parts

The Science Behind Lithium Cell Characteristics and Safety

September 18, 2017 by 49 Comments

To describe the constraints on developing consumer battery technology as ‘challenging’ is an enormous understatement. The ideal rechargeable battery has conflicting properties – it has to store large amounts of energy, safely release or absorb large amounts of it on demand, and must be unable to release that energy upon failure. It also has to be cheap, nontoxic, lightweight, and scalable.

As a result, consumer battery technologies represent a compromise between competing goals. Modern rechargeable lithium batteries are no exception, although overall they are a marvel of engineering. Mobile technology would not be anywhere near as good as it is today without them. We’re not saying you cannot have cellphones based on lead-acid batteries (in fact the Motorola 2600 ‘Bag Phone’ was one), but you had better have large pockets. Also a stout belt or… some type of harness? It turns out lead is heavy.

The Motorola 2600 ‘bag phone’, with a lead-acid battery. Image CC-BY-SA 3.0 source: Trent021

Rechargeable lithium cells have evolved tremendously over the years since their commercial release in 1991. Early on in their development, small grains plated with lithium metal were used, which had several disadvantages including loss of cell capacity over time, internal short circuits, and fairly high levels of heat generation. To solve these problems, there were two main approaches: the use of polymer electrolytes, and the use of graphite electrodes to contain the lithium ions rather than use lithium metal. From these two approaches, lithium-ion (Li-ion) and lithium-polymer (Li-Po) cells were developed (Vincent, 2009, p. 163). Since then, many different chemistries have been developed.

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How To Select Just About Any Electronic Part

September 3, 2017 by 14 Comments

Sometimes you see an excellent post somewhere else on the web, and then discover that it is one of a series of similarly good posts that you completely missed when they were published. If you are a Hackaday scribe you are left wondering how you managed to pass them by, and then why on earth you didn’t think of writing them yourself.

Such is the case with [Sanket Gupta]’s excellent series for Octopart, of posts titled “How to select a…” and then a class of component. It was the latest, “How to select a voltage regulator” that caught our eye first, but then we found the previous installments dealing with capacitors, resistors, inductors, connectors, IC packages and MCUs. Each one provides a basic primer for the engineer, in terms of both parts selection based on capability and on suitability for manufacturing, and while you may think that only an inexperienced reader might find benefit in such pieces the reality is that everybody can learn something.

So if you are involved in choosing electronic parts, no matter at what level, take a look at this series. If you know everything [Sanket] has to say then we congratulate you on your mastery of the field, however we think most readers will find them to be an interesting and useful resource.

Header image: Kae [Public domain].

A Diode by Any Other Name

August 29, 2017 by 26 Comments

As active devices go, it doesn’t get much simpler than a diode. Two terminals. Current flows in one direction and not in the other. Simple, right? Well, then there are examples with useful side effects like light emitting diodes. [GreatScott] points out that there are other useful diodes and, in particular, he posted a video covering Schottky and Zener diodes.

These special diodes have particular purposes. A Schottky diode has a very low voltage drop and fast switching speed. Zener diodes have application in simple voltage regulation.

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Testing Distance Sensors

August 11, 2017 by 39 Comments

I’m working on a project involving the need to precisely move a tool based on the measured distance to an object. Okay, yeah, it’s a CNC mill. Anyway, I’d heard of time of fight sensors and decided to get one to test out, but also to be thorough I wanted to include other distance sensors as well: a Sharp digital distance sensor as well as a more sophisticated proximity/light sensor. I plugged them all into a breadboard and ran them through their paces, using a frame built from aluminum beams as a way of holding the target materials at a specific height.

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One Person’s Experience Of Having PCB Assembly Done In China

August 7, 2017 by 35 Comments

Those of us who have our PCBs manufactured by Chinese PCB fab houses will be used to seeing tempting offers to also assemble our completed boards. Send the Gerbers as normal, but also send a BoM, and for an extra slice of cash you can receive fully assembled PCBs instead of just bare boards. It sounds alluring, but leaves a few questions for those without the experience. How much will it cost, what will the quality be like, and will my boards work? [Alexander Lang] had a limited run of ten small pressure sensor boards to make, and since his board house had started an assembly service,  decided to take the plunge and opt for full assembly.

His first step was to assemble his BoM and send it with the Gerbers. He is at pains to stress that the BoM is key to the whole project, and getting it right with the correct packages and more than one source for each component is critical. The board house first charged him £32.05 ($41.76) to make his PCBs and stencil, and assess his BoM for a build quote. A few days passed, and then he had a quote for assembly, £61.41 ($80). He placed the order, the board house processed it and made the boards, and in due course his working PCB modules arrived.

This might sound at this point like an unexciting saga, but its very smoothness is the key to what makes it interesting. Those of us who have wondered about the risks involved in taking up such a service need to hear stories like this one as surely as we do stories of failure, because without them we’re flying blind. Whether £93.46 ($121.76) for ten small boards represents good enough value is another matter, but if surface-mount soldering is not your thing you might be interested to follow [Alexander]’s example. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that getting a cheap PCB made in China was a similar leap of faith.

Make Your Own Reed Switches

July 26, 2017 by 18 Comments

[Lucid Science] shows us how to make some simple reed switches. Reed switches are simple components that detect a magnetic field and can close or open a circuit once detected. While not really a thing of beauty, these DIY reed switches should help you out if you just can’t wait to order some or you fancied trying your hands at making some components from scratch.

Reed switches normally come in very small form factors so if you need something small then this may not be for you however the video does show you on a macro scale the fundamental workings of a reed switch. To make your own reed switch you need only a few parts: some copper, enamelled wire and magnets. They really are simple devices however sometimes it’s easy to overlook how simple some things are when they are so small that you can’t really see how they work.

Making your own components from scratch is probably the best way to understand the inner workings of said component. In the past we have seen some pretty awesome self built components from these beautiful DIY Nixie tubes to even making your own LEDs

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Design a Coil for a Specific Inductance

June 12, 2017 by 10 Comments

YouTuber [RimstarOrg], AKA Hackaday’s own [Steven Dufresne], shows how to make a DIY inductor for a specific inductance. This is obviously a great skill to learn as sometimes your design may call for a very accurate inductance that may be otherwise hard to find.

Making your own inductor may seem daunting. You will have to answer a few questions such as: “what type of core will I use?”, “how many turns does my coil need?”, or “how do I calculate these parameters to create the specific inductance I desire?”. [RimstarOrg] goes through all of this, and even has a handy inductance calculator on his website to make it easier for you. He also provides all the formulae needed to calculate the inductance in the video below.

Using a DIY AM Radio receiver, he demonstrates in a visual way how to tune an AM Radio with a wiper on his home-built coil. Changing the inductance with a wiper changes the frequency of the radio: this is a variable inductor,

This video is great for understanding the foundations of inductors. While you may just go to a supplier and buy yours, it’s always great to know how to build your own when you can’t find a supplier, or just can’t wait.

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