MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU

New Component Types.

Soldering Station Conversion

Sentimental Issues

Back in my Uni days, I bought what I thought was a pretty sweet soldering station - the Micron W/2172.   If I remember right it cost about 4 weeks worth of part time wages, and I think it was worth it - it's lasted about 20 years so far.

But, there are issues.  I can't find a supply of new tips for it, and the last good tip is a conical one.  So it was put away in the cupboard and I upgraded to a Hakko 396 station.

Then I got to thinking... both stations used a 24V supply to heat their irons, so how hard would it be to graft a 907 handle into the Micron station?  It would also be handy - I could load the Micron station with a big chisel tip for when you need a lot of thermal mass, standardise on one set of spares for both stations, and avoid having to swap tips on my Hakko all the time. WIN!

Will It Work?

There is a lot of information out there about the Hakko 907 handle, and this topic on the EEVBlog forum  was exceptionally helpful.  The important point to take away is that the 907 handle uses a thermistor to measure it's temperature.

If the Micron does the same, it should be a simple mod.

Take it Apart!

So, I whipped to cover off and started to take a look.

  

Improved Current Load

Some Free Advice!

(Update - July 2019 - see the end of this post regards how not to blow this up!).

Back when I wrote about my failure to build a current limiting circuit for my Alarm Panel Interface, Zega was kind enough to offer me some advice.

Long story short, half the oscillations I was chasing in my limiting circuit were due to my quick and dirty Constant Current Load.  

Here's the Problem...

nrf51822 QFN48 Reference Design

Giving Back

The other day I was looking at my blog stats, I was surprised to find that my KiCAD posts were linked to, where someone was wanting help converting an Altium reference design into KiCAD.

So, I thought I'd help out - here's the reference designs, converted to KiCAD PCB.

Enjoy!

KiCAD Tidbits

KiCAD, For Profit!

I recently picked up a small contract for a board design, and the client wanted to use KiCAD.

I'd dabbled with KiCAD before, and even though I wont favour it over Altium, it's still a useful package, at a great price :)

But, it's not without it's quirks.

All About The Angles

Bright Light

The Workshop

At home I've seconded a small corner of my garage for my work space.  

You could describe it as 'spartan' or 'functional' but in reality, 'cheap' is more accurate.  One problem with the bench is that it's poorly lit.

Altium MultiChannel

Multi-Channel Rules

Just recently I was reading this post on the EEVBlog forum and thought "Ah ha!  I've done this before." Should be easy.  Famous last words.

So after spending a ridiculous amount of time workign out what the missing step was, I thought I'd better capture it for the next time I want to use it.

WHY MULTI-CHANNEL

You use a multi-channel design in Altium when you have multiples of an identical sub-circuit.  QAll you need to do is lay out the one channel, and then you can duplicate the layout by 'Copy Room Formats".  This has saved me a ton of time in the past.

THE PROBLEM

Altium uses a complex naming convention: