3D Printed Tool Lets You Measure Component Reels Easily

April 15, 2023 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

Component reels are a highly-0ptimized packaging format. They deliver components to pick and place machines for effective high-speed assembly. As more of us get into working with SMD components, we’re exposed to them as well. [MG] wanted a way to easily measure tape from component reels, which is difficult because they’re often curled up. Thus, they whipped up a nifty little tool for the job.

The device consists of a 3D printed bracket which is designed to fit on a cheap electronic tape measure from Amazon. The bracket holds an 8mm wide component tape against the measuring wheel. As the component tape is fed through the device, it turns the wheel, and the measurement appears on the screen. No more must you try and flatten out a tape and measure it section by section. Instead, you just feed it in, yank it through, and you’re done!

[MG] notes that the tape measure itself runs on an STM32 microcontroller. As an extra-credit assignment, they suggest that the device could be reprogrammed to display component count instead of distance if that’s more suitable for your application. If you happen to make that mod, be sure to notify us on the tipline!

Binary Watch Rocks A Bare PCB With Pride

January 26, 2023 by Lewin Day 18 Comments

Most of us learn to read digital clocks first, which display the time in obvious numbers. Analog clocks are often learned later, with the hands taking our young brains a little longer to figure out. Once you’ve grown into a 1337h4XX0r, though, you’re ready to learn how to read a binary watch. Then you can build your own, just like [taifur] did.

The watch rocks a simplistic, bare bones design with the PCB acting as the body of the device itself. It’s not great for water resistance, or even incidental contact, but it’s a sharp look with the golden traces on display. The heart of the operation is a ATmega328P, as seen in the popular Arduino Uno, and it’s paired with a DS3231M real-time clock module to keep accurate time. 13 SMD LEDs are charged with displaying the time in binary format, with [taifur] choosing to spec a classic red color for the build. The watch is powered via a CR2032 coin cell, which you’re best advised not to swallow. So far, [taifur] has found the watch will last for over a month before the battery is tapped out.

It’s a fun build, and one that looks good when paired with a classic NATO watch strap in green. If, however, you desire a watch that definitely won’t last a month on a single coin cell, you can always build a Nixie watch instead. Video after the break.

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Internal Heating Element Makes These PCBs Self-Soldering

January 18, 2023 by Dan Maloney 53 Comments

Surface mount components have been a game changer for the electronics hobbyist, but doing reflow soldering right requires some way to evenly heat the board. You might need to buy a commercial reflow oven — you can cobble one together from an old toaster oven, after all — but you still need something, because it’s not like a PCB is going to solder itself. Right?

Wrong. At least if you’re [Carl Bugeja], who came up with a clever way to make his PCBs self-soldering. The idea is to use one of the internal layers on a four-layer PCB, which would normally be devoted to a ground plane, as a built-in heating element. Rather than a broad, continuous layer of copper, [Carl] made a long, twisting trace covering the entire area of the PCB. Routing the trace around vias was a bit tricky, but in the end he managed a single trace with a resistance of about 3 ohms.

When connected to a bench power supply, the PCB actually heats up quickly and pretty evenly judging by the IR camera. The quality of the soldering seems very similar to what you’d see from a reflow oven. After soldering, the now-useless heating element is converted into a ground plane for the circuit by breaking off the terminals and soldering on a couple of zero ohm resistors to short the coil to ground.

The whole thing is pretty clever, but there’s more to the story. The circuit [Carl] chose for his first self-soldering board is actually a reflow controller. So once the first board was manually reflowed with a bench supply, it was used to control the reflow process for the rest of the boards in the batch, or any board with a built-in heating element. We expect there will be some limitations on the size of the self-soldering board, though.

We really like this idea, and we’re looking forward to seeing more from [Carl] on this.

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A Homebrew SMD Vise Built From Scrap Wood

January 4, 2023 by Al Williams 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.

tiny surface mount seven segment display

Nano-Sized 7-Segment LED Display On A Surface Mount Module

November 30, 2022 by Joseph Long 19 Comments

Inspired by a prank tweet, [Sam Ettinger] endeavored to create an SMD seven-segment display. The NanoRaptor NanoSegment implements a panel of seven-segment display modules sized at “0806” each or just a bit wider than a standard 0805 SMD footprint. Each of the seven segments is a single 0201 LED. Six I/O lines and three resistors are required to operate each module.

To demonstrate the operation of his tiny display modules, Sam also created the “6Pin 7Seg” development board featuring an ATtiny84 microcontroller coupled to PCB footprints sized to receive the NanoRaptor NanoSegment display modules. A demonstration of the board counts through digits displayed on one of the tiny seven-segment modules.

Hoping to reduce the module’s interface to two pins, Sam is now experimenting with a seven-segment display on a flex PCB that folds up into a 1208 footprint. He is attempting to fold the resistors and a ATtiny20 microcontroller into an “origami PCB” configuration.

If these hacks are getting a little too small for your tastes, we’ve got you covered with this giant seven-segment display.

Front of PCB for "SMT Garden" with glowing LEDs

Surface Mount Soldering Practice For Budding Electrical Engineers

October 4, 2022 by Abe Connelly 10 Comments

Electronics components are steadily moving away from through hole parts to using surface mount technology (SMT) exclusively. While the small size of the SMT components can be intimidating, with a little practice, soldering can come pretty naturally. To help folks get over their fear of soldering small parts, [Alpenglow Industries] have created a charming board to practice SMT soldering skills on.

[Alpenglow Industries] board, called the “SMT Garden”, combines a variety of SMT sizes ranging from 0402 to 1206 with beautiful PCB artwork to highlight the variety of LEDs on board. [Alpenglow Industries] provides detailed instructions on the various aspects of SMT soldering including what the terminology is and providing various techniques to help in soldering. The boards have practice “stalks” of surface mount component pads, so that folks can practice on columns of similarly sized SMT components to perfect their technique. The training stalks themselves aren’t functional but are there to provide practice for when folks feel comfortable soldering the LEDs, 555 timer and inverter chips to make the board functional.

[Alpenglow Industries] have provided all the KiCAD project files, gerbers and schematics available online. SMT soldering is more accessible than ever and when you can even use your phone as a microscope, it’s a good excuse to try it out, if you haven’t already.

Automate Parts Kitting With This Innovative SMD Tape Slicer

June 7, 2022 by Dan Maloney 5 Comments

Nobody likes a tedious manual job prone to repetitive stress injury, and such tasks rightly inspire an automated solution. This automatic SMD tape cutter is a good example of automating such a chore, while leaving plenty of room for further development.

We’re used to seeing such tactical automation projects from [Mr Innovative], each of which centers on an oddly specific task. In this case, the task involves cutting a strip containing a specific number of SMD resistors from a reel, perhaps for assembling kits of parts. The mechanism is simple: a stepper motor with a rubber friction wheel to drive the tape, and a nasty-looking guillotine to cut the tape. The cutter is particularly interesting, using as it does a short length of linear bearing to carry a holder for a razor blade that’s mounted perpendicular to the SMD tape. The holder is mounted to a small motor via a crank, and when the proper number of parts have been fed out, the motor rotates one revolution, driving the angled blade quickly down and then back up. This results in a shearing cut rather than the clipping action seen in this automated wire cutter, also by [Mr Innovative].

Curiously, there seems to be no feedback mechanism to actually measure how many resistors have been dispensed. We assume [Mr Innovative] is just counting steps, but it seems easy enough to integrate a photosensor to count the number of drive sprocket holes in the tape. It also seems like a few simple changes would allow this machine to accommodate SMD tapes of different sizes, making it generally useful for SMD kitting. It’s still pretty cool as a tactical project, though, and does a great job inspiring future improvements.

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