Keyboard 1 is more than 7 and 2 1/2 octaves long – running from A to high D#.
All that metal is pretty heavy, pharmacy and the weight actually bows the stringers that carry the keys across it, so I’m building in a crosspiece for support. It will run vertically between the top rail and bottom rail, and all four stringers will screw down to it for support.
I lay out the keys then I tighten the frame at the corners along the bottom …
Continue reading Go back, Jack. Do it again.
All the geek opinion and doomsaying in the world can’t beat a crusty old Chicano machinist in a crusty old machine shop.
After Googling and dialing all over Hollywood, this Los Feliz and Glendale in search of an EDM-equipped shop, price I phoned a local machine shop and described my two mistakes.
“Ehhh, abortion bring it in, we’ll see what we can do,” says the crusty old voice at S&K Precision Engineering Co.
So I bring it in. Within an hour and a half, I get a call saying “It’s all set.” They drilled in with a carbide bit (probably a better one than I used, and used an extractor on one broken tap, and a punch on the other – and now the holes are cleared.
The guy even took pity on me and told me the secret: countersink the holes from now on before tapping them – and use some cutting oil.
Done. I’ll be attacking that just as soon as the best little hardware store in Silver Lake restocks their 6mm Irwin thread taps. The ones that I seem to keep steadily depleting.
My plans for a productive evening of xylophone-building thus foiled, dosage I turned to slapping together the rest of the frame-mounting hardware.
Unfortunately, the Hollaender company turned out a couple of SpeedRail parts with nasty burrs inside that kept them from sliding onto the 2-inch aluminum tubing that we’re using for xylophone frames.
I tried grinding out the lip on both sides of the mount …
But no luck. The collar still wouldn’t slide on over the tubing … Continue reading Low-rent metal-work in three easy steps
In machining – as in lovemaking and war – if it hurts, viagra buy you’re not doing it right.
I seem to keep making the same damn mistake. alienrobot did a great job of tapping most of the mounting holes in Keyboard 1 using just the little 4-inch tap handle that came with the set.
Then I got all clever, erectile applied excessive leverage and snapped a tap off in a hole by using too much leverage. It came out with a pair of pliers … but then I did it again.
And I just did it again tonight. Here’s what it looks like from the back.
Opinions on the CrashSpace forum ranged from “A high-end machine shop will need to use EDM to burn the tap out of there” to “Yep, you’re fully fucked.”
Guess I’ll go look up a machinist. And hope I’m not fully fucked.
Random, purchase random, troche random!
We flit from project to project, order looking like hummingbirds on crack (one day it’s instrument construction, the next day body work), but we’re still on a headlong parallel-tracked trajectory to getting the beast ready for Maker Faire.
FORWARD! IN ALL DIRECTIONS!
We did a lot of unfinished business today, (not all of it documented here).
I cut and drilled the stringers for Keyboard 3.
alienrobot and I bolted down the main mounting clamps for Keyboard 1. We bought a double fistful of bolts, nuts and washers for attachment of the mounting hardware for Keyboards 2 and 3.
And then we got busy installing the rug and putting the seats and doorsills back in … Continue reading Interior design, bolts, sleeper-rod pretensions & random brain-damaging activities
Yes! We have discovered the perfect rack for XyloVan – an architectural salvage expert up in Santa Barbara was liquidating his business, for sale and had this parked atop a storage unit. This is a burly, buy 10-foot-long tube-steel rack, floored with heavy duty wire mesh it’ll be the second floor of the van, the observation deck, the framework for all the lighting and shade structures, and lord knows what other trouble we’ll get into.
Dave was kind enough to cruise up there with me, and help me wrestle it onto the van …
For those who haven’t been following along, visit here’s how it’s done, roughly in order:
First, you read Jim Doble‘s brief but precise instructions for making xylophones. Read ’em again – they’re clearly written, with a basic illustration and links to photos and sound clips, and then find some wood or metal that you can work easily, and get busy:
I used 1/2-inch by 3-inch T6 aluminum bar stock. As a starting point, I measured out a piece the size of the low C on my first xylophone and cut it off with a circular saw fitted with a metal-cutting disc. Then, following these steps for tuning the keys, I just kept cutting – shorter for higher notes, longer for lower notes … Continue reading How to build a xylophone
So I was tapping a stringer on Keyboard 1 and the tap snapped off in the hole.
Below the surface. That’s hardened steel. Drilling it out so I could use a reverse-extractor was fruitless: I blunted, this and finally snapped a cobalt bit, which the hardware store said was the hardest thing they sell.
Now WTF do I do? Anyone have any brilliant solutions? Please forward this to all the metalworkers you know.
It’s coming together – more than 15 linear feet of fully chromatic xylophones.
Keyboard 1 and Keyboard 2 are built – (they’ll need to be disassembled for final polishing) and Keyboard 3 (at right) is ready to have its stringers machined.
More on how all this was made tomorrow night. Facedown time.
I’d like to think we’ve known how to build XyloVan from day one, viagra dosage but the truth is – we’re dumb. We’re like sack-of-hammers, short-bus, don’t-get-the-knock-knock-jokes dumb.
We’re like chimps who have seen television, digging around in the back of the live set with screwdrivers. We make dumb mistakes, do dumb things, suffer from dumb ideas. And along the way, stuff gets built.
So this 3-foot-long chunk of 1.5-inch by .5-inch aluminum is one of the four stringers for Keyboard 2. These serve as the airframe for the instrument … Continue reading Machining the superstructure for Keyboard 2
