PCBs Straight From The Magazine

June 19, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 30 Comments

It’s never been easier to get a printed circuit board made. In fact, almost every electronics video out on the internet will incessantly remind you of this fact now. But making a custom PCB wasn’t always as straightforward as sending a KiCad file to a board house. Many DIY methods involve harsh chemicals and tedious processes, but did have the potential benefit of taking much less time than waiting on boards to arrive in the mail. [Bettina Neumryr] is demonstrating one of these older methods, called the toner transfer method, using a circuit that was printed directly in an old magazine.

The first part of the toner transfer method is to create an image that can be printed. Since this circuit came from a magazine, it is first scanned in to a computer and imported into GIMP, where it can be scaled to match the size of the components and then sharpened to make a crisp print. With the image ready, it’s time to print the image onto some toner transfer paper, ensuring that the printer in question is a laser printer which actually uses toner. From there, a sheet of blank copper PCB is prepared and then the toner is transferred by heating, in this case using a laminator. After that its etched, removing all of the copper not protected by the toner, and then the toner itself can be removed which leaves behind the copper traces.

For those of you who were around when toner transfer was in vogue, this video might not have much value. But for anyone who can’t use a board manufacturer for whatever reason or is looking for alternatives, a modern video showing the method could be much more useful and have better context for beginners than videos made a decade or more ago now. Some of those older methods include similar processes using inkjet printers instead, but there are more modern DIY methods as well using lasers or CNC machines too.

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Behold A 60 Hz Refresh Rate E-ink Monitor

June 13, 2026 by Donald Papp 50 Comments

E-ink displays have a number of advantages over other display types, but their refresh rate isn’t one of them. But what exactly makes them slow? According to [Wenting Zhang], it’s not an inherent limitation of the technology. It’s mainly the controller, and this limitation can be overcome to create a high-resolution 60 Hz refresh rate E-ink display, totally suitable for use as a computer monitor.

The reason E-ink displays are so slow is simple. For a long time, they existed for only one purpose: to be screens for e-readers. They had to work on devices that were generally low power, with limited interfaces and slow processors. Accommodating these factors was the primary driver behind the high latency and slow refresh rates associated with these displays.

It was actually the limited interface options rather than the slow refresh that initially led to a custom controller, because [Wenting] wanted to use an E-ink display on a laptop build. But it quickly became apparent that a custom controller could do considerably more than E-ink was known for.

Initial tests with fast refresh rates were so positive that it led to a Hackaday Supercon 2024 talk on how to make E-ink go fast, and more recently has culminated in the Modos Flow, a fully open-source, user-repairable 13.3″ portable E-ink monitor.

The development path from proof of concept to finished product has been a long one for [Wenting]. Not only did a lot of optimization and feature work need to be crafted from scratch in order to effectively balance appearance with responsiveness in different display modes, but the usual hassles of development and bad timing were also in full force. On top of it were wasteful vendor shenanigans, as well.

Check out the story in the video, embedded just below. If you’d like to buy one, there are monochrome and color versions offered through Crowd Supply.

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Mod This IKEA Lamp Into Smart Lighting For Not A Lot

May 15, 2026 by Donald Papp 18 Comments

The IKEA SKAFTSÄRV is an economical LED accent lamp, but while highly affordable it has only fixed lighting options. [simoneluconi] shows how it can easily be turned into a fully-configurable, WLED-connected, WiFi-enabled RGB lamp with little more than an ESP32-based board.

A thirty-LED lamp with integrated diffusor and stand can be had for surprisingly cheap. Add an equally-economical ESP32 board and it becomes a whole lot more.

To do this, the control board of the lamp gets replaced with an ESP32-C3 Super Mini board. Control and automation comes from WLED, open-source software that offers flexible automation and control for LED lights with a wide range of features, including native Android and iOS apps.

Modifying the SKAFTSÄRV lamp is fairly straightforward, but opening the unit does require breaking some glued seams to get inside. Once that’s done, the replacement board fits nicely into the housing and the unit can be closed back up. As far as WLED is concerned, the new lamp has 30 LEDs, WS281x type, GRB color order.

The end result is a stylish accent lamp with built-in diffusor and mount that can be controlled over WiFi with all the features WLED brings, such as easy integration with Home Assistant.

This isn’t the first time IKEA’s LED lighting has been given a powerup. Their pixel-style LED wall-mounted OBEGRÄNSAD, which displays a few canned animations out of the box, got considerably enhanced with a new controller.

Thanks [Crash] for the tip!

A Sail And Oar Skiff Built From Common Lumber

April 26, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 13 Comments

For those first venturing into sailing, it can be overwhelming since the experience is thick with jargon and skills that don’t often show up in life ashore. With endless choices, including monohulls versus catamarans, fiberglass versus wood, fractional versus masthead rigs, and sloops versus ketches, a new sailor risks doing something like single-handing a staysail schooner when they should have started on a Bermuda-rigged dinghy without a spinnaker. Luckily, there are some shortcuts to picking up the hobby, like the venerable Sunfish or Hobie ships. It’s also possible to build a simple sailing vessel completely out of materials from a local hardware store, as [Cumberland Rover] has been demonstrating.

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Playful ‘Space Dice’ Kit Shows Off Clever Design

March 28, 2026 by Donald Papp 4 Comments

[Tommy] at Oskitone has been making hardware synth kits for years, and his designs are always worth checking out. His newest offering Space Dice is an educational kit that is a combination vintage sci-fi space laser sound generator, and six-sided die roller. What’s more, as a kit it represents an effort to be genuinely educational, rather than just using it as a meaningless marketing term.

There are several elements we find pretty interesting in Space Dice. One is the fact that, like most of [Tommy]’s designs, there isn’t a microcontroller in sight. Synthesizers based mostly on CMOS logic chips have been a mainstay of DIY electronics for years, as have “electronic dice” circuits. This device mashes both together in an accessible way that uses a minimum of components.

There are only three chips inside: a CD4093 quad NAND with Schmitt-trigger inputs used as a relaxation oscillator, a CD4040 binary counter used as a prescaler, and a CD4017 decade counter responsible for spinning a signal around six LEDs while sound is generated, to represent an electronic die. Sound emerges from a speaker on the backside of the PCB, which we’re delighted to see is driven not by a separate amplifier chip, but by unused gates on the CD4093 acting as a simple but effective square wave booster.

In addition, [Tommy] puts effort into minimizing part count and complexity, ensuring that physical assembly does not depend on separate fasteners or adhesives. We also like the way he uses a lever assembly to make the big activation button — mounted squarely above the 9 V battery — interface with a button on the PCB that is physically off to the side. The result is an enclosure that is compact and tidy.

We recommend checking out [Tommy]’s concise writeup on the design details of Space Dice for some great design insights, and take a look at the assembly guide to see for yourself the attention paid to making the process an educational one. We love the concept of presenting an evolving schematic diagram, which changes and fills out as each assembly step is performed and tested.

Watch it in action in a demo video, embedded just below. Space Dice is available for purchase but if you prefer to roll your own, all the design files and documentation are available online from the project’s GitHub repository.

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Use A Gap-Cap To Embed Hardware In Your Next 3D Print

March 27, 2026 by Donald Papp 20 Comments

Embedding fasteners or other hardware into 3D prints is a useful technique, but it can bring challenges when applied to large or non-flat objects. The solution? Use a gap-cap.

The gap-cap technique is essentially a 3D printed lid. One pauses a print, inserts hardware, then covers it with a lid before resuming the print. The lid — or gap-cap — does three things. It seals in the part, it fills in empty space left above the component, and it provides a nice flat surface for subsequent layers which makes the whole process much cleaner and more reliable.

This whole technique is a bit reminiscent of the idea of manual supports, except that the inserted piece is intended to be sealed into the print along with the embedded hardware under it.

If you have never inserted anything larger than a nut or small magnet into a 3D print, you may wonder why one needs to bother with a gap-cap at all. The short version is that what works for printing over small bits doesn’t reliably carry over to big, odd-shaped bits.

For one thing, filament generally doesn’t like to stick to embedded hardware. As the size of the inserted object increases, especially if it isn’t flat, it increasingly complicates the printer’s ability to seal it in cleanly. Because most nuts are small, even if the printer gets a little messy it probably doesn’t matter much. But what works for small nuts won’t work for something like an LED strip mounted on its side, as shown here.

Cross-section of a print with an embedded LED strip. The print pauses (A), LED strip is inserted and capped with a gap-cap (B, C), then printing resumes and completes (D).

In cases like these a gap-cap is ideal. By pre-printing a form-fitting cap that covers the inserted hardware, one provides a smooth and flat surface that both seals the component in snugly while providing an ideal surface upon which to resume printing.

If needed, a bit of glue can help ensure a gap-cap doesn’t shift and cause trouble when printing resumes, but we can’t help but recall the pause-and-attach technique of embedding printed elements with the help of a LEGO-like connection. Perhaps a gap-cap designed in such a way would avoid needing any kind of adhesive at all.

3D Printed Wire Stripper Uses PLA Blades

March 26, 2026 by Donald Papp 22 Comments

One might think that [Da_Rius]’s mostly 3D printed wire stripper would count its insulation-shearing blades among the small number of metal parts required, but that turns out to not be the case. The blades are actually printed in PLA, and seem to work just fine for this purpose. (We imagine they need somewhat frequent replacement, but still.)

Proper wire strippers are one of the most useful tools for a budding electronics enthusiast, because stripping hookup wire is a common task and purpose-built strippers make for quick and consistent results.

As far as tools go they are neither particularly expensive nor difficult to source, but making one’s own has a certain appeal to it. The process of assembling the tool is doubtless a rewarding one, and it looks like it results in a pretty good conversation starter if nothing else.

As mentioned, the tool is mostly 3D printed and does require some metal parts: fasteners, heat-set inserts, and a couple springs. Metal nuts and heat-set inserts are easy enough to obtain, but springs of particular size and shape are a bit trickier.

It is perfectly possible to make custom springs, and as it happens [Da_Rius] already has that covered with a separate project for using a hex key and printed jig to make exactly the right shapes and sizes from pre-tempered spring wire.