Some shopping, some bodge reversing

I took the day off work today as I needed to attend a private appointment this morning, so I figured I would use the rest of the day to progress with the Mendel.

Shopping
I stopped by the shops and managed to accumulate a number of goodies:

• Sandbar resistors to reverse the bodge on the power supply.
• Some connecting posts to make the power supply more universal
• I picked up a new multimeter which includes a temperature sensor.  (I figured this might be handy and they were on special).
• For the print bed I managed to locate a heat resistant glass cutting board which is 189mm x 288mm.  As the bed is only really constrained in the one direction I figured this was perfect, so I bought a spare.  The to side has a texture, but the bottom is smooth, so I'll simply use it upside down (See pictures).
• The Veho USB microscope I ordered also arrived. (I'll play with that later).

Reversing the bodge

I spent most of the afternoon turning the old PC power supply I am using into a universal 12V power supply.  This involved fitting a switch salvaged off an old plan printer, some connecting pins, and a sandbar resistor to act as a latching load.  The article I based this on mentioned cable tying the resistor to the case as a heat sink, but as I have a number of old CPU heatsinks and fans lying around I fitted that instead.  Probably overkill, but better safe than sorry.  The only mistake I made is that the fan is noisy and I didn't test it before soldering it in.  Doh!!