From: Mark Holm 
To: atm{at}shore.net
Reply-To: Mark Holm 


I have written a Windows program to print layouts of the bars and triangles of a
mirror flotation cell.  The idea is that, if you will be using a drill
press or hand drill, instead of a milling machine to drill the holes, you
need some way to get reasonable precision for the hole locations.  The
first step, laying out the hole positions can be a precision problem.

Modern computer printers usually have pretty good position accuracy,
usually much better than 1 millimeter.  Having a computer print the layouts
gets you started with an accurate layout.

Cut out the layouts.  Spray contact cement them to your metal.  Use a
center punch to transfer the hole positions to the metal.  Start your
drills in the punched indentations.  This sequence, done carefully, with
good drill bits, should result in placement precision of 1 millimeter or
better.  Using a machinist's center drill bit as the first drilling step
will probably help. Center drill bits are designed not to wobble or wander.

The program is in a pretty simplistic form.  You have to enter all the data
by hand, and there is no provision for saving a setup.  Still, the time
spent entering data will be much less than trying to draw the layouts by
hand.

The program accepts inches, millimeters or centimeters.  It allows absolute
measurements, or measurements scaled to your mirror radius.  It has a
feature to
test your printer's scale accuracy and adjust for printer scale errors.

There is no help file or even a readme.txt file.

It was written in Visual Basic 5, and should run on all versions of Windows from
95 on.  You may need to install the Microsoft Foundation Classes 4.2 files
to get it to install and run.  Many, but not all, Windows computers have
them already.  I can help you find the MFC files if needed.  Try to install
it first.
  It may go just fine.  If not, you may need the MFC files.

Find the program at http://www.atmsite.org specifically at
http://www.atmsite.org/contrib/Holm/cellparts/cellparts.html

The installations files are in a .zip file, you will need Winzip or another
uncompressing utility to uncompress the files after downloading.

Mark D. Holm
mdholm{at}telerama.com

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