[sbonse]

Thought i would start on my belt gizmo as im waiting for my pack lights to turn up. I ordered most of the parts for the belt gizmo last year when i started on my pack.

I ordered the resin kit from Nick-a-tron. It was the later version he was selling with the nixie tube holders.

this is the kit as received from nick. excellent kit for the price.
Also went to maplins and picked up a pack of various resistors so i could add them to the board. Ordered the nixie tubes off ebay from a seller in Russia.

You buy them in a set of 9 if i remember enough for the belt gizmo.

started off by drilling 1.5-2mm holes in the daughter boarder for the resistors to fit into.

Here are the resistors fitted. they are only pushed in at the moment just to try for fit and to how it looks as i need to paint it yet.

also did the same on the main circuit board. drilled the holes for the resistors

again the resistors just placed in to see what they look like

a very boring job drilling the holes but it needs to be done. I used various pictures from other members builds for ideas and positions of the resistors.
will be picking some paint up tomorrow so i can start to paint the circuit boards over the weekend.

[sbonse]

started painting my belt gizmo. Firstly gave it a coat of grey plastic primar front and back and then painted the board with a metalic bronze spray paint purchased from homebase.

gave it a couple ofcoats front and back and left to dry for at least 2 hours between coats and 24 hours to fully dry.

painted the 4 chips white using some white enamel paint that i had lying around in the shed. These required 3 coats so that the bronze paint was not showing through


next up painted the four upper chips using some matt black paint. had some left over in a spray can from painting my pack, so sprayed some into the lid of the spray can and applied using a small brush.


also painted the little prongs at the bottom of the board and the pins around the sides of the white chips with metalic gold paint

[sbonse]

Little more work done in the belt gizmo. Glued the resistors into the board.




also added the green circuit lines to the board and gold coloured solder dots on the end of some of the green circuit lines


Using a glue gun glued the resistors in place and when the glue was dry cut the excess off the resistors

Also added a real chip and red wires coming from the chip going into the board.

[sbonse]

Started adding the resistors and wires to the daughter board tonight






Used the same concept as I did on the main board. Used a glue gun to hold the resistors and the wires in place on the back of the daughter board. Also glued a chip and a few other components on to make it look more like a circuit board

[sbonse]

Little more done in the belt gizmo. Paint the angled bracket and the piece that the nixie tubes fit into matt black. Also painted two small wooden blocks black as well to fix the angled bracket onto the board. Got the idea from a few other peoples builds that I have used for reference.


Close up shot showing the wooden blocks



Next up cut various lengths of wire and stripped all of the wire gauge out so I was left with just the outer plastic wire sheaf. Cut the lengths of wire to the length I required. I doubled up on the wires on the nixie tubes so I only used 4 strips of wire.



Drilled 9 holes into the board so that the wires could pass through. Glued the nixie tubes into place with a glue gun and glued the wires to the reverse of the board. Same as I did with the electrical components.






Not sure how many nixie tubes should be in the gizmo. A few of the threads I looked through only used 8 nixie tubes but nick's resin kit seems to be made to use 9 nixie tubes. I had 10 nixie tubes so used 9 for my gizmo. Good job I had a spare as one rolled off the table and smashed.
Just need to pick up some ceramic capacitors from maplins in the week and print some sanyo labels off to finish the chips off and get a curly black wire and the belt gizmo is complete.

[mburkit]

That came together really well. Can't wait to see it hanging from a belt.

[Kingpin]

Back when Nick and I were drawing up the design I ended up using what I now know to have been an incorrect model of Sanyo Calculator as reference, visually close enough... but with some major differences (the first generation of the boards Nick produced featured two extra chips where your resistors are mounted, and one of the chips with the gold caps absent)... the design also featured 9 nixies, and no error box... I believe the accurate model had eight nixies along with the error box.

[Demon Vice Commander]

That's looking pretty good; however, shouldn't the nixie tubes be facing the other way (numeric display facing out)?

[sbonse]

That's looking pretty good; however, shouldn't the nixie tubes be facing the other way (numeric display facing out)?

Yeah I have them the wrong way round. Hadn't noticed until you said as I thought this was the correct way until I looked through other peoples builds. Not changing them round now

[sbonse]

Picked up a mix bag of ceramic capacitors today from Maplins to finish adding the components to my belt gizmo.




just need to add the stickers and attach the main board to the daughter board and then the gizmo is complete. Receive the lather holster the other week so nearly there now

[AJ Quick]

Great job. Nice finishing touches!

[Kingpin]

Ooooh, those capacitors are much better in terms of spacing. What model are they?

Have you heat shrunk the heatshrink? It appears a little lose around the wires for the Nixie tubes.

Aside from that, it's coming along really nicely.

[sbonse]

Ooooh, those capacitors are much better in terms of spacing. What model are they?

Have you heat shrunk the heatshrink? It appears a little lose around the wires for the Nixie tubes.

Aside from that, it's coming along really nicely.

here is a close up of the capacitor showing what is written on them.

dont know anything else about them as they were in a mixed bag.

The wires are not heatshrinked on didnt really think of doing that.

[sbonse]

small update of the belt gizmo in the leather holster. pic of the leather holster i purchased. It has a press stud on the inside as well so that the gizmo can be held in place




press stud glued onto back of board


gizmo in holster




a couple of pics with the holster on my jeans belt to see what it looks like

[Kingpin]

Pretty close now, all that's needed now is the coiled cable.

[sbonse]

Pretty close now, all that's needed now is the coiled cable.

going to get one over the weekend

[sbonse]

Ordered a khaki military belt off eBay to use for my uniform. Not completely screen accurate but it looks close enough. Went for this one as it was available in the uk so worked out cheaper than paying import etc. Belt is fully adjustable up to 44" waist.
Pics of mother board in it's holster on the belt.

[sbonse]

Purchased a cheap tape measure the other day for £1 so I could use the belt clip off it for the daughter board for attaching it to my belt




Just need the curly wire and some stickers and it's finished

[sbonse]

Added a strip of lights to my gizmo earlier just to add to the effect. I had a spare light strip that was lying around. Glued the light strip onto the main board behind the nixie tubes. All powered by a 9 volt battery which I just push up onto the leather holder out of the way.






Last image is showing the battery pushed inside the holder

[Carpeteria]

Nice! Reminds me a bit of what I did with mine. I like the blue.

[Kalbuir]

Very nice build, What size nixie tubes did you get for that kit?

[sbonse]

Very nice build, What size nixie tubes did you get for that kit?

Not sure on the size of them but I ordered them off eBay from a seller called jetparts from Russia.

[sbonse]

Finished my belt gizmo earlier. Purchased a incar charger which I took to pieces so that I could use the curly wire to connect the main board to the daughter board