It's been a very slow week this week, lots of parts but little overall visual progress.
I've been pondering the little hinges for the inspection hatches, there's a dozen of them and all need hinges cut from 0.4 mm copper wire. There's a couple of issues here, consistency and retention, cutting anything this small runs a high risk of projectilus disappearus.
Originally I've super glued them in place or used expensive loctite 480 or some such adhesive so this time I'd try soldering, you need the merest sliver to do the job but it is possible. I used the micro flame and the trick is to waft the heat and warm it evenly and slowly, too fast and the flux spits and flicks the solder off like some sort of demented flee.
So here's the first four in place.
I don't like images this close, they show all the flaws and untidy work in a bad light, but these hinges are tiny so needs must.
Making them all the same was the next issues, actually it came before the fixing above, so I devised a little jig from some scrap etch, the base plate is this long as it can be clamped to the bench with those little plastic springy grippers you can get.
Simply slide the wire in from the right and using the guide at top, cut the wire to the required length, there's a two fold advantage here, they're all the same length and the stop at left prevents them scooting off when cut.
Now it's a case of cut one, use one; rather than cut five, find two and use one, loose the other type of scenario before.
Sometimes it's the little things that have the biggest pleasures