Electronics hobby blog

PCB fabrication - Part 2: Etching

ezContents 8 April 2017

After the dry film is applied to the copper layer, it can be etched. There is an option to use ferric chloride (FeCl₃), but it can not be reutilised and needs to be disposed.

Read more about PCB fabrication - Part 2: Etching

PCB fabrication - Part 1: Dry film

ezContents 3 April 2017

Being able to make your own printed circuits boards is a skill that can come in handy. There are several ways to do this and I will describe the one that I use. First part of the process is the creation of a layer on top of the copper that prevents the solvent to dissolve it.

Read more about PCB fabrication - Part 1: Dry film

UV LED PCB Exposure Box

ezContents 1 April 2017

During the process of manufacturing of home-brew PCBs you need to expose the photosensitive film with ultraviolet light. A cheap and low power solution can be found in UV led strips.

Read more about UV LED PCB Exposure Box

LED digital watch kit

ezContents 31 March 2017

If you can not afford a real NIXIE tube watch, there is an alternative. It is this 4-digit 7-segment LED watch kit. It costs less than 10 euros and you can find it on most Chinese reseller websites. It comes as a kit and you will need to do a bit of soldering and assembling.

Read more about LED digital watch kit

Printing with ABS

ezContents 29 March 2017

The most important advantages of ABS are impact resistance and toughness. Lego is made from ABS. It will also not deform in hot water, compared to PLA. On the downside ABS is hard to print. You need very hot printbed (around 110 degrees Celsius) and Kapton tape, so the first layer will stick properly. ABS can also warp and curl. There are also other issues in the Marlin firmware that need some attention.

Read more about Printing with ABS

Using composer

ezContents 11 March 2017

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage them for you.

php
composer

Read more about Using composer

PSU grip

ezContents 8 March 2017

Power Supply Unit (PSU) for the 3D printer is usually a large block that floats around the desk and is not connected to the printer. It is usually forgotten to integrate into the design. If you are lucky you can find mods on Thingiverse, but I had no luck and had to design one myself.

Read more about PSU grip

Building Volcano Bowden extruder

ezContents 18 February 2017

If you are impatient and don't want to wait too long for your print to finish you can look for a solution in the E3D Volcano hotend. It is able to extrude filament a much greater speeds than a normal (V6) extruder. But it comes at a price of sacrificing the print quality.

Read more about Building Volcano Bowden extruder

LUT - Programmable logic gate

ezContents 12 February 2017

The basic building blocks of FPGA chips are logic elements (LEs). A logic element consists of LUTs (look-up tables), which are basically programmable logic gates. This gate is a multiplexer and can be build out of NAND gates. This small project is a breadboard implementation of this concept.

Read more about LUT - Programmable logic gate

Altera Quartus on Mac OSX

ezContents 11 February 2017

One of the disadvantages of Altera Quartus II software is the disability to run natively on a Mac system. Luckily there are ways to get around this problem.

Read more about Altera Quartus on Mac OSX

Search here..