[TheForge] Re: Ralph, Mike and their toys (Was: OT Threads ?)

[Mike Spencer]

> ...one of my coffee shop buddies...says you can buy electronic
> throttle controls that'll attach to virtually anything with a
> linkage.

Yeah, Frosty, I spotted stuff like that on some aviation sites, too
-- seems to be guys building helicopters or gyrocopters.  Looked very
pricey.  I'd go for a cheap one of them quick.  Even a pricey one if
absolutely necessary.  But we all know that as soon as you start
messing with gear outside of the consumer-grade playpen, all the
little bits add up real fast, so I always look for a clever hack
before a convenient [1] purchase.  Somehow, my contacts in the
boat/engine/machinery domain seem to have died off but I'll ask around
and see if that's something I could pick up without getting a mortgage
on the potato patch.

BTW, where do you go to get weldable pipe fittings, the kind of thing
you'd buy if you were manufacturing tanks with threaded fitting welded
in?  Ordinary pipe fittings are some kind of cast iron and don't seem
to weld worth a s--t.  I have this spectacular 60 gal.  Halon tank,
rated for 600 PSI, but I need to weld up threaded fittings for it
because the existing ports are all threaded for special, large
diameter, high-pressure valves and stuff.


- Mike

[1] And around here, "convenient" often isn't very.  Drive to Halifax,
    the fifth guy I try finds it in a catalog and will order it from
    Montreal.  The guys in Montreal may have to order it from
    Cleveland or Guangdong.  And of course, when it gets here I'm
    going to need this and that other little item, etc.  Ho hum.  Back
    to the junk pile and the well-worn Automated Head-Scratcher.

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^