Armour Dreams

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening all,

Not much to report on the Panzer front, as I have been busy with other non military projects that I appear to have gained.

As for the Panzer i have been removing the parts that i have previously made and under coating them ready for a top coat as and when.

A quite interesting little project that i have finished is the rotary coupling that connects power and audio from the hull up into the turret.
I had thought of using a cheap slip ring as sold on ebay and modifying it to suit but i don't think that it will be man enough, so i decided to knock something up myself.

The rotary junction is bolted to the hull floor and attaches to the leg of the commanders seat, the cables then run inside of the seat support leg and into the turret.

I thought that i had taken loads more pictures but it appears that i didn't. This is the rotor and the copper ring connectors, sorry if my descriptive terms are incorrect but i can't think what the individual components would be called.

IMG_5393.jpg floor.jpg img8d77c664zikazj_jpeg_01eb1d32a86c20aa87ff12b5cf229852.jpg DSC06768.jpg

[Jonathan Moore]

The copper is 35mm plumbing tube pressed over nylon insulators with the relevant wires soldered in.

All the external connectors that i have used are clansman but i couldn't find a female socket, so i used a bulkhead fitting and turned up a two part housing that pushes together and sealed it all by covering it with heat shrink.

The outer housing has a bearing top and bottom and an oil seal at the top to stop dirt getting in but i forgot to take a photo of the completed unit.

The whole unit is housed in a fabricated steel enclosure that will be sealed with silicon on final assembly.

[Jonathan Moore]

That's all for now.



Jon

[Ganmain Tony]

Thank goodness you're back Jonathan.

I was experiencing serious withdrawal symptoms....

Need my panzer 2 fix

[DaveBuckle]

I too regularly check the armour forum hoping to see your updates.
Shames me into getting something (straightforward and simple) done down the shed ...
Great stuff!

[Jonathan Moore]

Evening All,

I have realised that i haven't updated my thread for a while so.

Thanks for asking after me, I appreciate it. I am, as you can tell, still in the land of the living but with winter coming, in the near future, there was a job that I needed to get done and If I have mentioned this before please forgive me for repeating myself, i blame it on my age.

When i built my workshop i built it to suit Land Rovers, so it didn't need to be that high or have tall doors, fast forward several years and the vehicles that i own, build, have got taller and i need more height, so i decided to remove the roof, raise the walls by 2'6" and rotate the roof 90 degrees so that the door would now be in the end of the workshop. It sounds so simple and what i should have done, is make a steel frame and erect it over the whole building and then demolish the old building but i am not that sensible. Of course once the building was water tight, I had to rewire it etc. So that's what i have been mostly doing.

On to more important things. The little time that i have had, i have used to make the frame that would house the radios in the original tank.

With a bit of wiggling I should be able to fit the Clansman boxes inside the reproduction German radio's.

[Jonathan Moore]

As stated before, I am going to be using Clansman intercoms in the tank and the ideal place to hide them is within the radios. I have an original radio but that is of no use as i don't want to ruin it by ripping the innards out, so i have been making a repro set. The radios were housed in the aforementioned frame on the inside of the hull on the right hand side, viewed from the front of the tank.

The radio consists of two units side by side.
So the task in hand is to try and recreate these units but with hinged front plates so that there is access to the Clansman boxes inside. Obviously i am not going over the top with them, as they just have to look the part but still it's a time consuming process.

One of two power plugs next to a picture of a real one.
The units are not finished yet but this is it so far.