Amazing Discovery

I looked at those, and at the new full-sized one (the Elite, I think), but they were too expensive. Mine was another eBay special, about 1/3 of new.

The competition was a little Chinese zoom stereo that would have been about $700. Vision Engineering quoted me $4k for the Elite, and for the price difference I can buy a lot of boat anchors, such as an HP 3577 RF network analyzer or a nice 4x8 foot optical table with air suspension, which are both on my wish list.

If business continues to be good, I might have my lab finished by the end of the year. I've got rid of about 80% of the boxes, but my prototyping area needs to be reassembled. I'll post some pictures in a couple of weeks when it's all done. (I'm off to New Mexico again tomorrow, for a week's work on the downhole frequency-locked laser gig.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

What's weird about the Mantis is that the apparent depth perception depends on how you turn the knob on the side, the inter-pupilary distance adjuster. I can make parts look super-Manhattan, or flat, or appear to sink into the board.

John

I don't take pictures through mine how ever, I do have a incandescent lamp in it, so I don't think i'd get blues images!

Jamie

ch it.

These were commercial artworks for mass-made computer boards, so drawing each one would have been a little tedious...

Radio Shack here used to sell such a pen. I still have mine. It's several decades old, and it still works. Unfortunately they're not selling them any more.

Some people say you can use a Sharpie (tm) brand marker, but for me the traces simply etch through. I've had the same problem with the other pens recommended by the all-knowing internet.

The Radio Shack pen smells strongly of solvent--that's the magic. Probably illegal now. What do you use?

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Sounds like a beauty. Ditto that mill of yours--that's worthy of a r.c.m. tool-boast.

Cheers, James Arthur

--- You call it "clucking and whining" in order to try to trivialize it because it's actually criticism and you can't bear to admit that it's valid.

Coward.

-- JF

Yet more clucking and whining. That's all you do any more.

ftp://66.117.156.8/Jim_Beer.JPG

Have a beer!

John

On a sunny day (Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:52:21 -0700 (PDT)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in :

I dunno, these days I use transparent foil and the inkjet (Epson). Sometimes I print 2 or 3 times to get enough black. But not so long agao I did see those pens for sale here in the Netherlands. Cool for small projects, did a solid state scope with it (with RTL logic) in past century :-) For the etching last time I just had it done, gave a pdf to a local shop, got the PCBs back, only had to cut the big sheet and drill holes. Prevents all those stains in the kitchen. The Linux PCB program is actually quite nice to make layouts for small projects.

They use two different optical paths- the left eye gets high depth of field and the right eye gets a high resolution image, and they depend on the brain of the user to fuse the two images in an optimal manner.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Interesting, thanks. Hopefully I'll have an opportunity to try one sometime. BTW my daughter goes to U of T--any chance I can swing by sometime and try yours?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

I bought a Radio Shack PCB etching kit in 2002 or so. It came with copper-clad board, ferric chloride, etchant, a pen, and 99% isopropanol to remove the ink after etching.

IIRC, the pen *was* a Sharpie at that time. The ink blocked the etchant only fairly well, and the traces had some pinholes and ragged edges.

But, I needed a board fast to make a prototype for a trade show, and the board was simple - it was a mere LED board for what was essentially a flashlight. That light since went into production.

--
 - Don Klipstein (don@donklipstein.com)

Phil:-

Haven't gotten a firm delivery date on it yet, but sure, if I'm not off somewhere, would be happy to have you drop by. There's interesting stuff going on and cold beverages etc. waiting.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Cutting away copper from copper-clad board sure sounds on-topic enough for this thread to me even if for a purpose other than originally posted.

--
 - Don Klipstein (don@donklipstein.com)

You saw my students in the fabrication class in Truckee. Pretty green freshmen, not much electronics experience. Using a laser printer with very glossy photoprint paper, 90% of them could produce a good board using the old iron-the-laser-toner-off-the-paper trick on the first pass and the other 10% got it the second time around.

In the advanced class (sophomores) I could get most of them to do a double-sided board the first time around if they had taken my freshman class the year before.

Etching with warm aqueous copper(II) chloride agitated with a plastic bubbler under the board in a small aquarium was the best way that we found to do it "just like at home".

then MECH-14, PCB Fabrication, pp 5-18

Similarly they learned that aluminum anodizing by cleaning with dilute lye (Drano), rinsing completely, and anodizing with a battery charger in dilute battery acid works. You can even color it (light colors only) as it comes directly out of the acid bath using Rit dye in water while the anodize coat is semisoft, then hardening it by steaming it in a canning kettle. Same website, Chassis Fabrication, pp 9-12.

Note the dedication of the book in the "Introduction" section.

Jim

*Nice!*

1) Did you us a Dremel for the copper removal? What tool? How did you hold it steady?

2) What is your source for the solderable stand-offs?

3) What is your source for the transmission line?

Thanks much. John S

No, I cut that with an x-acto and peeled the copper. I think I cut those against a steel straightedge, and deburred with Scotchbrite.

I got a sack of them at a surplus store. Cambion? Sealectro?

1M resistors make pretty good standoffs, too. There's one to the left of the EL07.

I also like the old-fashioned TV set type phenolic terminal strips. You can still buy them.

That's ebay hardline, with an SMA on the other end. These are pretty common on ebay. I think microwave companies have this stuff custom-bent, then change some dimension, and then have to throw them away. A common form will be a piece with a few weird bends, and SMAs on both ends. They're easy to cut up.

Go to ebay and try sma hardline

The hand-formable semi-hardline is good too.

You can do DC - 5 GHz wideband stuff on copperclad without too much difficulty.

John

--
My commentary wasn't about whether Larkin's - the OP in this thread -
posts were on topic, it was about his cheating by poo-pooing Jan's
clearly superior method, timewise, of abrasively removing the copper
using a Dremel tool and the proper accessory(ies).

Read the thread through and you'll see that Larkin denounced Jan's
method as being inferior to his because of the assumed inability to
generate a constant impedance trace with a hand-held Dremel and
because of the damage to the substrate using Jan's method.

Since, in the beginning, Larkin disclosed that he was only interested
in removing copper in order to expose some FR-4 to which he could
glue, dead-bug, some IC, the constant impedance argument was specious,
as was the damaged substrate argument, since the glue to hold the chip
in place  would fill any valleys generated by the abrasive wheel.

I have tried using a Dremel, and it didn't work very well. I didn't "poo-poo" (interesting choice of words) Jan's suggestion, I asked him what tool he used.

I told him that was my experience. Which it was.

This is a discussion group, and things get discussed. Until you show up, and turn it into a whining group.

You're obsessed, and it's not with electronics.

John

Then I shouldn't tell you that I only paid $20 for it?

--
It's easy to think outside the box, when you have a cutting torch.