After struggling for some time using homemade stencil holders and bits of tape to hold the stencils down we decided to buy a commercial stencil holder. Most seemed to be around the £2000 mark and only take large framed stencils and then...
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A few weeks ago I ordered a pair of “20W 1600Lm LED Garden Outdoor FloodLight 85-265V Pure White Wall WashLights” at £35 each to replace the pair of 150W halogen outdoor lights in the back garden. The seller claimed to be:...
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Following from the Arduino pick and place update blog post video and Automatic component feeders post we have now completed the first version of the Android tablet control software which uses bluetooth to communincate with an Arduino Mega...
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The basic Chinese Vacuum Pickup pump we have been using on the DIY pick and place machine has been giving us problems with its lack of suction when handling larger SOIC components and didn’t hold them still when moving fast or rotating...
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Following from the Panasonic component feeder mods and the build of our manual pick and place machine (pick and place part 1 & pick and place part 2) we have started to build an automatic stepper motor driven controller for the component...
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While building pcbs on our manual pick and place machine we have been looking at various options to hold the PCB boards still while placing the components but without having to use complex clamps to hold the boards in place.
To solve the problem...
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Following from the previous pick and place part 1 post we have completed the initial build on our semi automatic pick and place machine.
The air / vacuum supply nozzle was made on the lathe using a section of 10mm steel and has a 4mm hole approx...
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After discovering the cost of buying a ready made manual Pick & Place Machine was over £5,000 and an automatic one well over £20,000 we decided to try to make our own manual pick and place system with a motorised component pen.
We...
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We purchased a T-962 desktop reflow oven from China on eBay a few weeks ago and found the results from the oven to be very poor compared to the specifications on the area which it could process. We found that it would only reliably solder 4...
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While building the new ADC Pi circuit boards we found dealing with the surface mount resistors and capacitors to be time consuming when taking them from plastic trays as many of the components would be upside down and in different directions...
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The mains inverter we have for our solar system generates a lot of RF interference on our ham radio transceivers and also across the entire HF spectrum.
The inverter body has plastic ends and very little filtering for the mains output and also...
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After a huge response to the post for the Raspberry Pi I2C Analog to Digital Converter and being featured on the Hackaday website we decided to go ahead and build Raspberry Pi I2C Analog-to-Digital Converter boards to sell online.
The new board...
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Following the ballscrew upgrade of the X and Y axis of our Micro Mill in 2010 we decided it was time to try to improve the accuracy of the Z axis on the mill which had been using a basic lead-screw which had a lot of excessive movement.
We...
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One major factor which affects many electronics hobbyists is the cost of purchasing components and associated fixing hardware. Very cheap sources for used parts which are normally still OK to use for your own projects are electronic fairs and...
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