Letting [Euler] Help Out With PCB Fabrication

January 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

drillin

Since [Alessio] has been etching his own PCBs, he’s hit upon the most tedious part of the process, and the reason homebrew SMD boards are so awesome: drilling your own boards is a pain. While [Alessio]’s CNC mill takes care of most of the work, aligning the pre-drilled boards and correcting for any scaling issues from the mask is a bit difficult. With the help of a transform matrix, though, drilling PCBs has never been easier.

While the Gcode running the mill may be accurate, the actual manufactured PCBs might not be. If the extents on [Alessio]’s board aren’t exactly aligned with the axes of the CNC mill, the drill holes end up where they’re supposed to be. To solve this problem, [Alessio] wrote a PCB drilling transformational matrix calculator. The basic idea is by drilling just a few holes, [Alessio] is able to calculate any offset required in the Gcode with the help of a little bit of linear algebra.

Motorized Binocular Chair Has You Stargazing In Comfort

January 10, 2013 by Mike Szczys 30 Comments

motorized-binocular-chair-for-stargazing-in-comfort

It seems like something out of The Red Green Show but this motorized stargazing chair is a serious piece of astronomical hardware. It has a shelf that places a set of high-power binoculars directly in the user’s line of sight. The elevation is easy to adjust. And a power drill lets you take the whole thing for a spin.

The base has been outfitted with cogs and a chain from an old bicycle. The gear reduction lets a power drill rotate the platform. This worked well enough but [Gary] found that making fine adjustments was rather difficult and more often than not he ended up moving the binoculars to avoid overshooting when adjusting the platform with the drill. Luckily he didn’t give up on the idea. On the eighth and final page of his build log he refines the rotating setup with the help of an ice cream maker. It’s gear box is used as a speed reducer so that a very slow drill speed results in an extremely small heading correction. Now he can view the stars in peace, freed from frustration by a well-refined hack.

Web-based TI Graphing Calculator Emulator

January 3, 2013 by Mike Szczys 39 Comments

You can leave the TI graphing calculator at home thanks to this web-based TI-83 and TI-84 emulator. As with pretty much all emulators, this depends on a ROM image from the actual hardware to work. But if you have one of the supported calculators (TI-83+, TI-83+ SE, TI-84+, or TI-84+SE) you can dump the image yourself and this should work like a charm.

[Christopher Mitchell] calls the project jsTIfied because he wrote it in JavaScript and HTML5 (that’s where the js comes from) and it’s based on the Texas Instruments line of hardware (hence the capital TI). After agreeing that you’re not getting any ROMs from his site you can choose the file to load on your browser. The image of the calculator has working buttons and will show the boot screen just like the real thing. You can use it like normal but you can load load up programs for the environment. See this demonstrated after the break.

We’ve seen some arguments online about the price of the TI line over the years. Prices haven’t dropped much over the decades even though they’re making pretty much the same hardware. It’s cool to see someone figure out how to emulate the hardware — and on a web interface to boot! But we’re left wondering why TI isn’t selling an equivalent app for iOS and Android or at least leveraging what must be millions in each production run for a lower retail price?

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Make Your Own Plastic Friction Welder

December 31, 2012 by Mike Szczys 63 Comments

[Fran] shows us how to build a plastic friction welder. It’s a method of connecting plastic pieces. While it’s new to us, apparently this type of tool was given to kids about forty years ago to use with craft project (when plastic was all the craze).

The tip of the friction welder is a styrene rod. If it’s spun fast enough the friction will cause the material to heat to the melting point, depositing a bead of styrene into the joint. The tool seen here is a cheap DC rotary tool acquired from Harbor Freight. It really did a horrible job, but [Fran] discovered that it was the power supply that was under-rated. When she replace the wire that feeds it and used her bench supply it spit out 16,000 rpm without any trouble. The welding rods can be found at the craft store and fit the chuck of the tool quite nicely. You can see her demo in the video after the break. The seam she’s working on comes out very strong, surviving a slew of violent whacks on the workbench.

We’ve seen a few other methods of welding plastic. One used a tool much like a soldering iron, the other depends on ultrasonic waves and clamping pressure.

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USB Microscope Used For Soldering Very Small Things

December 30, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 48 Comments

solder

Lasik eye surgery is pretty common these days, but there are of course easier and cheaper ways to solder SMD components. [techpawpanda] wanted a video camera to see what was going on when he placed and soldered very tiny components on his board, but commercial SMD video cameras were terribly expensive. He wound up using a USB microscope to place and solder these tiny parts, and we’re thinking his SMD soldering station is the bee’s knees.

[techpawpanda]’s video-based SMD station is built around a USB microscope available at the usual online retailers for $40. This camera is mounted on a wooden base with a USB hub allowing the camera to be plugged in along with a few USB LED lights and a USB fan for a rudimentary form of fume extraction.

The results are impressive – even at 11x magnification, [techpawpanda] can put paste on pads and place even the smallest SMD parts. All this in a device that is small enough to fit in a shoe box, or be tucked neatly away whenever it is not needed.

A Portable CNC Mill

December 28, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 30 Comments

Proxxon

Second only to a lathe, a mill is one of the most useful tools to have in a shop. For [juppiter], though, a proper multi-ton mill would take up too much space and be a considerable investment. His solution to his space problem is actually very clever: he converted a small, inexpensive benchtop mill to CNC control, and put everything in a nice box that can be tucked away easily (Italian, here’s the translation).

The mill [juppiter] chose for the conversion was a Proxxon MF70, a very small mill made for jewelers and modelers. After buying a CNC conversion kit that included a few NEMA 17 motors, bearings, and mounting plates, [juppiter] set to work on driving these motors and controlling them with a computer. For the stepper drivers, a few industrial motor drivers were sourced on eBay, driven by an i3 miniITX computer built into the mill’s box. Control is through a touchscreen LCD and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

So far, [juppiter] has crafted a very elegant wood and brass CNC controller that allows him to jog the axes around and set the home position. It’s an excellent build that really shows off the power and ability of these inexpensive desktop mills.

Ask Hackaday: How Do You Give A Project Away?

December 28, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 66 Comments

lcr

A few weeks ago, we caught wind of a DIY version of ‘smart tweezers’ from [Kai]’s workbench that are able to measure SMD resistors, caps, and inductors. At that time, [Kai] hadn’t quite finished the software portion of his build, leaving him with a pile of parts and non-working PCBs. The code is finished now, meaning [Kai] has a very capable and very inexpensive version of LCR meter tweezers. He’d like to give back to the open source community and figure out a way to get his tweezers into the hands of makers the world over now. The only problem is he doesn’t know quite how to do that.

We’ve seen smart tweezers before, and they’re still available commercially for about $300. [Kai]’s version brings down the price significantly, so there is a market for these LCR tweezers. The problem, it seems, is getting these tweezers manufactured.

We’re assuming that soldering hundreds of thousand of SMD parts isn’t what [Kai] thinks is a good time; this leaves a Kickstarter as a non-starter, unless he can contract out the manufacturing. Seeed Studio might be a good place for [Kai] to sell his wares, but we’re wondering what Hackaday readers would do in [Kai]’s situation. Obviously he deserves to compensated for his work either through licensing or royalties, but as far as actual advice and recommendations we’re turning to Hackaday readers.