A person holds a glass jar in their left hand and a spark plug in their right atop a white cylindrical canister. The jar and canister are sitting on top of a green cutting mat.

Spark Plug Becomes Glass Cutter

May 28, 2024 by Navarre Bartz 15 Comments

Sometimes a hack doesn’t need to be rocket science to be useful. Take for instance [MofigoDIY] using an old spark plug to build a glass cutter.

Sure, going to grab a glass cutter at the hardware store might be easy, but there’s something satisfying about going the DIY route. [MofigoDIY]’s version of this classic hack is a bit more refined than the quick and dirty route of smashing the spark plug alumina and hot gluing it into a tube.

After using a rotary tool to cut off the threads and expose the narrow part of the ceramic, [MofigoDIY] grinds it down to a fine point. This lets the spark plug itself become the handle, so you don’t need any additional parts to make the cutter. Toward the end of the video, a heated wire is used to break a glass jar apart after it was scored which might be of interest even if you already have a glass cutter. Once you’re finished making your glass cutter, make sure you dispose of any chips left over, since ceramic spark plug fragments are considered burglary tools in some areas.

Would you rather just build the glass up additively? How about using a laser cutter to sinter glass or 3D printing fused silica using a polymerized composite precursor?

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Locate Faults With The Leakseeker-89R

May 24, 2024 by Lewin Day 29 Comments

Have you ever needed to hunt down a short circuit, but you’ve had no idea where it is or how it’s happening? As it turns out, there are tools to help in that regard. Enter the Leakseeker-89R.

The device is able to help hunt down short circuits that measure anywhere from 0 to 300 ohms. The device is typically used with two leads on a given pair of traces, and it has a display made up of red, yellow and green LEDs. As the leads are moved closer or farther from the short circuit, the display changes to indicate if you’re getting hotter or colder. There’s also a third lead that can be used to allow testing under more challenging conditions when there is a large capacitance in-circuit with the traces you’re testing.

Fundamentally, it’s basically a very accurate resistance meter, finely honed for the purpose of hunting down short circuits. We’ve featured similar tools before. They can be of great use for troubleshooting. Meanwhile, if you’re building your own test tools in your home lab, don’t hesitate to let us know! We’re always dying for hot tips on the best DIY lab equipment for saving time, frustration, and money.

Turning An ATX PSU Into A Variable Bench Supply

May 23, 2024 by Lewin Day 90 Comments

Bench power supplies can sometimes be frustratingly expensive and also kind of limited. If you’re enterprising and creative, though, you can create your own bench supply with tons of features, and it doesn’t have to break the bank either. Do what [Maker Y] did—grab an ATX supply and get building!

ATX power supplies work as a great basis for a bench power supply. They have 12 volt, 3.3 volt, and 5 volt rails, and they can supply a ton of current for whatever you might need. [Maker Y] decided to break out these rails on banana plugs for ease of access, and fused them for safety, too. But the build doesn’t stop there. [Maker Y] also added a buck-boost converter to provide a variable voltage output from 1 to 30 volts for added flexibility. As a nice final touch, the rig also features a pair of USB A ports compatible with Quick Charge 3.0, for keeping smart devices charged while working in the lab.

[Caelestis Workshop] also designed a fully enclosed version if you prefer that style. Check it out on Instructables.

No matter which way you go, it’s a pretty simple build, with a bunch of off-the-shelf parts tossed together in a 3D printed housing. Ultimately, though, it’s got more functionality than a lot of cheap off-the-shelf bench supplies. You can build it just about anywhere on Earth where you can get cheap eBay parts via post. Continue reading “Turning An ATX PSU Into A Variable Bench Supply” →

Is This The World’s Smallest Multichannel Voltmeter?

May 22, 2024 by Jenny List 8 Comments

The instrument which probably the greatest number of Hackaday readers own is likely to be the humble digital multimeter. They’re cheap and useful, but they’re single-channel, and difficult to incorporate into a breadboard project. If you’ve ever been vexed by these limitations then [Alun Morris] has just the project for you, in the world’s smallest auto-ranging multichannel voltmeter. It’s a meter on a tiny PCB with a little OLED display, and as its name suggests, it can keep an eye on several voltages for you.

At its heart is an ATtiny1614 microcontroller on a custom PCB, but for us the part we most like lies not in that but in the prototype version made on a piece of protoboard. There’s considerable soldering skill in bending surface mount components to your will on this material, and though these aren’t quite the smallest parts it’s still something that must have required some work under the magnifier.

All of the code and hardware details can be found in the GitHub repository, and for your viewing pleasure there’s a video showing it in action which we’ve placed below.

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Hands On: AD409-Max Microscope

May 22, 2024 by Al Williams 18 Comments

It used to be that only the most well-equipped home electronics lab had a microscope. However, with SMD parts getting smaller and smaller, some kind of microscope is almost a necessity.

Luckily, you can get USB microscopes for a song now. If you’re willing to spend a little more, you can get even get microscopes that have little LCD screens. However, there are some problems with the cheaper end of these microscopes.

Many of them have small and wobbly stands that aren’t very practical. Some don’t leave you much room to get a soldering iron in between the lens and the part. Worse still, many cheap microscopes have trouble staying still when you have to push buttons or otherwise make adjustments to the device.

It seems like every time a new generation of microscopes aimed at the electronics market arrives on the scene, many of the earlier flaws get taken care of. That’s certainly the case with the Andonstar AD409-Max.

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Students’ Leaf Blower Suppressor To Hit Retail

May 18, 2024 by Tom Nardi 81 Comments

Electric leaf blowers are already far quieter than their gas-powered peers, but they still aren’t the kind of thing you’d like to hear first-thing on a Saturday morning. Looking to improve on the situation, a group of students from Johns Hopkins University have successfully designed a 3D printed add-on that manages to significantly reduce the noise generated by a modern electric leaf blower without compromising the amount of air it’s able to move. The device has proven to be so successful in tests that Stanley Black & Decker is looking to put a commercial version of the device on store shelves within the next two years.

The team says the first part of the problem was identifying where the noise was actually coming from. After taking an example leaf blower apart and studying all of its moving components, they determined that most of the noise produced wasn’t mechanical at all — what you’re actually hearing is the complex cacophony of high-speed air rushing out of the nozzle. With this knowledge in hand, they isolated the frequencies which were the harshest to the human ear and focused on canceling them out.

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Flexures Keep This Printed Displacement Sensor In Line

May 18, 2024 by Dan Maloney 4 Comments

When the job at hand is measuring something with micron-range precision, thoughts generally turn to a tool with a Mitutoyo or Starrett nameplate. But with a clever design and a little electronics know-how, it turns out you can 3D print a displacement sensor for measuring in the micron range for only about $10.

While the tool that [BubsBuilds] came up with isn’t as compact as a dial indicator and probably won’t win any industrial design awards, that doesn’t detract from its usefulness. And unlike a dial indicator — at least the analog type — this sensor outputs an easily digitized signal. That comes courtesy of a simple opto-interrupter sensor, which measures the position of a fine blade within its field of view. The blade is attached to a flexure that constrains its movement to a single plane; the other end of the flexure has a steel ball acting as a stylus. In use, any displacement of the stylus results in more or less light being received by the phototransistor in the opto-interrupter; the greater the deflection, the less light and the lower the current through the transistor. In addition to the sensor itself, [Bub] printed a calibration jig that allows precision gauge blocks or simple feeler gauges to be inserted in front of the stylus. The voltage across the emitter resistor for these known displacements is then used to create a calibration curve.

[Bub] says he’s getting 5-micron repeatability with careful calibration and multiple measurements of each gauge block, which seems pretty impressive to us. If you don’t need the digital output, this compliant mechanism dial indicator might be helpful too. Continue reading “Flexures Keep This Printed Displacement Sensor In Line” →