Tool Hacks

2884 Articles

A Homebrew SMD Vise Built From Scrap Wood

January 4, 2023 by 23 Comments

We don’t see too many wooden projects around these parts, but when [olikraus] turned a few pieces of scrap lumber into a functional SMD vise, how could we not take notice? The idea is simple. Two pieces of wood with slots in them hold the PCB. Two other pieces form an arm with an adjustable needle that can hold down tiny parts while you solder. Magnets hold each piece to a metal working surface. Simple and elegant.

We might have 3D printed some of the pieces, but then again, you have to be careful where your soldering iron goes if you go that route. The other advantage to using wood is that you can easily grab a few pieces of scrap and have a different-sized vice in just a few minutes.

There are a few improvements we might suggest. For example, a thumbscrew to fix the needle would be welcome. It seems like you could make the part that holds the needle smaller, too, to help you get your soldering iron into the same area. But it looks workable with no changes at all.

Working with scrap wood isn’t glamorous, but it does make for quick and easy functional builds. A number of the holes and bolts here could even be replaced with glue if you don’t mind the time for it to set.

Of course, you could mix and match this with other designs. We like the “dollar store PCB holder,” but it would work well with the arm from this project. We couldn’t help but think of the SMD beak when we saw this project.

Near Field EMI Probes: Any Good?

January 3, 2023 by 17 Comments

[Learnelectronics] purchased some near-field EMI probes for his tiny spectrum analyzer for about $5 on sale. Could they be any good at that price? Watch the video below and find out.

The probes arrived as a kit with four probes: three circular ones for sensing the H field and a stubby probe for sensing E fields (although the video gets this backward, by the way). There’s not much to them, but for the price, it probably isn’t worth making them yourself if your concern is the cost. Now, if you just want to make your own, we get that, too, but don’t expect to save much money.

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3D render of the badge programming adapter PCB

Supercon 2022 Badge Gets A Tinkering Helper Add-on

January 2, 2023 by 3 Comments

Are you one of the lucky ones to own a Hackaday Supercon 2022 badge? Would you like to make it even easier to program than it already is? [brokebit] has exactly the project you might’ve been dreaming of all along — it’s a Supercon 2022 Badge programming adapter. With pass-through for all badge pins, four buttons, a total of ten DIP switches and four LEDs, the sheer IO of this add-on makes good use of the badge’s expansion header. But that’s not all, as there’s a USB-UART converter accessible through a MicroUSB socket.

Using mostly through-hole components, this board won’t leave you digging through parts drawers for exotic buttons or pin headers; most everything is jellybean. The pass-through capability of the adapter means that other badge add-ons will be compatible and you can even use this adapter to debug them, with DIP switches helping you disconnect whatever onboard circuitry interferes. For instance, if you’re not looking for USB-UART functionality provided by the classic CP2102, the dual DIP switches are right there for you to disconnect it on the fly.

The board is 6 layers, but since the quoted price was the same as a 4-layer board, it made for a more comfortable layout. Want a refresher on the badge? Here you go, and here’s our write-up about it before Supercon. Hackers have been stretching the limits of what the 2022 badge can get done — here’s a punch card reader, for instance.

LEDCard: The Pocketable Ring Light

January 1, 2023 by 17 Comments

How many times have you found yourself fumbling about with lighting while trying to get a clear up-close shot of an object? Although smartphones come with pretty nice cameras these days, properly lighting an object and taking impressive macro shots isn’t exactly their strong suit. This is where [MisterHW]’s LEDCard is a very welcome companion. Not only does it provide a credit card sized ring light, it also allows for a molded acrylic lens to be inserted for high-quality macro shots.

The project in its current iteration consists out of a single PCB with rechargeable Li-ion coin cells (LIR2430) and a USB-powered charge controller. After charging the LEDCard (or inserting freshly charged Li-ion coin cells), a single button press will light up the SMD LEDs via the LM3410 LED driver IC. Press the ON button gently (half-press) for medium brightness and fully for full intensity. Finally, pressing the TEST button with the LEDs lit performs a battery level test that turns the LEDs off if the battery is ok. If they stay lit, it’s time to recharge the LEDCard.

As [MisterHW] points out, the LEDCard being compact enough to carry around with you wherever you go makes it suitable as an emergency flashlight as well. It’s also not the final iteration of the design. Future (incremental) improvements include a diffuser for the ring light and more. Even so, in its current state LEDCard is already a proven design.

A closeup picture showing the jagged edge of the cut

Debugging Laser Cut Wobble, The Scientific Way

December 29, 2022 by 23 Comments

[PWalsh] was using his lasercutter to cut acrylic, expecting the cuts to have a pleasantly smooth edge. Alas, the edges turned out to be wobbly and sandpaper-like, not smooth in the slightnest. Bummer! Internet suggested a stepper motor swap, but not much in the way of insights – and that would’ve been a royal pain for sure. How would you approach debugging such a problem? Well, [PWalsh] didn’t want to swap crucial components willy-nilly, going the scientific way instead, and breaks it down for us.

Having compiled an extensive list of possible places to look for a fault in, he started going through fundamental assumptions. Do other lasercutters experience this issue? No, even the cheap ones can cut things properly. Is it water level causing intermittent cooling? Nope, not that. Is it the stepping settings? Tweaked, not that. Laser pulsing frequency? No dice. Continue reading “Debugging Laser Cut Wobble, The Scientific Way” →

Reverse Engineering Saves Weller With A Wonky LCD From The Trash Pile

December 25, 2022 by 15 Comments

There’s nothing more satisfying than finding a broken piece of gear in the trash and bringing it back to life. Satisfying, but also potentially more time-consuming — someone tossed it for a reason, after all. Figuring out what that reason is and finding a way to back it better is where the fun — and the peril — are.

Luckily, some pieces of equipment have a relatively short list of well-known failure modes, a fact that [Lauri Pirttiaho] relied on for this fix of an old Weller WD1 soldering station. The unit, sporting the familiar light blue Weller livery and more than a few scratches and dings, had an LCD that was DOA. Typically it’s the driver that’s the problem here, but [Lauri]’s diagnosis revealed it was the LCD module itself that was bad.

With OEM replacements being basically unobtainium at this point, the fix was to intercept the data heading from the driver to the old LCD and send it to a new, easily sourced 16×2 character LCD display. This began with an inspection of the display controller’s datasheet, and a bit of probing of the old display to find out which segments and backplanes map to which pins. A little bit of case modding allowed the new display to fit, the old controller chip was removed, and a PIC16 went into its place, in a tidy nest of Kapton tape and bodge wires. The PIC does the job of translating the original display, which had a fair number of custom icons and symbols, into sensible text-based equivalents and sending them to the 16×2 via I2C. The video below shows the hack in action; it honestly looks like it could have come from the factory like that.

The nice thing here is that [Lauri]’s fix applies to a whole range of Weller stations, so if you find one in the trash, you might be able to resuscitate it. Failing that, you could always roll your own Weller from (more-or-less) scratch.

Continue reading “Reverse Engineering Saves Weller With A Wonky LCD From The Trash Pile” →

Self-Propelled Chainsaw Reduces Injuries

December 25, 2022 by 30 Comments

[Advoko] is an expert at milling logs into various sizes of boards. He typically uses nothing but a chainsaw to enable him to mill on-site without needing to bring any large or expensive equipment. The only problem is that sometimes he gets a little carried away running his mill non-stop until he has enough lumber for whatever project he is building, which has led to some repetitive strain injuries. To enable him to continue to run his mill, he’s created this self-propelled chainsaw jig.

The creation of the self-propelled chainsaw was a little serendipitous. [Advoko] needed to mill a tree which had fallen on a slope, and he couldn’t move the large trunk before starting to mill. To avoid fatigue while pulling his chainsaw upwards, he devised a system of rubber belts that would help pull the weight of the chainsaw up the hill. Noticing that if the chainsaw could have been operated downhill, it would essentially pull itself along the cut, he set about building a carriage for the mill to hold the chainsaw in place while it semi-autonomously milled lumber for him.

The chainsaw jig isn’t fully autonomous; [Advoko] still needs to start and stop the chainsaw and set up the jig. It does have a number of safety features to prevent damage to the jig, the chainsaw, and himself too, and over a number of iterations of this device he has perfected it to the point where he can start it on a cut and then do other tasks such as move boards or set up other logs for cutting while it is running, saving him both time and reducing his risk of other repetitive strain injuries. If you don’t fully trust the automatic chainsaw jig, take a look at this one which requires a little more human effort but still significantly reduces the strain of milling a large log.

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