Tool Hacks

3077 Articles

Powering USB Devices With A Bench Supply Adapter Board

March 20, 2026 by 7 Comments

Sometimes you wanna test a piece of USB hardware, but you don’t just want to plug it into a random old phone charger. [KS-Elektronikdesign] has whipped up a useful tool for just that case, allowing one to easily power USB hardware from a common bench supply.

It would have been simple enough to whip up an adapter board to connect banana jacks to the power pins of a regular USB port. Easing the hookup process was indeed a part of the motivation for this project, in making it easy to power hardware that hooks up via USB-A and USB-C. However, it also goes a little further. It includes TUSB319 chip to handle the all-important power negotiation, without which many USB devices will not feel confident drawing their required amount of current.

There is also polarity protection and over-voltage protection to stop you from blowing stuff up if you hook the board up wrong, which might save you a smartphone or three in the lab. The board will allow negotiated output power up to 10 W via USB-A and 15 W via USB-C, which isn’t heaps, but will be fine for lots of smaller devices. You can up that to 25 W and 35 W respectively if the board is switched to pass-through mode. We particularly like the physical design—the board will plug straight into the banana plugs on any supply with a jack spacing of 19 to 23 mm.

Overall, this is a useful tool to have in the lab if you want to run USB hardware with the flexibility of the voltage and current limits available on your bench supply. There are other ways to power modern USB devices, too, and you can do all kinds of wild stuff if you learn about USB PD and USB PPS. If you’re working up your own nifty lab tools for similar purposes, we’d love to know about it on the tipsline.

DIY Reflow Plate Runs On USB Power Delivery

March 18, 2026 by 18 Comments

If you’re working with surface mount components, you’re likely going to want a reflow plate at some point. [Vitaly] was in need of just such a tool, and thus whipped up a compact reflow plate that is conveniently powered via USB-C. 

This reflow rig is designed for smaller work, with a working area of 80 mm x 70 mm. There are two options for the heating element—either a metal core PCB-based heater, or a metal ceramic heater. The former is good for working with Sn42Bi58 solder paste at 138 C, according to [Vitaly], while the latter will happily handle Sn63Pb37 at 183 C if the dirty stuff is more your jam.

Running the show is an ESP32-C3-WROOM, which serves up a web-based control panel over Bluetooth for setting the heating profiles. Using Bluetooth over WiFi might seem like an odd choice at first, but it means you don’t have to add the hot plate to the local wireless network to access it, handy if you’re on the move. It’s also worth noting that you can’t run this off any old USB charger—you’ll need one compatible with USB Power Delivery (PD) that can deliver at least 100 watts.

If you’re needing to whip up small boards with regularity, a hotplate like this one can really come in handy. Files are on GitHub for those eager to build their own.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen USB-C powering a small reflow plate. Of course, if you make your PCBs self heating, you can sidestep all that entirely.

A blue frontplate to a circuit board is shown. On the left side is an OLED screen displaying "4.35 µH". To the right of this are a red and a black socket, with an inductor between them.

Building An LC Meter With A Franklin Oscillator

March 18, 2026 by 10 Comments

Although it dates back to the early days of the Marconi Company in the 1920s, the Franklin oscillator has remained a relatively obscure circuit, its memory mostly kept alive by ham radio operators who prize its high stability at higher frequencies. At the core of the circuit is an LC tank circuit, a fact which [nobcha] used to build quite a precise LC meter.

The meter is built around two parts: the Franklin oscillator, which resonates at a frequency defined by its inductance and capacitance, and an Arduino which counts the frequency of the signal. In operation, the Arduino measures the frequency of the original LC circuit, then measures again after another element (capacitor or inductor) has been added to the circuit. By measuring how much the resonant frequency changes, it’s possible to determine the value of the new element.

Before operation, the meter must be calibrated with a known reference capacitor to determine the values of the base LC circuit. In one iteration of the design, this was done automatically using a relay, while in a later version a manual switch connects the reference capacitor. Because the meter measures frequency differences and not absolute values, it minimizes parasitic effects. In testing, it was capable of measuring inductances as low as 0.1 µH.

We’ve seen a few homebrew LC meters here, some battery-powered and some rather professional.

Replicating A Nuclear Event Detector For Fun And Probably Not Profit

March 12, 2026 by 29 Comments

Last year, we brought you a story about the BhangmeterV2, an internet-of-things nuclear war monitor. With a cold-war-era HSN-1000 nuclear event detector at its heart, it had one job: announce to everything else on the network than an EMP was inbound, hopefully with enough time to shut down electronics. We were shocked to find out that the HSN-1000 detector was still available at the time, but that time has now passed. Fortunately [Bigcrimping] has stepped up to replicate the now-unobtainable component at the heart of his build with his BHG-2000 Nuclear Event Detector — but he needs your help to finish the job. Continue reading “Replicating A Nuclear Event Detector For Fun And Probably Not Profit” →

Hands On With Creality’s New M1 Filament Maker

March 11, 2026 by 28 Comments

Ever since 3D printing has become a popular tool, the question of waste has been looming in the background. The sad reality of rapid prototyping is that you’re going to generate a lot of prints that just aren’t fit for purpose, even if your printer runs them off perfectly every time. Creality has some products on the way aimed at solving that problem, and [Embrace Making] on YouTube has got his hands on a pre-production prototype of the Creality M1 Filament Maker to give the community a first look.

The M1 is actually only half of the system; Creality is also working on an R1 shredder to reduce your prints into re-usable shreds. [Embrace Making] hasn’t gotten his hands on that, but shredding prints isn’t the hard part. We’ve featured plenty of DIY shredders in the past. Extruding filament reliably at home has traditionally proven much more difficult, which is why we mostly outsource it to professionals.

Lacking the matching shredder, and wanting to give the M1 the fairest possible shake, [Embrace] tests the machine out first using Creality-supplied PLA pellets. The filament diameter isn’t as stable as we’ve gotten used to, and the spool rolling setup needs a bit more work.

Again, this is an early prototype. Creality says they’re working on it and claims they’ll get to ±0.05 mm precision in the production models. Doubtless they’ll also fix the errors that led to [Embrace]’s messy spool. That’s probably just software given that the winding mechanism did a pretty good job on the Creality-supplied spool.

Most importantly, the M1-produced filament does print. The prints aren’t perfect due to the variation in diameter, but they turn out surprisingly well for home-made filament. [Embrace] also shows off the ability to mix custom colors and gradients, but, again, using raw PLA rather than shredded material. Hopefully Creality lets him test drive the R1 shredder once its design is further along.

This is hardly the first time we’ve seen a filament extruder. The goal of this product is to pair with a shredder and use it for recycling, but if you’re going to stick with raw plastic pellets, you may as well print them directly.

Continue reading “Hands On With Creality’s New M1 Filament Maker” →

The printer-based "pen" has a pistol form factor.

DIY 3D Pen Is Born To Weld

March 7, 2026 by 10 Comments

Depending who you ask, 3D pens are silly toys or handy tools. Those who use them as tools find them handy to fill gaps in printed assemblies or to use them as a PLA or PETG-based hot glue gun for their prints. [half-baked-research] on YouTube is in the second category, but knows that welding is better than gluing — so he built himself a 3D pen designed for plastic welding.

You can weld with a regular 3D pen, and [half-baked] demonstrates that in the video. But thanks to the low-conductivity tips on commercial pens, it’s a slow, fiddly business. By using a normal 3D printer hot-end, with its conductive brass nozzle, [half-baked] is able to get a lot more heat where it’s needed. That means the plastic on either side of the weld melts for a good bond with the stuff coming out the nozzle. He’s also able to push plastic much faster with the modified extruder he’s squeezed into the hot-glue-gun looking contraption. Those two things together conspire to make the whole process go much faster than with a commercial 3D pen. He calls his build a 3D pen, but given the form factor it might be more accurate to call it a ‘plastic extrusion gun’.

Starting at around 13:38 in the video, he performs some strength tests, something we wish more YouTubers would do. He’s able to demonstrate a stronger bond with his welding pen than the normal 3D pen, and a much, much stronger join than the usual superglue. A traditional plastic weld with hot air is even stronger, but [half-baked] points out elsewhere in the video that on thin-walled prints (as opposed to the solid test articles) hot air welding can be a very dicey business. Pen-welding offers much greater control, so is an interesting technique to keep in mind.

Alas, [half-baked-research] apparently still considers this idea too half-baked to release the design. If you don’t have time to wait or reinvent this particular wheel, we featured a much simpler implementation of a similar idea years ago, using PLA in a hot glue gun. If that won’t work for you — maybe you aren’t a fan of PLA — perhaps you might try friction welding with filament.

Continue reading “DIY 3D Pen Is Born To Weld” →

Portable Tow Rope Batman Would Be Proud Of

March 6, 2026 by 16 Comments

Out of all of Batman’s massive array of tools which turn a relatively ordinary person into a superhero, perhaps his most utilitarian is his grappling gun — allowing him the ability to soar around his city like Spiderman or Superman. [John Boss] isn’t typically fighting crime, but he did develop his own grappling gun of sorts which gives him another superpower: the ability to easily scale snowy hills to quickly get back to the top.

The grappling gun takes inspiration from a commonly used tool called a power ascender, which is often used in industry applications where climbing is required. This one is held in the hand and uses a brushless motor with a belt-driven 3:1 reduction for increased torque. The pulley system, bearings, and motor are all housed in a 3D printed enclosure and are powered by rechargeable Milwaukee power tool batteries. During prototyping the rope intake and output feed locations had to be moved to increase the pulley’s grabbing ability, and with a working prototype he swapped a lot of the plastic 3D printed parts out for metal to increase the sturdiness of the device.

The grappling gun was originally designed for a smaller child to get hoisted up a hill on a sled, but when stress testing the device [John] found out that it actually has more than enough capability to haul even an adult up a hill on skis. As an added bonus, the outfeed for the rope can be put into a bag and used to automatically coil the rope up when he’s done at the hill. Although this is a great solution for a portable rope tow, for something more permanent and more powerful take a look at this backyard rope tow that was built from spare parts.

Continue reading “Portable Tow Rope Batman Would Be Proud Of” →