Making the light pipes

Post date: Jun 1, 2014 2:40:33 PM

I think I've got a plan for making the light pipes. My new thought is to cast them. Making the molds is quite simple if you think of it as sheets of holes making up a multi-part mold design. The bottom sheet is a polished sheet metal. This forms the front face of the light pipe. The second is a sheet drilled with 0.125 holes. My preference would be to use the same end-mill that I use to machine the fretboard, but that's not especially critical. These are drilled into a regular pattern. The sheet thickness is determined by the amount of material I wish to leave at the bottom of the pocket in the fretboard. This will likely be on the order of 50 mils. The third sheet is a set of 0.250 diameter holes drilled on the same pattern. These form the stop that will hole the light pipe in place. The thickness of this layer will be chosen by the distance between the top of the LED and the bottom of the pocket. I'd prefer these to be either in contact or in close contact, so that I'm not totally relying on the glue joint holding the light pipe into the fretboard. Once it's all glued up, it's not coming apart.

The other thing I'm starting to think about is where to stuff all the electonics (see the photos). I can either make my own board (looking likely) or try to creatively stitch and mount all the parts together. The mounting issue is the same for both cases. I need to figure out how to mount the electonics inside the uke. Getting a standard size Arduino UNO through the resonator hole looks possible, but I'd probably be better off going to another size board.

Also, I need to make a provision for the USB connection. I've located a small bulkhead mini-usb adapter, so that's looking like a real possibility. It's also about time to start thinking about switching over to the final power scheme. I can eliminate one USB cable (I'm using one to power/charge the battery and one to power the UNO) with a little rewiring. I also want to add in a soft cut-off switch to drop the power to micro-amp levels when the system is powered down.