Catwalker

Well, it was time for a brief respite from summer heat and soldering bits together, so we went to a fireworks display nearby, it was a nice show, if somewhat short. (I gather a display like this can be somewhat pricey)








The display lasted about ten minutes, lots of the usual flash and bang.



(Yes, these are my photos)

 

 

 

じゃまた

A .036 carbide drill bit in my O*L*D Dremel 370 Moto Tool, I have had this old beast since about 1975 it was a Christmas present from mom and dad. It is still running strong, but doesn't even appear in the "discontinued tools" section of the Dremel web site (neither does the matching drill press stand, for that matter.) This is the smallest drill bit I have ever used.




The drilled and marked board (I decided to see if the toner transfer method would work just as well in putting the parts layout on the board, it did, more - or - less)




The board, just needs a couple of parts I forgot to order (oops)




A note - the tiny little drill bits are F*R*A*G*I*L*E I broke mine (thankfully, I was finished drilling) when I was going to take it out of the moto - tool, I dropped the tool, drill bit and all and it snapped it off....

じゃまた

Time for yet another new project, today I'm just posting part one. Part two will come later. Today I'll give some brief details about the printing of the PCB. Or "Printed Circuit Board". The project I am making isn't my own this time, but can be found here: Open Programmer It is a programmer for microcontrollers. Mainly, the Microchip PIC series.


Here are the raw materials for making the PCB, invisible is a piece of plywood (more on that a bit later) and no, the inclusion of a clothes iron is no accident. The newest tool in my staple of electronics bits and bobs. Why an iron?






Because for the first time,
I am using the
TONER.... TRANSFER.... METHOD....
as Bre Pettis from Makezine puts it.
The last time I made a PCB, it was about 17 years ago, I had no access to:

a) UV exposure boxes
b) Sensitised boards
c) developer
d) money for all of the above :)

I used to cover the copper clad board in wide strips of masking tape, draw on the pattern, cut it out with a sharp Xacto knife, paint the exposed copper with acrylic paint, let it dry, peel the tape away, patch up any damaged areas, etch the board. This worked, but it was overly time consuming, messy and couldn't really do fine traces. And the etch resist pens from Radio Shack were crap.

Check out this like: Make your own PCB's for the full explanation, the Youtube video references this site: Toner transfer method as explained by Thomas Gootee. Be very careful when using the etchant mix, I'm told it can become exothermic under the right (or should I say wrong?) circumstances, and it it needs to be used O*U*T*S*I*D*E or in a well ventilated space - it's toxic and it stinks. And if you get it on your mom's (or your wife's) stainless steel sink, you could be sleeping in the dog house. (You may be better off using ferric chloride - I was impatient so made my own etchant).

(BTW - If I were you, I wouldn't take Zander up his suggestion about amusing Law enforcement - There seems to be somewhat of a lack of a sense of humour on the part of a number of law enforcement officials --- some will be amused, others ... not so much -> just sayin :) )


I had a smallish piece of plywood, which I placed under the copper clad board, so I would n't damage anything underneateh. Here is my piece of plywood after ironing the paper pattern onto the copper clad board. It got pretty hot.







The board was hot enough to sizzle when I slid it into the bowl of hot water. As you can see, the paper is actually slightly scorched.





After about ten minutes of soaking in the hot water, I was able to carefully peel away part of the first layer of paper on the back, you can see the pattern from the paper plainly stuck to the copper clad board.





Here is the board with the paper gone ( a little bit of residue to clean up) I was surprised at the results, especially considering some of the traces are very small.




Board etched - I have deliberitely darkened the image a bit so you can see that the excess copper is gone, and the board is trimmed to size (about 2 3/4 x 4 inches) - just a couple of more things to do...



Board mostly complete, with the toner scrubbed off with acetone (use a mask, and ventilation - acetone is nasty stuff) - those couple of things to do? Clean it a bit (there are a couple of traces shorted together) and drill the holes - for that I need to get a couple of Carbide drill bits, FR4 glass epoxy and copper make quick lunches of HSS drill bits and band saw blades.


Coming up, once drilled, I will show off the completed project, and the reason I am going to all this effort.

じゃまた

It is now the 4th of July, to my American friends, take pride in this day. Your founding fathers risked quite a bit to start your republic.  233 years, it seems like a long time to us, but the U.S.A. is still young. Here's to 233 more.

Freedom Is Not Free To my American friends on memorial day, thanks. And to those who never made it back, thanks just does not cut it.

On the left is the audio amp board, on the right are the two audio amp IC's (did I mention I H*A*T*E desoldering and resoldering Integrated Circuits? Thankfully these have only ten pins :-) ) The chip on the extreme right is the good one the one to its left is the dead one.
Two electrolytics, the one on the left with the disc ceramic cap and resistor is one being replaced (there are two assemblies like this to be replaced) Notice how much shorter the new one is?
 The new one now with a disc ceramic cap and a resistor added.
The rig purring away nicely. Still some stuff to do, but it is now functional and at least I can listen in. The pile of parts in front are the bits I have replaced so far. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

じゃね

It has been a while since I started and completed an electronic project, but that is what I decided to do this weekend. I built myself a piece of test equipment:


This is some of the raw materials I picked up today from Queale Electronics in Victoria, in addition to a few bits from Digi Key electronics. (Man, solder is expensive these days...)




Normally, when I build an electronics project, I take the time to whip up a printed circuit board, but this time, in a desire for simplicity, I went for a prototyping board. The schematic for the project is in behind.





Here is the project built but not yet in the case.







Here it is boxed, ready to be closed up. Prototyping makes it look a tad messy, but it works. You can see the speaker on the bottom of the box, stuck in place with a few dabs of epoxy. (Epoxy is S*M*E*L*L*Y stuff)


So just what the heck is this and why did I go to all of this effort to build it?


Well, it is a signal tracer, and I needed it because my venerable old Kenwood TS 820S was sick. It had been sick for some time, but only this week did I get around to working on it, only to discover multiple problems, including dead audio, for which a signal tracer is a must.






Whoops!! A word, if I may?

Never, and I do mean N*E*V*E*R ever short
the ac input of a set of rectifier diodes, to the DC output of said diodes....

At least when the power is on... :-(


The results, as you can see here, are very smelly, noisy and messy, since my dominant hand tends to shake (Essential tremors) I did just that while trouble shooting, thus creating an additional problem.

The eagle eyed amongst you will note that there are circuit traces missing, and a couple of cracked diodes.


Four very dead rectifiers and the replacements just above.





The end result of the repairs needed due to my shaky hand. Four new diodes with protective sleeves (Right side). In addition to two new shiny electrolytic capacitors. (No, they didn't blow, but since the radio is around 35 years old, I decided to replace them, after that period of time, electrolytics become, shall we say, troublesome.


OK, the power supply is repaired, back to trouble shooting, now for that dead audio. Thanks to the new signal tracer, I think I have found the problem, a bad audio amp I.C. off to Ebay to find a 35 year old Integrated circuit. Hopefully I can find some NOS (New Old Stock)


I also discovered that I need a choke for the power supply (unrelated to my shaky hands incident) This is going to be an expensive repair, but well worth it, this old lady (sorry, I am most definitely not PC and never will be) is a grand piece of equipment, and full of memories for me. (I bought this rig from an older HAM - (now an SK) - in 1981 - for the grand sum of $800.00 which was a lot of money for a teenager)

じゃまた。

So, can somebody (sensibly) explain to me what the fuss is over Macs? I have been playing with OS X for a few days, and quite frankly, just can't see anything superior about it.

The Graphics - no better than my Linux machine
The interface - Pretty, but so what? Pretty isn't better.
Ease of use   - Sorry, no easier than any other OS

I had Linux/Windows/OS X side by side and have
to say: it doesn't live up to the hype I've seen.

Am I going to get flamed?

じゃ

The headstone for Mother's grave is supposed to be delivered and installed today, the monument people sent us a photo, it looks classy, which my mother would have liked. I will post a photo of it later.

じゃまた

Stop on that red octagonal sign suddenly come to mean stop only if the police are there?
-------
The amber light come to mean put the pedal to the metal?
-------
Yield come to mean mine! Get outta my way?
-------
The red hand on the pedestrian sign come to mean high five, not "Don't walk"?
-------

O.K. here is my naive take on those traffic rules:

Stop means stop/no movement/give way/give it up!

Amber means stop, you lose, next time you go!

Yield means surrender the right of way to other drivers.

The red hand means Don't walk you idiot! Cars are heavy and dangerous, you aren't.

And one more thing; put the damn cell phone down already and concentrate on your driving, stop being a doofous!

I added a new add - on for Mozilla Firefox (I am a Linux user - I despise Windows) It is called Scribefire, this is a blogging tool which allows a little finer grained control over your blog entries. Give it a try! Scribefire. I think this extension should work for you Windows users as well.

Well, the snow of a couple of weeks ago is almost gone. It is looking gross out there. I will be happy when all of the mini mountains of dirty black snow are gone. Y'know, it's nice when its fresh, but...