g1 smd transistor

What do you get by gluing 1738 MOSFETs together? If your answer is "4-bit CPU", it will be completely correct. can be used as

As "CPU1738", it seems to be aimed at beginners in computer theory, and its construction instructions explain how to construct a CPU by combining a single MOSFET into a logic gate.

Although its SMD format is definitely more compact than pure through-hole components, the use of countless small PCBs on top of a larger PCB can result in a considerable package. The CPU was assembled piece by piece, and then the assembly continued, adding sensors, motors and wheels. Finally, a robot appeared, although it looked a little unstable.

Please check the linked video after the break, but before you start playing, please pay attention

The price of only the CPU block (approximately $500). On the other hand, in addition to 1738 MOSFETs, there are 1070 LEDs, so you can buy them in the blink of an eye.

The best Christmas tree ever.

It can be further developed into an automatic toilet seat. When it feels occupied and automatically shuts down after use, the cute blinking light will light up.

Apart from outstanding performance, I have nothing to say, I pay tribute to the direction of the creator. well done.

Need some plexiglass panels (increase stiffness and reflect additional lights in the structure to make it flash more) and cup holders ("Take me a beer/soda"), otherwise it would be great, I hope I can afford it Start/prove it is reasonable $500

Unfortunately, $500 plus a cup holder will only give you a coffee table with potential. That does not include the "rover" part, you must program the "blink". :)

"Although its SMD format is definitely more compact than pure through-hole parts,"

It seems that the PCB can easily accommodate 4 TO92 FETs. Laying them flat will only increase the height by a few millimeters.

A few years ago, I took a cheap NPN transistor spool and dreamed of using it to make a discrete ECL computer. Then life gets stuck. So, I pay tribute to this design. well done!

It seems that I am not the only one.

Would you like to share the experiment?

I'm here

And others

Far away from you. I started this project in university more than 20 years ago, but I didn't take good notes. This is an extension of a project I did for a class in which I investigated the switching speed of various 74 series logic series (3 and 5 inverter ring oscillators). The most difficult part of the project was ultimately the procurement of all (even at the time) obscure 74 series: L, LS, H, C, L, S, AS, ALC, HC, HCT, etc. I was thinking about expanding it to different ECL series – Motorola just expanded their ECLips series of ultra-fast discrete ECL. I am curious what can be done with discrete parts.

As you seem to have discovered, RTL and DTL have many shortcomings, and they are not easier to use than ECL (and you can choose that each signal is a differential signal for free inversion). But the school blocked it. Later, when money was no longer a big issue, I picked up a triode (a household transistor labeled 2n4401), but by then, work and other time demands emerged. Then it was a family... I just remember the project I encountered when cleaning the office from time to time, when I came across transistor spools.

You should definitely record it, and/or join our TTLers group :-)

When others share their similar tickling, it will reduce loneliness;-)

They started selling again! 1000 2n4401 or similar products, price $6. The urge to buy more must be controlled....

Oops, I pressed the wrong button / o \

Please record the documents before buying!

It is easy to purchase parts that tend to accumulate dust in the drawer.

What will you do with 1K transistors? Even for a simple processor, this is quite short. I think you need at least 3K or 4K to get remote useful functions.

If there are less than 3K available, I do not consider buying parts, it is a full reel, preferably 2 or 3! Therefore, if you want to get any feasible results, you have already spent $60 even if you don’t understand your design.

If you still want to move on, please take a look at Tim's latest work :-)

Replace the LED with 3 diodes in series, and that's it.

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If you are lucky enough to come across some home-brewed electronic products from the 1950s, it is very likely that these components are assembled on solder labels under the lid, each with long leads, and installed on the rack for The socket of the tube. Easy to assemble, using the most agricultural soldering iron.

Open home buildings in the 1960s or early 1970s, and you may find the same passive components and germanium transistors installed through holes in the bizarre, larger interposer boards, or even homemade PCBs with thick and wide tracks.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, you will find a more familiar sight. The dual-in-line IC through holes on the ribbon board with a pitch of 0.1 inches, and self-made PCBs began to appear on the glass fiber board. Easy to use and easy to solder. Familiar with safety. Almost forty years later, what you will see on the breadboard is still the same, but it can still be seen from many kit manufacturers.

But we all know that progress in the field of electronic components has not stalled. The history of surface mount components can be traced back to the 1960s and has appeared in consumer devices since the late 1980s. More components per square inch, smaller, cheaper equipment. Today, they are everywhere, and more and more through-hole versions no longer offer these new components. If your experiment is limited to 741 and 555, this is not a problem, but if your taste extends to new types of sensors for microcontrollers or RF work, then this will constrain your style.

This development triggered a series of reactions. Many people happily embraced the new media,

The result is full of really smart SMD projects. But many people still cannot upgrade to SMD, maybe because of smaller SMD components, special tools they may need, or even new skills they must learn. When you sell a kit with SMD components, you will receive responses from people who like the kit but want to get it through the through hole, so this article applies to them. In order to expose the mystery of using SMD, and prove that the work of SMD should be controlled by almost anyone who can use a soldering iron.

This may be the first reaction of a lifetime through-hole soldering machine. SMD parts are indeed usually very small. Even those parts filled with large packages, the leads may look as many and thin as cat hair. When the endless bunny headlights panic, they look like It's a cat.

But it is important to step back and understand that not all SMDs are the same. Some of them are small, and only those with god-like power can be hand-soldered, but many devices are packaged in SMD, which is large enough for mortals to use.

So when you see a circuit board covered with components the size of dust particles, don't worry. Few people will try this level of construction, but of course your scribe cannot. (We are waiting for commentators to claim that the thousand-pin BGA and 01005 chip components were manually soldered as expected. However, such a statement is useless without evidence.)

Instead, focus on your SMD package 

deal with. The SMD chip component package is represented by a number related to its size. Confusingly, the scheme has two metric and imperial systems, but the format is the same: length followed by width.

Considering the picture above as well as the PCB and tape measure, it is the bottom surface of the Raspberry Pi B+ model and will be assembled by the robot to automatically place the machine. Most of the components are indeed small, but you will notice that L3 is the black component in the lower left corner, which looks large compared to its neighbors. The package is "1008", 0.1 inches long and 0.08 inches wide. It is still small, but imagine picking it up with a magnifying glass on tweezers. Not bad, you may have dealt with many things in this size range before, do SMD parts look so scary now? The larger components-0805, 1008, and 1206-are surprisingly within the grasp of the average manufacturer.

In a business environment, SMD equipment will be assembled by machines. Glue or solder paste will be printed on the relevant part of the circuit board, and the automatic pick-and-place machine will remove the components from the tape package and automatically place them in the correct direction. Then, the entire circuit board can be soldered at once in a reflow oven or wave soldering machine.

If you are new to SMD, you are unlikely to just put these kits on the bench. Have

with

, But it is safe to say that they are still quite advanced things.

You will also see all commercial kits for desktop SMD builders. Conventional soldering iron hot-air soldering stations or SMD drill bits are very useful, but the price is very high.

The good news is that you don't need any of these special tools to dip your toes in the SMD water. It is almost certain that you already have everything you need, if not, all you are missing is SMD work. If you have the following items, then you are fine:

. Even larger SMDs are still small. Sufficient light ensures that you can see them clearly. A good downward-pointing table lamp is sufficient. 

. Because SMD is difficult to see clearly, it will help if you operate SMD on a bright white surface. Fresh white printer paper on the table can be used as a suitable work area. 

. Unless you are fortunate enough to have amazing eyesight, you will need a decent magnifying glass to use with surface mount components. The "helping hand" type on the stand is appropriate. 

. When soldering, you need to use it to hold down the surface mount component. 

. You will need these to pick up, manipulate and flip surface mount equipment. 

. If you have a standard fine tip soldering iron suitable for use with traditional 0.1 inch pitch through-hole components, then you should be fully equipped.

In other words, there is a special tool that may be worth your consideration. Sometimes it seems that three hands are required to hold the SMD device while soldering, so one or two tools can be found to help. Fortunately, this is something you can build yourself. take a look 

 For example, or your scribe's

.

It is not difficult to imagine that when you look at SMD integrated circuits, the pins are too small and too close, and you may not be able to solder them by hand. The answer is, of course, you just need to see how to weld in other ways.

With through-hole ICs, you can solder each 0.1 inch pitch pin separately. If you manage to build a solder bridge between the two pins and compete to use desoldering pumps or braids, it will be a disaster.

In contrast, when using surface mount ICs, as a mortal, it is almost impossible for you to solder each pin individually, so you don't even have to try. Instead, use an excessive amount of solder to solder the entire row at a time, and then use a braid of solder wire to remove the resulting huge solder bridges, thus making clean and professional work possible. Surface tension and a large amount of flux are your friends, and if you are an experienced through-hole welder, then you hardly need to have any welding skills.

If you can fix it on the board and use a magnifying glass to see it clearly when necessary, then the component can be anything and you can solder it. Try it, you will be surprised!

Therefore, we hope you have convinced SMD doubters to enable you to use SMD yourself. What's next?

Read the topic first. Your favorite search engine should provide it, tutorials can be found from the following locations 

From 

, Or from

 and many more. And look for videos owned by YouTube

But there is no alternative. Find a clipboard with surface mount components of the appropriate size and rework it. Desoldering its components may be difficult, but you should be able to rework the solder joints easily. Coat the pins of the integrated circuit with flux and try to run a mass of molten solder along them, then use a defluxing braid to remove the excess solder. The advantage of the clipboard is that it will not damage it, so you can practice these techniques according to your inner habits until you are satisfied with the newly discovered skills.

Therefore, you can move on and proceed with your first SMD project. well done! What you want to do next is up to you. Design your own circuit and make PCB, buy kit or find

Downloadable PCB files and order by yourself.

No matter what you do, be happy that you have overcome the fear of SMD and are determined to be the first in the queue to try any new technology in the future!

Enough to say: p

When I see that QFN is done with iron instead of hot air, I am always impressed.

Use the "solder mask" method and ordinary soldering iron and solder wire to solder QFN:

Time back in time to make a batch of SMD boards with ordinary soldering iron and solder:

Please enjoy. :)

Not all QFNs have leads that extend to the edge of the package and can be contacted with a soldering iron.

As long as the pad extends to a reachable position and is not covered with solder resist, there is no need to touch the lead.

Fortunately, cold welding should not be performed in this case.

Yes, I also have questions. However, with the right amount of solder paste and flux, you can still try it. In most cases, it will work. Flux, wettability and surface tension are all wonderful things.

Oh, lead (Pb) is also a good thing. Unless you are legally obliged to do so, do not use lead-free solder indiscriminately. Otherwise, you should get any problems, especially when using non-optimal welding techniques.

@ [Chris C.]

I have seen RoHS (lead-free) car battery terminal connectors. You screw them onto the lead battery terminal.

This is not a "just try" thing. It is impossible to work reliably with solder wire. Think about it. If the pad is heated and the solder flows on it, if the solder is below the chip, there will be no contact between the solder contacts and the pad on the chip. Therefore, there is no heat flow. So the joints are very cold.

If there is a *contact between the chip and the pad, the solder will not be able to flow under the chip because the edge of the chip is not connected to the contact point.

*Most* QFN contacts extend to the edge of the chip, which is the JEDEC standard. But not everyone does it. In fact, solder paste and hot air flux are not needed.

Nice video!

You mentioned diluting the flux with alcohol. Which flux and type of alcohol did you use?

You can even desolder the QFN with ordinary iron.

"We are waiting for commenters to claim that a thousand-pin BGA needs to be soldered by hand"

What does "hand welding" mean? Anyone can easily complete a high pin count BGA using StencilQuik and a reflow oven. Yes, the unit cost of StencilQuik has increased by about $10-20, but this is only a small modification of the cost of a thousand-pin BGA.

But the 01005 component is up to you.

At the HaD conference held in San Francisco last fall, a German (sorry, don't remember his name) gave a quick introduction to assembling BGA parts at home. The trick is

. Instead, just apply a coating on the area where the BGA should be fluxed and place it as carefully as possible, then cook the board in your favorite reflow oven/hot plate.

The key is that the right amount of solder has been provided in the form of solder balls on the part. You just need to let it flow onto the mat. The flux and surface tension do the rest.

I haven't tried it, but he made it sound simple.

I have redesigned some DDR (0.8mm) in this way, but if you are making a surface mount board, you should use a template anyway. The more flux you control, the better the reproducibility, and the use of templates to paste paste can make the operation very precise.

Yes, StencilQuick can achieve perfect alignment based on feeling alone, so you don't have to worry about it. This is just a precision cut polyimide adhesive.

Hmm...humorous alert.

It is worth mentioning that WRT manually placed the BGA for reflow soldering. According to what I observed other people did, they found it difficult to align the BGA correctly, so the failure rate was high.

Correct! Because you did not notice the important part in my post.

If you don't want to click the link to view, they are polyimide adhesives with BGA patterns. Yes, you can add solder paste to it, which will definitely help, but the "most important thing" it allows you to do is "feel" the alignment. You align the StencilQuik adhesive to the circuit board, which is very easy to approach perfection-if you tighten it, you can lift it up and try again (if you do tighten, then $10 is usually cheaper than a BGA part).

Then put solder paste on it, and then put the BGA part, and then you can *feel* it falling into the hole of the solder ball.

If StencilQuik’s $10 per cost will disappoint you, then you will find a DIY example

To be honest, another thing I have been curious about is whether you can mill a small metal frame the same size as the BGA and place mounting holes on the board. Then you connect the frame, put the BGA in it, reflow it, and then remove the frame. You are trying to align an object to a part of 1 mm. It shouldn't be that difficult.

You can also feel it on an appropriate board with solder mask. Not so good, but still obvious.

Yes, StencilQuick basically played the role of thickening the solder mask: ordinary LPI masks were about 2 million, while StencilQuick increased by about 4-8 million, totaling about 6-10 million. The height of a BGA ball is usually ~16 mils, so you can see that a Stencil Quick of ~6 mil means it is half the height of the ball, which makes it *really* easy to notice the difference and you really can't tighten it.

Why should you pay attention to? This is the purpose of flux and surface tension, the chips move to the proper position by themselves

The global position is very good, because the surface tension cannot resolve every alignment error ;)

"You are a spammer, hacker or other bad person."

—

I don't like the huge solder speckle/solder braid removal technique. This is very messy and there is a risk of overheating parts or damaging small pins.

The most important technique for SMT welding is FLUX FLUX FLUX FLUX FLUX. There are liquid flux bottles, gel flux tubes, flux pens, a large amount of isopropyl to dilute it as needed, dispenser syringes and brushes, and bottles with dispenser needles.

The second most important technique for SMT soldering is the soldering iron tip. Clean, bright, well-plated and not too small... A fairly large hoof or beveled tip will be very useful.

The third most important trick is to search for "drag welding" on YouTube and hide your welding braid until you learn this technique.

Yes, I have just started surface mounting, and it is all about flux. I use a soldering pen and regular scrap iron, and it works normally. What surprised me was that I was able to do this because I almost sucked in conventional welding.

This one! Even welding very fine pitch parts with good flux quality and iron quality is very easy. I have been using drag soldering! Whenever someone mentions a solder core or breaks it for something, I cringe, because 90% of the time will eventually cause you to lift the traces and pads off the PCB and possibly from you Tear off the pins on the parts!

I cannot emphasize enough the difference between a good set of tweezers! Break it down and spend some money on a good set of clothes, you will not regret it.

In my past work, I often welded 0201 parts regularly, and the tweezers worked. You need a microscope to do most of the work, but it is feasible! Using a desktop magnifier can easily reduce anything to about 0402, but anything smaller does require a microscope to examine joints.

Absolutely, the solder sometimes cools at the edge of the wick and bonds to the pins. When you pick up the wick.... Damn.

That $25 bargaining chip became an expensive rubbish! It’s time to disconnect the magnet wire, assuming there is enough metal to try to fix it... (don’t ask)

Sorry, I don't understand this problem very well-I never happened. One person dragged away the wick and the soldering iron together, and the wick was "melting" all the time...

That's what you should do, but one time you don't do it is when you accidentally tear off the pads on the PCB. This is a good way to solve the error, but I will not use the solder core as a normal and expected part of the soldering process, and you will use this material on each pad.

I try to avoid individual parts smaller than 0402 because they become more difficult to handle. I like resistor arrays because they have the best of both worlds-larger than their single array and save more space. For example, 0302 has two 0201 resistors, but to deal with it is almost like 0402, and you have to place less.

The problem is that in addition to saving space, there are more reasons to make smaller parts.

In many cases, 0402 caps are better than 0603 caps. Its parasitic inductance is about 30% smaller because it is smaller. That is to say, under the equivalent capacitance, the upper limit of 0402 will be higher than the upper limit of 0603 * maintain* 40% of the upper limit.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the "capacitor array" technique here, because the "distance" from the object on which you are placing the capacitor is the cause of parasitic inductance. Therefore, the cap must be as close as possible. This means finer = better.

I really want to avoid using the 0201 upper limit as much as possible, but this extra decoupling can really help when you try to run at 500+ MHz.

When using physically smaller capacitors, be sure to pay attention to the DC bias. When the capacitance value of the 0402 size exceeds 100nF, only a few volts can start to lose a lot of capacitance. In most cases, if I want to be close to 1uF at 5V, I need to use 0805 capacitors.

This is why I don't talk about the cap array.

In a few cases, you happen to get 2 closed pins to take advantage of the array. Anytime you need to break through a few mil jumpers to connect to the capacitor cap, you may forget the capacitor cap. It is best to drop the through hole directly to the power/ground layer and connect the capacitor cap directly to the power/ground Floor. Don't forget that the power/ground plane acts as a very low inductance high frequency capacitor.

The capacitor array can still help decoupling-flip the power and ground connections on one of the capacitors to reverse the current and eliminate some vias and parasitic inductance. A specially designed capacitor array like this (for high frequency decoupling).

Flux is the most important part. And appropriate lead-containing solder. It makes sense, why the TV 40 years ago can still work, but the models from the 2000s are outdated...

The smallest component I soldered is 0402 without a magnifying glass or any other optical aids. I'm short-sighted, so it's easier for me, but to check if the components are soldered correctly, I took photos with Dimage Z5's macro mode. When I soldered TQFP-100 with cheap Chinese flux, I messed up. There are more bridges than Venice. Good flux and concave solder tips solve this problem.

Can people recommend some tweezers? Links to global websites (such as Aliexpress or RS/Mouser/Farnell, etc.) would be great!

I found some different suggestions in a Google search, but no consensus was reached.

It is difficult to determine "good" only by checking online, and there are many choices for the shape of the nib!

I like those who are bent, because they don't block my sight. I like the Prideline curved tweezers near the bottom right corner.

I bought a pair of spare backups from China. Haven't used it yet.

I use Adafruit's ESD bending elbow. Those sparks are too hard.

The tweezers made by Xcelite are very good. I prefer XSST7V for smaller things and XHT-678 for larger things. Amazon's shelf prices are reasonable, or deep-fried prices are high.

Hemostatic drugs may sometimes be helpful, but a good brand suitable for these people has not yet been found.

I bought some tweezers from AliExpress/ebay. The first one is actually pretty good, I still use it. Then for some reason, I wasted 6 more, they are so bad, I should throw them away. I mean instead to buy well-known brands, or buy from well-known distributors.

I discovered that after about 20 years, my solder braid no longer sucks. B ^)

Maybe it's already oxidized...

I think the SMT flux I bought 15 years ago may have crystallized in the container.

Put some flux?

In most cases, you will not encounter a huge problem, I mean, if you are new to SMD, it is not the end of the world.

Yes, flux. And more flux. Therefore, a lot of photos:)

I use Swamp Sander non-acid flux paste BTW, the type used for plumbing. The effect is as good as the expensive SMD flux, which can be easily removed with methylated alcohol.

I thought that non-acidic pipeline flux is feasible, but it seems that most pipeline fluxes are acidic. Flux specifically designed for electronic products is so cheap, I won't risk telling beginners to get close to anything with a "pipe" on it.

Of course, solder mask is the only way to go. But especially on the last pin, some excess solder is easy to gather. In this case, some wicks may help quickly eliminate and control the situation. Yes: using good enough flux is the "start and end" process.

In the early days, I managed to solder to a board so that people could use ordinary iron to manually use surface mount components on the breadboard of the DS2423 device. This part survived. quality education

As it happens, my project aims to provide a cheap entry point for welding equipment. Use Weller's high-quality prompts, but reduce the cost of the workstation.

Or you can buy it without a weak tip

Which flux do you recommend? Is the "unclean" version useful? What should be considered when choosing a flux?

The flux you are looking for is to have flux. Yes, really. A lot of flux.

Okay, there are some preferences (I use Kester RA flux most often in my pen), but it is important to use it.

Importantly, the flux may be corrosive and may conduct electricity, so it should be cleaned. If your boards are present/visible, you will not want to use no-cleaners because they will become hard and difficult to remove (they do not need to be cleaned, hence the name "no-clean"). If it is used on a finished product without a PCB cleaning step, it does not need to be cleaned. Prototype is up to you, but I usually clean the circuit board and use RA flux.

The liquid is not clean! It has annoying and harmful fumes and it is difficult to remove residues. I like water-soluble ones because with a little hot water, an old toothbrush and some ipa (if needed) can be easily washed off. The effect of Kester 2235 is very good, you can buy a gallon of gasoline, the price is reasonable, and the service life is long. RA is also a good choice, very flexible and can be used for almost anything, although it usually leaves a sticky residue.

It seems like a good beer was wasted.

Lol. I see what you are doing there! Moving! If you like to use "IPA" when cleaning, it is not a waste, although you should make sure it is the correct "IPA", otherwise you may be blind!

IPA (as isopropanol) will not blind you, it will be methanol. AFAIK IPA has approximately the same toxicity level as ethanol (something most of us sometimes drink in alcoholic beverages). Of course this does not mean that you should drink it, it is said that it is nothing fun compared to "normal alcohol".

Kester #2331-ZX Flux Pen. Great, especially lead-free solder. Also, for DIY, please do yourself a favor and use regular 60/40 solder.

A lot of light and glasses or head-mounted magnifiers can provide good stereo vision. The magnifying glass is PITA.

Hot the iron. Flux pen pad. Use curved tweezers to press down the part, and then hit a pin or one side of the iron nail. Or tin it first, then hit it with a flux pen, and then the pins will quickly fall into the molten solder. This is a good way to avoid too much solder (this is very effective for me). Unless the beginner on the Chinese rework line is cleaned up, I will never need a solder core.

My product needs to move five 0408 resistors for a customer who purchases 20 to 50 customers at the same time. It takes about 45 seconds in total under the stereo microscope.

With this in mind, we continue to use brass sponges to clean the tips and never "tinned" them. The brass sponge in the heavy pot is another "essential condition" for quick cleaning. Similarly, tapping the sponge and then touching the pins with too much solder will usually pull enough force without any wicks. First touch it with a flux pen to get a beautiful joint.

The same brass sponge can also pull sticky things, fibers and other paste-like substances from the tweezers very quickly.

Currently using Kester#985M "low solid content, no cleaning". good results. I found no toxic fumes. It leaves very little residue, so that I sometimes only clean it once after repairing it, even if it is not really necessary, but I am too persistent. It can be cleaned easily with IPA (isopropyl alcohol). Use with 600°F soldering iron and standard lead multi-core solder. Sometimes solder paste is used, which can be stored in the refrigerator, but has expired and has been reformulated with 91% IPA.

I admit that I still feel a little scared of SMD. My eyes are not good, my hands are not stable, I have to work slower, but in the end I still use most of the 0402/0603 parts in the carpet. Therefore, I still use many through-hole parts. But when SMD is necessary or clearly superior, I will use it without hesitation. The first time I tried to make a reliable solder connection, there was no problem, and no components were damaged by overheating (except for a very small button).

The flux in the picture is sold in the UK for plumbing. It is a non-acidic pulp, and I apply it generously with cotton swabs. After soldering, my circuit board is covered with flux, so it is almost no-clean, but it can be removed with a toothbrush for a few seconds and some methylated alcohol. The small filter PCB shown in the figure does just that.

IMHO, what matters is not the flux used, but the flux used. Use a lot.

some advices.

I have a good magnifying glass with a built-in light source, a separate light source and a separate magnifying glass with different focal points (these are three items). This helps to remove shadows on large blocks, allowing you to use one or another magnifying glass depending on the size or fatigue level, and even double the lens and lighting. Most people should already have a good light source and a second-hand magnifying glass, so getting a magnifying glass/light source combination should not make a big leap.

I use an X-acto knife with No. 11 blade instead of a flat screwdriver (note this). With a little practice, you can skillfully apply solder paste, flux (I use a liquid that I do by myself), up parts, cut traces, and press down parts when soldering (using the back of the blade). If the soldering iron damages the blade or the blade breaks, I will not feel uncomfortable, I just throw it away and replace it. I have used tweezers, but I still put the tweezers somewhere for picking and placing parts, but I am fed up with losing so many resistances and covers, so I just dipped the blade into the flux or paste In the mixture, and then grab the parts as you grab it. A bun-bun because I was too lazy to switch to the tweezers that I still couldn't find, so I could only dig out larger parts. I came up with this idea when I read about Chinese manufacturers using chopped and mashed chopsticks to manually pick and place SMD components. Been doing it for a while, but prefer the blade. Remember, the blade has two sides, please make full use of both sides. If #11 does not match your style, please check other X-acto blade shapes.

If you want to do a lot of SMD work, please buy a stereo microscope. There are some cheap Chinese versions on eBay that work normally. like this:

It will be great.

Get the best soldering iron tip you can find. We use Pace with plugin hints. They are not cheap, but they heat up immediately.

I want a decent stereo microscope as my workbench, which is very useful for removing metal or wood chips from my fingers (obtained in a woodworking shop).

A decent stereo microscope, with a good long (several inches) working length, has paid off in many fields, yes, including pulling wood and metal fragments, and making smd work very easy. do it! I have extra products from edmund Optical and B&L, and the former is actually better (and updated a lot). It takes a while to get used to the curved light path-the hand coordination of the eyes will be confusing at first (not for a while afterwards). worth it. Zoom-priceless. I use a paper background and a cheap halogen gooseneck table lamp with floodlights.

do it! It's worth it for the shards and makes the work of SMD almost easy. Most of them have a good working focal length-around 3 inches. The background of the paper, halogen gooseneck table lamp and floodlight, is worth it. Curved pointed tweezers are cheap when having MPJ. I use Kester 952 flux (diluted with IPA if necessary) and occasionally drag the braid, but sometimes it is not necessary to drag the solder. If you want to lay out your own circuit board, please do the opposite of normal-make the width of the pad 1-2 mils narrower than the pin to ensure that all bridges are not on the pin board, but on the pin. Save the trouble of eliminating any bridging. If you do this often, the expensive MetCal iron is actually worth it – I would not believe there is such an iron (think you are a good customer, because I bought things for me, so I never do it for myself Out of pocket).

Agree, however, this article may not be suitable for beginners.

Cheap Chinese 10-20x stereo oscilloscopes cost between US$100 and US$200. You may be able to build your own LED lights. Anyone who does a lot of SMD work should be equipped with a stereo microscope. Once you use it, you will know that it is worth the money. I cannot strongly recommend these.

You can also easily remove debris from (or someone else's) fingers, fix small accessories, etc.

If you make something small, buy one. You will not regret it.

Even cheap mono USB microscopes cost less than $40, and most still provide good images. For some of us, position is a major factor, and avoiding the stooping posture of certain conventional magnifying glasses will give the bench more time. This is a good basic description, but please avoid the mistakes of the former HAD writer, who laughed at several readers, including me, who said that they always use magnification when working on the circuit board. He is one of your typical theoretical builders and can install 0.01 mm without dragging or bridging. It's nice to see that the editors have eliminated most of this attitude.

My suggestion-please use sharp metal tweezers. When talking about component placement, this is a solution that will never let me down. Plastic tweezers tend to melt and are difficult to sharpen, so you only need to obtain tweezers and a demagnetizer. In fact, 4-5 pairs are obtained. You can give them away, and if a pair is lost, you will have spare parts, so you don’t need to look for one of the most important tools and you don’t have to make things =)

I started in 1206-resistors/capacitors of this shape are still much better than through-holes in terms of taking up space, so the circuit board can be routed more easily. Then I moved to 0805 (still placed manually), it was easy even with a relatively large soldering iron.

You must also manage some more parts. I used to be able to place resistors, capacitors and ICs and everything outside of their packages, and if they happen to be mixed up, I can sort them quickly by color code or number. Now, on many parts, the numbers have no meaning for which part, and their color codes have no meaning. It's better to put them in a package or labelled tape instead of dumping everything you need to use on the bench. The IC is still marked, at least it is easy to figure out. Similarly, you may have to etch a board or fabricate one. No more prototype boards. Most "solutions" are expensive or cumbersome to use.

Well, I still have some through-hole parts, and I only buy through-hole parts for prototyping. In addition, there are simple breakout boards suitable for all types of packages. If you need to prototype on SOT-23 FETs, you can easily solder smaller parts to 2.54 connectors or male-to-male prototype terminals.

The SMT welding method I chose is a standard kitchen-grade hot plate. Open the board, apply solder paste to the board as you like, place the components, then bounce the whole board on the hot plate for a few seconds, and remove it after all the solder paste has melted. Gently place it on a flat surface (I use a ceramic plate), wait for it to cool, and so on, all SMT soldering is done at once!

However, this only applies to boards where all SMT components are on the same side (and a heating board is required *no* magnetic stirring function, unless you wish to observe your components sliding around the board with large metal clumps).

Yes, so far, the easiest way to mount solder is not to do this. Sitting there with a soldering iron and tweezers, soldering, soldering is very cumbersome.

Another voted for the use of electric hot plates. We use them to build prototypes, and even use circuit boards containing only a few components and cheap metal templates for some light-weight production work.

Fear is the way to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to Frizinger. "

The only problem is to find the SMD kit. They are really hard to find.

Does anyone have any links?

I use "freezing tubules" to fix my SMD parts. Not my idea, "That is the extinction where I used to work. They are in a small box with a cardboard separator, you can write this value on the screw cap. Check the biological supply site. R's group , A group of C, different packaging boxes of different sizes (although I almost exclusively use 0603)

Whenever you order a part from Digikey, you only need to order 100 cut pieces, and then put the other parts in the freezing tube. You will immediately have a complete toolkit.

One source:

Use a screw cap to obtain the plastic type. Different color upper limit of R and C

My Digikey order last year had a lot of beautiful blue static dissipative zipper positioning bags for many parts, including cutting tape SMT passive components, so I just put them there. My shipping box has the right width for easy storage of bags. :)

Digikey has only recently started shipping in resealable bags. great!

People can buy large cut-resistant tape/ceramic capacitor books on eBay for around $20.

We usually standardize around the following aspects:

0805 is suitable for 1% resistance/LED

Ceramic capacitor 0603

1206 is used for fuse/diode/large capacity capacitor

These sizes are suitable for handling with tweezers and are very tolerant of reflux in household ovens.

Note that if possible, you want to reduce the change in value, as this will reduce the cost of making anything at home and in the factory.

Alcohol-based liquid flux with desoldering braid is indispensable, even with suspicious solder mask (if there is enough gap in the design process), we can easily drag 84-pin QFN solder. If you are using solder paste, you must remove the flux, otherwise you will not be able to check the contact area of ​​the chip for tiny solder ball contamination. Admittedly, I was skeptical at first, but it turns out that QFN bridges have far fewer parts than fine-pitch leads.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but smaller parts (such as 0603) have a higher relative surface tension and will pull the SMT part into place. In addition, when I was a student, people often told us to avoid plating through holes on the ground pad, otherwise the solder paste would reflow into the holes and the chips would not be properly bonded. However, the facts show that usually only about 70% of the actual pads need to be covered with SAC305-based solder, even 5 plated-spaced through holes can significantly improve cooling, and if reflowed, the QFN chip will be less likely to be in alignment During the period, it drifted and pasted too much without alignment. If you want to delay EE, please advocate its recommended practices for all reflow operations. ;-)

I like to see effective ways to avoid using canned death solvents around people. Please note that most RoHS parts will rot in moisture, and unlike plastic, it will not dry out easily. People should use desiccant boxes with aluminum foil bags to extend the 2-year shelf life. In some cases, even too much flux will not help, but I have found that most reflow problems are caused by oxide/debris or solder paste quality.

In addition, if you only need 1 board instead of 3 boards... because most boards have reflow time characteristics, you need to adjust.

Ask the company for a sample kit (if you are not a company, but an engineering student, it may take a long time). Digikey has a kit,

I have to disagree that reflow soldering is an "advanced" skill. This is really easy compared to manual welding of SMD parts. The hardest part is getting a reflow oven, but it's not that difficult-most entry-level hobbyists just modified an oven. I sold my own conversion kit on Tindie, which made it very easy.

With the oven, all that remains is to use tweezers to place the components. I use 0805 as my standard size, it works normally and has a lot of parts. As I become more experienced, I sometimes complete TQFP packaging and QFN. But my first project used nothing smaller than SOIC and 0805.

At this point, what I want to say is that manual PnP and reflow soldering are actually faster than through-hole assembly. After all, all welding is done at once, and no leads are clamped. A circuit board I often make mixes SMD and TH because it handles high voltage. I estimate that in this case (YMMV), the same number of TH parts as SMD will take one-third of the time. All it has to do is gain experience and familiarity.

The last thing I want to say is that I did this for the first time, and I thought it would be a disaster. When I finished placing it, it looked terrible. I almost threw it away, but decided to pass it through the oven. The result is a miracle. It looks bad, but when it first came out it seemed to be made in Shenzhen. Use (surface tension) force Luke.

I even used a fully stocked oven for reflow soldering on more than 100 boards. The only modification is to set a kitchen timer nearby and manually control the profile:) Low 3 minutes, high 2 minutes, turn off and Let cool :)

If you are a beginner at the beginning of SMD welding that this article is aimed at, it is advanced. But yes.

I am the timid beginner, and I want to assure those who are standing in the same place (in my 20s to 20s) that this is easier than they thought.

Hot air and flux, that's all

SMD I say no to you.

Please do not make the mistake of repeating the problematic SMD soldering technique. They are popular, but they are not correct.

First, let's talk about the size of the components. Although it may seem like a large component is needed at first glance, it is not. For example, for chip capacitors, you want to be as small as possible. Larger enclosures are very susceptible to heat-related stress cracking, especially when manually soldered incorrectly. Large components are also expensive. I found that almost everyone can use 0805, and 0603 is the right compromise between cost, size, usability and ease of assembly. 0402 can, but it does require more effort when placed.

Good light source I can agree with. This is very important.

For SMD welding, the magnification is almost always *completely useless*. Inspection after welding is very important. It is also important when making bridge connections and can help with other forms of rework. Welding does not require magnification: you need to be able to operate both hands in a precise manner at the same time, which requires direct visual feedback. You want to grab a component, place it and solder it all at once. If you really have trouble seeing how the components are aligned, you can use magnification, but other than that, it makes the situation worse. Especially the recommended magnifiers, because their optical quality is usually poor and small, so they will always get in the way. In order to check after welding, you want to have a reasonable magnification, ideally a little more than the magnification used for welding.

Slotted screwdriver: Why? do not disturb! You have tweezers! SMT components do not require pressing force, so just use tweezers. I never knew about screwdrivers; they are difficult to handle, and you will most likely end up scratching, cutting or otherwise damaging the components.

Tweezers: Not sure if you need a set. Having multiple tweezers is great, but you can also use a pair of tweezers. They must be of reasonable quality, that is, they cannot bend metal waste. They don't have to be expensive: I spent several dollars with Chinese "Vetus" tweezers, and they are definitely worth the money. I do recommend Aven's EZ-PIK series (I bought it from digikey) because they are inexpensive and color-coded, which makes them stand out and therefore easy to find. Whether you want a straight or curved nib depends on taste, but if you are serious, please provide both models. It's not around $15, and two reasonable tweezers are surprisingly expensive. Over time, I bought some expensive high-quality tweezers for myself. They are better, but not many.

iron. Oh, well, where should I start? Tipping is likely to cause many problems. SMD components are small, so you want to have the most control. Ingenious techniques are very useful for rework, because if you want to connect a wire to a single pin in a 0.5mm pitch package, you only need to heat that pin. They do attract tin because they do not transfer a lot of heat. SMD soldering must be done quickly, because the components are definitely more refined than the lead lead brother. The chisel point is the best. Choose a pad that is slightly wider than the pad of the chip component. I like to use 2mm or 2.4mm wide chisel tips on 0805 and 0603 (sorry, not sure yet). They can heat up the pad quickly, and when the components are tightly packed, they are not clumsy enough to cause problems.

Welding technology: please do not use moisture-proof and moisture-proof methods! ! ! This technique seems popular, but it is one of the worst things you can do. The reasons are as follows: (i) the components have been subjected to great thermal stress; (ii) it is difficult to handle them correctly; (iii) the quality of the solder joints obtained is unqualified.

(I) If you solder all the pins with a large amount of molten solder, it will take a lot of time to heat them. Then, they are heated again with a solder core, which takes a long time. This puts a lot of thermal stress on the components. ICs don't like soldering, so ideally you will keep the thermal stress as low as possible. Using this method, you heat the entire chip twice, each time also requires additional time.

(Ii) The core needs to be heated thoroughly. It is difficult to completely control it. If stuck, it is easy to damage the pads or leads of the component. It is almost impossible to precisely control the amount of solder sucked away. This leads us

(Iii) The quality of solder joints. There are many websites that talk about the quality of SMD solder joints. Go and see them. IPC 610A provides more information, but it is not important. The important thing is: the back and sides of the pin should have a nice rounded corner (heel rounded corner). It is not recommended to solder on the top of the pin or near the component package. With solder wicking, you will first get a lot of solder on the top of the pin and near the package. Then you suck the solder away, usually without leaving heel fillets. Components soldered like this can easily fail to be fixed due to mechanical shock because they are just not properly connected to the PCB.

So, what should you do? Drag welding. There is a lot of information online about how it works. It is very easy. I was anxious at first, but when I tried it for the first time, it worked well on the 0.5mm pitch TQFP. You only need to use the right amount of flux, and try not to use too much solder. The pins and pads take up very little solder, so usually very little solder is enough.

Therefore, the flux is missing from your list. Get the best no-clean gel flux. Use it whenever you encounter a problem, it definitely helps. Yes, good flux is expensive and a bit messy, but it is definitely worth it.

I prefer to use a magnifying glass when soldering, even for through holes. In other words, I totally agree that the magnifying glass displayed is garbage. However, the 5-inch fluorescent rocker magnifier will not hinder you when welding.

Until recently, I used the old Dazor articulated magnifying glass lamp, which was above the work and did not move my hands. Recently, I added an old Bausch & Lomb stereo zoom microscope and I like it very much. Although it is not as wide as a magnifying glass, the clarity is excellent.

It may be a cheap magnifying glass, but it does a good job for my SMD work and will not hinder you. :) I don't use alligator clips.

This article is written in response to some potential customers in my suite business who are afraid of SMD work. Therefore, this is a kind of eating my own dog food, and I must be able to assemble them using the basic kit. I sold them a toolkit that was only used in a reflow oven is useless.

I am an engineer and do some SMD prototyping on a regular 0.1" perforated board. I also own a 5cm^2 small SMD oven with only 80W instead of most 1kW ovens.

For single-sided PCB:

-Put a (micro) dollar solder paste on each pad of the PCB,

-Use tweezers and a magnifying glass to place the component on its pad (don't worry too much about the alignment problem, capillary action will solve this problem),

– Make sure that SO is not at home,

-Turn on the fan to avoid being suspected by the above SO,

– Put the PCB on the ceramic stove,

– Turn on the furnace and wait for the solder to liquefy,

– Turn off the stove and carefully move the PCB to the colder part of the stove,

-carry out,

-So it is not wise.

If there is a better choice to buy resistors/capacitors or buy as needed, does anyone suggest?

If you have a specific design, please buy it as needed, plus some additional things (depending on your confidence). If you are making a prototype and are not sure, get various passive components. Unless you use specific things (buffers, transistors, etc.) in many designs, it makes no sense to get too many extra ICs.

For example, you can get the following information:

Various 0603 parts are also available.

They sell various cutting tapes for resistors/capacitors on Aliexpress. You are buying $2.08 and $3.82 for 36 values ​​x 20 0603 resistors/capacitors. Even for practicing welding, this is a reasonable choice. I don't know what size you want, but 0603 is a suitable size.

This is a store I have visited six times.

It depends on your goals and other factors. I bought large-size SMD resistors and capacitors on Ebay from overseas, and the prices of both are around US$20. Unless these organizers can be expanded, don't waste money on more expensive goods with expensive organizers. Otherwise, you will have to use two organizational systems to store other values ​​to be stored, which can cause confusion. Or merge into a single system, in which case the original organizer is wasted.

In fact, every project still requires me to place an order for things I don't have, so the classification there is not very helpful. But I miscalculated the number of passive components in the order. It's used more than I thought, or more than imagined on the carpet. Found that I need to change a value. In all these cases, having a variety of goods frees me from paying the shipping cost of extra parts in cents, and without waiting for shipping. Various products are worth it to me.

DigiKey offers 5000 0805 1% resistor reels for $13. At such a price, I don’t know why you should buy a cut tape, unless you really want to make a thing, and if you are considering learning to do SMD, it means you intend to do so. More than once.

I need a reel for each value because I need a new one. This led to log purchases. :) In many applications, you only need to keep the value within an order of magnitude-such as a pull-up resistor. Therefore, starting from the decimal value -100Ω, 1kΩ, 10kΩ, 100kΩ, 1MΩ. For 5v LEDs, a 330Ω series resistor is usually required. For 3.3v, it is 150Ω. So far, I have purchased about 12 values, but I have completed many projects.

So far, I have used up one paper plate-0.1µF 0805 capacitor. That is my standard IC bypass capacitor.

And, if you think that there are too many full reels for each resistance value, for small-scale users doing manual assembly, ordering 1000 times on the cutting tape is a good choice to keep inventory. A 1,000-fold bag costs only a few dollars and takes up less space than a full paper tray.

I have been engaged in electronics hobby for 50 years, so I no longer have good eyesight, but SMD is still feasible. Very bright LED lamps (non-halogen lamps can keep heat and ultraviolet light low) are very important. Most of my work is done at one time, and size is not a key factor, so I will try to use through holes on IC breakout boards. I built a rather complicated reflow oven for SMD. I prefer to use an electric stove instead of an oven, because my circuit board is single-sided and the heat can be dissipated to places where there is no need to heat large parts. I use infrared bakeware to minimize the delay. The main problem is solder paste placement. Maybe the quality of the paste I have been using is not good enough, but it tends to be very sticky and does not stick to the pad well. For this reason, I am considering using a small amount of solder resist. For the installation of a single component, I found that when pre-coating the pad, first use a solder core to remove the excess part, and then use no-clean flux and a hot air gun to install the component. Since I usually install a single IC on the through-hole branch board, it works well. I will not use this method for BGA because it is impossible to check. I found that a cheap Chinese USB electron microscope is very valuable. It cannot be used in the welding process but used in post-weld welding inspection.

Any idea of ​​applying solder paste manually or using good solder paste will be welcome.

I find that the paste dispenser is very valuable. If you wipe the board with alcohol first, stick it better. ENIG also helps (thanks OSHPark). It is best if you try to come to the board vertically and try to make a "hershey kiss"-shaped deposition on the mat. For IC, I just put a log on all pads.

However, for QFN, a template must be used, and vacuum placement tools are essential.

My first batch of home construction panels used 0805 components. Use a syringe to apply solder paste and reflow in a cheap oven. This is easily done at home. My latest motherboard requires 0402, which is difficult to do. Although I often perform 0402 at work, I don't like doing it at home because you want a good magnifying glass to check it. You can use the mold for processing, but it is still difficult to rework later.

I have done 0201, only a few 0100 5, I do not recommend them. Hot air is best for small parts. In any manual operation, the circuit board can be preheated, which will minimize the chance of damaging the circuit board. I even used a 500-watt halogen shop lamp to heat the circuit board.

A good soldering iron is a must, and good skills are required. You need the iron to be in contact with the pad and the pin at the same time, and the tips of the hoof and chisel work well. For 2-pin components like resistors and capacitors, you need to use two irons, one in each hand-faster and the surface tension will be aligned with the part.

Compared with SMD, the through hole speed is slower. I can solder SMD devices 10 times faster than through holes. It requires more practice, but it is worth it.

Look at the professionals. Sorry, this is an old Flip camera. That was the ARM11 6410 board that was upgraded with NAND a few years ago.

I remember the first time I tried SMD (without flux), I got stuck in a lot of soldering irons. Later I "discovered" the changes and the situation became much better. Nowadays, when I am really lazy, I use solder paste and hot air or oven. Even I have a tool that can cut templates at any time.

Shameless plug warning:): At this time I am learning how to solder the kit. What are the odds:) Here is more information:

It is a kit that will produce high-precision resistors with 54 0805 resistors (in 1OHM steps 0-1MOHM). All you need is a decent soldering iron and flux (or solder paste and oven, but this is nothing fun: D)

You should publish articles on the development direction of different "open pick and place" projects. I remember Firepick, OpenPnP and LitePlacer. The last one is the only PnP machine that is actively shipped.

How much is your time worth?

I set a price for the home DIY platform and concluded that even the Neoden 240 machine is more economical.

That is, your opportunity cost rate will be lower than $1.50 per hour to build similar projects.

Fast food workers will laugh at you.

;-)

Most amateurs will not benefit from PnP machines. For most hobbyists, placing parts by hand is an order of magnitude faster than setting up a machine.

If you are like me, and you own a Tindie store and do many of the same things, then it's very different. But even I haven't been there yet. On the contrary, for some of my most popular products, I have outsourced the assembly. I still think I might get ahead of time to get my own PnP and set it up.

This is real. true. ;)

Shameless plug, but if you want to keep the PCB stable when soldering SMD parts, try Stickvise. You don’t have to buy it, although you won’t regret it – if you have the tools and time, you can easily make it out of scrap:

Gosh, the second image is crazy. According to modern PCB standards, this is really a hodgepodge.

This is the VFO I obtained in a radio trash sale about 20 years ago. From the perspective of components, it was probably in the early 1970s. Very often. :)

After being forced to weld 0402 and some QFN parts, I developed some "cheater" methods for these parts.

1) The first thing I want to do is to assume that everything I remove is toast and will be exposed to too much heat; it will not be reliable in the future.

2) In the case of using all small SMD passive components (and a large number of ICs), I tinned a pad, and then placed the part while keeping the pad "wet". You are an animal

3) I have always been ready to wind the wire, which will make it ~2" long and wrap 3/4 around the soldering iron. Then, I will form the remaining part into a pointed extension tip and use it to cushion the “thermal inertia of the soldering iron” "Usually, this will cause me to use some very fine solder even on 0201s under extreme pinch injuries.

4) Sometimes I solder a short 30 AWG wire to the pin as an indirect heat transfer path for the soldering iron. I just tinned about 30 AWG wire, glued it to it with a small amount of solder, and then used the wire as a physical fixative and a method of transferring heat to the pins.

Side note: I'm a bit short-sighted, so I can use a relatively close focus to solve many details. I wear glasses most of the time, but when I wear contact lenses to work, because I can take off my glasses, I can't see close-up photos. Therefore, contact can become an obstacle to handling small parts. Get out of trouble

Personally, I don't use a magnifying glass when soldering (the smallest thing I usually do is 0402 on smaller pads). This is my idea. For inspection, this is great. However, the tips here are flux, flux, flux and a good light source. I personally use liquid flux from a syringe. The flux is worthless because you have to press them on the board. Soldering QFNs is not a big problem, as long as the pads extend on the side (so that you can drag them).

I actually do own some 01005 components, but I have never tried to solder them. I should take a moment to try them and see how scary they are.

The worst project I have ever worked on is my picosumo (1.25cm cube robot). The circuit board is 1x1cm and has a lot of 0402 (with additional small pads because the standard in Eagle is very large). Due to a design error, the board even has bridge wires.

By the way, Murata has actually demonstrated capacitors smaller than 01005. They obviously use the metric 0201 (link below), so don't complain that the SMD is too small. It could be worse!

There is an advantage to using through holes that I have not mentioned-if one orders a professional PCB but uses some kind of fast home production method, then fast wiring becomes a problem, because either everything is on a required layer or needs It is processed by riveting/tin wire welding or other methods. On the other hand, vias allow you to get "free vias" on each pin-you can route from each pin on either side, and aligning the sides with the via pad size is usually not required pay attention.

Wow. I do nothing.

I hate flux. The exposed flux surface absorbs moisture and becomes partly conductive. This in turn acts like a huge parasitic capacitor, acting on the traces on the PCB surface, so the less flux I use, the better. Likewise, for modern packages, these have very little spacing between the bottom of the package (such as VQFN) and the PCB surface. Capillary action will cause so much flux to flow into that small cavity.

Side note: I use some of the fluxes mentioned here for cold soldering/silver soldering/low-temperature brazing or wherever you are.

I also use 60/40 solder.

I focus on surface treatment instead of using more flux. I have pee/solution that can eliminate oxidation and pollution.

I drag the fine pitch solder, and finally always leave a solder bridge between the last two pins. Sometimes I use a braid for this, sometimes I tilt the board and apply more solder (actually flux), depending on what I think will minimize the heat to the chip.

Apart from that, I can only add one point, my light box or any spotlight helps a lot. I will try to get pictures.

VQFN 100 0.5 mm

Good light box The bell shape on the light box (5600+Kelvin) is clear.

This is QFP, not QFN (with external leads)

The bent leads in the upper and lower right corners can cause shorts, especially the top shorts.

Without a proper side view, you cannot see if the rounded corners at the heel/toe of the lead are correct. The surface finish of the joint is also not visible.

As for what will cause flux problems later...clean the circuit board after soldering and you will never see any problems.

I learned a lot from one-off, and SMD is not very practical in this regard. I guess? You can't just grab a stripping board and put things together. I think the demand for custom PCB is higher, which is not very practical.

I want to be proven wrong. Is there any good way to use disposable/prototype circuits with SMD components?

For peeling boards, try using SMD resistors and capacitors. 1206 and even 0805 components can be directly welded to the strip by hand, thus providing you with a compact layout.

Generally speaking, if you can spin your PCB quickly but hate all drilling, then SMD is great once. I may modify the PCB design and perform toner transfer etching during the time that I need to perform layout and point-to-point wiring on the ribbon board.

In other words, PCB layout and home manufacturing have a learning curve, and you need to climb first to reap the rewards. The patch panel and splitter of SMD parts allow you to complete the work with less learning.

I think the time to actually learn to make Som PCB is almost over. It may not be that difficult, it is just a matter of actually getting what I need to do.

Sorry, I have provided you with a SMD prototype board. It accepts the most common smd packages, such as SOIC, 0805/0603 RCL, smd switch, 0805/0602 LED, etc.

There are many SMD parts around me, so most of the prototypes I make are SMD. It does not take up too much space, so the wife will not complain too much :)

I think my biggest problem is purchasing parts. Some tqfp microcontrollers have been used for some time. The problem is that most of my inventory is salvaged through punched parts. The results of salvaging smd parts are much less. Most parts are unmarked, so while it is easy to figure out what (in terms of passive components) is easy, determining the value is not so easy. The resistor usually has a code, if not, my multimeter will help. Now, all inductors and capacitors without codes are the bane of my smd experience. My cheap electricity meter cannot measure these. In addition to passive devices, IVE also found it difficult to find data sheets on thin films such as diodes and transistors.

And the other thing that disappointed me was the board of directors. Many of my projects are on various prototype boards. It’s great to have various smd parts in some places, but nine out of ten, I can’t use the parts I want on the board. If possible, I will make the board myself. But all my inventory is wrong. The large and thick double-sided panels I have seem to be too overkill in terms of surface treatment, and I always struggle. One of these days, I will get some lighter single-sided inventory and use jumpers like most sane home etchers.

A few years ago, I tried SMD for the first time, but I never flinched. At that time I only had a tweezers and a soldering iron. Now, I use tweezers, toothpicks, solder paste and electric skillet.

Like most tricky things, the practice is perfect...Anyone is dead HD discs/similar discs? There are many types of sysads that we have worked with, and I used to steal controller boards from there. Desolder some ICs and put them back again. Repeat 10 times. :-). The date granted to me is from the current board with up to three ICs, TSSOP flash memory, SDRAM and less BGA to the present, but many failed HDs are also ancient. :)

"We are waiting for commentators to claim that the Thousand-pin BGA and 01005 chip components were manually soldered as expected, but these statements are useless without evidence."

How about reprocessing 0201 indicators all day? If the BOM of only one board is five numbers, then you have no choice but to learn. In the end, experience and good tools are not that difficult (stereo microscopes such as the mantis are essential).

las, there is no evidence. . Damn NDA:(

I learned to solder smd only with solder paste. It saved me hours of headache. The price of a tube is about 30 dollars, but I have had it for a year and I do a lot of welding work. Use a template with multiple templates, or use a syringe to place the spots on the mat, which are added parts. It has the right amount of flux and solder, all you have to do is hit it with a sharp soldering iron for 2 seconds.

When using conventional solder for soldering, obtain very thin and expensive materials. Also great.

Oh, I do it 0603, sometimes 0402.

This post is at the right time. By the way, the boss of the company asked me if I have any micro-welding experience (lack of confidence), because the main loss of his business is to transport the parts out and fix it through micro-welding, so I told h

Since parts can be obtained easily and cheaply through Internet mail order, it is easy to forget that buying electronic parts used to be a tedious process, and salvaged parts are usually used because they are what you own. Now, it may be a thing of the past to find the right resistor from the trash can TV to scrub the panel, but that is not all. [Ryan Flowers] Fortunately, he scored a box of old CB radios in a garage auction.

Looking for parts, he can use to make QRP amateur radio devices. In-depth study of aging electronic products is on our street!

One possibility for 27 MHz CB rigs is to convert them to the adjacent 10 m amateur band, but since these are AM rigs, this mode is rarely used by amateurs, so it is better to separate them. With the development of radio design, this is an interesting study because it reveals a completely analog design composed mainly of discrete components.

After carefully checking the photos, we found that Fairchild Semiconductor’s uA703 5-transistor IF amplifier chip is contained in a metal can, but this is as advanced as its technology. Unexpectedly, there are a large number of crystals instead of becoming a standard frequency synthesizer only a few years later.

He took away the case, switch and potentiometer, as well as the RF inductor and crystal from the PCB. Those tiny Toko inductors were once common, but now they are rare. If you like semiconductors in this era

, Where uA703

.

This is not nonsense at all, I have been doing it for 25 years... and still working hard!

Similarly, although it has been 22 years. I am 28 years old.

There are still boxes and boxes full of PCBs: old test equipment, medical equipment, PPE (gas detector), a bucket (Arm7 MCU) filled with a temperature recorder. A little bit of each :)

Recently, I bought some LM350 adjustable voltage regulators online. You used to buy them for about US$3.00, but I was shocked to find that they now cost about US$50.00 from Mouser, Jameco, etc.! WTF happened! Obviously, they must be in short supply and may not be manufactured anymore, so the price is too high!

Almost any part in the TO3 package you want is overpriced. They need too much work to put it in metal packaging.

Thanks for the information Roger! I don't know that fact. When I found out that the cheap, $2.00 LM350K TO3 is now on sale for $50.00, I damnably dropped the chair! I canned the bombed LM350K into cans and replaced them with TO-220 boxed LM317, because I don’t need much current because it is part of my self-made adjustable DC power supply, which I used for electroplating Built of silver. It can work perfectly with cheap and large quantity of LM317. Take care!

I have LM350 tube in TO220. I want to know if I can Ebay?

I suggest putting them on Ebay, you may be surprised by their supply!

Oh, wait, to220 is 2 dollars, and TO3 is 60 dollars. Get a good heat sink...

Yes, of course, I need TO3 package of LM350K. Because I don't need high current, I only use LM317 to solve it. I built an adjustable DC power supply for silver plating. It is flawless! I originally used LM350K to build it because that was what I had at the time, but when it became trivial, I found that I could replace it just by ordering another one. At that time I found that the price soared to $50.00! I found LM317 in the parts storage area, and instead, everything is fine and it works great! Take care brother!

LM350 is an ancient part. Use smaller regulators to drive large MOSFETs. You can now find that they have an on-resistance of 1 milliohm, which is approximately equal to the PCB trace.

Chances are, if you are using a large LM350, you don't have to worry about I*R falling.

For MOSFETs, what you are looking for is not the lowest Ron, but the Ron with the highest SOA rating. Low Ron devices are designed for direct on/off switching and do not need to have a large die to handle the heat required by linear circuits.

Calm children will use a switch to handle most of the voltage drop, and only use the LDO to maintain the final voltage of about 1V, so put the power supply in a much more usable TO220 or eqv package for control.

The LM350 crowd will not get caught up in complicated circuits, nor will they understand better parts. They will be better by sharing a bunch of old LM317 currents in TO220 or Boost current with external power transistors.

Thank you for providing tips on using LM317 and MOSFET! I am grateful! Yes, you can definitely choose other methods from the price of LM350K of $50.00! From this price, I suspect they are outdated. Thanks again!

Also here, I live in a very remote place and it is difficult to get parts. I have to wait, I don’t like waiting for 4-5 days each time. In addition, I like to save money. Therefore, when I was very young I started to disassemble electronic products (although not long ago), and then clean the parts, and sometimes I get something useful/cool. However, I have to buy some things. Can't I just find z80 and some EEPROM in the old microwave oven now?

This is the only way that I or anyone I know can afford electronics. When you can order soldering equipment specifically designed to remove items from the board, and often treat the board as a dispensable thing, there is almost no crash. Sometimes, if it has a particularly useful function, we will even put in more effort to save the whole or part of the circuit board. I have an LED controller, from a bad TV I have used to random LED things, this is a great simple controller, suitable for all kinds of weird configurations.

I need to do this because I don’t have money, but it helps or reflects my electronic knowledge.

The first few projects I tried failed. I copied the parts list and went to the store, unable to "buy it cheaply". They did not work.

I suspect that many of the reasons are my lack of soldering skills, but I know so little that I don’t know whether the pin arrangement is the same as that of the product, or whether the general-purpose transistor they sold to me is suitable.

The first thing that works is the code practice oscillator, the tge leads are just twisted together. But the parts came from extra boards I bought cheaply, and I cut the boards to remove the parts. Then there is a crystal oscillator.

The difference is that at that time I knew enough about alternatives, and my fear of "making mistakes" was reduced, so I could invest in it.

After that, I was always at a loss, although sometimes I had to buy some parts because I couldn't find them. I know that a few years later, other children in school became interested in this, and I told them to specify 1/2 watt resistors because they are most commonly used. Another person spent a lot of money on the HEP replacement series of operational amplifiers. When I pointed out the cheaper alternatives, he did say "I don't want to make mistakes."

I almost always look at the schematic and think about which parts I can replace or how to change it to fit my parts. It comes from understanding.

In the 70s, for me, most of them were old TVs, some of which were equipped with valves, although my best teenagers found were early varactors (obviously in later models). I still remember the stench of phenolic paper PCB when heated.

Oh yes, it's so memorable!

My mother hates that smell

My father used a 75W Weller gun model for desoldering to heat. This is a method my father used to make vacuum tube launchers in the 1950s. It is a method to release the phenolic aroma. If the bugs are spared, another method It is to pass the power of 4-5W through 1 / before understanding the power consumption, use the power of 2W. good time!

What is the smell of the old flux core? When I was repairing things from the 70s, since I was a kid playing with electronics, I immediately felt back in time. It is not leaded solder, because I also used it today (lead-free solder sucks), it is an old flux core, probably rosin.

My method is to use a Bernz-O-Matic blow gun and use pliers to pull out the components. This is too smelly to be done in the house, so it is mainly for outdoor summer activities. If there are precision components, of course I will use a soldering iron. My first good desktop tool is the Weller WCTPN soldering station, which works many times better than the Radio Shack pencil soldering iron. In addition, bite-sized and rolled cores are also useful.

The early 1970s was the heyday of eroding old electronic products. Many things are made of common parts, which are easily found in Signetics, Fairchild or National manuals. When I was in high school, I used to buy stack boards from Data General, Burroughs, Mohawk Data Sciences, etc. for free on Dayton Hamvention. I can still pull many parts from those boards in the parts cabinet, although I might throw away the DTL IC at this time.

Considering all application-specific and surface-mount parts, it is becoming more and more difficult to find parts that are easy to produce, although I recently found a Chinese iPod FM modulator at a discount store for $1. The parts are cheap. Hole frequency synthesizer chip that can be reused,

When I was a kid, I could purchase all kinds of cool surplus items through mail order, such as PCBs taken from obsolete computers. These parts I have used before, and also used in obsolete military aircraft and complete military radios. The brand new box spare parts.

Even in the late 1960s, there was still a large military surplus from the Second World War and the Korean War, perhaps due to the need for new weapons during the Vietnam War, which led to an oversupply of military stocks.

For example, I bought a brand new boxed compressed air-driven gyroscope from a World War II bomber (although I am not sure which one, but I think it is a B-17 bomber), it has almost none. It is a kind of precision mechanical jewelry.

This is the armaments I bought. I read that they went bankrupt in 1988:

Meshna Surplus Specials: "Our 84-page catalog is crowded with exotic, unusual electronic and optical equipment purchased from the government and other sources."

sad:

Remaining death

December 7, 2015

Satellite electronics on Vancouver's main streets in the 1980s

Oscilloscope and oscilloscope repair, chart recorder with excellent galvanometer for laser show.

At RP electronics, I got a 20,000 volt high-precision power supply. Something amazing. It can be set to 0.00v 20 20,000.99v! It has a huge vacuum tube rectifier. For my Plasma Scientific 2mw He Ne laser, this is too violent. When I have to slide from 15,000 to 2000, you should have seen sparks because the tube needs to trigger a spike, and the PS is not designed for this!

Both locations have a large number of wire-wound circuits from scrapped rack-mounted computer systems. I have never bought new winding supplies. I am actually engaged in the business of custom circuits. This does not require me to spend any money to build, except that the chips and components and a circuit board full of 12 inches x 6 inches are 2 dollars each!

good time.

Oh yeah. Certain other resins etc. seem to add to the familiar smell of analog electronic products in the 70s and early 80s. I still remember it myself.

I will reuse and rewind damaged ATX PSU and other SMPS transformers from time to time. I even make "transformer soup" to unlock the core. I reused some of the magnet wires in the large iron core PFC chokes included in the PSU...

Sometimes I reuse resistors and capacitors, and when I don’t have stock, I save all transistors, ICs, switches, many connectors, and all other valuable things...

I also removed the magnetism of the ATX PSU.

Lol @"transformer soup"... can I get that recipe?

Yes, you can!

You can start with a few transformers, re-soldering them, or use the mature transformers from the parts box. Tear off the tape holding the two core halves and use a sharp thin knife to cut or remove any visible resin holding it to the bobbin. Place the transformers in a small pot and pour enough water to cover them. Transformers should stand on their laps. Bring the pot to a boil, then simmer for 5-15 minutes. Use pliers or other tools to pick a transformer, place it on a dry cloth, and then pass half of the core through it. Try to separate them from the bobbin first, and then pull them apart. Gentle but firm, because it easily breaks the ferrite. If you can't separate them yet, put the transformer back in the pot and pick another one. If you remove half but the other one will not loosen, put the transformer back for a few minutes, then take it out, grasp the bobbin, and then use narrow pliers or other tools to pass the core through the center hole of the bobbin.

Transformer soup does not require seasoning. Service cold...

"Not suitable for microwave cooking"?

This was common in my university in the early nineties. They have donated pcb racks. We often clean the parts of the project.

I don't remember ever seeing the RS catalog. If we have to buy parts from Maplin or RadioShack, there will be no money, so less beer money...

I started to do this around 1959. Neighbors will give me their shabby TV and radio. By 1960, a neighbor paid me to repair his TV when I was 12 years old.

New parts are cheaper on many levels. To find the parts, you have to spend time looking for the right PCB, have time to get the parts from the circuit board, pray that the heat will not damage it, and ultimately you are not even sure whether the part is qualified or there are some potential failures after several years of aging . Original use.

Of course, for rare parts or rare/expensive parts, this makes sense, but otherwise it will waste time and you can use it better.

Not necessarily true. You can learn a lot by playing with old PCBs. In addition, not everyone can order components from China, so removal is their only option. I personally like to remove the components from the old trash. This is therapeutic and there is always some value in reusing/recycling things that would otherwise be discarded. It is not always necessary to absolutely optimize everything. Sometimes the game itself has value. But I want to treat everyone...

Large-scale disassembly and assembly with a spray gun is very fast, which may cause some stubborn parts to be injured or killed, and the grounding marks on the pins are obvious. I will sort and inspect the parts during disassembly, and I agree that the process of digging a box of wooden boards to find specific parts during the project is time-consuming and frustrating. A certain degree of random disassembly may also lead to potential failures, and such failures will not be immediately apparent. If there are important things, I will use new parts.

I collected old parts from TV and radio. They come in handy... part of it is sympathetic repair of old test equipment and professional music equipment (many 350v, 450v capacitors, ECC83 valves, high-power resistors, etc.), while the other part is dekatron and nixies. I have never been to amateur radio broadcasting-my head turned to audio and music equipment at a very young age, but I collected a lot from one person and only recently passed it. Now, I have multi-blade tuning caps, plug-in crystals, a large number of valves and power transistors, diodes, moving coil meters, coils, N-type connectors... I realize that one thing we missed with modern electronic technology is color , And various finishes, shapes and sizes. I have large resistive encoders, large polyester and polycarbonate capacitors, large bright electrolytic capacitors, TO3 power transistors, and highly polished housings (please show these transistors!). With such resources, to say the least, it becomes easier to find the right parts to repair an old electronic valve guitar amplifier.

Hi Nick! I have been working as an amateur radio operator for 43 years and I like to build my own equipment, especially RF power amplifiers. It sounds like your inherited library may contain some larger, transmitting or even smaller "fine-tuning" models. Air variable capacitor. I would love to know what you have, transmission tubes, variable air capacitors, roller inductors, etc.! Thank you very much for getting in touch with you! Since I don't have enough budget to buy new components, I have been struggling throughout my life with the radio, so I redistributed all my energy to me. Thank you! Best wishes!

Yes, addiction! When I was in my twenties, my Gran provided me with a working Philips AM/FM radio with six short-wave bands, and I couldn't help but disassemble its air gap tuning capacitor. Still regretted decades later.

We have all done stupid things, for example, when we were young and unwise, I also felt sorry. Lol!

Minivac 601, bc, you know, just sitting on that Bakelite panel like that, these DPDT relays are not accessible enough. FFS what am I thinking.

We all did it. Many historic radios died under my ten-year-old hand.

I learned something from it, which made me who I am now.

For those who are interested in electronic products, removing garbage electronic products is a useful effort. Worked in the field of industrial electronics for many years.

First of all, simply stripping off the therapeutic value of electronic components cannot be regarded as a way of relaxation. Disassembling the old electronic equipment and then unsoldering it from the PCB can maintain manual skills and require almost no effort. Then, some equipment or other equipment aroused your interest, and you searched on the Internet and found its data sheet, so you carefully extract it for future use. In strange situations, the entire project was found to be too interesting or potentially useful to be broken down into parts immediately, so it tried to repair it. Most of my home test equipment is purchased this way.

^^^Yes, this ^^^

Space forces me to stop grabbing roadside things like before, but disassembling some things and letting certain parts or subassemblies arouse my interest is still somewhat therapeutic and practical. I now have a lot of parts, enough to handle many repairs and projects, and I have almost everything on hand.

I have no rework skills or eyeballs to process today's surface mount products, and I do like the availability and low prices of all SBCs and other available modules today, so electronic removal may be an endangered art.

The thing to consider is that bed bugs like warm dark places. A roadside TV might be equipped with a six-legged traveler. Ah! Please check carefully before dragging it inside. Smoker-owned televisions emit unpleasant brown tobacco smoke residues on everything, especially the most unpopular CRT high-voltage lead. I have repaired a few TVs for my family and friends who smoke. It's hard to make smoker's residue smell. It's hard.

The problem with newly purchased components is their quality! All the components are from China, this is where we live, and most of the components are of very poor quality! The output transistor is the biggest problem! Totally underestimated, made in China! Therefore, I only use the original old quality components!

On Hackerspace, we did some heat gun tests on the old motherboard. Just shake the motherboard and the components will fall.

Oh, paint remover hot air gun == portable instant reflow device? Uh uh uh...

Make sure to get a heater with 2 heating settings (high and low). The lowest temperature will be around 250°C, you can use it carefully to reflow BGA etc. However, the more precise and controlled mechanical pencil is now only twice as expensive as the cheaper "paint stripper" heat gun.

In the first wave of lead-free soldering issues for laptop GPUs and chipsets, I used one of them for some operations. I actually have a hand-held drill that can insert the heat gun nicely into it. So I had it, and then I made a tin foil protective cover with a hole for the chip to be processed, and basically sat there for 10 minutes, and then waved around the IR thermometer like I knew what I was doing (Ok, I’m checking if the chip temperature is higher than 220C, and it’s not much higher than this.) The method is as effective as many other methods, giving you months of repair time, but only reassembly can really improve This method.

One of the most interesting things I learned a few years ago was to use a hot air gun to desolder parts. My recent attempts have left me with 5 (another messy) 62-pin edge card slots, and many more on the board. It does require some practice, so before trying the garbage game, please practice garbage first. Many times, these components will not fall out completely without any prying, but when it happens, it is quite satisfactory.

This is how to teach me how to solder by learning desoldering. By the time I started elsewhere, I was already very good at it. Oh, let's say this annoys people when I am outside school.

Before the "wheeled trash can," rubbish was scattered and piled up on the streets or placed in black bags. When I was a child, I used to ride a bicycle nearby on garbage collection days, then drag old TV sets and valve radios to my home, then disassemble and store them. I didn’t have the knowledge to use components at the time, but this might be how I was interested in electronics

I really thought this would be an article about miniaturization.

I have been doing less and less cleaning work, because these parts are getting smaller and smaller, and their use in hand-etched designs is also less and less, not to mention from more analog input solutions to digital switches. Mainly converted.

Even with all the appropriate tools, the time required to recover parts using SMD components and my personal conversion scrap rate are significantly higher than through-hole components. So yes, ordering a new product is more valuable than disposing of an old 0805 resistor, and when I reuse it, these spacers will fall off.

I'm used to soldering SOT-23 transistors (hint: rotate them 45 degrees when soldering to a 0.1 inch performance circuit board), but the most difficult part is determining the damn thing. Usually there are only 2 or 3 letters, some of which are dual diodes. However, if you are lucky, they will be in the list you can find.

I used to work in a place with several pick-and-place machines, and I think I did something right for a person, because when he vacuumed once every few months, he would leave random parts bags on my desk. There is nothing more crazy than trying to classify various components. I call the smallest particle "coarse sand", which is only slightly larger than the coarse sand. This is another form of removal, but it is still interesting. I sorted out a few dime SOT-23 transistors. I tried to make a project with some people. Real life prevents me from completing the work, but I do understand that I can solder SOT-23 by hand.

In the late 1970s, in order to get rid of cheap surplus boards for ICs, I found it easier to use propane torches. In this way, the parts can be removed within a few seconds, thereby minimizing the heat of the chip, but it can well damage the PCB. If they look useful, I still free them from the exhaust gas. High quality (low ESR) caps are expensive. Also, if a piece of equipment has a nice smooth action toggle switch, then I can’t throw it away! If it’s an iPhone, I just run the coaster app on it and put it on the coffee table.

I collected all kinds of old mobile phones from that thrift store. (After more than a month of lock-in, I am really happy.) Next week, I will introduce them to see if they can be used as a camera for making youtube videos to record projects. Basically set them to a fixed angle, start rotating them, and then copy the video and edit it when finished. I hope at least one or two of them are useful.

In Los Angeles, we are lucky to have several "electronic surplus" sockets, which are already filled with components that have been separated. I admit that this eliminates the trouble of destroying discarded or idle "gadgets". If this epidemic disappears, TRW Electronics/Ham Radio Exchange Conference will resume.

The surplus shrank severely elsewhere. Cali may be its last place to survive in North America.

I am currently mourning the exchange meeting I did not go to this weekend.

Indeed, the surplus is disappearing. Not long ago, a local aircraft manufacturer ran a "surplus" building, and it was a pleasure to select specialized tools and exotic materials with ease. Who knows, it might be used in one day. For now, the best local (Los Angeles County) is Cal Aero Supply at 13840 Paramount Blvd, Paramount, California. (Google it) They sell tools in pounds sterling. (Drills, taps, etc.) Screws, bolts, nuts, in pounds, yes, some stocks are typical "port freight" items, but hovering in the rear for real enjoyment.

As for the surplus of electronic equipment, please go north to the valley. All Electronics, 14928 Oxnard St

Van Nuys, California 91411

Yes from

several times. I don't think they will put anything less than 20 items on the website, or list really obscure things, so the actual location might be more interesting.

Yes, it must be visited. It is hard to believe the available inventory levels.

5 years ago, (I spent my whole life in a retail store), I forced my grandson to visit all the surplus stores in Los Angeles and Orange County. It took a whole day, but he was surprised by the appearance of "Stuff".

He used this information to support his college courses, where he was building "cube satellites" and 3D printed rocket engines, and now he has dropped out of school and repaired computers on cruise ships and submarines. In terms of swaps, TRW is the grandfather of everyone. But, like everything, it is slowing down. Now it is waiting for the virus to stop. (

) The "cool" product I bought last time was the World War II high-speed 35mm high-speed gun camera in the original box. (Shhh, don't tell my wife) I doubt I will try to make it into a lamp or something. Maybe the background object of my video podcast. Last year TRW offered two missile gyroscopes for sale, but even though they were super cool, I passed them.

God, save any air variable caps you encounter! I think they are not difficult to make, and most people will not be useful to them, but I don't think they make them the same as before!

High-quality bottle caps are actually still available, but even Chinese caps are easily sold for $10-15-so saving them is worth it.

But up to now, the equipment with variable air caps has also begun to have a long history.

I thought the article cited by tye looks very fictitious. He found a set of circuit breakers, but was excited about common parts. This is something I noticed elsewhere, anyone can post it, but it does not mean the best information.

I have posted a long reply there, suggesting something better that can be learned, but I also suggest that for some esoteric parts, it is best to keep them intact, because the circuit board will provide the data of these parts and how to use them they. In addition, sometimes when using electronic parts, you may need the original circuit block, so it is best to also cut off this area of ​​the circuit board (if it is not a separate module).

This is a good comment.

Without the rest of the circuit, it will be difficult to separate the oscillator coil from the RF tuning coil and everything else.

I once took apart a radio and did not restore it, but carefully marked the names of all the different coils in the circuit. Therefore, I have [radio model, component name] IF coil 452KHz attached to the jar.

Of course, you can put the coil in the oscillator circuit and see what its span is, but this is a lot of extra work. Due to the presence of radio frequency shields, it is difficult to check them with a micrometer.

I haven't really had a "harvest" meeting in a while. When I was a kid, AM radio seemed very rich, so my first project had many points. Then in the millennium or so, I had a little understanding of VCR, the output and variety looked good, and in the end it did not deal with too much awkward garbage like CRT. Then we encountered the disaster of capacitors. I used a large number of motherboards as organ donors for other motherboards. But, last time, I tend to choose them according to your needs.

However, a few times, I had a "part" thing, and then I found it interesting in itself. There is some kind of S-100 board. Galaga arcade board. I haven't found a motherboard with 8088, please continue to try if you want to peel it off or try to run it somehow.

For me, the motherboard is an important source of surface moutn MOSFETs, some are 12amp or higher, usually 3 to 5

In the 1990s, I bought a small hanging basket with Pcop-11 board (single width, with two edge connectors) in a thrift store. I think one of them is a UART board, but there is nothing more special than a CPU or memory board, otherwise I might care more.

In the early 1990s, when I was a teenager, I encountered an adventure story. My grandfather’s microwave oven is broken-a micro switch somewhere is malfunctioning. It sat in our basement for a while. A few years later, a colleague of my father brought a broken Amiga 500 and several Epyx 500XJ joysticks. He started looking for parts, then kept a low profile, and found that the 500XJ used the same micro switch as the microwave. I took that microwave oven to college... I remember telling my roommate this story. One of them said: "This shift must make 1988 "Switch Journal" an editor's choice."

I changed the door switch 3 times on the old (now retired) microwave oven.

Alternatives come from various donors. The other switches of the door did not malfunction.

I do this for work (automotive electrician), such as repairing electronic organs, etc., sometimes driving chips/FETs or anything that is difficult to purchase with reasonable quality. Therefore, I try to keep stocks of some good donors of common boards. Fortunately, most manufacturers usually either dice the internal parts of their ECUs or throw the dice on potentially junk parts from China. . I am sure that the repair locations of mobile phones/laptops/game consoles are the same, there are many proprietary things.

All the things I used to do when I was a kid (old radio, TV, etc.) were caused by getting parts, because I can’t afford new parts for the project, I have to say that surface mount things are easier to rebuild once I get the know-how use.

About ten years ago, I reinstalled the ECU on Suzuki.

*Clear...

I stopped doing this a few years ago and spent hours rooting in useless outdated consumer trash to find a 7-cent transistor,

It's the same for me. Of course, if you happen to need some rare or hard-to-find components, and happen to need these scraps, but apart from "meh", my position is the same.

My problem is to know when not to salvage what, let it go. "I will use it someday" quickly became "I must get rid of all this nonsense".

My neighbor who grew up had a "garbage day" every year. My father went shopping with me. The amazing things that people throw out only need some adjustments here or there, otherwise we peeled it off and used it for test tubes, spent a few hours on the bench for test tubes, and thus inherited the humidor, except for me Indeed throw away all 1B3. I bought my first recording device in this way before I was in the second grade. It was a well-functioning Webster recorder with extra spools. The old garrard and BSR turntables were once a complete wooden stereo speaker, and everything is still inside. Speaker Jason, this is interesting.

I cannot tell you how many items have been thrown away because of the thermal fuse that I replaced and sold to make a profit. At the age of 12, my mother bought me a set of Encyclopedia of Popular Mechanics. Since then, all my knowledge of electromechanics has been popularized. I got a degree in mechanical engineering, but I have always been rooted in electronics. I should have been a double major. Today I am still looking for food, and my wife thinks I am addicted. I only accept useful things. true!

Everyone should have 3 sets, namely 50s version, 60s version and 70s version. Skip the 80s (eventually?), this was a problem with magazines at the time, it was a "how do we spend money" publication, not how to do things. There are also popular scientific and practical handymen worth mentioning.

I still have some boxes, they were cleaned in the 50s and 60s. Does anyone need a selenium rectifier?

Most things are no longer worthy of scrap, but every month I will dispose of the rubbish at our local garbage collection office. There must be something worth scrapping here. There, I opened up the entire through-hole life cycle monitor in the 90s (a lot of electro-pneumatic parts, expensive instrument lights, to3 volt reference voltage, etc.), several desktop power supplies, and a hp200a Audio oscillators, and many other things that can be fixed or equipped with high-end mysterious parts.

Well, I believe that we are at a time when parts one by one disappear from our eyes due to miniaturization. PCB space is left to store more and more dedicated ICs. These ICs are more difficult to inspect and reuse. It is difficult to find a home in another device.

Looking to the future, I believe there is "thing" only in the nonsense of the entity level. From a weird point of view, today's through hole is a wooden board. In this direction, the new trend of circularity has some very interesting concepts. With a lot of engineering work and social interest, these concepts can lead to more standardized, separable, repairable and reusable equipment. But the reality on the ground seems to be different.

There are "11m" CBs with SSB in the United States...Despite the common noise in this frequency band, I even made an incredible 1,000-mile contact with a back during the solar cycle in the 90s. Changing the IF of one of these units is not much different from the more common-mode CB-at least as far as the older model is concerned. Modern units use chip-based oscillators, which are more difficult to modify in most cases. The real problem is that in the past few decades, the 10m band of DX has died out. This is due to long-term sunless conditions, which are extremely active during this period.

Haha nope. not dead. Whenever I need a switch or similar thing like a prototype or a singular project that doesn't require ten things, I often use a hoarded parts warehouse.

I cleaned an ISA debug board from an old computer. It has 5 TIL311 and some other goodies. I also found 33 am27c4096 EPROMs during dumpsterdiving.

Like a treasure hunt

After taking it out of the box, I have started storing the PCB. They take up less space and it is easier to identify the parts if you have the entire circuit board.

I did shoot many parts on some old telecommunications boards with a propane torch by tapping the end of the board hard to loosen the parts. It works, but it's not as good as I wanted. For this, I do need to make bumpers to clamp on the board.

DIP is the challenge of effective removal. I am still looking for a better way. I am very disappointed with the desoldering gun. The remaining solder is enough to keep the material in place.

Yes, part of my comment on the original site was to keep the board intact.

On the other hand, once I started to carry some tools to strip the e-waste, I saw it waiting for a garbage truck. It is easier to grab a power transformer or variable capacitor than to drag the whole thing home. Or turn on the computer to get memory, hard drives or exotic peripheral boards.

Sadly, I see less and less e-waste in the dump or garage. I think this will be waste collection. As someone once suggested, this collection will ensure that people buy new products.

Before I waste things (VCR, DVD, etc.), I take them apart. Then, I only need to pay a higher return fee for the circuit board itself and a lower rate for the rest of the circuit boards. They did not charge me for direct entry into the metal bin.

I have always wanted to make a tool for DIP. I can see something like two miniature claw hammers, used for the curved part of the claw hammers, connecting those claw hammers to two arms and a handle, so when you push it, they roll together and pull up. Or just a better chip puller. I used the ISA slot punching mechanism to become a spring clamp type, which can take out some RAM chips at a time, but its size is just right, so it is not very useful for anything else. Like some SOJs, it won't help if the damn thing is abused on the board.

However, it is best to use a suction cup to fix it end by pin. It is usually best to use the tip of the soldering iron from the side and align the suction cup exactly to the top of the pin before triggering. Then they will usually become very clean. If not, row down and "flat" each with iron, which will break the connection. If your hole is too tight with large rivets, it seems too narrow to suck in... Then sometimes the only way is to pull the chip upwards about a millimeter at a time until it moves the chip upwards. Come out immediately. Heat, lift one side, heat the other side, lift, repeat. When one of my techniques is worn with a 30W iron soldering iron, I cut it off, then cut it open, and cut a one-inch-wide triangular copper sheet into it, then drilled a small hole, and then fixed it with a small bolt it. Now, it is a pin heater/slicer/bulldozer for some awkward things. Either heat a row of pins at a time, lift one side of the SOJ at a time, or push away some small Rs and Cs.

The quick chip test has helped me remove the bad IC several times, but please clean the circuit board thoroughly before trying to install a replacement product.

The county’s state parks have 1920s farms, houses, and outbuildings. We provide piano players, which are typical digital music players today. My boss restored the finish of the battery radio and grill cloth in the front hall. It lacks knobs, molded Moderne style. The monkey ward has been around for a while. I looked at a box of old radio and TV knobs with a preserved treasure in it that matched the missing knob. Once on the broadcast, okay! Back to Indiana again.

Don't ignore the possibility of using existing knobs to make silicone or Bondo molds and casting epoxy replicas for missing knobs.

As seen on Hackaday(TM) servers a few years ago.

My favorite is the Marantz tube power amplifier front panel I found on the side of the road-nothing but a thick aluminum front panel.

I built a modular (22 panels) synthesizer with most of the cleaned parts. I have to buy some potentiometers, jacks and switches, and some more specialized ICs that I can't find in radios, etc.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, there was a radio/television repair shop about half a mile from my home. They have a shed where they throw away equipment that the customer does not want to repair or equipment that they have repaired but the customer does not pick up. Several times a year, they will let our children fill the carriage with what we want. What happiness do we have! I remember that Zenith Transoceanic I found at the time was still working. I tasted that shortwave radio for the first time. Later, I worked at Zenith as a TV engineering technology for a period of time.

Finding the Zenith Transoceanic SW suit is very cool! I have been a licensed amateur radio operator for 43 years and I have been working since I was 6 years old, listening to shortwave radio in the heyday! I like this hobby and built my own equipment. It is very educational at all levels, including geography and world culture!

interesting. Last year I received a message from a child who pulled a 22-year-old agricultural control box from the trash can. At that time I put the email address on the S/S layer. At that time, my (competent) partner insisted on clearing the IC ID. Therefore, the child wants to know the content on the PCB and the purpose of the box. And his roommate wanted a part of it. After replacing the lid and transistor, he made the box work normally.

We have been talking for a while, and we have recruited another person from the dark side. When he returns to school, he will switch to EE major. Everyone cheered Lord Vader.

Or as they said recently.

B ^)

I use a bunch of stereo speakers from the 70s and 80s. Usually used as an endless supply of replacement covers. Suitable for newer Jankier electronic products.

The board must be the correct year.

Too early: They have old useless DIP parts on double-sided PCBs. It is difficult to remove and not worth the effort. I have 20 tubes of various unused parts and trash cans. I haven't touched it in the past 20 years, and it feels like there is no tomorrow. Since there are only a few stitches, the simulant is easier to delete.

Just right: SMT parts are easy to desolder with hot air tools. The boards are still made of soft candy, so they can still be used.

It's too late: a large SoC with only one function. They are not useful for anything other than design purposes. BGA or other difficult-to-use packages that require multilayer boards. Mainly choose the passive.

Goldilocks Dilemma

My problem is that you want to kill the original work, and it is difficult for me to do so. A long time ago, I had a bunch of Unix machines that could hold 300 MB SCSI drives, the memory of which could be modified to fit a PC, and each machine was 20 megabytes. I sell them at a price lower than the value of the drive, just because I cannot take them apart by myself. They still work. I do have a few boxes of rubbish boards. Although these items are indeed made of hoses, I still make scarves. I find that few surface mount parts are much more difficult.

Write here. This used to be a problem for me, but I overcame it. I woke up one day and said, "This thing gathers dust and is of no use to anyone, or I can take it apart, and at least I am very happy to take it apart." "But it's retro!" Someone said. Yes, there are? Useless is useless, no matter how old it is. The 23-channel CB is neat, but as useless as the CB. When was the last time someone had fun with one of these radios? A long, long time. I have had more fun from it than anyone has imagined in the past 25 years. Now *that* is valuable, and make them valuable.

In fact, this reminds me of some things that came to my mind when thinking about this topic the other day:

For historians and archaeologists, sentimentality makes sense. I am neither

what are you saying? That is our daily bread in Africa. I have been doing it for 35 years. Professor of physics.

Old industrial gears = a source of expensive high-value parts, otherwise expensive or not available at all!

Wow! Check out all these replies. And I thought I was the only one who likes to tear garbage into pieces. I have nothing to add. It's nice to see other people evolve like me.

This is the way of the past, and it will be the way of the future. Resources are limited, and learning by connecting different source components is the best form of learning. And save money...

A few weeks ago, I assembled an electric guitar amplifier. The pickup is a solenoid. Random stereo system speakers. Printer power supply. Switch to vintage wine from the 1950s, made in the US :) The jars are newer. Knob on old test equipment. The audio transformer is actually a 120/24 V power transformer... I used a new transistor, but this is optional. There are hundreds of old and new things around me.

The end is almost here! Prepare... :)

I have some boxes with old through-hole assembly boards instead of removing all parts. Now, I have a deal with a local recycling station: I can take any mechanical/electrical equipment-they return some repaired equipment (free of charge), and I have an unlimited supply of parts. 20 LCD TVs must have been collected by now. Best find: Almost brand new washing machine, showing error code. The error is: clean the filter. And coffee machine with error. Use vinegar and preservatives for a few cycles!

The good things that fools throw away are amazing! I have never bought a new TV, but over the years, I have collected many great TVs from the garbage dump on the roadside and repaired them at very little cost. The latest TV I'm currently using with great results is a 50-inch LED TV with an excellent thin screen! I don't even need to fix it! The reason that guy threw it out was because the rhythmic "ticking" sound from the center speaker was almost below the human hearing level! I don’t even have to worry about installing it correctly, just disconnect the speakers! The left and right stereo speakers are working properly, enough to meet my requirements! Lol!

* scavEnging!

Are you sure we are not writing sc-Avenging?

The best cleaning unit I just found is a 512 Canon printer. The sum of the parts I cleaned greatly exceeded the price of this old printer. 30 micro switches, 6 small stepper motors, 150 small screws, a small matching kit of 22 springs, 26 plastic gears with different transmission ratios, many ribbon wires and connectors and everything I can recover from the board Electronic parts. And I can send all plastic parts to a recycling center instead of landfill. These are part of the honey scavenger hole. Never give up all these parts. The main finding...

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For most of us, electronic technology takes the form of solid-state devices. Transistors, integrated circuits, microcontrollers. However, in the first sixty years or so of the current field, these devices have either not been invented or are in the early stages of development, so that they are not cost-effective or widely used. Instead, a very different type of electronic component dominates the vacuum tube.

The electrical properties of a group of electrodes in a vacuum glass enclosure depend on the modulation of the electron flow through them. Until the 1960s, these electrodes were ubiquitous in consumer electronics and even popular in some mass market applications. The mid-1970s. As cheaper, more general-purpose semiconductors replaced them, they faded from the electronic parts catalog, and the industry that once produced them in such quantities disappeared in favor of factories that produced new devices. Consumer products no longer contain these products, and an entire generation of engineers has never worked with them. If you made a tube amplifier in the early 1990s, it would be a big anomaly.

As the composition of our consumer electronics products becomes more and more digital, there is growing interest in analog devices, or at least devices with obvious analog components. In particular, the audio world has begun to chase the elusive "tube sound", whether it's a deliberately overdriven amplifier for guitarists or a perfect amplifier for audiophiles.

High-end high-fidelity stores are full of tube-based devices, and electronic enthusiasts can also use a large number of tube amplifier kits. Various brands of electronic tubes can be purchased at dizzying prices, which is a pleasant surprise for a technology that may be thought to have disappeared 40 years ago. However, this does raise an interesting question. There are so many steel pipe brands on the market, where are they manufactured, and how have their manufacturers survived for so long? The answer is relatively simple, but in other respects it is a maze of complexity.

Although the vacuum tubes of decades ago may have disappeared from ordinary electronic products, it is worth pointing out that many old names in the vacuum tube industry did not stop manufacturing vacuum tubes, but just stopped manufacturing vacuum tubes that you may be familiar with. In industrial applications, vacuum equipment is still closely related to us, although in many cases, their semiconductor devices will be tightly broken.

For example, high-power RF amplifiers for UHF and higher frequencies still use vacuum tubes because they

Or a slightly faster exotic fare, such as klystron. Similarly, there are still dedicated RF applications still in use

, And ultra-high power industrial equipment that uses vacuum and gas-filled tubes for control or rectification.

But who is making "ordinary" tubes-smaller glass enveloped tubes, small triodes and pentodes? We recognize some past names, such as

Either

, Others are modern brands, such as

Or mudguard

Brand, others are obviously Russian or Chinese names, for example

,

,

", or

. Obviously, there are few test tube factories left in the world as many logos printed on imported test tube glass, so what is going on?

The answer is that by 2020, the consumer electronic tube business will no longer be a commodity parts market, it will be the lifeblood of one million TV sets and radios, but a boutique serving niche markets. Looking at the available tubes, it is clear that if you are looking for the humble 1050s small signal RF tube, you will be unfortunate. These are mainly audio amplifier components, dual triodes, output pentodes, and even occasional power rectifiers, and they are expensive and may surprise original buyers.

For example, the Mullard brand ECC83 (12AX7) general purpose small-signal dual triode made by Electric

(£35.09) in 2020, while

We found the same part number that advertises 8 shillings and thrift, that is, the price of this part number is £0.41 ($0.51) in British currency after decimal digitization. use

Today's price is about £9.96 (approximately US$12.27), so Hyundai's reissue price is more than three times the original price in its heyday. Obviously, this is a business with a large price increase, and the rest of the world's steel pipe mills are making money.

Upon further investigation, we found that there is no such type of pipe manufacturing in America and Western Europe. It survived the decline of Russia, China, and the former communist countries of Eastern Europe in the 1970s. With the decline of Soviet communism and the growth of the Chinese economy in the 1990s, it emerged from the shadows and provided products for the audio market. These do include factories that have been engaged in the pipeline industry for a long time, and their products have decades of reliable service experience.

Therefore, if the brand name of the straw you buy today is Western, it will be produced in the same Eastern factory as something with an obvious communist tradition, so given that the same can be obtained from the same source under those cheaper brands Part numbers, so it’s hard not to doubt whether they are actually the exact same tube, but the price is too high.

In the slovak republic

, This is a long-established electron tube manufacturer that used to be

Range of vacuum devices. They are not allowed to put their own electronic tube trademarks on their websites, but they are considered to be the source of these Telefunken brand parts. Move east to Russia and then we find

In St. Petersburg, consumer electronic tubes corresponding to industrial and high-power RF vacuum equipment are only a small part of its product range on its website. They used to be the manufacturer of the Svetlana series of test tubes in the Soviet era. Although they no longer own the brand name, they retain the winged C logo of that era. It is not clear whether they are still involved in the production of brand tubes, because their website is not very informative, but their "Weded C" tubes are still on sale.

The whole Russia in Saratov, a southern Russian city, as well as the Expo-PUL factory, the story here becomes interesting. It is owned by Americans

The company also owns the rights to many older brands including Svetlana, Sovtec, Mullard and Tung-Sol. The reissued Mullard ECC83 was made here, and it became news of the past

Entering China, the situation becomes quite opaque. There are some larger manufacturers in China that can produce high-quality pipes for high-end export trade, but there are also cheap pipes on the market with few manufacturer logos and almost no traceability. If you spend $20 on an AliExpress tube headphone amplifier kit, you will most likely receive one of the latter, but its source is unclear.

The largest manufacturer in China is

, Located in Changsha City, Hunan Province. They produce various products and produce parts for other brands. Their upstart competitors

It is also located in Changsha and specializes in the high-end audio market. For example, it is unlikely

Although this will come from these two manufacturers or their smaller high-end competitors, it is clear that there are more Chinese pipe manufacturers at all levels of the market, and this is not easy to find on the other side of the world .

As someone who has been a vacuum technology enthusiast for 40 years, I am now happy that the product is still in production and the industry seems to be healthy. But my journey in the world of tube manufacturing in the 21st century disappointed me a bit, because most of their marketing is still shrouded in myths.

As someone

When it was very unpopular, I understood the charm of the elusive "tube sound", but experience taught me that it was not as good as the supporters thought. Even the distortion characteristics that musicians seek can be easily created by DSP in 2020, so I can’t help but lead people astray, because I see the same tube at various prices based on its tube alone. sell. brand. I like to use tubes and listen to tube amplifiers. But don’t make the mistake of falling into the hype trap, and never ignore engineering.

A set of electrodes in a vacuum glass enclosure whose electrical properties depend on the modulation of the electron flow through them. Until the 1960s, these electrodes were ubiquitous in consumer electronics and even popular in some mass market applications

.

You will forget a long-lasting mass-market electronic tube application: cathode ray tubes.

Moreover, you have forgotten the vacuum tube in the microwave oven.

Yes, although microwave oven vacuum tubes (magnetrons) are not so sexy because they lack glass. In addition to the things that melt/destroy, I'm still happy to find uses for the salvaged people. Maybe it's a huge Tesla coil or something...

However, discussions of modern electronic tubes should not ignore this cool French video about handmade vacuum tubes from scratch. Hackaday actually contacted it for a while.

I think physics determines that microwave-based vacuum tubes will be small. Like a few inches long.

I think physicists say that microwave-based Tesla coils will be very small (if too much power), for example less than 5 inches in length?

This magnetron is not just a vacuum tube, but the entire transmitter. Therefore, it is difficult to repurpose it. Even its transmission frequency is not adjustable.

And Ron Soyland (glass strap on YouTube) hand-made tubes. He keeps them in order, but mainly to restore old audio. His video is very, very good. He shows the process in detail, making you feel that anyone can do it with just a little practice. :)

Microwave glue curing is used in industry for wood bonding and composite materials, but I have not seen amateur use. I did see magnetron herbicides. However, for amateurs, these are not safe...

The microwave display is usually a vacuum fluorescent display, and the other is a vacuum tube. In fact, you can use them as low-gain direct heating triodes.

Check out Korg 6P1 dual triode.

Basically, it adjusts the Noritake VFD into the audio vacuum tube.

The main problem with it is that it is obviously crazy microphonic.

real. Also, the magnetron.

"Instead, different electronic components rule the vacuum tube.

The vacuum tube is missing. Maybe this is a fluid extraction device?

This is certainly not "disappearing", there is one in every microwave oven, and the local music store will be happy to sell you a guitar amplifier with a tube.

(Facepalm)

X didn't understand the meaning of the joke...

Has Futaba not recently launched a VFD for small signal audio applications?

There is a notice of withdrawal from VFD on its website:

Korg Nutube:

I can't see any difference from any conventional VFD. Although cool application...maybe it's time to turn my giant Soviet 7-segment VFD into a triode!

Korg Nutube is a triode instead of a VFD package. It is not a display, but a very small amplifier. Its manufacturing cost may be much cheaper than traditional tubes, and they can make a wide tube and pack multiple tube elements in one package.

Apart from doing it very well, I really have nothing else to say. Just check in.

I noticed that in the reference schematic of your Yugoslavian pipe project, negative feedback depends on the resistance of the volume control tap to ground and the input source impedance at high volume settings. Is there any instability or distortion when the volume control is set too low?

It is almost certain that this is the product of my youthful prosperity and not any similar engineering ability.

And this person:

Who makes a brand new digital tube.

Korg Nutube contains 99% of the marketing. It is not useful for classic audio designs because it requires a positive grid bias and the anode has a power rating of 1.7mW.

This is the answer to question j above.

Please fix the comment section.

"Please fix the comment section"

The most overlooked comment about Hackaday.

To be fair, this is provided by our host wordpress.com.

I found the comment section in HaD to be as enlightening and entertaining as the article.

Considering how important this is to the community, just pointing the finger at WP doesn't seem too happy to read here.

You are a paying customer. If the product WP does not work properly. Fix it. If the supplier cannot solve it, or is not interested in solving it, it will be a huge market. go fishing!

Можносамомулампусделать.

Wait a minute...you said "vacuum tube". You may have met us halfway through and called it a vacuum valve, which confuses everyone. I do think that "thermoelectronic valve" is a better name because it describes its operation more appropriately. After all, it does control the flow of those mysterious thermionic ions.

I don’t know how long some of the other tube manufacturers can last. Almost certainly, the largest market is guitar amplifiers, except for the cheapest guitar amplifiers, most of them use guitar amplifiers. Which factories are still in use, especially factories in Eastern Europe and Russia that are using long tooth production equipment? I may be able to see some Chinese companies continue to develop, maybe we may see a Western company suddenly appear to participate in high-end operations, but that may be the final coffin of those former coffins. Soviet manufacturer. Of course, I may be wrong, they are all modern factories, but I doubt it.

What is the difference between "modern"? Many things, such as lollipops and shoes, are manufactured on production facilities that are more than 100 years old.

Because everything is ultimately a consumable, even a machine. If there is no money to reinvest in your manufacturing equipment, sometimes the quality of the product will become unacceptable. I don’t know that this is the case for any of them, and I seriously underestimated JJ. According to Wikipedia, the ratio of JJ’s net income to total income is about 1:2. The latter was about $10 million in 2015. .

People can make electron tubes at home in the garage. As long as there is demand, someone may continue to make them, and as long as they stay cheap, the aesthetics will

It's a good reason people want them.

I’m a big fan of Class D, so I’ve never really owned a tube amplifier or other bulky things,

But they are definitely cool.

In the fifty years of the development of electronic technology, I remembered an article from about 1964 about a South American ham, and he made the tube himself. I think it's just the power tube of the transmitter. It requires both skill and design. He must know how the tubes are enough to make them.

I suspect that in the early days, some people might have made their own test tubes, but I didn't mention it.

Yes, the guy who recorded the video in Europe a few years ago.

This shows that this is not an easy task, and it may take enough effort to make most products cheaper to buy than to manufacture.

Yes, it is almost certain that it is cheaper to buy than to manufacture, but almost everything that can be manufactured at home can be mass produced at low cost.

Scientific testing equipment like the atomic force microscope seems to be the last thing that can still be purchased on your own but is still expensive.

On the surface it is not *easy*, but I will argue within the grasp of anyone who is motivated and educated.

There is a Frenchman (I believe) making high-quality audio tubes-getters and everything else there. He even built some custom equipment to help maintain consistency. Material selection is also critical. To build something that sounds great and durable, there is a lot of knowledge to know.

Make test tubes with ransom specifications? of course. Make a couple that is enough to build AMP? It's not that there is a lot of money invested in tools.

My son's tube guitar amplifier has DSP, which can imitate the tube effect very well.

Don't forget that many HAM/ham radio operators still use RF power amplifiers that rely on tubes/valves, as do some radios and power supplies that are still in use.

Reminds me of Yaesu FT-101 / Sommerkamp FT-277.

So far, one of the best FET transistor RX / electron tube final TX combination.

It's much better on HF than the annoying FT-817/818 that every ham is so obsessed with today.

In addition, Zetagi from Italy is also popular for producing affordable CB/10m tube amplifiers.

They used the cable end tubes originally used for CRT TVs (is the English name correct?).

It is called a horizontal output or "sweep frequency" tube.

I once laughed at other engineers who had early desktop PCs. Their computers relied on vacuum tubes, and most people did not flicker because the display was a cathode ray tube.

Fifty years ago, people could only dream of owning something like FT-817, even though FT-101 came out 49 years ago.

Up-conversion is almost not a problem. There is no synthesizer in the ham radio, and the digital readout only exists on a rig (and some home rigs). Too many functions do not exist or too high-end equipment is not available.

There are a small number of 6M SSB rigs and a 2M SSB rig (though in the past). No drilling rigs for AM, SSB and FM. If you want more than 6M SSB, you must start with HF SSB devices like FT-101 and add a bunch of converters to enter VHF and UHF bands. For most people, this means a complete set of equipment is required.

Now you can encapsulate it all in a small portable package.

"Now, you can pack it all in a small portable package."

Well, this is my illusion.

817 can do a lot of things, but it can't be "right".

Ham is obsessed with small black things with many knobs.

Matches are

"Blind belief in progress". I think.

Development can not only advance, but also regress. People tend to forget this.

The same goes for the economy. This will not "rise" forever.

New ≠ progress

Used as a

FT-277E and some 817s (original ND models) came to the following conclusions:

The sensitivity below 30MHz is not commensurate with the FT-101 in the 1970s,

It has a high degree of modularity and scalability (digital frequency reader can be connected to IF output, can also be connected to FSK, etc.).

The part quality of the 817's miniature SMD filter and circuit is not as good as its "real" full-size similar products. Esp. The coil and quartz filter need the correct physical size (not SMD).

Moreover, modern bandpass filters are not as good as

Preselector. If you have ever used a magnetic ring with a variable capacitor, then you will understand what I mean.

Conversely, higher frequency bands (such as VHF/UHF bands) require smaller parts with smaller distances between parts.

Compared to the deaf-mute VHF/UHF radio, using a sensitive short-wave radio with a converter can provide better performance.

Or just use SDR RX/TRX for 150 Euros. It will revolve around 817.

Don't be kidding, an SDR like an RTL-based 5 Euro USB stick is much better than the 817 (IMHO) on the receiving end.

By now, the entire super design is outdated. In fact, FM, SSB and Superhet are things that old hams cannot let go.

If a computer/SDR software is used, the direct conversion receiver in the earliest radio broadcast has more uses than the super receiver. ?

"But my journey in the field of tube manufacturing in the 21st century disappointed me a bit, because most of their marketing is still shrouded in myths."

of course. Without myths, you cannot sell products to audiophiles.

Still, a very good article-interestingly, there are so many sources.

The reason why there are too many "brands" of pipes or valves is that it is easy to clean the glass and print your own brand on it. In fact, a company in Oxfordshire does exactly this.

There are many Hammond and Leslie suits in the church and they need services. 6AU6, 12AU&X7, 12BH7, 6X4, 6550. Some power tubes have a short life. This is a real gamble, and a bad seal at the pin can make people angry. There are also metal fragments inside. This is the option to replace 40 or 50 year old lamps with low final emissions. Sunday comes, and things need to be resolved.

Wow, each of you actually has an amplifier that uses tubes. Except for longevity, your assumptions are worrying. Yes, they are expensive. As a collector of 6SN7 tubes, I can attest. Have you heard of RCA 6SN7 gray glass or Sylvania 2-3 hole bad boy? In contrast, there are no transistors around, and no cheap devices squeeze the 6CA7's functions. Useless article. As for those using Class D power supplies, it is thin and lacks motivation. But I think contempt these days is more fashionable than understanding. If price is a factor, maybe this is not for you. BTW Telefunkens is a manually selected extended voltage JJ EL34 tube, then it has been frozen and passed 48 hours of aging inspection. The price of my Genelex KT77 tube is 154.00 per four, but it has also undergone aging and double inspection. It sounds like a studio. So yes, I think all apples are the same? ….. So this is a quiz question, what is the difference between the reissued Mullards and the new Tung-Sol EL34 tube?

awesome…..

"Nowadays, contempt is more fashionable than understanding." May check the mirror there.

I bought a military surplus TV-7 tube tester for about $50 in the late 1980s. Then, the tube audio nut began to buy all the products equipped with tubes, which pushed up the price, and realized that they needed tube testers, so they also increased the prices of these tubes. My TV-7 is now worth about $500. hoo!

But sadly, when the value reaches $1,000, your poor pipe tester will be trapped in the garage, and the typical time that the garage has accumulated "garbage" and dust has been more than 4 years :) Good luck.

Your point is correct. It is actually on the shelf in my workshop, and occasionally I pull it out to test the radio tube. It may be used once a year. I will die one day, and my family will deal with my things without knowing it's worth it. Maybe before that, I will donate it to the Milwaukee Makerspace.

I gathered some people and like to arrange their test tube testers like in a pharmacy to imitate the experience of bringing test tubes to the pharmacy to see if they are good.

I remember an article published by a service technician in an amateur electronic magazine listing the ways in which pharmacy test tubers might mislead consumers. Not deliberately, but people don’t know enough.

Well, enthusiasts will at least take care of their own things. If the ham entangles them, they will disappear for many years.

Radio amateurs (myself included) are often hyped by new technology and throw away their old things just because it no longer exists.

Except for some nostalgic/gentlemen like my father, most amateur broadcasters I meet are ungrateful, egoistic and greedy.

(Does not include young or fresh hams of any age; there are still some good souls with ideals and ham spirits, and/or new ham services are added from time to time.)

Hams are like modern model train people, buying only the best things they can buy, and then blowing their noses at the old handmade things that were once made with love and innocence. More importantly, they seem to be unfaithful to their inner children/people in the past. They throw away their young things and put a lot of work into them.

Just because they can buy things "better".

It makes me sad every time, because it is not only wrong (in noisy situations, than the sound card solution can also use some old DIY hammcomm modems and rtty filters!), but also very affected when facing the spirit of ham welcome. We have used fantasy and imagination. Now we sell our souls (not just rent them) to buy commercial items.

In short, we have become dull consumers in terms of free will. And love it, what's worse, IMHO

Speaking of home cooking/DIY, this is different from the 1950s. Grandpa and grandson used waste cardboard, some wood, metal cans and old paint to pile things together and have fun. Such craftsmanship does not absolutely disappear, but is rare. Now they use $1,000 equipment (lathe, circular saw, 3d printer, cnc machine).

They abandon the ancient equipment, make fun of it, or sell it to some poor souls at a completely high price, while shooting their own equipment very clever and cunning. Of course, after the gear is repaired (the ugly switch is installed, there are many holes in the case, and the device cannot be operated). I think we are like used car sellers.

In any case, I am glad that I did not participate in the American Ham Show. It is said that they used to smash old radios, mainly tube radios at the beginning of solid-state grazing, and burn them for entertainment or laughter. . Really

I don’t need a tester or a curve tracer to find bad transistors. I find that using metal oxide resistors in flat and shielded circuits is very useful because they will burn, saving expensive transformers. The disconnected resistor makes a hum on the output tube in question, so I don't need to witness the light-emitting board. Someone gave me a tester decades ago, but I never fired it. The tube is actually quite forgiving. I remember once learned that silicon can exist almost permanently, but like ordinary electronic tubes, the lifespan of modern electronic equipment is longer than most people retain.

So here is the card. The tube tester can be used for the unqualified test of the tube. In fact, in the past, a bunch of TV "technicians" knew nothing about electronic products, and they would carry the tube tester with them as a sales method. For example, "Refer to: The reading is in the lower green area, so we might want to replace this tube (Fragrance)".

In addition to rough troubleshooting, an electronic tube tester is also used for push-pull class AB1 to match the two output tubes to obtain gain and reduce the second harmonic distortion of the PA class.

by the way. In broadcast applications, you may need to spend more than $8,000 on lamps, which are of great significance for filament and cathode temperature control. The filament and cathode have been trimmed, which makes them more electrically active (details are omitted for brevity), which means that the more complete the coating, the higher the gain. Over time and temperature, this will deplete and eventually lead to loss of gain. The broadcast tube will almost never fail, they are just Peter.

Therefore, the method to control this method is to operate the filament under normal voltage (after 1 week of burn-in time) while monitoring the output *gain* of the printing plate. Gradually reduce the filament power until you see a slight decrease in gain, then push the filament power back to recapture this slight loss. This minimizes the filament and cathode temperature (they are additives due to the resistance heating of the cathode)

Generally, you can extend the life of the lamp from a typical 1 to 2 years to 4 or 5 years. Although it is more difficult to use Fender twin, it is also suitable for sophisticated low-power output tubes. There is a lot to say about adjusting the filament supply. and also. The main reason for the burning of bulbs and filaments is that their resistance is very low in cold, so they will generate a large inrush current when they are first turned on. By limiting the initial cold filament current, the service life of the lamp can be significantly extended. I see some boutique guitar amplifier manufacturers are using stepped filament voltage for this operation.

Very easy to write. No mention of Nuvistor at all, which is a bit disappointing.

As an amp for high-end microphones in the 60s/70s, it is very popular.

So is the acorn tube of World War II.

As it happens, I own a Nuvistor FM tuner. But what I am talking about is here.

I have collected more than 400 test tubes, mainly for saving beautiful photos. A few years ago, I got a set of instructions on DIY remanufactured receivers, which were published in Boys Life in the 1930s and made with the Type 30 in my collection. I should probably write it down.

I see that there are still many surplus NOS Soviet miniature tubes, even if they are shipped, the price is usually US$2 or less per tube. We should use these still abundant military surplus tubes to design some audio equipment, instead of chasing the exorbitant pricing of once common tubes (look at your 12AX7)

Well, these stocks will not last forever. If they are used in mass-produced products, there will be a large market for such replacement products, and eventually the product will become useless because there are no more replacement tubes available.

Western Electric tubes are still manufactured in Roseville. Of course, you have to pay for American quality tubes. The matching pair price of 300B triode is 1499 US dollars, the price of quad-core matching is 3099 US dollars. You can also buy a single test tube for $699. View them online at the following URL:

I hope there will be a premium, but not so high for power transistors. To make matters worse, 300B seems to be the only tube they produce, so if you want a tube, you must find some NOS tubes first, or if you are using 12AX7s, then maybe some cheap Russian or Chinese parts . A great way to praise the $700 power tube.

I also lack Emissionlabs and ELROG, amazing (improved) design, but their prices are astronomical

I forgot to mention that the amplifier in the story picture is an abomination. People have the ability to add LEDs to tubes and VF displays that do not belong to them. Show my age.

There must be many cheesy preamplifiers that use bright LEDs to illuminate the tubes, but as far as I know, this is not the case in the textures.

Yes.

You missed a point in this discussion, the 500V circuit design separates people from boys. Coupled with a box of free garage sales pipes, some wires, some iron, some physical principles, and then like 100 years ago, it can bring a lot of fun.

I have worked on defibrillators for many years. At one time, they usually have a 40uf capacitor, which can be charged to about 1500 volts, so I think it is very suitable in a tube environment.

Do you happen to know their upper limit? I have some GM-70 transistors and they will be happy at a voltage of about a thousand volts B+, so the upper limit of a suitable/reliable defibrillator sounds like a good investment

There are still some companies that produce VFDs, which are vacuum tubes.

This is a cool synthesizer module using VFD. I don't know if this is a new or old part or a modern part, but this is a good application of the technology, not a big tube.

High-end custom tube:

How to make-audio vacuum tube

Those are some beautiful tubes! I have never heard of KR before.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of modulating the flow of electrons through a vacuum instead of silicon.

I am mainly interested in vacuum tube-based computers, not in electronic tubes for audio, even though I have made tube headphone amplifiers. Just for it, I did this:

It's hard to underestimate the importance of semiconductors in active electronics and the amount of material science needed to make it a reality, but I support you. Elementary particles are almost incredible. For example, electrons move in free space and are controlled to do useful things, such as amplifying a signal or even drawing an image on a monitor.

Very compelling. I still had a Graymark 511 multi-band tube regenerative radio when I was in high school, and built a decent regenerative radio from the ground up using equipment equivalent to the Russian 6SN7 dual triode.

Regens is a sentence of radio design. There are so few components.

X-ray tube, anyone?

If we want to go there, we can include particle accelerators. With THAT, I remember that there were some magnetrons called cyclotron magnetrons. They used different straps between the cavities to make them work like a cyclotron.

Oh! And we must not forget the various electron microscopes without solid substitutes!

That is a good point.

For those products that are electronic tubes, the transition to non-electronic tubes is slow.

People have already mentioned CRT here. I remember some replacements for Geiger tubes, but I don't remember how straightforward they are.

Know nothing about X-ray tubes.

Due to the power required, the microwave oven must still be using tubes. It is worthwhile to continue manufacturing these tubes because they are well done.

I like this article because it really makes things clear...

I think it’s time to take out test tubes from my "Atwater-Kent 60" and cathedral style "Lyric Superheterodyne Model S-7" and sell them. These tubes may be worth

Not just a complete radio.

It may also be time to cash in on my "Technology Series RC-21" RCA Receiver Tube Manual (which contains the best tutorials in the world about vacuum tubes, many application circuits-my favorite is the 50-watt hi-fi stereo amplifier-detailed information) , And complete details about building a tube tester). The price is on the cover? $1.00.

Keep this kind of thing coming; I never considered the fact that one of my "All-American-5" ac-dc super-experts (the ALSO plan in the RCA tube manual) will pay next month's rent.

The largest vacuum tube to date is obviously a particle accelerator. The length of the LHC is 27 km. It uses 16 klystrons, each of which drives 300 kW at a frequency of 400 MHz, smashing two proton beams with multiple TeraElectronVolt energy. Interesting design summary at

.

I have heard of using a stereo amplifier made by Millard Valves connected to a CD player. It produces a wonderful warm sound from the Amplifier and a clinical sound from the CD Player. This is a perfect combination of new technology and old technology, Millard Audio Valves is famous for a long time, reliability and quality have been owned by Philips, Ross

If you can read German, please read Chapter 10 of the *extensive book "The Physics of Electric Guitars" to finally accept that electrons in a vacuum (ie different tubes) will not produce any "sound" except for electronic transmission Electrical or mechanical tolerances. (The same applies to capacitors (in operation), etc.)

I want to know if there are any TV stations that use transmitters with launch tubes in the final stage? There is a great video on YouTube which shows an e-nerd browsing an old analog TV transmitter (which has been replaced by a digital transmitter), and it has a huge tube as an output stage amplifier for the video signal.

I did not conduct a comprehensive manufacturer search, but my general feeling is that DTV transitions that have lower power requirements and use significant digital predistortion may have replaced most of not all tube-based TV transmitters.

These are worth seeing. UHF Klystrodes is installed in a 6-foot-tall metal frame with wheels, with liquid cooling hoses on the side and corrugated ceramic insulators at the bottom, which can provide -23,000 VDC at 4A.

Very high gain, very linear. Before the duplexer, 15 watts of power from the exciter can generate about 40 KW. With this linearity, you can perform "IF duplexing" and transmit audio and visual carriers on a single tube. Many transmitters have 2 identical cabinets and can operate hearing in one cabinet and vision in another cabinet, or perform duplex operation with reduced power while maintaining the other cabinet. It's been a while, but the last time I put a price on one of the test tubes, each of them was north of the 30 big tubes, and it cost three.

2 in the cabinet, 1 spare.

Typical size 30 60 120 KW RF.

You need to perform maintenance very carefully.

I remember seeing a TV transmitter tube in the museum. It was placed in the original wooden box. The size of the box is about 1.5'x 1.5'x 2'.

Please refer to the link. The adjustment part is missing. These adjustment parts are the metal box surrounding the copper window port. It also lacks all the cooling, power supply and RF hardware.

They eventually called them klystrodes or IOT.

Or better details from Teledyne ev2:

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The word "revolution" is much less used than it might be, especially in the field of electronics. However, this is understandable-social changes caused by the "transistor revolution" or "PC revolution" or more recently, the "AI revolution" has undergone changes, which are usually beneficial and sometimes diseased. However, the common thinking is that once these revolutions occur, there will be no such thing again.

This is the case with software-defined radio (SDR) and digital signal processing (DSP). These two related fields don't seem to be as revolutionary as some other electronic revolutions, but when you think about it, they did change the world of radio communications. SDR means that complex radio transmitters and receivers no longer have to be strictly implemented in hardware as a collection of filters, mixers, detectors, and amplifiers; instead, they can be reduced to a series of algorithms running on a computer.

The collaboration of SDR and DSP has led to tremendous changes in the RF field. It was almost an afterthought that a powerful high-bandwidth radio link has been built into the device. However, these concepts may be difficult to take root at least when you delve into the basics and really try to learn the working principles of SDR and DSP. Fortunately, Dr. Marc Lichtman, an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, did write this book.

It is a wonderful introduction to SDR and DSP, for people who want to learn how to use SDR and DSP in actual systems. Dr. Lichtman will stop by Hack Chat to talk about his textbook, answer questions about how to best understand SDR and DSP, and discuss the next steps once the basics are conquered.

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