How many of you have 3d printers?

Posted by: @codecage

The last word in the Recent Posts section was assembly, so it didn't really didn't need to be bleeped, but the preview only showed the first three letters of "assembly" then three periods!  LOL

I noticed that too.  My first thought was that the 3d printing thread is really going downhill. ?

I got some SMD solder paste today.  So I'm finally ready to try my luck at soldering SMD.   I'm interested to see how this goes.

Posted by: @robo-pi

I'm finally ready to try my luck at soldering SMD. 

let us know how it goes for you 

it is just as easy as it looks on the youtube videos 

Posted by: @pakabol

let us know how it goes for you 

it is just as easy as it looks on the youtube videos 

Yep it turns out to be really easy.   This was the first SMD I ever did.    I had avoided them before because I thought they would be too difficult but this went really well.  I did use a new idea that I never saw in any video. Instead of applying the solder paste to the PCB I used a small screwdriver as a spatula and holding the IC in a pair of tweezers I applied the solder paste to the bottom of the IC legs by scraping the paste off the screwdriver using the IC legs.  Then when all the legs had paste on them I set the IC down on the PCB.  That seemed to work without getting any solder past between the feet.   It also caused the IC to stick to the PCB pretty nice.   Then I applied the hot air and it didn't take long before the solder all flowed out nice a smooth.  No bridges or anything.   It went really well.

Here a picture of the chip I just soldered.   It's just a breakout board that allows wires or pins to be connected to the chip. I thought I'd try some of these for my first experiment with SMD.

Here's the soldering station I used.

Posted by: @robo-pi

I did use a new idea that I never saw in any video. Instead of applying the solder paste to the PCB I used a small screwdriver as a spatula and holding the IC in a pair of tweezers

ive been doing this my self it only takes a small amount of paste.but even if you do get a bridge it so easy to fix with a bit of flux. great job 

Posted by: @robo-pi

Here's the soldering station I used.

that looks just like mine but mine is blue 

@pakabol,

Here's the finished product with the larger pins soldered on.   I soldered the larger pins on using the regular soldering iron.   And now it plugs onto a breadboard just like a standard DIP chip.

You might wonder why I don't just buy regular size DIP chips.  Well, this is just an experiment.  Plus these SMD chips are a lot cheaper.  I think they are even cheaper including the breakout boards.  Not sure about that.  But I just wanted to try this. 

@codecage got me into KiCAD so now I'm thinking of making SMD boards instead of through-hole.   So I thought I'd get my feet wet with some SMD experiments.   This chip I just did is a MAX 471 current sensor chip.   I wanted to try to some experiments with this as well.   I bought ten of these for SMD solder practice.  But after having done this first one I really don't see any need to practice.  It goes really slick.  So I'm confident that I could do it again with no problem.

This opens up the whole new world of SMD to me now.  I actually bought the solder station just for the soldering  iron.  But it's really cool that it turned out to be perfect for SMD hot air soldering too.   So I'm all set.

Now all I need is a 3d printer. ? 

You guys are making me jealous. Y'all are getting the printer I want but have no room for

Anybody wanna buy a fully assembled Anet A8 ? It's only got 62 days and 2200 meters on it (according to the odometer thingy) (no, you can't have the one that you talk to. Jarvis is mine. MINE. MINE you hear... mu huhu haha ha!)

Nice solder job.

Nice solder station.

Wish I had money for toys like that.

I spend all my money on parts for projects I'll never finish

Posted by: @spyder

I spend all my money on parts for projects I'll never finish

im starting to know that feeling. but they is just so many thing one can do. its hard to pick just one project

im thinking it might be time to clean up my work space 

thankfully today a friend gave me a label maker. so the first thing i did was label the label maker 🙂

Posted by: @spyder

I spend all my money on parts for projects I'll never finish

I'm doing that too.  In fact, my robots are sitting here on HOLD.

I'm waiting for Bill to make the next DB1 video in the hope that he'll cover the motor control code in detail.  I added two STM32 boards just to run the motors so I can have clean acceleration and distance control.  And now I'm awaiting the code to see how to implement the acceleration and distance sensing using the motor encoders.

I also added the Raspberry Pies onto these as well.  So far I have two of these robots identical up to this point.  But I don't have them up and running beyond simple motor ON/OFF functions at this point.  I want to get the nice smooth acceleration and fine motor control using the encoder feedback.   I know these are different from DB1 but I think the principle is the same.  I can modify the code to suit my needs. 

In the interim I've been playing with my 433Mhz boards and working on my Robot Overseer program in C#.  

I want to use one of these current sensor chips to monitor the current going to the transmitter.  I want to make sure that I'm getting the full 100 mW allowed.   I also just built a 433Mhz audio receiver so I can hear what going on.   I'm having lots of fun as I break the bank. ? 

@robo-pi

Well, honestly, that's only half my problem. The other half is that I buy parts that I don't even have a project for. That's why half the time I can just pull something off a shelf brand new in a box just to try an experiment

Of course, there are also times that I buy something just for an experiment, and never actually have a project for it

Posted by: @pakabol

im thinking it might be time to clean up my work space 

thankfully today a friend gave me a label maker. so the first thing i did was label the label maker 🙂

That's what my workbench looks like too.  Although I did clean it up just now after soldering up these current sensors.   I made 3 in total and they all turned out perfect.  At least they look perfect,  I haven't hooked them up yet to see if they actually work.  I guess I better do that before I start feeling too over-confident.

Posted by: @spyder

Well, honestly, that's only half my problem. The other half is that I buy parts that I don't even have a project for.

I do the same thing.  I bought 10 of these Cyclone FPGA boards.  I just had to have them. ? 

And as if that wasn't enough then bought 10 of these CPLD MAX II boards.

I just had to have them.  

I had a lot of experiments I wanted to do.  And I actually started doing them but then I ran into a roadblock.  I wanted to mix VHDL code with Schematic representation, and I ran into what at the time seemed like an insurmountable problem.   I was even asking on FPGA forums how to do this.   And everyone was giving me a hard time asking me why I wanted to do it.  They suggested that I just write up all my schematic logic as VHDL.  But that's not what I wanted to do.    So I eventually gave up and put everything on a back burner.

My ultimate goal was to build a neural network that was independent of CPU processing.  I was actually planning on incorporating OP-amps into the circuit as well and just using these FPGA and CPLD boards to switch the configuration of the OP-amps.   In fact, I've been thinking of returning to this idea lately.  Now that I can use KiCAD and have boards made up cheap I'll be able to build quite complex OP-amp circuits on small PCBs that my FPGAs and CPDLs can control.

So I'm not sorry I have these suckers.  I just need to get back into them again.

Posted by: @robo-pi

everyone was giving me a hard time asking me why I wanted to do it. 

I really dislike those types of forums and those types of people

I've come to the conclusion that the reason that they either tell you it's impossible, or demand that you give a valid reason for doing a thing is because you've asked a question and they're just trying to cover for the fact that they simply have no answer, and you've completely stumped them, so they're just digging for an answer from you that they can use to come up with a solution that they've already tried which will in no way actually answer your original question

I once worked for a guy who told me ""I don't know" is a valid answer, especially if it's followed by "But I'll do my best to find out""

Just because you don't know one thing doesn't mean you're stupid.

Pretending you know everything, that's stupid

Computers and electronics are such a vast and varied and constantly changing array of curriculum that it's logically impossible for any one person to know everything

One person can know lots of things. More people can know more things. But not even everybody combined can  know everything or we'd have Dyson Spheres and warp drives and I'd be sitting on a beach with a drink with an umbrella in it

Sorry. </rant off>

Posted by: @spyder

I've come to the conclusion that the reason that they either tell you it's impossible, or demand that you give a valid reason for doing a thing is because you've asked a question and they're just trying to cover for the fact that they simply have no answer

That's what I figure.  If I get this stuff back out again I'll probably figure it out myself.  I seem to always do better after having taken a break from something.