Sunday, August 09, 2009


Hall sensor board take 2. here is how it turned out on the second go around. Tested it with a neodymium magnet and it works perfectly.

Also, I got a lot better result on the soldermask using thinner for the Vitrea 160 paint.
Wart Zapper! Here is a circuit I found on the web. I claimed to zap warts (something I wanted to do. Long story short,

IT WORKS :D

I followed the directions here using SMD parts and adjusting the layout to fit on one side.

Jay

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Hall sensor break out board results:

Well, 1.1mm was just too small :) Never got it to work. Oh well, it was a long shot by hand for sure.

So I redid it for a "bigger " sensor device. Also, I am playing with a soldermask technique I found at www.diyaudio.com. It uses a glass paint called Vitrea 160. The image above I painted it with a narrow drush and avoided the pads. Then let it dry for a day and baked it to fuse the paint.

It's a work in progress as I'm not fomd of the "blobiness" of the paint. Trying to get the glass paint smooth is proving a challenge. I want the paint to flow and level out, but it doesn't. I may have to buy some of the thinner to see how that goes.


This last image shows a test I did using Press-N-Peel blue to mask the pads. I then painted over everything, baked it, and then used acetone to remove the mask (and paint on top. Worked really well, just need to improve my PNP blue techie as the mask smeared (due to too high heat and pressure I'm sure).


Jay

Sunday, July 26, 2009

I new milled circuit. Helping out a guy I met on the web that wanted a circuit milled. This is just a test to see if I can do the SMD pads. With the Widgetmaster and Wolfgang ... yep :) The smallest pads are .254mm wide. This is right off the mill with no "cleaning" of the whiskers of copper. I'm impressed.

Removed by request.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Milled an illuminame for me :D

1/4" Lexan. I bought some ball nose endmills. The rouging pass was with a 1/8" 2-flute end mill. The finish pass was a 1/16" ballnose. The max depth is 1/10". The sign is roughly 8 x 3.5"

I plan to light it from underneath.


Thursday, July 23, 2009

I added a more precise spindle to my CNC router.

I broke down and bought a mount for my Wolfgang spindle to mount it to the Widgetmaster router. Was it worth it? You tell me...



Ran a test circuit to compare...

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

I know, I know ... It's been a long time since my last update. However I wanted to share this one. I was contacted by my alma mater to help them mount a SMD hall effect device. Rather than ask me what would be best, they already ordered the part. It's unbelievably small. How small, 1.1mm square!

Yeah, have a look at what I milled out:







Even closer:


The whole board is about 1.5 inches. There are 2 surface mount capacitors in the bottom right. They are size 805 for those that care :D

I'll update when I actually mount the switch and test it. This is a BGA device (4 balls) ... I've never soldered a BGA but plan to use my hot air station. My other option is to buy a skillet from goodwill and do a reflow.

Jay

Monday, January 12, 2009

As usually happens my attention gets moved from robotics into some subset. IN this case, CNC has my full attention. Most of my adventures are posted at www.cnczone.com versus here. I also have been adding new videos to youtube. I was hoping to get involved with the students at my alma mater to get me back to robotics but it didn't work out.

Jay