Via press crushes copper to make a mechanical connection

via-press-in-action

[Jay] was looking for a way to make his own vias on homemade double-sided PCBs when he stumbled across this post from about five years ago. The technique shown here makes mechanical vias and was developed by [Retromaster]. There’s no soldering involved, instead he uses some solid core copper wire and a press to crush it tightly against the boardRead the rest

Easy to build parts tumbler you can add to your shop

This parts tumbler was easy to build but it still does a great job of rounding rough edges and polishing the surfaces of parts cut with a CNC machine. You can see that it mounts in a bench vise, and the cooling fans have a magnet which holds the tray in place on the anvil portion of that tool. Since … Read the rest

DIY bench vice

diy_bench_vice

A bench vice can be one of the most used tools in your workshop.  For those that don’t have a workshop [Matt] built a vice that clamps to a table. He used scrap wood, MDF, threaded rod, washers, nuts, and wing nuts.  Cheap, easy to build, and very useful!

[via Toolmonger]… Read the rest

C64 Twitter client

c64_twitter

The last of the Commodore 64′s shortcomings has been addressed; it finally has a Twitter client. [Johan Van den Brande] wrote BREADBOX64 for use on the C64/128. It’s running on top of the open source Contiki operating system. The hardware is an MMC Replay cartridge with an ethernet adapter. If you don’t have the hardware available, you can run … Read the rest

Reusing PCB components


If you’re anything like us, you have a closet full of old electronics, some broken, some obsolete. You can stop using those as paperweights with the help of this guide that shows you how to recycle and reuse PCB components.

The first step of the process is finding electronics you don’t mind taking apart. Next place the PCB you’ll … Read the rest