The Future Of Hydrogen Power… Is Paste?

February 6, 2021 by Al Williams 142 Comments

We’ve been promised hydrogen-powered engines for some time now. One downside though is the need for hydrogen vehicles to have heavy high-pressure tanks. While a 700 bar tank and the accompanying fuel cell is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, it becomes problematic with smaller vehicles, especially ones such as scooters or even full-sized motorcycles. The Fraunhofer Institute wants to run smaller vehicles on magnesium hydride in a paste form that they call POWERPASTE.

The idea is that the paste effectively stores hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure, where it stays chemically locked until mixed with water. The researchers note that it will decompose around 250 °C, but while your motorcycle may seem hot when parked in the sun, it isn’t getting quite to 250C.

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PCB Bath Comes From Russia With Love

February 6, 2021 by Al Williams 19 Comments

[Ruvin Kub] likes magnets, a lot. Most of his projects feature some sort of magnet and his PC board agitation bath is no exception. You can see a video about the device, below. We’ll admit our Russian is pretty rusty, but if you ask YouTube nicely it will translate the Russian subtitles into whatever language you like.

One of the things we liked about the video was that he uses hydrogen peroxide, citric acid, and salt as an etchant. We’ve seen the same mix with vinegar or muriatic acid instead of citric acid. We aren’t sure what the actual translation is about why he doesn’t like ferric chloride, but YouTube says, “she’s too gloomy for my light souls.”

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Sequencing DNA For Metagenomics

February 5, 2021 by Al Williams 15 Comments

If someone brought you an odd piece of electronic hardware and you wanted to identify it, you’d probably look for markings on the outside first. If that didn’t work out, you might look under the cover and read some markings on the board or key components. However, in a tough case, you might dump the firmware and try to guess what the device is or what it does by examining the code that makes it run. That’s kind of what [Ciro] did. Wanting to determine the bacteria in a water sample led to using relatively inexpensive DNA sequencing hardware to look at the DNA present in the samples. This would have been a huge undertaking for a well-funded lab just a few short years ago. Now it just takes a USB device and some software.

Of course, inexpensive is in the eye of the beholder. The micropore sequencer costs about $500 and has a one-time use consumable cost of about $500, although that’s enough to process about 10 human genomes. The technology depends on using a small pore only large enough to pass one strand of DNA at a time. Blocks of nucelotides cause different amounts of electrical current to flow through the pore.

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Hands On With The Voltera V-One PCB Printer

February 5, 2021 by Al Williams 42 Comments

Creating your own PC board is a rite of passage for many. These days, though, you can order super inexpensive boards and have them in very little time, so it doesn’t always make sense to build your own. Still, some people like the challenge, and others don’t want to wait even a few days. Probably everyone has dreamed of a 3D printer-like machine that would just crank out beautiful PCBs. The Voltera V-One isn’t quite at that level of sophistication, but it isn’t too far from it. [Great Scott] shows us how he built two different boards using the system in the video below. While the results were impressive, you can also see that there are several limitations, especially if you are not designing your board with the machine in mind.

One thing that is obvious is that the machine does need your help. In addition to aligning holes, you’ll need to install tiny rivets for vias and slightly less tiny rivets for through-hole components. The last time we looked at the machine, it didn’t do holes at all, but [Scott] shows the drill attachment which allows the machine to produce vias and support leaded components.

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Bugatti Concept Car Shows 3D Printed Strength

January 31, 2021 by Al Williams 30 Comments

We doubt you’ll be driving a Bugatti Bolide anytime soon. It’s a bit of a showy concept car, and it really is pushing some limits on what you can 3D print in an automobile. As you can imagine, they aren’t printing car parts out of ABS or PLA. According to The Drive, the prints use selective laser melting with titanium to make some impressively strong and light parts.

It isn’t just the material that makes the 3D prints strong. Bugatti actually patented the internal structure of some parts which are almost bone-like. By having the parts largely hollow, the weight is cut. But fine internal structure creates very strong parts. How strong? A 3.52 ounce pushrod can handle up to 3.85 tons. The printed titanium is apparently heat-treated to increase its resistance to fracture strains.

In addition to titanium, some of the concept car’s parts are printed ceramic which insulates some components from heat. The printing process can apparently get resolutions down to 0.1 mm. Many parts are quite lightweight including a 0.48 mm wheel that with supports weighs in at about 100 grams.

If you want to get into having a project car, we’d suggest something more modest. Even if you want to 3D print a titanium part for your ride, we’d still start a little smaller.

Mystery Box Gives Up Its Patented Secrets

January 31, 2021 by Al Williams 21 Comments

[CuriousMarc] likes to go to surplus stores even though there are fewer of them around. On a recent trip, he found a box that had some parts he thought would work for a temperature controller project. It was marked Dial-A-Level and proudly proclaimed that it had a patent pending. The box was from the 1970s and [Marc] was wondering what the device was meant to do.

The device was a bit of a puzzle since it had three oddly-marked probe inputs. A search through the patent database revealed the device was a “capacitance probe for detecting moisture with very long cables.” The idea was to create a capacitor at the end of the cable and use the liquid as a dielectric. The sensor creates a 10 kHz sine wave it uses to excite the probe and an op amp measures the relative capacitive reactance of the probe versus a reference capacitor. The rest of the circuit is a comparator that reacts when the level is at a threshold.

We love seeing the old hand-drawn boards from that era. Component designations are in copper and there’s no solder mask visible. There was a clever application of a silicon controlled rectifiers and a relay to create a type of flip flop, that [Marc] explains.

Interestingly, the company that made the device, Expo Instruments, is still around and [Marc] contacted them. The actual patent holder replied and was amazed that [Marc] had possession of this antique. You can only wonder if anything you build today will wind up on whatever passes for YouTube three or four decades from now.

Capacitive sensing is quite versatile. Of course, there are many other ways to sense liquid level, too.

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3D Printing A Full Scale Fiberglass Speedboat

January 30, 2021 by Al Williams 15 Comments

It’s an age-old problem. You draw up a nice 6.5-meter long motorboat and then discover the shape won’t allow for a fiberglass mold. What do you do? If you’re [Moi], you grab a few Kuka robots and 3D print it using thermoplastic with embedded glass fibers. A UV light cures the plastic and you wind up with printed fiberglass. That’s the story behind the MAMBO, a 3D printed powerboat.

Despite the color, the fiberglass isn’t blue out of the gate — the boat is painted. Still, it looks nice with lines inspired by [Sonny Levi]’s Arcidiavolo design from 1973. MAMBO stands for Motor Additive Manufacturing BOat. It has a dry weight of about 800 kg and is fitted with a cork floor, white leather seats, and an engine. We presume none of those things were 3D printed.

Although it wasn’t fiberglass, we’ve seen a 3D printed boat before. In particular, the University of Maine’s giant 22,000 square foot printer cranked one out. We’ve also seen boats printed in standard PLA filament, which then had fiberglass cloth and resin applied after printing. True that one was only RC, but there’s no reason the concept couldn’t be scaled up if you had the patience.