Erie Caboose Antenna

Time to try out the rotary table. I spend a few hours hand
writing code. Dry ran the machine. Looks good. Not going
to use a cutter this time. Going to try my carbide scriber I
made for engraving walls for a TT scale brass caboose. It
gave a perfect circle, but the six legs of the Antenna didn't
seem to start at the exact center.

Here's how big the jig is. That's a piece of .010" phosphor
bronze wire. Once I get the six legs started from center I'll
make some small clamps to hold everything together for
soldering.

I zeroed in the rotary table perfectly under the spindle
center. It now produces a perfect circle.

Using an Archimedes Drill. What is that? Here's a picture of one.

Using the Archimedes Drill and a .0225" drill a hole was
drill through the 1/4" thick aluminum jig.

The drill through the jig showing it can be done.

I made tiny clamps using .010" piano wire. A small loop
around a 2-56 screw to hold it down flat.

Flatened solder was cut into tiny slivers. Next I cut six
pieces of wire to a length of .140" (3.556mm) long for the
spokes. Flux was smeared on were the wires will be
soldered and to hold the slivers of solder. One piece was
laid on the jig to tell when the solder had melted.

Here comes the fun part. Soldering all those parts
together. Easy to do. I set the jig on a bigger piece of
aluminum and then that was set on a gas stove burner. At
the highest setting it only took a few minutes to heat both
plates to melt the solder.

A quick run under some cold water and this is the end
result. Not 100% but it proves out the jig works. I can
think of one reason not all six spokes soldered, the wire
wasn't clean enough. Also when I drilled the .0225"
(.5715mm) hole through the center it didn't drill straight
though. The slanted hole has nothing to do with the
soldering job. Now that I have prove of concept I'm going
to make another jig, hopefully with a straight hole
through the center.

Well here you go. Third try was the lucky charm.

And here's why I need a new jig.

Here's a video of how the jig was made. The video has been speeded up 4 times. The part is scribed several times in order to get enough depth to hold the wire in the groove.