Tool Hacks

3064 Articles

Electro Luminescent Fun With Jeri Ellsworth

June 14, 2010 by 25 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuDZnJX5kqw]

[Jeri] got her hands on some of the DuPont Luxprint EL ink and had some fun conducting experiments. She tried different materials for the base and the display itself.  Not only does she just play with materials, she also tears apart a VFD and an LCD to see if she could use them for parts. The LCD turned out to be the most successful. We saw this stuff show up at the Bay Area Maker Faire and we’re excited to see it become more accessible.

[via Makezine]

Superprobe

June 4, 2010 by 30 Comments

The Superprobe is a logic analyzer, multimeter, and much more rolled into a fun to build project. [Ben Ryves] didn’t come up with the original idea, but he definitely took a good thing and made it better. You can use it to test logic, inject logic into a circuit, read capacitors and resistors, test frequency, read the device address from 1-wire devices, and more. Interchangeable probes, choice of internal or external power, simple two-button operation, and a powerful PIC microcontroller at the heart of it all make this a fantastic tool for your electronics workbench. Check out the quality video after the break that  [Ben] put together to show off the results of his tinkering.

Continue reading “Superprobe” →

USBasp: AVR Programmer Based On ATmega8

June 3, 2010 by 28 Comments

We love our AVR Dragon programmer but it can be nice to have a cheap and simple in system programmer on hand too. The USBasp is one such programmer that uses and ATmega8 as its only IC. It requires just a handful of components and can be purchased as a kit, or etched and assembled at home. If you source your own parts the chip does need to be programmed which makes for a chicken-or-egg scenario. We’ve used the Parallel-port dongle (schematic) from Adafruit’s Spoke POV before. It’s basically just a DAPA cable and a few resistors, a ribbon cable (use and old IDE cable if you have to) and a parallel port connector can have you up and running in no time. This is also a great way to get a friend into working with embedded systems. Order parts for a few of these and give them away to your buddies.

Brighten Up Your PCB Drilling Station

May 30, 2010 by 15 Comments

Being able to see what you’re doing can be the hardest part of drilling the through holes in those freshly etched printed circuit boards. We don’t know why we didn’t come up with this, but [Markus Gebhard] solved his shadowy woes with his 20-LED Dremel light ring. Honestly, how many times have we seen lights rings in photography without putting it together that a light ring is perfect for this purpose. So kudos to [Markus], now we’ve got to go and dig up some surface mount LEDs and uncork the copper chloride.

Power Drill Solder Spooler

May 21, 2010 by 21 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF4cw41SMvY]

[Scott] over at curiousinventor.com has posted an instructable detailing how to use an Arduino and a power drill to spool solder. The Arduino senses the speed that the drill is going via an opto interrupter and a laser and adjusts with a servo hooked to the trigger. While we don’t think many people will be dying to spool some solder, this system might be useful for all kinds of things, like winding yarn or making coils.

Solder Station Hack Adds Temperature Control

May 19, 2010 by 20 Comments

Take that cheap fire stick you call a soldering iron and turn it into a real tool. [Giorgos Lazaridis] turned his 30 watt soldering iron into a temperature controlled soldering station by adding a thermistor just above the tip to monitor how hot things are getting. A MAX6675 takes care of the thermocouple and shoots a digital temperature value off to the PIC 16F88 which controls the unit by taking user input from a potentiometer and displaying the settings on an HD44780 character display. His use of a dissected ‘wall wort’ inside of the ATX power supply carcass used as the case for the station is a clever hack. See it melt some metal in the clip after the break.

This makes a nice upgrade to our solder station guide, which had a temperature controlled iron but lacked the sensor and automation seen here. Continue reading “Solder Station Hack Adds Temperature Control” →