Axworthy Ghosts
Axworthy Ghosts
Control
Now I needed a better way to control the speed of the ghosts; the foot pedal from the sewing machine just wasn’t easy to control with any accuracy. With that in mind I stopped by our local Granger supply center and picked up a fan control switch.
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/items/6E897?Pid=search
There were a couple of issues with this rotary control, however. One, when turning the unit on from the off position it first went to high speed (sort of like the box window fans whose speeds are “off-hi-med-lo”) which I didn’t want. Two, it wasn’t easy to get the rotary knob to exactly the same position it was in once a good speed was found.
To solve this I made a control box with a light switch for power, the rotary knob in the middle for speed control, and an outlet at the end for the motor to get plugged into, and mounted them in three metal outlet boxes I had. To help keep the elements out I attached the outlet boxes to the bottom of an old bucket from cat litter I cut the top off of. Then I screwed the cat litter box to the fence next to the post holding the motor.
In the above pic the white cable that’s plugged into the outlet is the power going to the sewing machine motor. The black cable going out of the box goes to an extension cord providing power for the setup. The extension cord was plugged into a GFI outlet in the basement for safety.