原创 Yummy antique analogue meter faceplates

I've been meaning to bring everyone up to date as to the current state of play with regard to my various hobby projects, but so much is going on that I never seem to find the time.

For example, I spent a large part of this past weekend working on my BADASS Display. Even though the front panel and the surrounding cabinet are made out of regular plywood, this really is starting to look like a piece of old furniture.

 

The main display panel at the top and the small control panel at the bottom look like brass (they are actually made out of 3/16" thick hardboard), and I flatter myself that the acorn nuts holding these panels onto the cabinet add a certain something to the proceedings. The next step will be to add the matrix of 256 brass washers and Fresnel lenses, followed by the tri-colored LEDs and controller (any guesses what I'll be doing next weekend?).

I'll be talking about the BADASS Display more in a future column. For the moment, however, I want to focus on the antique analogue meters I'm using for my Vetinari Clock and Prognostication Engine projects. Let's start with the Vetinari Clock. I opted for the cabinet layout shown below.

 

The front panel of the clock is going to feature a really tasty aluminum-colored, wood-grained veneer, while the surrounding cabinet is going to be ebony. The whole thing is going have an Art Deco-esque look-and feel, so I asked my graphics guru chum Denis Crowder if he could help me out with the designs for the meter faces, and he responded with the following:

As we can see, Denis came up with a stylized "MAX" logo that I will be using on all of my meters from this point on. Also, I particularly like the understated touch of red on the "Hours" meter.

Meanwhile, I was finding it a tad difficult to remove the old faceplates from some of the meters to the extent that I became worried about damaging them. Thus, based on some engineering drawings I created, master craftsman John Strupat in Canada created a set of new faceplates out of thin aluminum sheet.

Once I received the graphics from Denis, I emailed them to John, and he "printed" them onto the new faceplates. The reason I say "printed" in quotes is that I'm not too sure of the exact process used, and John is keeping this under his hat. All I know is that it starts with a powder coat and the result looks like white (very lightly cream-colored) enamel. In fact, the end result looks astounding -- I was performing my happiest of happy dances when these little beauties arrived in my office, let me tell you.

The next step was to send my Vetinari Clock meters and these new faceplates to my chum Jason Dueck at Instrument Meter Specialties (IMS). Jason and team stripped the meters down and refurbished them. As part of this, they added in the new faceplates from John, plus they did a lot of other stuff that I will discuss in a future column. The image below shows these meters just after they had arrived back from IMS.

 

A few days ago I took these meters, along with my plans for the Vetinari Clock's cabinet, down to show my master carpenter friend, Bob. I was hoping to enlist Bob's aid in making the cabinet, but I know this is going to take a substantial amount of work, so I must admit to being somewhat trepidacious as to the cost. You can only imagine my surprise when Bob told me that he loved this project so much that he wants one also, so if I furnish the meters and the electronics, he will build two cabinets -- one for me and one for him. Well, I didn't see that coming, but it sounds like a great plan to me.

Prognostication engines
As you may recall, when last we discussed my Pedagogical and Phantasmagorical Inamorata Prognostication Engine in this column, I'd just created a test jig for the little beauty. Here we see my test jig just after I'd performed a trial installation of the switches, potentiometers, and meters.

 

Remember that this Inamorata Engine is intended to predict whether the radiance of my wife's smile will fall upon me each day. (Also remember that, should she ever learn this machine's true purpose, I won’t need a Prognostication Engine to predict her mood-of-the-moment, so let's keep it our little secret.)

Just to remind ourselves, the large meter in the upper right-hand corner will reflect the full range of female emotion, from Extremely Disgruntled to Fully Gruntled. Underneath this we have the Fickleness Factor meter, which will reflect the chaotic nature of the multi-universe. Next we have the Suspicion of Wrongdoing meter, whose underlying algorithm has been the undoing of many a poor soul. When we come to the lower panel, the meter on the left will indicate the number of days until the next full moon (which has the potential for trying times), while the meter on the right will indicate the number of years, months, and days to the next blue moon (with the possibility of good fortune).

As you will observe in the image above, at this stage the meters had their original faceplates. Now, as we discussed in this column, for the past six weeks or so I've been working with Jason at Instrument Meter Specialties (IMS) to come up with the designs for the new faceplates.

Jason has developed some very interesting graticule (reticule) generating software, which he will be describing in a future article. Suffice it to say for the purposes of this column that Jason used his software to generate the faceplates shown below (observe that we used the stylized "MAX" logo created by Denis for the Vetinari Clock meters).

Initially, I was worried that the tan background was a tad too dark, but Jason assured me that this would be much lighter in the real world, and he was right, as we shall see. But first let us take a moment to remind ourselves that the Inamorata Prognostication Engine, which will eventually be housed in a wooden radio cabinet circa 1929, is to be complemented by a Phrankly Phenomenal Ultra-Macho Prognostication Engine, which we last discussed in this column.

The Ultra-Macho Prognostication Engine is to be presented in a box that sits on top of its Inamorata counterpart. In the image below, we see this box in the progress of being created.

 

In the fullness of time, there will be a brass panel inlayed in the front of this box. Mounted on this panel will be my largest and most bodacious meter reflecting units of Magnificence Magnitude (there will also be a number of other items, but we'll leave those for a future column). The following shows an early rendition of this faceplate before it was transposed onto a circular template.

As for the Vetinari Clock, I sent all of my Prognostication Engine meters to Jason for them to be checked out and refurbished by the IMS team. As part of this, Jason removed the existing faceplates, printed our new designs on the backside of the faceplates using a super-duper UV printer, and then reassembled everything and gave them a final once-over before returning them to yours truly. The results are as shown below.

 

As we see, the tan background color on these meters is very subtle -- just sufficient to give them an old-time appearance. Also note that any brass nuts and bolts shown in the above images are the ones I was originally working with as place-holders. IMS also supplied me with a complete set of age-appropriate nuts and bolts in black.

So, that's where things stand at the moment. I know these projects have been a long time in the making, but -- as I hope you will agree -- they are all starting to come to fruition. In future blogs we'll start assembling everything and honing the code to drive the various engines. Meanwhile, as always, I welcome any questions and comments.