- Thread starter
- #161
My first (very) rough concept prototypes were etched with a quickly thrown together ferric chloride setup. That was some messy crap!
Permanent fix (in progress): Fuel/temp gauge spiking (pics, not dialup friendly) (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Spook50
- Start date
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perhaps I don't know everything... maybe call that anything about the PCB world
I think coming from a perspective of a solid parts designer is not applicable in all types of production.
The donor engine for my 2FE came with this as the EGR block of plate. It says "I did it my way" with two flaming skulls. I thinks its pretty neat and its one of my favorite things Ive taken from my truck. that being said I'll always encourage anyone to make their product their way however that way may be
I may or may not have used this to paint something at a point in time.
I think coming from a perspective of a solid parts designer is not applicable in all types of production.The donor engine for my 2FE came with this as the EGR block of plate. It says "I did it my way" with two flaming skulls. I thinks its pretty neat and its one of my favorite things Ive taken from my truck. that being said I'll always encourage anyone to make their product their way however that way may be
I may or may not have used this to paint something at a point in time.
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kenavt
SILVER Star
How's this production side of this project going? This is a really admirable and cool reverse-engineering effort!
If when you're looking for PCB production houses, you're looking for soldering assembly (not just PCB fabrication), I would consider looking at CircuitHub/Worthington Assembly. They aren't cheap like the overseas folks, but do good work, are somewhat active in the online maker community, have made great stuff for me before, and are domestic (in Massachusetts). If you are looking to do soldering assembly though, at that point you'd probably want to switch to surface mount components.
If you're just looking for PCB fabrication for prototyping or even <100 qt, I can't talk up OSH Park enough (who I've used for ~100qt and ~3qt). Plus they're relatively local (Lake Owego). Then there are a variety of PCB fab places in the country as well (Advanced Circuits, Bay Area Circuits, Sunstone) but they usually require needing to run a full PCB panel.
Or sell them as kits with thru-hole components as @CruiserTrash says!
If when you're looking for PCB production houses, you're looking for soldering assembly (not just PCB fabrication), I would consider looking at CircuitHub/Worthington Assembly. They aren't cheap like the overseas folks, but do good work, are somewhat active in the online maker community, have made great stuff for me before, and are domestic (in Massachusetts). If you are looking to do soldering assembly though, at that point you'd probably want to switch to surface mount components.
If you're just looking for PCB fabrication for prototyping or even <100 qt, I can't talk up OSH Park enough (who I've used for ~100qt and ~3qt). Plus they're relatively local (Lake Owego). Then there are a variety of PCB fab places in the country as well (Advanced Circuits, Bay Area Circuits, Sunstone) but they usually require needing to run a full PCB panel.
Or sell them as kits with thru-hole components as @CruiserTrash says!
- Thread starter
- #164
Great suggestions, thanks. I've heard good stuff about OSH Park but haven't contacted them yet. My current iteration of the PCB is ready for prototype (at this point I'm trying to get a diode issue figured out and get the mounting holes lined up just right for easy install). I've gotten a quote from Advanced just the other day and will check with OSH Park next.
It's only taken me nine years to get to this point
But I ain't quitting!
kenavt
SILVER Star
Part of what's great about OSH Park is their website handles all of the quoting, ordering, and everything. You just upload your design files (and they support Eagle and KiCad files directly, don't even have to export Gerbers). The only time I talked to them on the phone, out of my over a dozen orders in the last seven years, was about my 100qt order because it had some tight delivery constraints.Great suggestions, thanks. I've heard good stuff about OSH Park but haven't contacted them yet. My current iteration of the PCB is ready for prototype (at this point I'm trying to get a diode issue figured out and get the mounting holes lined up just right for easy install). I've gotten a quote from Advanced just the other day and will check with OSH Park next.
It's only taken me nine years to get to this point
But I ain't quitting!
- Thread starter
- #167
An update, but another hangup. With the weather cooling off again for the first time since completely restoring both my current and my old fuel gauge that I kept as a spare, I notice that in the mornings when the temp is blow about 65º F, the fuel gauge needle won't respond. This happens with both gauges, but weirdly enough has never once happened with the temp gauge as the engine warms up. Both gauges use the same type of mechanism with the same size wire wrapped either the same of a very close number of times around the bimetallic strip that moves the needles. This tells me that they also operate off the same (or again, very close) amount of current to move the gauge needles. I can not for the life of my figure out why both fuel gauges behave this way but the temp gauge.
My idea for a fix is to add a secondary circuit that will send full battery voltage to the gauges for 1.5 seconds upon startup and then switch to the regulated ~7.2VDC that the gauges operate off of. My expectation is that this will allow more overall wattage (current will be the same, but with nearly double the voltage for that second and a half, wattage will be increased allowing a faster warmup of the bimetallic strips in the gauges. My hope is that this will give the fuel gauge a little bit of a jumpstart before settling to the correct reading.
This initial power-on boost and then switch to the regulated circuit could be accomplished with an RC circuit to keep it as simple as possible, but it would only add a small amount of complexity (and a lot of reliability) to make a simple timed switch using the venerable 555 timer. I'm leaning heavily toward the 555 with a small form factor relay, and I would design it with a "fail mode" of defaulting to the 7.2VDC output circuit as a protection against frying the gauges. This obviously will require FINALLY building a test bed with temp and fuel gauges mocked up so that I can experiment, which honestly would be a good thing, HA!
A benefit to this will be the gauge needles rising faster to their indication level on startup, rather than the lazy slow rise they have with my current design. Because of this I had planned to release my current design and then later on selling the updated design as a revision offered at full price for new and like half price for anyone who already had an original but felt the need to upgrade. But now with the cold weather issue I've been having seeming to be rooted in my regulator design, I'm seeing the necessity of integrating this feature now. It's been almost ten damn years since I started this project and I'm so close to a marketable design that I'm honestly torn on how I want to approach this.
My idea for a fix is to add a secondary circuit that will send full battery voltage to the gauges for 1.5 seconds upon startup and then switch to the regulated ~7.2VDC that the gauges operate off of. My expectation is that this will allow more overall wattage (current will be the same, but with nearly double the voltage for that second and a half, wattage will be increased allowing a faster warmup of the bimetallic strips in the gauges. My hope is that this will give the fuel gauge a little bit of a jumpstart before settling to the correct reading.
This initial power-on boost and then switch to the regulated circuit could be accomplished with an RC circuit to keep it as simple as possible, but it would only add a small amount of complexity (and a lot of reliability) to make a simple timed switch using the venerable 555 timer. I'm leaning heavily toward the 555 with a small form factor relay, and I would design it with a "fail mode" of defaulting to the 7.2VDC output circuit as a protection against frying the gauges. This obviously will require FINALLY building a test bed with temp and fuel gauges mocked up so that I can experiment, which honestly would be a good thing, HA!
A benefit to this will be the gauge needles rising faster to their indication level on startup, rather than the lazy slow rise they have with my current design. Because of this I had planned to release my current design and then later on selling the updated design as a revision offered at full price for new and like half price for anyone who already had an original but felt the need to upgrade. But now with the cold weather issue I've been having seeming to be rooted in my regulator design, I'm seeing the necessity of integrating this feature now. It's been almost ten damn years since I started this project and I'm so close to a marketable design that I'm honestly torn on how I want to approach this.
- Thread starter
- #168
Almost a year since my last update, and I've still been hitting brick walls as far as finding a business to prototype my current revision of PCBs for this project and then produce the final product. In the meantime I've been working on my window relay unit refurbs (with a big challenge that I finally completed last week) and working on future revisions to the regulator itself.
Currently I'm debating on a valid calibration point for setting the voltage output of the regulator properly. My initial consideration is an even 4 gallons of fuel in the tank, then setting the regulator so that the fuel gauge needle rests on the lowest line of the gauge, or just a hair above the "E".
I'm looking for a little input as to which would be preferred, and I'll experiment myself using the 4-gallon method. My thought is that when the gauge shows you're pretty much empty, you still have a few gallons reserve to get to a gas station ASAP. The potential caveat I see is the temperature gauge being thrown out of whack too far in one direction, so this could take some time with trial and error.
Currently I'm debating on a valid calibration point for setting the voltage output of the regulator properly. My initial consideration is an even 4 gallons of fuel in the tank, then setting the regulator so that the fuel gauge needle rests on the lowest line of the gauge, or just a hair above the "E".
I'm looking for a little input as to which would be preferred, and I'll experiment myself using the 4-gallon method. My thought is that when the gauge shows you're pretty much empty, you still have a few gallons reserve to get to a gas station ASAP. The potential caveat I see is the temperature gauge being thrown out of whack too far in one direction, so this could take some time with trial and error.
Regarding the PCBs: do you have Gerber files ready to go? Happy to help with CAD if you need it. I also have a guy local to me who does great assembly work. I can help smooth that stuff out if you need to.
- Thread starter
- #170
Bare PCBs is exactly what I'm looking for. I've got the current Gerbers good to go and a bin with all the individual components to load and test at my workstation.
OshPark is a US-based company I use to make PCBs. They are more expensive, but higher quality and domestically made. Places like PCBWay in China can get small quantities to your door in about a week for far less, but sometimes can be riskier.
Are you wanting to stuff the boards yourself? My assembly guy would happily take the work if you don’t want to do that.
- Thread starter
- #172
I think OshPark is one I hadn't contacted yet, so I'll give them a try. I plan on stuffing the boards myself since that'll allow me to rapidly troubleshoot in the case of a bad component and future experimentation.
- Thread starter
- #173
Quick update: Trying a different diode that I'm hoping will allow compatibility with 24V vehicles so I had to change the solder points for the diode, but have a set of new PCB prototypes coming from Osh Park. Fingers crossed I have some good results.
Prototypes!! That’s a good step.
- Thread starter
- #175
Third prototypes actually lol
The first had some misaligned holes for the gauge posts, and the second didn't fit the diodes I wanted to try. So hopefully with both corrected now it'll be good.
Next step if this is good will be to find someone with a 24V rig to test one of these regulators and ensure that it actually WILL work in a 24V system.
@CenTXFJ60 is Mason on here? Need a 24V truck for testing.
@Spook50 You can at least use a bench PSU to make sure 24V isn’t gonna blow it up. Use a dummy load for the fuel level sender, etc. Obviously you’ll need a truck to test functionality.
@Spook50 You can at least use a bench PSU to make sure 24V isn’t gonna blow it up. Use a dummy load for the fuel level sender, etc. Obviously you’ll need a truck to test functionality.
- Thread starter
- #177
Exactly my plan
CenTXFJ60
SILVER Star
Mason is @landsnoozer
CenTXFJ60
SILVER Star
I have several 24v gauge clusters and glad to loan a gauge or two
Any update on this? I’ll buy 3!
