Really cool! Great beat! you could try ducking the drone with the kick, that could sound interesting! maybe not though xD
Playing with a DIY etching machine we use it in our electronics lab course where students learn how to solder and create electronic circuits and layouts.
Still tuning the parametersâŚ
Is this a school course or something like a maker space?
Can you walk us through the process and kit you are using? Many of us here make our own boards and Iâve yet to to find a method that suits me so Iâm always curious about other methods.
Cheers
Thatâs a University, the physics department (solid state physics) Each scientist has to teach a few hours a week and they can decide what they prefer. I decided to do the electronics lab course - for a couple of years now
Yes sure, I can take a few pictures and explain it but Itâs a fairly big setup for a home build.
Any info regarding your process would be interesting.
Many thanks
Btw. there is not much special about it, itâs the usual workflow:
- prepare the board layout in Eagle/KiCAD/etc.
- print the traces/vias/pads using a laser printer on a special paper (itâs just a UV-transparent paper)
- put the printed layout on the copper board where a photoresist has been applied (we buy those ready-made)
- use a UV-light-box (it looks like a flatbed scanner) to expose the non-copper areas
- put the board in that magic box and press the button on the DIY microcontroller circuit (it then controls the pumps and valves and goes through the whole photolithographic process including exposure, etching and cleaning)
On the second picture above you can see that the board is hanging and the chemicals are sprayed from the front on it. All the chemicals are stored in large bottles (some of them with a heater) under the table and non-reusable fluids are diverted into waste-bottles. Thatâs what the microcontroller does, opening and closing the valves in Y-junctions.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. The magic box you describe is new to me. Is there a manufacturing benefit to spraying as opposed to dipping?
The automation is much easier since you donât need to move the board (or any trays) at all, just spray the chemicals for a predefined amount of time, thatâs the main benefit
I really like the colorful panels. this is something I shouâve thought about before I built mine because the uniform look of my modular makes it hard for me while patching sometimes.
this is my current build progress. Iâm pretty happy with what Iâve built since 12/2020.
all my projects are documented HERE => knopslmodular
congrat nice set up !!!
Cool!
Howâs it done?
Any plans of being able to morph through saw â tri â square kind of thing?
Magic!
Or possibly phase shifting. Using an all pass filter.
Wasnât that the plot of the Star Trek episode The Tholian Web?
I think I shared a photo of protoboard versio of this previously. I got proper pcb:s and rewrote all the code.
Now the name is actually wrong. It takes in clock signal and has four channels with pattern and clock divide/multiply pots. It can clock it outputs by 1/8, 1/7, 1/6, 1/5, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 multiples of incoming clock signal. Every channel also has 16 different 4 step patterns, selectable by left pot. It shows them as binary on the leds when adjusting. Also, there is switch and gate input for enabling it, they are physically separate and go to different inputs, so one could code enable gate input to do something different.
Iâll make a thread with code and schematic, as this is mostly just inputs and outputs to Arduino Nano, when I get this finished, currently thereâs some problem with giving power to Arduino. Shouldnât it just take +12 volts to its input and regulate it to 5 volt that I can use to have pots as voltage dividers? Currently the Arduino doesnât seem to boot without usb-power.
Yes, you can put +12 V on the VIN pin and the regulated +5 V will appear on the 5V pin. Thereâs limits to how much current it can supply but that shouldnât be a problem. Is the Arduino socketed, and if so, does it boot on +12 V if you pull it out? If it doesnât, it may be defective.
Well, that was easily debugged. Iâm using reverse voltage protection diodes in series with the power lines. One on the +12 V line was reversed in this build. Also, bit of research tells me that powering Arduino with 12 volts isnât optimal especially with Nano, as it has surface mount regulator chip with no heat sink, so I could cram a 7805 there and have it create the +5 volts for it.
Iâve never had a problem with it, shouldnât be an issue if youâre not drawing much current. But you can use an external regulator. In that case connect the regulator output to the Arduino 5V pin, not the VIN.