MightyOhm

I am pleased to announce that the MightyOhm Wiki is now online and open to the public.

While there isn’t a ton of content yet, my hope is that the wiki will become a useful means to share information and resources relevant to the site.  At the moment, there are pages for electronics vendors, hardware/software tools, and PCB manufacturers.

Another page I have been working on for a while is the surplus directory, which lists surplus electronics stores around the country.  If you have a favorite surplus goldmine in your area, please create an account and add it to the wiki!

MightyOhm Has a Wiki.  Check it out.

This weekend I hosted a post-Halloween kit building party at MightyOhm HQ.

Nine close friends built Conway’s Game of Life kits from Adafruit Industries.  This is my favorite kit for these kinds of workshops because it’s easy for beginners to complete in about 2 hours, and when everyone is done, you can wire all of the kits together to create one large cellular automata display.  The last time I helped people build this kit was at a Make:SF workshop at the TechShop in Menlo Park.

Here’s a timelapse video of the afternoon, shot with a Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro webcam on an Eee PC 4G running Booru Webcam 2.0.

The capture interval was 5 seconds.  I used Quicktime Pro to stitch the images together at 15fps and iMovie to add titles and music (Turbo Outrun by FRP from remix.kwed.org.)

I wore my Halloween costume for most of the afternoon.  What am I?  Most people on the streets of San Francisco had no idea…

Safety first!

Stuart was the first to finish his kit:

Soldering the kits together to form the matrix:

Nine happy kit-builders with the 3×3 matrix they created with their finished kits:

And lastly, a video of the 3×3 matrix in action:

Three people had little to no soldering experience at the beginning of the afternoon.  Everyone who came went home with a working kit.  Success!

Why do I need a microscope for SMT?

The single biggest challenge to doing “real” SMT work (0805 or smaller components and fine lead pitch ICs) at home is being able to actually see what you are doing.  I know that there are many hobbyists (and maybe even some budget-conscious professionals) who will disagree with me, but I wouldn’t dream of working with surface mount components without using a microscope.  I’ve tried many alternatives, including a 10X handheld triplet loupe, a magnifier ring light, even a nausea-inducing magnifying visor, and none of these even come close.

In case I haven’t made myself clear: I would rather solder SMT’s with a 150W soldering gun than with anything other than a decent stereo microscope.

In January of this year, I scored a stereo zoom microscope on eBay.  While my scope is far from state of the art (it’s a “vintage” American Optical model 569) the optics are fantastic and it quickly became the most prized piece of equipment in my shop.  Here’s a photo of the scope shortly after I added it to my lab, for more photos and information about it, see my original post.

For the first few months, I used the scope pretty much as it arrived.  One of the first major tasks I used it for was assembling the first batch of AVR HV Rescue Shields, and for this purpose it worked extremely well.  However, as time went on, it became clear that I needed to improve my setup in a couple areas:

1. The magnification range of 7-30X was great for working on a few tightly grouped 0805 or smaller components, but was too high for general PCB work.  A typical BGA package was larger than the field of view.
2. The included incandescent projector-style illuminator (shown piggybacked on the scope in the photo above) could only be placed in a limited set of positions and did not have adjustable focus – it made a nice, bright spot in the center of the image that didn’t fully illuminate the field at low zoom levels.  While it is removable from the scope (this provides a workaround for these issues), the included stand took up too much bench space to be practical.

Upgrading the microscope:

The first upgrade I made was to add a secondary objective aka barlow lens to the scope.  A secondary objective serves to increase or decrease the total magnification of a microscope, while simultaneously trading off working distance, the distance between the bottom of the microscope and an object in focus on the bench.  In my case, I added a 0.5x secondary objective, which gave me half the magnification while increasing my working distance by approximately 2x.  While American Optical stopped making accessories for the StereoStar 569 long ago, Reichert, who acquired AO’s microscope line, still sells parts and accesories, including the #575 0.5X secondary objective, shown below.

The secondary objective screws into the existing threads on the bottom of the microscope.  Here it is installed on my scope:

Now with the secondary objective installed, I have a zoom range of 3.5-15X and a working distance of 6-8″.  If I need higher magnification, I can always remove the lens.  Perfect!

The second upgrade I made was to add a fluorescent ring light to the scope.  I picked up the cheapest one I could find on eBay.  This model is sold by Amscope, outputs 8W, and is available for under $30:

The ring light conveniently attaches to the newly installed secondary objective by tightening three thumbscrews, and provides a decent amount of light that fully illuminates both the object I’m working on as well as the surrounding workbench area, which has been surprisingly helpful.   Best of all, the new light stays out of the way and provides more even illumination than the halogen projector that came with the scope.

Here’s a photo of the microscope setup as it looks today:

Conclusion:

While the changes I made are significant improvements over my original setup, I have made a few observations that may lead to even more tweaks and upgrades in the future:

• The increase in working distance due to the 0.5x secondary objective is great, but it puts the scope significantly higher above the bench.  I didn’t appreciate that this could be an issue until I had to buy a taller lab chair to see through the eyepieces!  I’m not sure how to work around this, but it’s good to be aware that more working distance isn’t always a good thing.
• The color temperature of the fluorescent ring light is very poor (cool) compared to the halogen illuminator it replaced.  This gives everything a slightly depressing blue cast and is far from a true color representation.  Most noticeable are tantalum caps, which go from bright orange in color to a sort of slightly orange-ish dark grey under the scope.  Yuck!
• Ring lights can create pretty nasty glare.  This might be a side effect of how I have the ring light mounted or the distance to the bench.
• The 8W fluorescent lamp is ok, but more light would be better.  Fluorescent ring lights are nice and cheap, but better performance can be achieved with a significantly more expensive fiber optic illuminator.  I may look into getting one of these in the future.

Despite these minor issues, I am pretty happy overall with the new setup even after a couple hundred hours of heavy use.

I just got an e-mail from HSC Electronic Supply announcing their 45th Anniversary Sale (aka Sidewalk Sale), which takes place this Saturday, Sept. 26th.  If you are in Silicon Valley this weekend, this is definitely worth checking out.  If you want to get an idea of what this event is like, check out my photos from last year’s “Warehouse Clearance Sale.”  (It seems like they change the name of this event every year now!)

45th Anniversary Celebration
Local Customer? Come on in and celebrate with us and save
10%-60% on everything in our stores. One day only!
Out of the Area? For our online customers, from September
23rd to 27th, HSC will offer *FREE shipping plus an additional 10%
off any order over $50.00. Just mention “Anniversary Special” in
the shopping cart order notes and we’ll take care of your discount.
The 6,000 items listed online are just a sample of our extensive store inventory.
Don’t see what you need? Please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-800-442-5833.

HSC is having some online specials too, although if you shop online you are missing out on 90% of the fun, such as sifting through crates of miscellaneous electronics parts!

Every project I work on usually involves at least one trip down to the South Bay to visit HSC, and I usually find at least a few interesting odds and ends at their annual clearance sales.  And while you’re in the area, I highly recommend a side trip to Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale as well.

Welcome to Part 3 of the Diamond Chop Saw build.  In this installment I’m going to focus on the construction of the mechanical aspects of the saw structure, motor attachment, vacuum chuck, and splash guard.   This is a  picture-heavy entry…

After thinking for a while about how to build the saw, I decided that it would be best to have the blade move only in the vertical axis, and the workpiece move horizontally in two axes.   This led to the overall machine design which consists of a vertical column with pivoting cutting head assembly, and a workpiece holder that has two axes of horizontal motion.

Completed Dicing Saw

I wanted to ensure the motor and blade had a rigid, heavy mounting structure to reduce effects of vibration and flex on cutting performance.  I decided to mount the motor using the original mounting flange from the hard drive enclosure since it was nicely machined to match the motor flange.  I used a hacksaw to cut out the shape roughly to size, then straightened up the edges and machined a mounting recess on my milling machine.  The L-shaped piece of aluminum is 1/2 inch thick which gives lots of weight and provides sufficient thickness for mounting the bearing while preventing motion orthogonal to the bearing axis.

Cutting Head Assembly

Another view of the cutting head assembly.  In the upper left hand corner is the pivot bearing.  The bearing is held in place with a set screw that goes through the L-shaped aluminum piece.  Along the bottom edge of the black hard drive enclosure portion I attached a strip of white LEDs to help light the work area.  RTV Siliconeis used to seal the electrical contacts from water that migt not be caught by the splash shield.  At the lower left hand corner of the aluminum plate is a rounded off screw.  The cutting depth adjustment micrometer pushes against this rounded off screw.  Pushing against the aluminum would be less accurate (aluminum would become unevenly worn).

Cutting head assembly (rear view)

At the top of the column on either side is a hole for the screws that hold the pivot bearing (also from a hard drive) in place.   Luckily the one I used has 4-40 threaded holes on either side.  A screw on each column holds the bearing in place, and then the rest of the column assembly and adjustment plate are attached resulting in a good alignment of the column to the bearing. 

Pivot bearing/column mounting detail

Controlling the depth of the cut is critical, as my cuts will be as small as 5 thousandths of an inch deep!  I mounted a micrometer head to a plate on the back of the column which controls the height of the cutting head assembly.

Rear view of the column and depth adjustment control

 Now for a little detail on the vacuum chuck… The chuck is made from two 1/4 inch plates of aluminum.  The top surface has a shallow set of trenches cut to distribute the suction across the bottom surface of the glass plate used for holding parts.  The lower plate has a deep trench cut in it to distribute the suction to the three small holes drilled on the top plate.  The whole thing is held together with screws and sealed with silicone.  I made a set of hose barbs (one is pictured below) so that I can use 1/8 inch vinyl tubing to connect to my vacuum pump.  The barbs were made by turning down 10-32 stainless steel screws on my lathe. 

Lower half of vacuum chuck with custom-made hose barb

  The last major component of the saw is the splash guard.  This actually took a fair amount of effort to make, as I broke pieces more than once and had to start over.  Essentially it is a two-piece design with a thick piece screwed to the cutting head assembly, and a thinner piece which screws onto the first.  I used a heat gun to soften the plastic and carefully mold it to the shape of the face plates.  I then glued the curved section and the outer face plate together using epoxy and while not very pretty, it holds together well.

Splash guard on the saw