Soldering Vent Part 2

Now that I'm back from college, I finally got time to finish my soldering vent. I started where I left off, which was wiring the whole thing up. I also had to glue the front on, so once I had everything going to the switch box, I glued, clamped, and while that dried, I finished wiring it up. It was all fairly simple, I just had to follow the directions. Once everything was wired up, I fastened the switch and box in place. I may have just done something wrong, but the holes for the switch didn't line with the holes in the switch box, so I just decided to use a 3/4" screw. It isn't the best I could have done, but it worked.

After that, I decided it was time to test it. I wasn't completely confident of my wiring job, so I put it in the middle of my driveway just to make sure. Well, nothing bad happened, and it worked, so I finished it up. This didn't require a whole lot, all I had to do was put the cover plate for the switch and vent on. For kicks, I also decided to add a handle to the top. This was one we just had laying around, but if I was to make this again, I would probably have taken the time to go to a hardware store, and tried to find something that I could have wrapped the power cord around.

 The finished product. I think it turned out quite well.

And now for something completely different:

All Monty Python references aside, I thought I would take a break from talking about the MAME cabinet and instead show a different thing I have been working on.
As I am sure you already know, and have for some time now, I am at college staying in a dorm. I have had different arrangements of my desk, and my current arrangement leaves my desk directly under the smoke detector. I plan to be soldering at my desk, and that produces smoke. Now I don't know if it would be enough to set it off or not, but I would just as soon not find out. With that in mind, I set out to make a solder filter. I had remembered seeing this instructable a long time ago. I went on the Home Depot website and started pricing out different fans, hoping for one with a square case. After a while, I found this bathroom vent, and decided to go with it. Once I got it home, I realized that it didn't have an AC plug, so I had to do some more work. I went back to Home Depot, and got a replacement power tool cable, along with a light switch, switch plate, and switch box. It was only after I got all that stuff that I realized that I would need a housing to put everything in. I started sketching out a design on paper, and once I had a satisfactory design, I put it into Sketchup.

My finished design

An idea of what it will look like finished

With it completely designed, it was off to my house to work on it over Thanksgiving break.
For this project, I decided to use plywood; I figured it would look good enough without doing anything to it. I bought some 3/4" plywood at the local Lowe's, but I couldn't find any satisfactory 1/2" plywood there. I decided to use my Baltic birch plywood that I had bought for a different project, but I can just buy more when I get back to that project. First I glued the two top pieces together; while those were drying, I cut the exhaust port holes in the side piece, and glued those together as well. Once everything was dry, I glued the frame together. Before I applied the glue, I realized it would be impossible to get the fan in there if I had the middle piece, so that's why you don't see it in the picture of the glueup.

I checked all the corners for squareness once everything was clamped and they still managed to get out of square. Ah well, you do what you can.
The back is inset in the frame, but when I didn't put the middle piece in, it made it impossibly difficult to position the back piece correctly. The quick fix for this is to glue a couple of support pieces to the inside, so the back won't fall in.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get much more done, and I didn't take any pictures, but not much more was done. Next time I go down there, I will probably be able to finish it, and I will take more pictures.

Slight Revamp to the Site

Nothing major going on, but I thought I might direct your attention to the new bar to your immediate up. If I have a major project going on that would take up more than a few posts, I will create a page so you can see all of them at once. My first example is obviously the MAME cabinet. Once I start doing other projects, if you want to read only about the MAME cabinet, you can just click on that button and only read about the MAME cabinet. Of course all those posts will still show up on the front page, they will just be with all of the others. Also up there is the obligatory "About Me" page.