I DIY surface mount all the time. Through-hole projects are embarrassingly bulky and underpowered today. I start off with an oversized board where I can replace components with soldered jumper wires to a breadboard for tuning and experimentation.
I get clean 0.2 mm wide traces from $70 laser printer and Press'n'Peel Blue transfer sheets. The only things I can't do are BGA (needs vias) and the very smallest SMDs (needs precision gluing).
-- I will not see posts from astraweb, theremailer, dizum, or google because they host Usenet flooders.
Would seem to me that a quick look at the schematic would prove you to be correct...
I'd be torn between a kit and an unfocussed bunch of stuff plus info on how to make a project.
Well, that's Heathkit. Commercial equipment normally does work.
It's near impossible to retain the qualities of kit a good half century old while giving it specs one would expect of modern kit. That's the core problem with clones, they're really not what they pretend to be.
NT
Well, for the kit, you give it to the kid, and your involvement is minimal. With a project built from scratch, you're totally involved. If I had the time, the from scratch project would certainly be better. You also get to deal with the basics, such as which end of the soldering iron to grab.
There are some that would disagree with that assertion:
Yep. Finding 1960's parts today is a bit of a problem. That's why I suggested updated component substitutions. Leaded parts are still available. Individual leaded xsistors, IC's, and such can still be found. LED displays in DIP packages are still around. If anything, the quality is now better on these parts than in 1960's. Certainly, the prices are less (in inflation adjusted dollars). I would have some difficulties with the predominantly painted sheet aluminum packaging used by Heath, but that has to stay because it's their signature. Regulatory compliance will be a problem, so some designs will need additional RFI/EMI and safety considerations. I'm also not thrilled with give a kid a present full of exposed high voltage circuitry. Lots of details that need to be worked out, but I only wanted to know if the concept of a resurrected old design was acceptable.
As for clones, I've cloned products that didn't work, told not to change anything for various stupid reasons, and to nobody's amazement, produced a clone that also didn't work. Hopefully, a revived Heathkit product lineup would be more a "work alike" than a clone.
-- Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com 150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Just how many "yous" do you think there are? Many of us "dead bug" boards together, too, but that's not going to fly for the HeathKit market.
No, the kits bored them to tears. None of my friends, who went on in electronics, played with the lame kits. Most of us scavenged parts from TVs, and such. I had a supply of interesting electronics junk left by my father.
That's great if you intend to go into computer repair but not so useful for a career in electronics.
:) I did say normally - we've all encountered idiocy in commercial electron ics.
Why do we like certain old goods? Reliability, clever design, character, lo oks, an experience of the past and so on. If you clone old stuff, you run q uickly into some problems. You can't get the parts, you wouldn't want to us e those parts, you've got to change stuff to address safety regs & liabilit y issues, you need to change the UI to incorporate necessary features, you' ll build it on PCB rather than hardwired or tagboard to save a fortune in l abour, you'll use a regulated psu to keep the crap out, etc etc. Once you'v e done those, you simply don't have the original item any more. It's someth ing else, and fails to have the upsides of the original. And in most cases, crucially, it just won't have the longevity/reliability of the original. S o it's taking a beautiful swan and making a short lived duck.
Many people want to recreate historic stuff. But when you ask them about th e details what they want is something else. And clones always are something else.
My 1937 radio still works great. In some respects it beats far more complex modern kit. If it were cloned, the copy probably wouldn't have survived be yond 15 years.
NT
Exactly what I mentioned in another thread. Shipping is outrageous in the US. Even here _inside_ the US we can get a lot of stuff in good quality from China for much less including shipping than from sources such as Sparkfun. So people buy from China. I usually only buy from places like Sparkfun when I need something fast, like tomorrow or the day after.
Not really. Large packages can't fly under the radar. People even buy heavy stuff such as backpacks in Asia because shipping is so cheap.
If Heathkit really wants to come back internationally they have to set up shop outside the US. At least a distribution or fulfillment center. There won't be another way.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
That shows your age :-)
You can even get them on Amazon for less but since it's not from China there is around in $6 shipping:
This is a nice one:
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
0.5mm is pretty easy to solder by hand though, if the board is designed for it.
Note that shipping costs within the US are *strong* functions of the size of the shipper (the one paying, really). It costs DigiKey a
*lot* less to ship something to you than the other way around and I'm told to use our contract shipping numbers whenever possible. The differences in the normal rates is astounding.That's probably true for many reasons. Component sourcing is another biggie.
Sure they were. Not sure about the SB-301 you built. In Europe their SB-line was considered ham gear for rich folks. My first transceiver was a HW-100 and the guy who owned it before me beat the daylights out of it because he had it mounted in an army Jeep that was used offroad a lot. I still have that HW-100. You could not buy anything that came even close in performance for the money it cost as a kit.
For me it was either Heathkit or having a license but no transceiver.
Avnet stocks well over 30,000 CD40106 in DIP and Verical has over a million 2N3904 in TO-92. They don't keep such quantities around for fun.
Also, I don't have a problem doing DIY with SMT. You can get 2-layer boards made in China for a buck a pop if you buy 10. For RF stuff I often saw off chunks of copperclad with the scroll saw, score them, glue them onto larger copperclad, solder them on. Deadbug style with superglue is even easier but I don't like that.
Heathkit can only compete in the nostalgia market and it has to be something you can't buy or something that is freaking expensive everywhere. If I was a decision maker there I'd design a small series of tube amp products for audio folks. Stuff that elicits oohs and aahs when the guys come over for the ballgame. Maybe also some steampunk electronics that SWMBO would consider cool to have around.
[...]-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Just go easy on the coffee that day. One can also bend up alternating pins which makes it 1mm pitch when doing a sauerkraut wiring.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Den tirsdag den 13. oktober 2015 kl. 02.13.48 UTC+2 skrev krw:
yep, a local online store that sells all kinds of stuff like amazon now offer to do shipping, using their rates they can do shipping for other people at something like 1/4 the price and still make money on it or they wouldn't do it
-Lasse
reminds me of QIL, back when 0.1" was too fine!
NT
I disagree, .5mm QFPs aren't easy at all, particularly with the tools a normal DIYer is likely to have at his disposal.
The "poor" folk built from scratch. I don't know about Germany but there were several alternatives here that were on par with Heathkit.
Again, most people I know built their own. I decided to spend a year's salary on the SB-301 because I was really rotten at reading code and needed a good receiver. I built the transmitter myself.
One part? Most parts do *not* come in DIP anymore. ...and there are fewer every day.
You don't. I don't. But we're hardly a target market for electronic kits. I'd certainly never buy one. There boatloads of other things that would eat my time before building an electronics. Yuck, I do enough of that sort of thing for a living. I don't need to waste my precious time doing it.
I don't know about yours but mine has little to do with my toy buying decisions. She certainly has something to say, but that's afterwards. ;-)
soldering .5mm QFPs is easy with any old iron and some flus and solder braid
-Lasse
Sure, if you don't mind all pins connected to all nodes and the part torched.
Den tirsdag den 13. oktober 2015 kl. 19.04.43 UTC+2 skrev krw:
if you are used to doing plumbing maybe
-Lasse
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