Scratch-Building in Brass

…is harder than I thought, and I originally thought it pretty hard. Spent some quality time cutting brass and flesh tonight, and then burning brass and flesh in an attempt to fuse certain bits of it together, and the results are pleasing…or would be if I hadn’t assembled it backwards. No matter, it’ll do. [...]

LED Driver: First Test-Type Assembled

populatedboard

LED Driver prototype 1, fully populated.

Having recevied my PCBs, all that remained was to assemble the parts onto one and test it. Assembly took a couple of hours, but that’s because I was being careful at each step. I can now say that I am pretty comfortable soldering SMD components; having a [...]

LED Driver: Custom Circuit Boards

circuitthumbnail

The boards I received in the mail, about two inches long by one-and-a-half wide.

I built a prototype. Then I designed a PCB. This weekend I received a set of my very first custom-designed circuit boards. It’s quite a thrill to hold an item manufactured to your own specifications. Best of all, I [...]

Small Successes: SMD Hand-Soldering

Hand-soldered SSOP microchip in breakout board

I suppose that not all is bad, previous posts notwithstanding. Illness has conspired to prevent me from sharing much of what I’ve done lately, but as I’m feeling better now, here is something new.

Tonight I discovered that I can solder SSOP SMD components by hand with [...]

KIHA 110 and DCC (First of three articles)

I should know better than to say things on this site like ‘I’ll post tomorrow that…’ or ‘Next week I will…’. I’m a grad student, which means I don’t really have a lot of time, generally speaking. Things slip, it’s a fact of life. Modeling hasn’t slipped so much as blogging. Which means I’ve [...]