18 MAY 2013
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...
05 MAY 2013
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...
29 APRIL 2013
I had been looking for a Kent hand key from eBay for some time as I plan to try to learn CW (Morse) to use with my Yaesu FT817 on the HF bands. As the Kent keys are around £100 new I thought that a used one would be a good...
28 APRIL 2013
The factory fan on my 2 year old Apple ATI Radeon HD 5870 1Gb Graphics Card finally failed last week after over 8 months of rattles and worsening noises before finally stopping and the graphics card getting a bit warm!
As...
14 APRIL 2013
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...
27 FEBRUARY 2013
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...
27 FEBRUARY 2013
Following from the Automatic component feeders DIY pick and place Part 1 post we have now redesigned the Y axis which pushes the activation arms on the Panasonic component feeders to use a new leadscrew from Reliance...
10 FEBRUARY 2013
Since upgrading our solar charge controller to a MPPT model we lost the facility for the charge controller to shut down the inverter when the battery voltage dropped too low. This resulted in a few days when the battery voltage...
06 FEBRUARY 2013
The new Raspberry Pi model A arrived today after a mixup where Farnell sent us another model B yesterday.
The new Model A on the left with a Com Pi board and Wifi dongle. Older Model B on the right.
As the new Model...
23 JANUARY 2013
After treating myself to a new Yaesu FT 817 HF, 6m, 2m & 70cm transceiver, I also ordered a CAT to USB control cable from Radioarena (Yaesu USB Programming / CAT Cable for FT-100 / 817 / 857 / 897) which arrived 8 days...
05 JANUARY 2013
After seeing other blog posts about people’s workshops, I thought I should add a post about our small home workshop which is in the loft of our terrace home.
The loft space is 4.1m long, 3.2m wide at its widest point...
01 DECEMBER 2012
Following from the Panasonic component feeder mods and the build of our manual pick and place machine we have started to build an automatic stepper motor driven controller for the component feeders which will have push button...
01 DECEMBER 2012
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...
20 NOVEMBER 2012
Following feedback and supply problems with the 16 bit ADC chip we had been using on our popular ADC Pi board which we sell on www.abelectronics.co.uk we have been working on a new version of the ADC board and we have now...
13 NOVEMBER 2012
To replace the diy surface mount component feeder used on the pick and place part posts, I was able to source 11 x 8mm Panasonic Ratchet Type Component Feeders (part no 10488BD059, specification 8WX4P Emboss) from eBay...
19 OCTOBER 2012
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...