I've seen photos of it. My bench isn't super neat either, but most of my stuff has microwave transistors in it these days, so I don't use that many huge through-hole parts anymore.
Au contraire. A nice-looking dead bug gizmo in an aluminum stomp box is easy to make and IME really makes the punters take an interest in how the gizmo works.
I only bother if it's for a POC proto. For little testers and stuff like that, I don't much care about the fingerprints.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Thanks!
Dead bug is confusing, not to mention insect cruelty.
ENIG has a few micro-inches of gold. Not worth much.
Yup. It's one of my most compelling technical war stories. (At least I don't get tired of telling it--listener mileage may vary!) ;)
Last time we talked about it was in early 2020:
Nope, just me. There were a few parts involved, some late nights, and of course the statutory minimum quantity of JB Weld. ;) It was neatly trimmed and painted flat black to make it less obvious.
He was in California at the time.
Not till they expire. The founder got into the glue with some of his former investors, so the patent ownership is very unclear at this point. Thus it isn't worth pursuing, at least not without a lot of backing.
I'd also need some machine learning folks to help out, because IIRC the detection algorithm wasn't anything straightforward such as spectral differencing. I wasn't privy to that part of the scheme, so it would have to be reinvented.
Great gizmo though!
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Was it a one-off or did your client intend to go into production?
I did a project for a woman who was interested in Kirlian photography. My non-professional opinion was she was nuttier than a fruitcake but her money spend as well as any and she was happy with the outcome.
At times I took a pass when I knew I couldn't deliver. For example one person wanted to develop a PPG heart rate monitor. It was a perfectly valid idea as evidenced by the number of devices on the market today but wasn't feasible in the '80s, at least not at the level of miniaturization for a consumer product.
It was a POC, not a production proto. I did a feasibility calculation to show that it could work, then a POC demo to show that it did in fact work.
The idea was for the founder to use those data to raise some more dough, which he did, and then hire a CE firm with biomed experience to make a solid product, which they did not--they ran through what I discover was actually nearly $1.5E6 and produced, um, something apparently from their lower back.
I posted a link to the whole story upthread.
Some Kirlian photos are pretty cool-looking--nothing wrong with making those. It's when people start getting into partly-baked spiritualism and stuff that they really start circling the drain. (Spiritualism is a dangerous delusion if you don't believe in the supernatural world, and even more dangerous if you do.)
Sure, nobody likes failures. I turned down one gig with a surgical instruments company who wanted to put RFID tags inside stainless steel surgical instruments, to reduce errors.
Would have been great, except that to get approved, the RFID tag would have had to be inside the metal. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
It's sold as "Cool Amp", intended for improving high-current bolted connections.
Phil Hobbs
What does that do?
Linecard. Services. News. Image Coming Soon. Service-Hotline. It's half English already.
Am 09.05.22 um 18:53 schrieb John Larkin:
The web site takes forever to load, it has an English section, too. But I sit in the glass house regarding my own site. I better don't throw rocks. :-(
Product name: SENO 3211
The bottle contains powder for 1 liter of a tin solution. It is dissolved in warm water, can be used at room temp. The bath creates a tin layer that is shiny, scratch proof, good enough for edge contacts. Simply place the copper board into the solution. An hour should do. The longer, the thicker. Manufacturer claims up to 5 um.
Ordinary FR4 board, tin-plated maybe 5 years ago, laying open in a plastic drawer:
<This is the manufacturer: <
I also have a silver solution. It contains mostly KCN and AgCN. The little bottle probably has enough to kill all your fiends.
<Works fine, too.
Cheers, Gerhard
Oh, I see that now. The little pull-down thing in the corner.
I've used a tin plate solution like that one. Didn't like it.
I did get some nice photos but the woman signing the checks was definitely into auras. I learned quite a bit about Eastman Kodak's specialized film and photographic techniques. Nothing I ever used again but I've always been too curious for my own good.
I don't want the customer to think I'm David Copperfield. I want them to think I'm Gandalf.
("But Gandalf never actually DOES much of anything. He just stands around stroking his beard and offering advice that nobody dares question." "Exactly.")
-- john, KE5FX
I'm holding out for Oberon's job from Amber--hanging out in the basement and casually changing the structure of reality. ;)
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
Well, I'm not sure 'looks like a Yugo' is the apt image; the Yugo, after all, was a fine Italian design. But, yeah, when the discussion of should-we-buy happens, you don't want a visible blemish to be part of the discussion.
Science labs are full of lashups-that-work, though. I kinda like the caveman craftsmanship look, and have spent a great deal of time admiring vacuum tubes... but don't often buy them.
The Fiat 128 was no beauty and translating it to Serbo-Croatian didn't help. While I was not in favor of the whole fiasco bombing the Zastava factory was a plus.
I may be a little OCD but while my shop space looks like the aftermath of a hurricane I always wanted anything produced for public consumption to look good.
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