Best of luck with the launch. You've put in the work. Good job so far.
Norm
Norm
Falcon 9/ Heavy 1:65 Scale cluster plan check
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Only other thought I have is that some of those relay boards come on sequentially. Make sure when you power on they all go click. Not click,click,click,click,click,click.......
Norm
Norm
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Each relay has its own lead so they can be triggered independently. In my case I'm going to wire them all together to the all work simultaneously.
Today I started work on how everything will get connected and parts have been arriving.
Project box
ATX male and female connectors for power to ignitors
40 wire ribbon cables for LED lights
Pin sockets for the LED cables
Coffee
More Screw posts
ATX power with screw posts to connect the relays to the 24 pin cable leading to the rocket.
4Pin ATX cables because I need 28 wires
Attachments
Double up on the coffee. Looks a bit light.....
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LEDs lights and bread boards
Screw terminal blocks and panel mounts for LED lights
wire
And designing mounts for the relay blocks and bread boards to aid in managing all of the wire this is going to need.
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Last night I started working on wiring the relay blocks. My first attempt was a fail.
Simply zip-tying the wires was going to add up to a bulky and difficult to service mess. Each relay has 3 wires on the switch side plus 1 wire to active each relay plus a positive and ground wire for the 8 relay block. That's 4x8+2=34 wires per relay block and 136 wires total! And the smallest solder boards have too much unused space.
My solution is to create a base for each relay block to organize the wires.
and cut the solder board to just the size I need.
Here all of the 22AWG positive (green) wires are in a screw terminal post that bridges them into one common 18AWG lead. And each wire from each relay is color coded and fed under the relay block out the end.
In the above photo you can also see one of many wire guides I 'll use to keep everything tidy.
Here is the under side. All of the relay's trigger wires (black) are also bridged to a single wire since I want all of the relays to close simultaneously. And the wires from each relay to the igniter or LED continuity indicator are color coded in two rows. So the yellow wires go to the same igniter and LED respectively.
Simply zip-tying the wires was going to add up to a bulky and difficult to service mess. Each relay has 3 wires on the switch side plus 1 wire to active each relay plus a positive and ground wire for the 8 relay block. That's 4x8+2=34 wires per relay block and 136 wires total! And the smallest solder boards have too much unused space.
My solution is to create a base for each relay block to organize the wires.
and cut the solder board to just the size I need.
Here all of the 22AWG positive (green) wires are in a screw terminal post that bridges them into one common 18AWG lead. And each wire from each relay is color coded and fed under the relay block out the end.
In the above photo you can also see one of many wire guides I 'll use to keep everything tidy.
Here is the under side. All of the relay's trigger wires (black) are also bridged to a single wire since I want all of the relays to close simultaneously. And the wires from each relay to the igniter or LED continuity indicator are color coded in two rows. So the yellow wires go to the same igniter and LED respectively.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2016
- Messages
- 174
- Reaction score
- 295
Last night I started working on wiring the relay blocks. My first attempt was a fail.
Simply zip-tying the wires was going to add up to a bulky and difficult to service mess. Each relay has 3 wires on the switch side plus 1 wire to active each relay plus a positive and ground wire for the 8 relay block. That's 4x8+2=34 wires per relay block and 136 wires total! And the smallest solder boards have too much unused space.
My solution is to create a base for each relay block to organize the wires.
View attachment 518496
and cut the solder board to just the size I need.
Here all of the 22AWG positive (green) wires are in a screw terminal post that bridges them into one common 18AWG lead. And each wire from each relay is color coded and fed under the relay block out the end.
In the above photo you can also see one of many wire guides I 'll use to keep everything tidy.
Here is the under side. All of the relay's trigger wires (black) are also bridged to a single wire since I want all of the relays to close simultaneously. And the wires from each relay to the igniter or LED continuity indicator are color coded in two rows. So the yellow wires go to the same igniter and LED respectively.
I almost completed the relay / continuity box this weekend except for some missing ring connectors for the external terminal screw posts that connect to the power source and launch controller.
Recall that the goal was independent LED continuity checks for each igniter in a 27 cluster 1:65 scale Falcon Heavy.
The green screw terminal blocks are the last stage of my "clip whip from hell"/
Here's the (almost) finished build of the relay/continuity box. Each LED indicates continuity for the corresponding igniter on each of the 27 motors the Falcon Heavy.
Lets look inside the relay box...
I had to stack the relays to get everything to fit into the project box:
Here you can see the top two and one of the bottom relay blocks. I used the same wire color for each relay NC and COM wire:
1: Black
2: Red
3: Yellow
4: green
5: blue
6: white
7: pink
8: purple
Positive power from the batter goes directly to the LEDs, then through each NC gate on the relay, and though each igniter to ground. When the relay switches to the NO gate, the LED circuit is opened and power is supplied through the NO gate directly to the igniters.
This makes it easy to assures the correct LED and igniter alignment. I also use Green wire as 12V positive everywhere (only because the LED wires shipped that way).
Since all of the relays need to switch at the same time, they are all wired together on a common buss (black wires in foreground of the front top relay).
I needed a ribbon cable to connect the LEDs in the project box lid to the main board inside the box. My soldering skills have progressed but I found these IDC 60-PIN Breakout boards and not only would it save a ton of time soldering but would allow to quickly correct mistakes or change the arrangement of the LEDs. They do take up a lot of space which is why I had to stack the relay blocks.
Originally I wanted to load balance all of the motors across all of the relays but in practice that just seamed like too much work. Now each of the first 3 relays provides ignition to one set of 8 AT10-0T motors on each core, and the forth relay ignites all three E12-0 core motors.
Here is a view from the top. The blue tape on the left is just keeping power and ground cables together until the ring connectors arrive tomorrow. The red space connectors (middle right) are also temporary.,
I ran all of the wires from the relays to the LEDs on the bottom of the base board. I did this just to keep the top side less cluttered and allow for easy tracing of wires and to avoid confusing the LED and Igniter wires. Also, I had designed and printed these 8 wire organizers so I had to use them somewhere. Everything on the project board is on self adhesive Velcro™ so I can move things around if needed.
Note that since the ribbon cable is only 60 pin, two of the relay cables cannot be used since each relay block has 8 relays and 8X4 =32 . I figured those are spares and gave them lots of extra wire.
The LEDs have a built in resistor
And are mounted using these 5mm LED mounts
I decided not to trim the LED cables just to save time & get to a version that can be tested. I plan to shorten those later. I added some tape to secure the LED wires to keep them from snagging on anything inside the box.
Before:
After"
This photo shows the wires going to the break out board for the 60pin ribbon cable. You can also see the ATX power supply breakout board used to connect to the 18AWG wires that go to the igniters and the 24pin motherboard extension cable
Note pins 0-30 are all just used to power the LEDs, so I ran a single wire across every screw post. I just stripped a wire and bent it |_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_||_ all the way across the block.
I designed and printed this base for the ATX breakout board to make it easier to access and organize the wires.
And with the ribbon cable installed.
Here is another view of the ATX break out board
Here's the outside showing the external screw posts. The two on the right are for power and the the two on the left trigger the relays.
On the right side I have a 24pin ATX motherboard connector plus a 4-pin connector. This was because I need at least 28pins and couldn't find a 28 or 32 pin cable in 18AWG wire. The 24pin cable is used for the A10-T0 motors and the 4pin is used for the 3 E12-0 motors. I still need to add a 16AWG ground wire.
I also need to complete the screw terminal connector block for the igniters. This is turning out to be very challenging due to the tight spacing an soldering required...
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@Switch , that is a thing of beauty. I really like the graphic representation of every igniter in the cluster on the front panel.
Really, really impressive.
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