Lighted Hockey Puck

[philba]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Sterling Martin:
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BTW, how much interference would the hall effect sensor pick up from the charger?<hr></blockquote><p>I'm not sure, you'd get an alternating field so if it was affected, it would cycle 60 times a second. Maybe you could put it perpindicular to the field but that might not be possible. Or you could figure out a way to inhibit the switch when charging. Or maybe it doesn't matter since you'll be stuffing more into the cells than taking out - might be a good feedback that its charging. Solvable but I dont know how much space you have available. <p>Now, if you used a PIC...

[Bernius1]

The electrical suggestions are all excellent, especially about non-contact. But my concern is the mechanical properties. If you split the puck & glue it, it'll break on impact eventually, even if dove-tailed. I'd hole-saw a plug out of the center, cross-drill it for batteries & PCB, & then silicone that back in. The concentric style should also retain balance. I've seen setups where the center plug and outer ring have o-ring grooves cut in them, so the plug pops in and locks, but is removeable.
BTW , the 3-day life span, if continuous, is V.good.
Look up casting urethane from hobby suppliers.
And remember how hard it'll be hit, & how fast it'll spin.<p>...& don't forget to name it Wolfgang !!!!

[milk_boy]

Hey Sterling Martin <p>I've actually made over 5 prototypes of LED's in pucks. My constraints were to keep as much as the puck possible, keep the LED's to a minimum and the G forces due to acceleration to balance out in the center of the puck. I started out with 2 watch batteries (3v), these were a pain to work with considering when you wire them you can't put the LED's in parallel unless each wire came straight off the battery (big con). I managed to get that one to work but it only lasted 30 mines at most. <p>Next I used 3 AAA batteries (4.8 V in total); this was fun to wire and figure out how to set the batteries into the puck with the same contraints as before. I used 2 LED's again for this puck and it seemed as though LED's run more off the current running through them than the voltage, I could be wrong. Anyways I put a switch in the puck too to make switching on and off the lights easy. you could easily put more LED's in this design but I'd be worried about the integrity of the puck and how much wire needed to set all them in parallel to each other, but it would be fun
There would be no glue that would beable to hold a puck after being split apart like that unless you somehow fused the puck back together. A small crack can cause alot of stress and strain to be focused on that location. Using 2 small bolts would minimize this and hold up to the stress. I thought about doing this but then it goes against my contraint of keeping much of the material as possible and the forces balanced in the center for the G's they are going to experience.