721 Spectrophotometer tear down

There will be more projects relating the to 721 Spectrophotometer but I thought I would start this little series with a basic tear down of the machine.

So the machine came in a very nice box, very well packaged and for the price I paid, it's higher quality than I originally expected.

The tear down started by unscrewing the sample holder rod then removing the wavelength knob and the 2 bolts on both sides. From here the white plastic top simply lifts off.

Overall simple design most of the left area is taken up by the lamp and the defraction gradient which unfortunately couldn't be accesed without me possibly damaging other parts. From here you can spin the wheel on the left side to modify the wavelength being used. On the right side you mostly have the sample chamber which is built to hold 4 separate samples and the detector.

I'm thinking of modifying the sample holder or at the very least 3d printing some adapters for some light fun.

Two separate circuit boards were inside the case, one to power the lamp and the other to control the screen.

The circuit that controls the screen really got my attention , I would like to see if I could do something with this "ISP" connection. Haven't identified any of the chips yet but getting a data port in here would be nice.

So there will be more projects on modifying the spectrophotometer later on but I hope you enjoyed the basic tear down.

Funaria hygrometrica pot

Been collecting plants for years and have been a fan of moss all my life.  It's a simplistic plant and after all these years I'm going to try to keep it in an indoor pot. Luckily living in the county side has given the ability to source my own moss. I filled the bottom with high quality dirt and compressed it pretty hard. So I just went outside one evening and started to fill a small indoor glass pot with cord moss. 

I give it a light spraying ever day to keep it moist and so far its doing pretty well. 

Also I think the pot is beautiful , I was given a load of old milk glass and am slowly going through it.

Custom Vivarium Lamp

So you probably already read my Vivarium build well as much as I love the Vivarium,  I would like to provide it better lighting and have it near my chair. So here we go , I started this build by drawing a simple pixel art of what I wanted (I just like doing it for all my projects).

The main parts of the project are as follows:

• Two round modules for mounting the LED strips

• Oak base

•Led strips

•Mount to hold the metal square tube 

•Cap

The round modules are probably the most complex part of the build mostly because you have to take into account for the leds strips, wiring and attaching it to the 19mm square tube. Took me two tries to get it just right but in the end it worked out beautifully. All the CAD work was done tinkercad. 

 

Originally I was going to cut a hole into the oak to hold the 19mm square tube but I decided to go the easier route and just 3d print a holder for it.

(At this point I simply need to drill a few holes and wire the led strips)

I didn't think it was going to be to bright but turned out I was wrong. So I built a simple shade to cover the brightest parts of the light. The leds get slightly warm which provide heat to the terrariumm