I built a Grasmaster-alike

[David Rickard]

Followed this handy guide on Ztrains http://www.ztrains.c...rassinator.html

 

And the end result was this:

 

 

A little more 'rustic' than the Ztrains version. The duct tape is due to the fact the pipe caps I bought were the same size as the pipe, and thus didn't fit. Duct tape fixes everything...

 

BOM:

 

 

 

 

Link to the ion generator at ebay.

 

Took a couple of hours to knock together, mainly due to the fact I'd mis-wired the power connector. But some poking about with a multimeter located the problem. I duly cut the mounting brackets off the ion generator, thinking it had to be oriented a certain way within the tube. It doesn't. For some reason I got it in my head it had to be a certain way round, but based on schematics I found of other ion generators, I can't see that it would need to be. It's just plopped in the bottom!

 

It works quite well. One promising thing is that I put a quantity of static grass into the unit, and laid some down on a piece of scrap card. Hardly any ended up not stuck to the glue, and very little ended up liberating itself from said glue when I'd finished, so I had no surplus to pick up. Really rather pleased with it!

 

My next plan it to pick up a small funnel, and mod it onto the lid of another pot, so I can have a large applicator, and a smaller one for spot jobs.

[Chrislock]

Hi David.

That looks better than my fly-swatter conversion.

Is that any safer in use than the insect electrocuter variety, which delivers a hell of a punch if you are not very careful - I speak from experience!

I didn't find it worked as well as |I expected but maybe I wasn't using long enough "grass".

Cheers

Chris

[David Rickard]

Well, when I was 'debugging' it, I was poking the multimeter around random places and when I got it going, got quite the arc off it. I didn't look at the multimeter at the time mind. When I used it, I just made sure to earth it before removing the lid, which does produce a spark. So far, I've not felt anything though.

 

I did consider the turbo-teastrainer method, but it worried me a little - this keeps your hands further away from the business end of the unit, so I think there's less chance of making your hair stand on end!

[Pugsley]

Duct tape fixes everything...

Ain't that the truth!

 

Thanks for the link, I may well give that a go.

[torkardlane]

Looks good David any chance of a short video/pics on how to use it, never seen one before being used.

 

Tom

[buffalo]

Looks good David any chance of a short video/pics on how to use it, never seen one before being used.

Tom, there's a link to a video in the Ztrains page -- see link at top of David's OP.

 

Nick

[Sidecar Racer]

I have built the budget 'fly swat' type' at the grand cost of £5-25 , I did not mess with the internal circuits as

the one I have does not match any photo's of others that have been made .

 

So far in testing it seems to give acceptable results , depending on surface preparation .

 

I have been testing on plain card , with no underbase the results look poor , but on a surface of brown scatter it improves no end .

 

I PVA'd an area and then powdered it with some old brownish scatter , let this dry out and then re-applied the PVA and used the grass , some photo's attached below .

 

I also did a long narrow strip to see how far from the earth pin it was possible to go before the static effect was lost , went 10''s with no loss of standing up .

 

These were all done with the Noch grass , I need to get some of the Silfor longer stuff to see if it will work with this applicator .

 

Please feel free to comment .

 

Photos below ,

 

No 1 . The machine .

 

No 2 . Plain white card test .

 

No 3 . On a brown base .

 

No 4 . With a footpath . Thanks for the idea Darren .

 

No 5 . Different season grass .

[Sidecar Racer]

And as a PS to the above , to avoid shocks , tap the bowl with a plastic handle or something , and ground it all

before removing the clip frpm the nail .