Custom Hat Gives Vintage Mitutoyo Calipers A New Lease On Life

August 2, 2024 by Dan Maloney 16 Comments

Metrology fans are usually at least a little bit in love with Mitutoyo, and rightfully so. The Japanese company has been making precision measuring instruments for the better part of 100 years, and users appreciate their precision almost as much as the silky smooth feel of their tools. If you can afford it, a Mitutoyo caliper is quite an addition to your toolbox.

As good as they are, though, they’re not perfect, which is what led to this clever Mitutoyo digital caliper hack by [turbanedengineer]. The calipers in question, a digital set from the early 1980s, happen to have a unique history with a tangential Hackaday angle — they belonged to [Dhaval], mechanical engineer and avid motorcyclist who happens to be the late elder brother of our own [Anool Mahidharia].

The tool, in need of a little TLC, made its way to [turbanedengineer] who first restored the broken battery contacts. Once powered up again, it became apparent that while the caliper’s native metric measurements were spot on, the internal conversion to inches was considerably off. This led [turbanedengineer] to the data port on the tool, which is intended to send serial data to an external computer for logging measurements. After a little experimentation to nail down the data format, he prototyped a tiny circuit using an ATtiny85 and an OLED display that reads the caliper data, converts metric to inches, and displays both measurements on the screen. The prototype led to a more permanent version, which cleverly sits over the original display and taps into the data port without any free wires. The video below shows the very slick results.

Our hearts go out to [Anool] and his family for their loss, and we tip our hats to [turbanedengineer] for his thoughtful and respectful hack of a storied tool. We know that anthropomorphizing tools makes no rational sense, but we think it’s safe to say that a tool like this has a soul, and it’s probably happy to be back in the game.

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USB-C Powered Hotplate Is Not For Food

July 25, 2024 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

Once upon a time, it was deemed mostly silly to try and schlep power from a computer’s ports. Then it was kind of amusing to do so with USB, and before you knew it, we were running whole laptops off what started out as a data connector. These days, it’s not unusual to run a soldering iron off USB-C, or, as [MarkTheQuasiEngineer] has done—a hotplate!

This hotplate is not for quesadillas, nor samosas. Instead, it’s a tiny hotplate for tiny reflow tasks. Given many PCBs are quite small, there’s no need for a huge hot plate to get your circuits assembled.

The device relies on metal ceramic heating elements to provide the warmth. An NTC thermistor is used for monitoring the temperature for accurate control, which is handled by the STM32 microcontroller that’s running the show. It also drives a small display indicating the mode of operation and current temperature. The STM32 controls the power going to the heating element from the USB-C feed with a stout power MOSFET.

Sadly, the project hasn’t been a complete success. With a PCB on the plate, [MarkTheQuasiEngineer] was only able to achieve peak temperatures of around 200 C. That’s not great for doing proper reflow, but it’s a start. He believes upgrading to a more powerful supply to feed the hotplate will help.

We’ve featured some other great reflow hotplates before too.
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Digitally Reading A Micrometer’s Output

July 17, 2024 by Lewin Day 11 Comments

If you’re instrumenting your machine tools, or if you’re just curious, you might want to get granular access to the output of a digital micrometer or the like. [Tommy] set his mind to figuring out the communications protocol of the ClockWise Tools dial indicator for this very purpose. And he succeeded!

Work began by finding the clock and signal lines for the gauge. With those identified, and the signals up on an AD2 logic analyzer, it was determined that once every 40 milliseconds, the device sent a data burst of six nibbles separated by 1.58 milliseconds apiece. The device communicates the absolute position of the gauge, and the data can be readily decoded with the aid of an op-amp to help boost up the 1.5-volt logic to a more reasonable level for a modern commodity microcontroller like the Arduino Nano. From there, the information can be trucked over serial to a PC, or you can do just about anything else with it besides.

We’ve seen similar hacks performed on calipers before, too, making automated measurements a breeze. If you’re working on something that needs precise measurements down to the, well… micrometer… this project might be just the thing you’re looking for.

Print Wave Metal Casting

July 13, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 4 Comments

Direct 3D printing of metal remains out of reach for the hobbyist at the moment, so casting is often the next best thing, particularly given the limitations of 3D printed metals. [Denny] from Shake the Future shows us how to simplify the process with “print wave metal casting.”

The first step of printing a PLA object will seem familiar to any 3D print to metal process, but the main differentiator here is pouring the investment casting on the printer build plate itself. We like how he used some G-code to shake the build plate to help remove bubbles. Once the plaster solidifies, the plastic and mold are placed in the microwave to soften the plastic for removal.

The plaster is dried in an oven (or air fryer) and then [Denny] bolts the mold together for the casting process. Adding a vacuum helps with the surface finish, but you can always polish the metal with a generous helping of elbow grease.

If [Denny] seems familiar, you might remember his very detailed breakdown of microwave casting. We’ve seen plenty of different approaches to metal casting over the years here. Need a part in another material? How about casting concrete or resin?

Thanks to [marble] on the Hackaday Discord for the tip!

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Keep Your Lungs Clean And Happy With A DIY Supplied-Air Respirator

July 9, 2024 by Dan Maloney 13 Comments

The smell of resin SLA printing is like the weather — everybody complains about it, but nobody does anything about it. At least until now, as [Aris Alder] tackles the problem with an affordable DIY supplied-air respirator.

Now, we know what you’re thinking, anything as critical as breathing is probably best left to the professionals. While we agree in principle, most solutions from reputable companies would cost multiple thousands of dollars to accomplish, making it hard to justify for a home gamer who just doesn’t want to breathe in nasty volatile organic compounds. [Aris] starts the video below with a careful examination of the different available respirator options, concluding that a supplied air respirator (SAR) is the way to go.

His homebrew version consists of an affordable, commercially available plastic hood with a built-in visor. Rather than an expensive oil-free compressor to supply the needed airflow, he sourced a low-cost inline duct fan and placed it outside the work zone to pull in fresh air. Connecting the two is low-cost polyethylene tubing and a couple of 3D printed adapters. This has the advantage of being very lightweight and less likely to yank the hood off your head, and can be replaced in a few seconds when it inevitably punctures.

Another vital part of the kit is a pulse oximeter, which [Aris] uses to make sure he’s getting enough oxygen. His O₂ saturation actually goes up from his baseline when the hood is on and powered up, which bodes well for the system. Every time we pick up the welding torch or angle grinder we wish for something like this, so it might just be time to build one.

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Building An IR Thermometer That Fits On Your Keychain

July 5, 2024 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

Non-contact infrared (IR) thermometers used to be something of an exotic tool, but thanks at least in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re now the sort of thing you see hanging up near the grocery store checkout as a cheap impulse buy. Demand pushed up production, and the economies of scale did the test. Now the devices, and the sensors within them, are cheap enough for us hackers to play with.

The end result is that we now have projects like this ultra compact IR thermometer from [gokux]. With just a handful of components, some code to glue it all together, and a 3D printed enclosure to wrap it all up, you’ve got a legitimately useful tool that’s small enough to replace that lucky rabbit’s foot you’ve got on your keys.

If this project looks familiar, it’s because the whole thing is closely related to the LiDAR rangefinder [gokux] put together last month. It shares the same Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C3 microcontroller, 0.49 inch OLED display, and tiny 40 mAh LiPo battery. The only thing that’s really changed, aside from the adjustments necessary to the 3D printed enclosure, is that the LiDAR sensor was replaced with a MLX90614 IR temperature sensor.

[gokux] has put together some great documentation for this build, making it easy for others to recreate and remix on their own. Assembly is particularly straightforward thanks to the fact that both the display and temperature sensor communicate with the ESP32 over I2C, allowing them to be wired daisy chain style — there’s no need for even a scrap of perfboard inside the case, let alone a custom board.

Two of these boards next to each other, one showing the front, assembled, side with the MCU and supporting components soldered on, and the other showing the back, patch panel, side, with wires connecting the MCU pads to testpoints leading to the supporting components

Try Out MCUs With This Jumperable TSSOP20 Adapter

June 29, 2024 by Arya Voronova 7 Comments

There are so many new cool MCUs coming out, and you want to play with all of them, but, initially, they tend to be accessible as bare chips. Devboards might be hard to get, not expose everything, or carry a premium price. [Willmore] has faced this problem with an assortment of new WCH-made MCUs, and brings us all a solution – a universal board for TSSOP20-packaged MCUs, breadboard-friendly and adaptable to any pinout with only a few jumpers on the underside.

The board brings you everything you might want from a typical MCU breakout – an onboard 3.3V regulator, USB series resistors, a 1.5K pullup, decoupling capacitors, and a USB-C port. All GPIOs are broken out, and there’s a separate header you can wire up for all your SWD/UART/USB/whatever needs – just use the “patch panel” on the bottom of the board and pick the test points you want to join. [Willmore] has used these boards for the CH32Vxxx family, and they could, no doubt, be used for more – solder your MCU on, go through the pin table in the datasheet, do a little point-to-point wiring, and you get a pretty functional development board.

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