Monday, October 6, 2014
SHELFstRAP PSU found
Sunday, October 5, 2014
SHELFstRAP 3D printer
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Reboot
The answer to the question is:
This is why they software was invented to do place and trace. I recently discovered EAGLE PCB and am playing around with this now to do PCB work.
Still exploring methods of PCB manufacture, but the Cricut is put away for the time being. What's changed? For one, 3D printing has taken the world by storm.
A fellow MSFT nerd and former coworker from 2008, Jerry, recently got me interested in the world of 3D printing after I discovered his Youtube channel, Barnacules Nerdgasm, and found him geeking out on maker technology in his videos..
Barnacules went to the World Maker Faire 2014, representing Ultimaker, and posted Vlogs of his experience on his channel. Most of the stuff he documented was absolutely mindblowing, like an 18-foot tall Delta printer named PartDaddy...
But there was one booth he featured that stood out from the rest of the Maker Faire.
There is a man from Togo, Afate of WɔɛLab, who built a 3D printer out of scrap E-waste.
Running a hackerspace in his own country, they obtained a 3D printer, but when they wanted build another, they realized they could find all the materials they needed in the their own landfills. This inspired me that this is the kind of maker niche I want to get into, and also a printer I want to build. Anyone who has read my blog over the years knows that recycling and re-appropriating e-waste is something I enjoy.
Seeing this kind of stuff stoked a fire and made me want to jump back into the maker game, full speed. So I challenge myself, to build a WAFATE printer completely out of eWaste.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Place and trace
This is a mastery I have desired to perform for years, but alas I am a rank amateur at that, even a beginner. I am still having a hell of a time trying to wrap my head around the concept of layouts by ordering where components go on an X-Y grid and drawing traces between them, and I think I understand why people spend gobs of money to go to school to become Electrical Engineers.
Luckily there is some software out there that can assist with the Layout portion of Electrical circuit designs. I will be evaluating some in the next few weeks and give my thoughts on each.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
From Cricut to Circuit - Part IV - Results of an etching and component placement

With the components placed on the second board.

Sunday, February 13, 2011
From Cricut, to Circuit - Part III - Implementing your circuit
SCALING IS CRITICAL!!
Make sure you get the pattern in SCAL to match the EXACT scale and dimensions of the SVG layout you are working from. I tried to cut an even more intricate pattern, based on the following design, which is a clone of a Phase-90 pedal: Tonepad's Pez 90
Here is what I was able to etch out of this. Still waiting on the Dremel I ordered to complete the board by drilling all the tiny holes in it.
(This was an old saved post from 3/23/11 and have the details posted in a newer one)
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
From Cricut, to Circuit - Part II - Etching Your Circuit

By this point, I had also just discovered that the ValveCaster board I etched was missing a specific component (by the layout creator's design) and probably wouldn't be as useful as I wanted...
However, this was great for an experiment, and I learned a lot from this, but I was ready to try a different tactic...I took another layout for my 2nd attempt, this time for the Pepper Shredder pedal, which is more involved and intricate. Taking another layout:

And converting it into another SVG cutting path:

Cut it out, and applied it, and etched it. I missed the step this time of pressing it with a iron, so the undercutting was more extensive than the first one, with it going almost 1 millimeter under the vinyl.

Not pictured is where I followed another's advice and marked out large sections of the copper board with sharpie, to conserve Ferric Chloride. There was one point where I had used a piece of paper as a straight-edge and marked across the board, between the intended patters, as a separator. Well, there was some ink-crawl underneath the paper and the sharpie ink hit the vinyl again. After wiping it off with Isopropyl Alcohol I discovered on etching that where the Sharpie ink hit the vinyl again, there was almost a perfect edge to the copper traces. Maybe I was on to something here. Time for a 3rd attempt...
I cut out another set of patterns on the Cricut in Vinyl, and applied it to another Copper board. This time, I liberally applied a wet sharpie to all the edges of the vinyl to see what result I would get this time:

I then thoroughly wiped off the entire board with Alcohol to remove the Sharpie ink on the surface. After running it through the etch, I discovered this was the secret to get minimal undercutting, although it presented another issue of its own. Be sure to remove ALL extra sharpie ink off the surface, or you may find yourself with short-circuits (which are easily cut and can be scraped off an Exacto knife)

(click for full-size)