REFITTING THE MECHANISM

Fitting the round hardware base

into the Tichy funnel-like base quickly revealed a problem. On a wood water tower with a flat bottom, the pipe feeding the spout comes out horizontally just below the base. But the Tichy kit represents a steel water tower with a conical bottom, so the pipe feeding water to the spout comes out much lower. There was no way to lower the mechanism that far down into the funnel.

I did the next best thing: I cut the round base holding the servo as small as I could and made an inverted triangular brace from .100" styrene to support it. I also drilled a series of

⁄16” holes in a vertical line where the

1

link attached to the servo arm would have to come out of the side of the tank’s conical bottom. I figured I could lengthen this slot if needed once I saw how it worked. I was concerned that I would restrict the amount the servo was designed to travel, so I made the slot longer than I thought would be necessary and hoped the movement of the spout would replicate that on the BLI tower.

To test progress, I first cut off each corner of the base. Since the kit is designed to be used with a water column, it doesn’t need to nestle up close to the main line like a tank with a spout does. The base of the tank will be covered with dirt, cinders, and weeds, so the cuts don’t have to be precise; I used tin snips. I then glued one ring of the water tank to the funnel version of the base to match the NKP prototype (a second ring and conical top would be added later). These were glued to the base, and the servo with its new triangular support was glued into the tank.

Curiosity got the best of me, so I hooked the two power leads to the rails and pushed the button. It worked! Well, the servo moved, anyway. There was nothing for it to do yet, however.