Knobs and Power!

So a couple of little projects in between everything else this weekend. Firstly a classic hack turning an old ATX power supply into a bench top power supply.. I'm not going to go into too much detail as there are THOUSANDS of instructables and blogposts on how to do this out there.. I had to add a 10 watt 10 ohm resistor dummy load across the 5v rail to make all the outputs create the correct voltages. Of course I used the CNC to make a little breakout panel which was interesting in terms of I realised I am at the point where it is quicker and more accurate for me to whip up a quick drawing in inkscape and rout it rather than breaking out a drill and saw!

Second up links to my previous post .. all the universal clamps on my stand system are closed by 4mm threaded systems usually a bolt with a handled nut like so.. I hadn't made any more of these and currently am sharing the couple I'd made between different bits of the system. These are great but equally take a bit of time to make as they require quite a few operations. The handle parts are press fit into a 4mm reamed hole as well as the tapping etc..and they also use up my meagre supplies of nice EN1A steel! So I whipped up some nice knobs from some 6mm MDF with a routed hexagonal hole into which I could press fit a M4 nut with a blob of super glue, they work really well.