The Eagle has landed ! (aka the Lunar Lander project)

[level42]

Yeah and Safari on my iPad auto resizes it to fit....pretty handy

[level42]

Received the CPO and Mission Control bezel. No customs 'problems' this time

First, I had to prepare the CP a bit. Although it looks nice and was powder coated (I think) it had some marks from the long storage I guess that needed to be fixed:







And the worst one...


You can also see some pits on the top right of that picture. These were on more spots on the panel and I didn't want my CPO to look bumpy so I sanded those parts. Your hands are your friends here....feel if everything is smooth





Spray painted two layers on everything and after some drying it was all smooth enough.

So let's start to put the CPO on. First I use my preferred method of fixing it. With all the large holes and with the sheer size of the CP, this is not an easy CPO to do, but it went quite well.



Alligned the CPO as good as possible. Then I flipped over the lowest part and cut away the protection as far as I could and pushed everything from the center to the sides and top to bottom:


Then I removed the buttons and folded back the top part and removed a part of the protection (about 5 cm.):


I steadily moved up, removing about 5 cm of covering every time while smoothing out the vinyl over the panel with my hands from center to sides and working upwards.



Then turned it around and did the front side the same way:





Then I had to turn it around again to make the "180 degree" fold over on the top edge of the panel. I shortly considered cutting it there but figured this would be the better (though much harder) choice. It was really tough to get it to fold that tight AND stay stuck to the other side of the panel "lip". I decided to use my wife's hairdryer which made it a bit easier. This was the only time I had to fight some air bubbles.

Final result:


And installed a tiny little thing that needs to go in there:

[level42]

As you can see there's a small bump next to where the top right bolt will go. I have no idea how it got there but it's too late to get it out now...

Now....I should be very happy but I am not completely happy. However I will have to discuss this with the seller of the artwork first.

[Etienne MacGyver]

It looks good if you ask me 

[gyruss]

beautiful!

[Belike]

Great job, hope to see it live at Eurocade.

[Robinholland]

Looks good

[level42]

Great job, hope to see it live at Eurocade.

Things are looking very promissing, I'm pretty sure we will have an -at least- running Lunar Lander at Eurocade

[level42]

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss !

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330733545211&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123

[Belike]

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss !

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330733545211&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123

What is that pcb for?

[Etienne MacGyver]

Great !, mission lights !

No fiddling around with "gaatjesprint" 

[scr33n]

So nice - great job!!! 

[level42]

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss !

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330733545211&ssPageName=ADME:X:AAQ:US:1123

What is that pcb for?

Béla, Lunar Lander has a lot of huge holes in the CP as you have noted. Under this there is a "Mission light bezel".



The bezel has pictures and text explaining the various missions you can choose.
Under that bezel there is this piece of wood:


This is there to keep the light of the bulbs for that single mission picture only (a "mask" is the correct name I suppose).

Under that there is this PCB I got from e-bay.

It is a very simple PCB electronically. It's just a connector, 2 diodes for the lamp that is permanently on (to lower the voltage a bit) and 4 transistors for the lights that "blink" or get selected. And of course the lamp holders.
Further the PCB probably also acts (not sure) to keep the light in too.



Since these PCBs are often missing because of LL to Asteroids conversions or because some people are converting Asteroids cabs to LL there was a small run of these made by DJW90 on the KLOV forum. Because of the large PCB size and the very small run, the price of them was pretty high (for a simple thing electronically speaking). However, DJW90 actually tipped me off about this original one on e-bay !

Here's a video of one of these in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5o0XFqwOww

Here's a video where you can see the lights (although not up close):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJLmXildv2E


When you choose a mission, that one will light up. The one on the far left is constantly lit. Some weird people put LEDs in there (YUGH !). The only advantage of that is that it keeps cooler, but I want the original look, so bulbs it will be

My "plan B" was to buy some vero-board ("gaatjesprint" as Etienne said) and simply wire it up and make it myself basically. However, in the first place I didn't find a large enough vero-board (by a couple of cm.) and apart from that, the parts are still adding up too, plus it would take a lot of time !

So, this was a perfect chance, that is, until I got the message saying that the shipping to me directly would be 58 USD !!!!!!!
That sounds pretty crazy. Maybe I will "reroute" it via my uncle & aunt.....if CKONG could pick it up at their place..... No, just kidding about that

[Belike]

Nice explanation, thanks André!

[level42]

Hey guys, did you see that I actually found an owl-eye coin door for my LL project ? The "bad" thing was....that there was a whole cab "attached" to it....

So here are some pics of that cab: