and heavy, you'd improve the...