[GreenKeys] [External] Re: anyone know the details of this unit?

[John Poulton]

Um.. guilty as charged!

I made a set of these punch blocks for Nick some time ago.. a fun project!
I'd never made anything that needed hardening, but it turned out to be
fairly easy, thanks to several friends who also have machine shops (and
more importantly, ovens and surface grinders).

If there's a lot of interest in this project, I could probably be persuaded
to make a few more of the things, as I still have all of the carbide
tooling required.   I could also put Nick's (K4NYW) original sketches, some
info from Teletype, and my drawings for the parts on line at "jptronics.org",
if anyone wants them.  I'm thinking NIck may have already shared these
drawings on navy-radio.com, however.

Nick also gave me a bunch of information about the electromechanical bits
in the BRPE, including punch timing, solenoid characteristics, and much
else.  Was thinking about building a punch controller (likely based on the
excellent little Raspberry Pi microcontrollers), and some custom solenoid
drivers.  I haven't made any progress on this, thanks to other stuff going
on, but it seems like a completely do-able project, from what I've read so
far.

73, John K4OZY

On Mon, Mar 31, 2025 at 7:25 AM Nick England <navy.radio at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have something better than my own Bridgeport milling machine - I have a
> buddy with a Bridgeport. John Poulton K4OZY took on the challenge of making
> the new 5-level punch block parts.
>
> Nick England K4NYW
> www.navy-radio.com
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 30, 2025 at 9:20 PM Jones, Douglas W via GreenKeys <
> greenkeys at mailman.qth.net> wrote:
>
>> From: W2HX <w2hx at w2hx.com> -- Sunday, March 30, 2025 7:31 PM
>> > I just wonder if there is any hope of converting this to 8 or 5 bit
>>
>> See the end of this web page for enough information to manufacture the
>> parts needed to convert your 6-bit punch block assembly to a 5-bit punch
>> block.  I think it was nick at navyradio.com who worked this up, but the
>> metadata on the PDFs say John Poulton:
>> -- https://www.navy-radio.com/tty/brpe.htm
>>
>> (the notes on the plans suggest he might have made 6 kits.  To use one,
>> you need the cast-iron center part of an old 6-bit block, plus most of the
>> small parts removed from that block except the actual punch guide plates
>> and die plate.)
>>
>> If you want an 8-bit block, you'll also need to have the cast-iron center
>> part machined.  I've been working on drawings of that:
>> --
>> https://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/UI-8/log2025.shtml#2025-03-20
>>
>> Once, several years ago, a lot of 10 8-bit BRPE punch blocks showed up on
>> eBay.  Despite a serious effort to get it, someone not on GreenKeys got
>> it.  We tried to contact the buyer to get a block and got no reply.  Who
>> knows where those blocks went.  I haven't seen an 8-bit punch block for
>> sale since.
>>
>>               Doug Jones
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> GreenKeys mailing list
>> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
>> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>> Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net
>>
>> >>> Jordan Spencer Cunningham's GreenKeys Search Tool:
>> https://teletype.net/gksearch
>> >>> 2002-to-present greenkeys archive:
>> http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
>> >>> 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:
>> http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
>> >>> Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:
>> http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html
>>
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>> Message delivered to navy.radio at gmail.com
>>
> ______________________________________________________________
> GreenKeys mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/greenkeys
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:GreenKeys at mailman.qth.net
>
> >>> Jordan Spencer Cunningham's GreenKeys Search Tool:
> https://teletype.net/gksearch
> >>> 2002-to-present greenkeys archive:
> http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/
> >>> 1998-to-2001 greenkeys archive:
> http://mailman.qth.net/archive/greenkeys/greenkeys.html
> >>> Randy Guttery's 2001-to-2009 GreenKeys Search Tool:
> http://comcents.com/tty/greenkeyssearch.html
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to jp at cs.unc.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/greenkeys/attachments/20250331/df2b771f/attachment.html>