A few months ago we brought you some experiments from [Bill Meara, N2CQR], in which he investigated the use of a glue stick as the former for a permeability tuned inductor. His set-up was very much in the spirit of experimentation, and we’re very pleased to now see [Nick, M0NTV] has taken the idea and demonstrated it for the 7 MHz, or 40 meter, amateur radio band.
The result can be seen in the video below the break, and is housed in a tin enclosure that we’re guessing once contained toffees. The oscillator circuit comes courtesy of [Ashar Farhan VU2ESE] of BitX transceiver fame, but we’re most interested in the glue stick coil former which makes use of a small bracket for stability. With the glue removed, he’s mounted a ferrite ring in its glue carrier which is moved in and out of the coil. We’re guessing this could also be done with other permeability-altering materials, for example we’d follow [VU2ESE]’s lead and try a piece of brass.
The knurled glue feed knob protrudes through a hole in the tin, and we’re guessing there’s enough separation for an operator’s hand not to drag the frequency too much. All in all given that variable capacitors are now something of a rarity, it makes for a useful demonstration of a very cheap replacement. Meanwhile, you can read our notes on [N2CQR]’s work here.
Some solutions come from no more than looking at two dissimilar things while in the right mindset, and realizing they can be mashed together. In this case I had recently segmented a large, hollow, 3D model into smaller 3D-printer-sized pieces and printed them all out, but found myself with a problem. I now had a large number of curved, thin-walled pieces that needed to be connected flush with one another. These were essentially butt joints on all sides — the weakest kind of joint — offering very little surface for gluing. On top of it all, the curved surfaces meant clamping was impractical, and any movement of the pieces while gluing would result in other pieces not lining up.
