imadaleknotanengineer

[imadaleknotanengineer]

14 May 2022

My brother had 3D printed the gatling gun bits from @threegringos since I didn't have a 3D printer at the time and I resprayed it. We started to try adding LEDs and spinning but weren't able to get that done in time for MegaCon.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

12 May 2022

I'd cracked my first two hemispheres but I had found some DIY plastic ornaments that I could take apart and snip off the part where the string goes through. I experimented with sanded vs unsanded. Some were test hemispheres and I tested out a colour shifting blue for potential use on Ren.

(unsanded ended up turning out better in my opinion but I might've not used a fine enough sandpaper, you can see the difference on the two black hemis)

[imadaleknotanengineer]

25 April 2022

Skully helped me finish up the hinge for the one person opening the weekend prior and after I'd gotten off work on the 25th I'd immediately began working on disassembling and painting/repainting what needed to be touched up as well as finished repainting the skirt. You can see in previous photos it had a much duller black that was matte finish. I wanted to have a more gloss finish on it which, in turn, gave a richer black.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

18 April 2022

Ran into an issue where the paint would fade and go patchy after it dried. I wasn't used to working with metallic paint, especially not metallic automotive paint. I started with a base of glossy grey that I used for the shoulders and had already done some slats (successfully) but some stubborn slats and hemis had the odd discolouring. The issues with the slats and hemis were the same day. I thought it was something to do with the weather at first (maybe too windy, hot (was around 23°c), or humid (was about 73% the day of this happening and it said on the cans below 80% is good).

I asked for help in the Florida Dalek Builders Facebook page and was told to sand the pieces down first and that did work. I believed the issue was the surfaces got too smooth for an even finish.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

13 April 2022

I got the rings finished. Nearly did the bolts in silver but I really did not like how difficult it was, as nice as it looked to have them silver. I just could not get it to go down without overspray or underspray and I was on a time crunch for MegaCon.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

20 March 2022

Huge thanks to Skully for helping design and build the frame/hinge system to allow me to open Hal by myself (prior to this point I needed 1-2 people to help manually take off either the entire top half at once or each part, shoulders up, one by one to get out). This day was a lot of spray painting.

I got the frame de-greased and painted, started the dome and dome bits, started redoing the hemispheres, was working on redoing the slats.

One thing I did that people might not've noticed but, in my opinion, made all the difference was repainting all bolts that were visible on the outside with a metallic spray paint. That made all bolts uniform to each other as well as with the rest of the bolts that weren't part of those sets. The slat bolts were also different from the screen used ones (which are just caps hot glued into the slat divots) and are carriage bolts with the numbers sanded off. This looks fantastic, but unprotected it started to develop some very minor surface rust. I sanded that off and sprayed over it to protect it and cover any surface imperfections from sanding.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

3 December 2021

Family came down for Turkey Day and my dad helped me figure out the issue with the lights and we tried to put in the better speakers.

I only have a bit of knowledge about wiring/rewiring electronics from the various projects my dad did with my brother and I as kids so I ended up blowing out the amp board by wiring the speakers in parallel rather than in series. There wasn't enough resistance with the two speakers to slow the flow of electricity. We did manage to identify and chart all the electronics in the dome as well as where connections go and what each board's purpose is and were able to find them online. This meant I could easily buy a replacement for the amp board and if any others needed to be replaced I could do the same, plus I had schematics to know how to wire it back in. We also started some schematics for a redesign of the brain box.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

23 November 2021

Hal is apart again for some more repairs. Trying to figure out the flickering lights. Just realised there was a plug I could remove the brain box from the rest of the dome to make taking it apart a bit easier.

Further fixed the cable management by affixing zip tie pads along points in the dome so it's easier to identify issues/make changes in the future.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

3 November 2021

Took the seat out of Hal, want to replace it with a bench that's also higher up. That's both to make room for electronics under the seat and to add height so I can see better while sitting more comfortably. Hoping this will also make some room for the supports to open/close the top half. At this point I also took off the arm and back of the seat so it wouldn't be rubbing against the sides. I set the remote in my lap from this point forward.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

22 October 2021

Part three of this post see part two here

WARNING!!! FLASHING LIGHTS HEAD!!!

[imadaleknotanengineer]

22 October 2021

Part two of three of this post see part three here

[imadaleknotanengineer]

22 October 2021

This was the progression of getting my MF-102 (Moogerfooger) voice changer set up. First one was just with the amplifier, second was the first attempt to get the audio to go through the dome, it was a cheap speaker and seated right up against the wood base for the dome so it did terribly with bass. My solution was to add some spacers to give it some distance between the wood and speaker.

Amp is a Roland Micro Cube-GX which was suggested by a fellow Florida Dalek operator, Paul.

See this post for the second video and this post for the third video.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

21 October 2021

Hal got his underbody lighting installed. I'd gotten strip LEDs that had a remote access feature via Geeni to change brightness, saturation, colour, and more, and adhered it under the wood portion of the base. I had to take off the skirt and fender to get up under there.

I believe I used the Prisma Strip Smart LEDs for that, I do remember it was ~$15 at Walmart and I later got more to light up the interior.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

23 August 2021

Hello! This will start my documentation of progress for Dalek Hal!

This was my first time trying to take him apart to modify him/fix something. For the most part I'll be copy/pasting descriptions from the old posts.

Had the dome charging for a good while and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't turn on…. Turns out the connector for the battery came loose. No real repairs needed here but I think seeing my old brain box and comparing it to when my new one is finished will be nice (EDIT: almost 3 years later and yeah, it does. Also I was still too scared to open the brain box at this point) and others get a chance to see what his dome electronics used to look like.

[imadaleknotanengineer]

Hello! Welcome to my blog.

You can call me leech, pest, or Dalek Hal (or just Hal). I'm the owner/operator/builder for Dalek Hal. Originally he was a commission from David Miller Creations. As of writing this (16/01/2024) I've put over 320 hours of work into him including but not limited to a hinge mechanism, completely new shoulder section, completely new dome, system for a voice changer, interior and underbody lighting, and more!

This blog will be a documentation of all the work I put into Hal over the past few years and any future work I do.

If you'd like to keep up with any events I am bringing/have brought Hal to, please check out my Facebook page!