Collaborate Disseminate
With how cheap and how fast custom PCBs have gotten, it almost doesn’t make sense to roll your own anymore, especially when you factor in the messy etching steps and the less than stellar results. That’s not the only way to create a PCB, of course, and if you happen …read more
Paper craft has been around almost as long as paper itself. It’s fun to mimic paper craft and origami with low-poly 3D prints, and [Stephen Hawes] wondered whether it could be done with copper-clad PCBs. Two years after the question arose, we have the answer in the form of a …read more
Continue reading Circuit Board Origami Puts You Face-to-Face with Low-Poly Electronics
Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams march to the beat of the hardware hacking drum as they recount the greatest hacks to hit the ‘net this week. First up: Casio stepped in it with a spurious DMCA takedown notice. There’s a finite matrix of resistors that form a glorious …read more
The idea of trying to prototype with SMD parts on the fly sounds like insanity, right? But then we watched [Leo Fernekes] walk calmly and carefully through his process (video, embedded below). Suddenly, SMD prototyping jumped onto our list of things to try soon.
[Leo] speaks from a lot of …read more
We know, we know. Getting PCBs professionally fabricated anymore is so cheap and easy that making them in-house is increasingly becoming something of a lost art. Like developing your own film. Or even using a camera that has film, for that matter. But when you’re in Brazil and it takes months for shipments to arrive like [Robson Couto] is, sometimes you’re better off sticking with the old ways.
[Robson] writes in to tell us how he decided to buy a ~$150 CNC “engraver” kit from an import site, in hopes that it would allow him to prototype his designs without …read more
Continue reading Turning a Cheap Engraver into a Decent PCB Mill
Is twenty times the copper twenty times as much fun to work with? Ask [limpkin] and follow along as he fabricates a DC/DC block for a Formula E race car on 20-oz copper PCBs.
The typical boards you order from OSH Park and the like usually come with 1-ounce copper – that’s one ounce of copper cladding per square foot of board. For those averse to Imperial units, that’s a copper layer 34 micrometers thick. [limpkin]’s Formula E control board needs to carry a lot of current, so he specified 700-micrometer thick cladding, or 20-oz per square foot. The board …read more
Continue reading Massive 20-oz. Copper PCB Enables Electric Racing
Is twenty times the copper twenty times as much fun to work with? Ask [limpkin] and follow along as he fabricates a DC/DC block for a Formula E race car on 20-oz copper PCBs.
The typical boards you order from OSH Park and the like usually come with 1-ounce copper – that’s one ounce of copper cladding per square foot of board. For those averse to Imperial units, that’s a copper layer 34 micrometers thick. [limpkin]’s Formula E control board needs to carry a lot of current, so he specified 700-micrometer thick cladding, or 20-oz per square foot. The board …read more
Continue reading Massive 20-oz. Copper PCB Enables Electric Racing