A little metal project

That is the kind of salesman no one wants to deal with, if their IQ is over 70. The last electronics 'salesman' I worked with would visit both engineering and production test to see what was going on, and had started with the company as a tech. If he didn't know the answer to a customer's question, he knew who to call to get the right information.

Your 'sales guy' should have gone back to selling used cars, or to putting lids on drinks at McDonalds.

I worked for an 'Engineering to order' company on products from 12 year old designs to cutting edge. All three departments didn't want to budge, fearing they would be giving up something. As a production test tech, I could stop the shipment of anything that didn't pass the tests. or was too close to the edge on all parameters. A few times of almost missing shipment dates soon had them paying attention.

The result was design changes to make testing easier and with better repeatability. New & modified test fixtures, and test software. Better test procedures, including rewriting some written by a Hispanic EE and translated into very ambiguous English.

One EE had designed and built the only automated test fixture in the plant, but he totally screwed up the software. He went ballistic when I not only rewrote the software, but added more tests and some diagnostics. My boss had a fit when I added two sound effects to the software. One was a low pitched fog horn whenever the software detected a problem. The other sounded like winning an early video game when the board passed. :)

Red, two door 1966. Black, chrome & wood grain interior. 389 CID YS GTO special engine. Turbo Hydro 400 transmission, and a 3.56 positrack rear end. :)

Boy, do I miss that care. :(

So would a tilt switch and siren. How about one of Harbor Freight's 'Oogah' horns? ;-)

Unlike mineral spirits which have gone nuts in price, wallwarts have gotten significantly cheaper since I last looked. That same Ault

6-volt 1.5 amp that mpja offers for $3.25 was available at my local AxMan Surplus for $2.50 yesterday.

I think Ault, which is not far from here, was recently absorbed by another company (SL) so there's probably a lot of Ault stuff on the surplus market. Spehro, they did have switchers for $2.95. I bought one just to take apart and examine, and I used your vise trick for popping the ultrasonic welds. Neat! Lotta stuff in that box for $2.95. It's based on the venerable UC3842, but no TL431 to be found.

So now I think I'll use that 1.5 amp wallwart, stick a brute force linear current regulator on that with a couple of square inches of sheetmetal for heatsink and declare victory. Not very elegant, KISS.