To keep the bobber clean and simple, I wanted to stuff all of the electronics (minus the battery) into some kind of a box or canister. While my wife and I were at Round Top looking for antiques and furniture for the house, I came across this.
It's an old White Mountain ice cream maker. Looked about the right size, and $20 later it was mine. I especially love the look of the cast lid that reads "Made in U.S.A." and "Pat. June 12, 1923".
This will need a lot of work to convert it to an electrical container, and the first thing was to make a mounting location for the Regulator/Rectifier...here's what one looks like.
This generates heat while in operation, hence the cooling fins on the body. To keep the fins efficient, they need wind passing across them, so I decided to mount this outside of the container. First step was to cut a hole.
Next I grabbed some scrap sheet metal and bent, filed, beat and ground it to fit perfectly. The ice cream maker's material was extremely thin, so the better I could get the sheet metal to fit, the easier it would be to weld.
Even with all the time getting the sheet metal to fit, the welding was still very tedious. But patience paid off and after cleaning up the welds, she was looking good.
Looks clean and hopefully the wind will keep it cool during operation.
