Using 2.5†gray electrical PVC pipe:
Picture 1 – Finished assembly
After doinking with Plasti-Dip trying to seal the nodes and determined to set the nodes in a reasonably straight line, my decision was to cut gray PVC pipe in half, drill 15/32 inch holes with a uni-bit on three (3) inch centers – not 3.5†spacing, slobber Plasti-Dip on both the LED side of the node and the wire entry side and call ‘er done.
Picture 2 – Modified jig saw
We used a “finish cut†saw blade (i.e. the teeth point down or away from the saw instead of the typical “up†teeth to push the cuttings inside the pipe.) The blades were too short to cut both halves of the pipe at once and too long to keep from banging away at the other side, I raised the saw deck by screwing on a piece of scrap.
The cutting jig is made from two 2x4’s screwed to a 2x8 base with the 2x4’s set apart a tad over the diameter of the PVC pipe.
Picture 3 – Chalk line ready to tighten and pluck
Picture 4 – Cutting the pipe
Since the first cut down the pipe tends to bind the saw blade, (the pipe tends to collapse upon itself) surplus angle brackets and a screwdriver separated the pipe.
Picture 5 – Plastic Paint application, turning gray to white.
The fellow in the Air Force shirt is my U.S. Marine son. (Note: the wind was gusting to 25mph that day but it was too beautiful outdoors to be working indoors!)
Picture 6 – Gooing on Plasti-Dip
After cutting a half-inch hole in the lid of a butter bowl and sealing the LED side of the nodes, we flipped over the assembly and my son is gooing the backside of the nodes. He also slobbered Plasti-Dip between the nodes and the PVC pipe making a permanent bond – the nodes will forever be attached to the pipe. Use silicon if you intend to use the nodes elsewhere in the future.
We’ll attach angle brackets to the half-pipes and screw the half-pipes to the windows, roof fascia and the gutters. The SSC controllers are mounted to the half-pipes with angle brackets, painted and hide perfectly. Sections over 115 inches (the length of the ten-foot pipe with the bell chopped off) were spliced with a piece of metal bracket bent over the diameter of metal gas pipe and fitted to the inside of the PVC pipe, screwed together with stainless screws and stainless nylon lock nuts. The screw heads, barely visible, were painted anyway.
Elapsed time to build the jigs, cut eight PVC pipes, drill, paint, stuff nodes and apply goo was around twelve hours. That’s eleven elapsed hours of my son working his buttocks off and one elapsed hour of (me) dragging around my handicapped butt trying to keep up.
joe
