@crasic Not really an option as a freelance engineer. Can't come to a customer and say "Oh, yeh, no, in this simulated environment X or Y everything works, but on your x86 32bit/64bit native Win Server, Win XP (yes!), Win 2000 (YES!), Win 7, Win Vista, Win 8, oh probably, just try it...
Though in honesty I try to avoid having to develop for windows native. But if they say their team uses MS VS to make the software and I am making the interface to the hardware as well (often) I still am not going to be the pisser frustrating everything with miniscule incompatibilities and/or weird path names, because that's my bread they can take away on a moments notice
Which then is a nice vicious circle with being used to using steam in Windows :-)
Usually you Germans have stuff like that for either better or similar prices, but with better shipment terms.
Insane, but true. Getting your metal rods from Köln is better than anywhere in NL, because shipping for > 1.7m is much more affordable with courier + good prices. But they don't do luminiums
On the bright side, my new high quality silicone flexible wire is in the care of UPS, so it'll be here soon!
I know that airbus once ordered big stuff from sapa but probably because it is near bremen and not particularily because they are the best/cheapest or anything,... and I dontk now if bremen qualifies as near the border for you
You use their Java tool to design prints and laser cut-outs and all and then you know what you'll get without someone trying to turn a 2D sketch into a box and all the confusion about wall thicknesses etc
hang oin brb
3 deliveries at once :"-)
@PlasmaHH Just ordered a cold rolled steel L-shaped case with powder coating, metric fasteners, seam welds, 4 pieces of 424mm x 220mm x 120mm, with pressed in metric stand-offs for PCB mounting and cable routing, 64 cut-outs in front panel and 2 colour print, adjusted to match top-powdercoat, 2 cut outs on back and about 30 cut-outs on both sides in total. Total cost including shipment and mutli stage verification and full support was $980
Well, because they use laser cutting and save on all the back and forth between me and an in-house CAD engineer, usually the larger cases aren't exponentially more expensive than the small ones.
but if I would be doing prototypes that need that much cutouts it would probably constantly moving so that it would be better to have some drilling tools available to change it each day ^^
Of course, the smaller ones are at a price scale that makes it easier to order 20, 30 or 50, shich due to mass ordering then still remains under or near $1000-ish
That's the difference you have to consider of course. I almost always design the PCBs so that they fit a purpose as small as possible, then design a case for it and now with protocase that is soooo easy that I have left hand work behind for half the jobs. That means that I then pay more attention to the PCB as well with regards to connectors, so it becomes a self reinforcing loop sort of
yep. I think you should up that one and get one a bit thicker with embedded chips inside the pcb, a very thin lcd and some thermoelectric generator that runs from the heat of your palm if you hold the card ;)
This one was quickly deisgned in about an hour or three (including the morse code module that translates static sentences into blinking) for a trade show
V3.2 will have more yay-ness that Nerdier people who've been there, done that will enjoy
Such as PCB translucency. Maybe, depending on cost for 500 or 1000 pcs, embedded components, possibly full-colour silkscreen on one side
Topside will be green/gold/white, of course, for the recognisable, but maybe bottomside will be matte white with full colour print
tented vias, added to the design th day after I sent out the Gerbers :-)
which reminds me of one board I have seen somewhere and wanted to research where and hwo to build it... it had soldermask in multiple colors, for each module/section one...
That's been an option for years, either screen printed or DDP depending on batch size, but you are going to want to: 1. do a huge run, or 2. have lots of budget
DDP silkscreening isn't that expensive anymore and I can easily spend $1.5 to $2 per business card, even if it only ends up giving me two contacts in a 24 month period
hm, nice, 0.3mm thick eink displays, those would probably work fine with such a business card... embedding some controller in the pcb wont be hard either... now for the thermoelectric part... any ideas? all I can find is the thick car fridge kind...
hm, I am wondering if there are fab houses that will drill you a rectangular 1206 or 0805 sized hole and then copperplate the sides of it so that you can solder your caps inside the pcb.. possibly even leaving a little bit of pcb material on the other side so that the hole wont get completely through...
gah, there is an image of a money card in my brain where the amount of money on it is displayed using some body heat powered thing... but it is totally detached, not even a possible date or status...
@PlasmaHH to your question/pondering: Yes. The copper plating is easy and the holes usually get milled for large, lasered or water-jetted for small. Down to 0402 is possible. Copper plating is just done by making contacts right at the edges and indicating a plated side. It's not as cheap as plated holes to do, but you can even have them do that on the absolute card edges.
Though that's insanely fragile and a waste of money, basically. But you don't need plated edges if the components are flush with the surface, because solder will bridge a 2mil gap easily
What you could do at a lower cost is a partially milled stackup, where you have a line milled out through a series of plated holes on all but the very last layer. You have each component placed between two plated hole remnants neatly in a row. Make 3 or 4 rows and one square cut-out for an MCU and it's actually reasonably affordable
@Onthewaytosuccess if you have something to ask or say, just go ahead.
Not if you have a nice plated solder-mask less contact edge along the gap
This is a homework question that I have stuck for a while and couldn't able to come up with the correct answer.
So here is the question,
My thoughts towards this question
When I move the rod PQ with a constant velocity ,the area of
triangle RPQ inside the magnetic field increases .
Once th...
This is a homework question that I have stuck for a while and couldn't able to come up with the correct answer.
So here is the question,
My thoughts towards this question
When I move the rod PQ with a constant velocity ,the area of
triangle RPQ inside the magnetic field increases .
Once th...
@Onthewaytosuccess I will give you one hint: What is the current through a wire in a magnetic field, regardless of triangles, and how does it depend on its location inside a uniform field?
hm, I wonder if one can come up with a better method for simple home pcb etching than with the toner transfer ... something not so fragile... and not requiring a 3d printer... although those get cheaper and cheaper...
nah, dont watn to make a product, market is not big enough, more like instruction for setting it up at home. the toner transfer is already quite cheap for people to do. laser printers are cheap too. 3d printers not so much
@PlasmaHH get a CD-printing enabled inkjet and formulate a water-resist ink for it that will not clog it. Look at Steadtler for inspiration, because Edding desintegrates too quickly in Sulfate etchants (personal experience)
It's either getting a $800 printer with easy to figure out ink for 2.5mil-ish pixel size, or a $100 printer with a lot of chemical fiddling on a one time bases for the ink to get 1.5 ~ 2mil
The problem in water-resist types is often the way it dries and not really re-hydrates neatly with its own solvent, causing clogs, but I'm sure that can be fixed. As is, just pouring Steadtler refil into an inkjet will only work for one printing session, at the most, but I know there's some resist-inks for Canon and HP printers, but they may not flow nicely on smooth surfaces.
I'd be more than willing to pay $250 for a printer and $50 for the ink if it can print on a copper surface that is near-smooth and I'm sure given some engineering investment that can go down as market interest rises.
My current problem is the cleaning needed to get thermals to stick nicely and evenly. But for photo-resist is too much set-up, given that thermal only takes me put-in-cleaning; print-thermals; apply top and bottom thermal; etch; clean with light abbrasive.
hm, those direct silver printers use silver nitrade and ascorbic acid which will then cause silver nanoparticles to fall out... but either my conversion tool sucks or they can only get down to 25mil
Chemical deposition of silver sucks for many reasons and should be abandoned as an idea before you even walk to a whiteboard.
And I'd be happy (continuing previous bit) to see my earlier investment leading to many hobbyists eventually being able to get the same for $100 + $25 per refil
hm, there is somone who says that as a resist he uses ordinary ink from a printer, and while still wet blows toner dust onto it and shortly bakes that one
well you could use a normal cd printing able printer, and then provide a box where you put that pcb in which does the dusting and baking. not much fiddling there.
With a good Stepper-motor system, if needed with gearing, you could possibly even skip the voltage-jetting and make it all DIY with a 40gauge needle or such
Still, environmentals and ink drying out before stuff gets to the box... I see forums upon forums of complaints and problems
I'm estimating with some community driven design, programming and testing on some ends you should be able to get to 1m2 per workday, which surely is enough for any protominded person
Use the Open Hardware CNC or.. eh.. liteplacer as a template and you inherit some cummunity from the start
hehe, yeah, I think a really good testpattern would be needed and a highres photo of it... maybe one day I will try this direct ink thing, though I dont konw if our new pritner has cd print capabilites too
I don't really need to print any photos any more, really, but I do some times :-)
Most my proofing, if it still happens anyway, is done with colour corrected monitor and trust in the local printshops for the one book/booklet/flyer I ever have to have accurate colours
I like taking pictures way more than looking at them
I look at them to see if I did an acceptable job, or need punishment/training
I may someone who's willing to put his contacts into trying, but I assume you want good black coverage and light-translucency for the yellows and such to make an optical play?
They do make translucencies, but usually if light resist is needed that's a separate layer. If you are willing to spend a day aligning and sticking togther two or three layers yourself you could still do that
I did some test runs with little crops out of that to get an idea for how this all needs to be, but it turns out to be completely different between services :/
I have asked a lot and they were all like "yes, we can do that" and when I then further asked for opinions on if this or that would work better they are like "uhm, dont do this often, cant tell"
Yes, that's how shoddy services reveal themselves.
Good ones, like in any trade say either "yep, we'll need to ...." or "we don't know yet, but we could try if you're willing to commit to some experimentation"
If they can't do it to a budget themselves they always know who can, sometimes because of a network, sometimes because one of their employees went freelance and now does the small stuff for them
I am starting to get a bit frustrated with the Beaglebone community. Every issue I have, I search and find where it's discussed on the Beaglebone Google Groups. Somebody reported the issue in 2013 or 2014. The main Beagle guy responded and asked for more information. The OP responds with the requested information. And then there's no solution or follow-up (maybe a couple other people saying they have the same problem).
Beaglebone restarts instead of shutting down when 'shutdown -h now' is done.
Gerald replies but there's no resolution.
New users (me) still having the problem a year later.
What's really freqking crazy is that it shut down correctly the first 3 times I tried it this morning, but then failed (restarted instead) the next 5 times.
I'm also thinking it may be temperature-dependent (why it worked 3 times first thing in the morning and then failed consistently after that). And I was suspecting the power management doohickey
I like it so much when it happens to me, I sometimes consider designing in a circuit running on pF resonance or dis-resonance just to make others enjoy it too... before I consider the ramifications of having junior engineers then do the measurements and then I switch to proper design, as which I get paid for.
breaboarding is fun... "why does this simple ne555 circuit not work...oh wait its oscillating at 600kHz instead of 440... why? oh, one of the caps pins isnt connected..
@crasic why do you need an old manual? And I'm sure there are, somewhere
It's one of the few kinds of manuals that isn't semi-versioned inside my dropbox
Buying dropbox was bad for my HD space requirement, but very good for people asking "hey, do you still have the Atmel ???? datasheet from years ago and do you know where?"
Everytime I look to the left I see my old laptop's screen and think to myself "How did I ever take that off the monitor to take to a customer and not get depressed...
Optimism. Yay
I should disconnect the internal monitor and stop using it
sigh I wish I had another speaker of the one I'm testing... I don't want to listen to "Van Gogh" saying the same thing over and over and over, I want to listen to music and/or watch TV
Welcome to Prinsenhagen blah blah blah
I'm going to shoot virtual people with my headset on to drown it out.
This is a homework question that I have stuck for a while and couldn't able to come up with the correct answer.
So here is the question,
My thoughts towards this question
When I move the rod PQ with a constant velocity ,the area of
triangle RPQ inside the magnetic field increases .
Once th...
