Just a Small Job

Speaking of Speakers…

Despite having an extremely busy week, I was able to do a very small amount of work on my saber.  All I could get done was soldering the speaker.

Basically, all you need to wire up a speaker is wire, a speaker, a soldering iron, some solder, and some de-soldering braid (or a wire to perform the same function).  I generally use 2 colors of wire so that I can separate "positive" from "negative"; speakers work wired either way, but the board you connect to usually polarizes the speaker.  All "negative" and "positive" mean for a speaker is the flow of electricity and, generally unless marked, speakers don't have a polarity.  The speaker, in this case, is a 2watt speaker with a 28 millimeter diameter speaker.  The soldering iron is up to you for brand and type - I use a Weller with an adjustable power and a very narrow soldering tip (more on that when I solder the sound board).  It's important that you use a rosin core solder - usually 60/40 is what you find.  I include de-soldering braid because it helps fix small soldering mistakes - like turning wires around, etc.

 

It's a simple matter to solder the wires to the speaker.  On this speaker, there are 2 pads - one wire goes on one side as above and one wire…

…goes on the other side.  Perhaps, this isn't the best arrangement for the wires.  Since the speaker goes into a plastic casement inside the saber, it would probably be better to de-solder these wires from the speaker and turn them so that the wires pass over the center.

Now, to stress why this is the only work I've done on the saber this week.  First, it only just occurred to me that I wired the wires facing the "wrong" way.  Second, and more importantly, I hooked them up to my multimeter and tested for continuity, expecting them not to have continuity.  Anyone who knows about speakers knows that they are an electromagnet driven part (well, I knew that) and that an electromagnet works only by being a continuous stream of current, i.e. it has continuity.  Worried that I wired the speaker wrong or something, I de-soldered the wires and checked the pads for continuity.  They had continuity.  Suddenly, I remembered how a speaker works and could just kick myself for panicking over a properly functioning part.  I decided that I couldn't be trusted to work on the saber anymore this week (especially now that I've tripped or lost my balance twice around critical work in the shop and I just don't do that).

Having realized that I should wire the speaker slightly differently, the next two pictures are kind of funny.

Yep, that's the speaker encased in it's casement.  It's not impossible to remove from the casement, just a pain because I have to remove the speaker without damaging it.  This is how it goes together, though, which is what I wanted to show.  To make the speaker function out of the saber, I'm going to get some craft felt, snip an "X" in it, run the wires through it, and glue it to the back of the casement.

Needing rest…

I'm hoping that I can get more work done on the saber soon.  At the moment, I think I'm in need of some proper rest.  Lately, I'm making too many mistakes and taking too many missteps.  I'm not comfortable especially with tripping over things in a shop - there are power tools like table saws and things to run into and that's not an injury to get.

Tweeting on Twitter

I just joined some to the modern world recently - I joined Twitter.  If you'd like to follow me there, I'm jek_creations - all like that.