Left: the traces of a flashy paper Christmas tree. Right: the finished tree on cardstock.

Flashy Paper Christmas Tree Does It With A 555

December 13, 2024 by Kristina Panos 10 Comments

‘Tis the season for holiday hacks, and [Ben Emmett] is here to remind us that we don’t necessarily need a fancy microcontroller in order to make flashy fun things happen.

Smoothing down the copper traces with a guitar pick.

Take this Christmas tree for example, which uses a 555 timer and a CB4017 decade counter in order to drive some blinking LEDs. The ICs are through-hole, making the circuit fairly accessible to new players, but there are a few SMD components that need soldering as well. (More on that later.)

Here, the 555 acts like a clock and drives a square wave. Using the clock as input, the decade counter toggles the output pins one after the other, driving the LEDs to blink in turn. Since there are only eight lights, there is a pause in the light-up pattern, but that could be fixed by wiring decade counter output #9 to the reset pin.

Although function was the main focus circuit-wise, [Ben] managed to lay the traces in the shape of a Christmas tree, which looks great. Having done a similar project in the past, he discovered that the craft cutting machine prefers thick traces and wider spaces between them. This is largely why [Ben] chose to use through-hole ICs.

After laying everything out in KiCad, [Ben] exported the copper layer image for use on the cutting machine. Once it was all cut out, he put it on transfer tape to weed out the extra copper, and get the traces onto cardstock, the final substrate.

This is such a fun project, and we love that the CR2032 that powers it also acts as the stand in its vertical holder. Hit up GitHub if you want to make one for yourself. Want something even more 3D? Check out this hollow tree we saw a few years ago.

This Pogo Pin Test Fixture Keep Your SMDs From Taking Flight

December 5, 2023 by Dan Maloney 12 Comments

There’s no denying how useful surface mount technology is, and how enabling the ability to make really small circuits has become. It comes at a price, though; most of us probably know what it’s like for the slightest wrong move to send a part the size of a grain of sand into another dimension.

To help make testing these parts a little easier, [IMSAI Guy] has come up with this clever little SMD test fixture. It’s designed to hook up to another custom board, which in turn connects to a wonderful old Hewlett-Packard 4275A LCR meter. The jig is based on two pogo pins mounted directly across from each other on a scrap of single-clad PCB. The spring-loaded contacts, which short together when not in use, are pulled apart to load an SMD part, like the 1-μH inductors shown in the video below. The pins hold the component firmly and make good electrical contact, allowing hands-free testing without the risk of an errant touch of the test probes sending it flying.

While the test fixture works well for larger SMDs, we could see this being a bit fussy for smaller parts. That would be easy enough to fix with perhaps some 3D-printed arms that retract the pogo pins symmetrically, holding them open until the part is loaded. A centering fixture might help too, as would a clear shield to contain any parts that get the urge to go for a ride. But, for the tactical application [IMSAI Guy] has in mind, this sure seems like enough.

Just getting into surface mount? If so, you might want to check out this handy guide to the often cryptic markings used on SMD parts.

Continue reading “This Pogo Pin Test Fixture Keep Your SMDs From Taking Flight” →

Pixel Pump, The Open Source Vacuum Pickup Tool Is Now Shipping

August 1, 2023 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

The Pixel Pump is an open source manual pick & place assist tool by [Robin Reiter], and after a long road to completion, it’s ready to ship. We first saw the Pixel Pump project as an entry to the 2021 Hackaday Prize and liked the clean design and the concept of a completely open architecture for a tool that is so valuable to desktop assembly. It’s not easy getting hardware off the ground, but it’s now over the finish line and nearly everything — from assembly to packaging — has been done in-house.

Pixel Pump with SMD-Magazines, also using foot pedal to control an interactive bill of materials (BoM) plugin.

Because having parts organized and available is every bit as important as the tool itself, a useful-looking companion item for the Pixel Pump is the SMD-Magazine. This is a container for parts that come on SMD tape rolls. These hold components at an optimal angle for use with the pickup tool, and can be fixed together on a rail to create project-specific part groups.

A tool being open source means giving folks a way to modify or add features for better workflows, and an example of this is [Robin]’s suggestion of using a foot pedal for hands-free control of the interactive BoM plugin. With it, one can simply use a foot pedal to step through a highlighted list of every part for a design, an invaluable visual aid when doing hand assembly.

The Pixel Pump looks great, but if you’d prefer to go the DIY route for vacuum pickup tools you would certainly be in good company. We’ve seen economical systems built for under $100, and systems built around leveraging bead-handling tools intended for hobbyists. On the extreme end there’s the minimalist approach of building a tool directly around a small electric vacuum pump.

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.

Fail Of The Week: Hackaday Writer Attempts XBox Repair

December 8, 2021 by Dan Maloney 55 Comments

Like a lot of Hackaday readers, I pride myself on being “the fix-it guy” in my family. When something breaks, I get excited, because it’s a chance to show off my skills. It’s especially fun when something major breaks, like the fridge or the washing machine — repairs like that are a race against time, since I’ve got to get it fixed faster than it would take to hire someone to do it. I usually win the race; I can’t remember the last time I paid someone to work on something. Like I said, it’s a point of pride.

And so when my son came home on Thanksgiving break from his first semester away at college, eager to fire up his Xbox for some mindless relaxation from his biochemistry studies, only to be greeted with a black screen and no boot-up, it was go-time for me. I was confident that I’d be able to revive the dead box in time for him to have some fun. The fact that he’s back at school and the machine is still torn apart on my bench testifies to my hubris, but to be fair, I did get close to a fix, and may still yet get it done. But either way, the lessons I’ve learned along the way have been really valuable and worth sharing.

Continue reading “Fail Of The Week: Hackaday Writer Attempts XBox Repair” →

Modified 3D-Printer Solders Through-Hole Components

July 22, 2021 by Dan Maloney 23 Comments

Surface-mount technology has been a fantastic force multiplier for electronics in general and for hobbyists in particular. But sometimes you’ve got no choice but to use through-hole components, meaning that even if you can take advantage of SMDs for most of the design, you still might need to spend a little time with soldering iron in hand. Or not, if you’ve got a spare 3D printer lying around.

All we’ve got here is a fairly brief video from [hydrosys4], so there aren’t a lot of build details. But it’s pretty clear what’s going on here. Starting with what looks like a Longer LK4 printer, [hydrosys4] added a bracket to hold a soldering iron, and a guide for solder wire. The solder is handled by a more-or-less standard extruder, which feeds it into the joint once it’s heated by the iron. The secret sauce here is probably the fixturing, with 3D-printed jigs that hold the through-hole connectors in a pins-up orientation on the bed of the printer. With the PCB sitting on top of the connectors, it’s just a matter of teaching the X-Y-Z position of each joint, applying heat, and advancing the solder with the extruder.

The video below shows it in action at high speed; we slowed it down to 25% to get an idea of how it is in reality, and while it might not be fast, it’s precise and it doesn’t get tired. It may not have much application for one-off boards, but if you’re manufacturing small PCB runs, it’s a genius solution. We’ve seen similar solder bots before, but hats off to [hydrosys4] for keeping this one simple.

Continue reading “Modified 3D-Printer Solders Through-Hole Components” →

Learn Bil Herd’s DIY Surface Mount Assembly Process

February 2, 2021 by Bil Herd 40 Comments

You can do your own Surface Mount Technology based PCB assembly with just a handful of tools and some patience. At the heart of my SMT process is stopping to inspect the various steps all while trying to maintain a bit of cleanliness in the process.

Surface mount or Surface Mount Technology (SMT) is the modern way to assemble Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) and is what is commonly seen when opening a modern piece of tech. It’s much smaller than the older Through-Hole (TH) technology where the component leads were inserted into holes in PCB, and act we called “stuffing” since we had to stuff the components into the holes.

A few specialized tools make this a lot easier, but resourceful hackers will be able to pull together a solder paste stencil jig, vacuum tweezers, and a modified toaster oven with a controller that can follow the reflow profile of the solder paste. Where you shouldn’t skimp is on the quality, age, and storage of the solder paste itself.

Join me after the break for my video overview of the process I use in my workshop, along with details of every step of my SMT assembly process.

Continue reading “Learn Bil Herd’s DIY Surface Mount Assembly Process” →