Fritzing ??

[Jim Thompson]

Anyone using "Fritzing" ??

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson | mens |
| Analog Innovations | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I'm looking for work... see my website.

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>
> ...Jim Thompson

I'm not allowed to. It's "for non-engineers."


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

[Martin Riddle]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:37:39 -0700, John Larkin
<jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
><To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>
>
>I'm not allowed to. It's "for non-engineers."

Pencil and Engineering paper rules!

Cheers

[bill....@ieee.org]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 9:37:45 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
> <To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
> >Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>
>

> I'm not allowed to. It's "for non-engineers."

Strange. John Larkin must think that he is an engineer.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[John Larkin]

Yes. I draw schematics on D-size vellum with a Berol Turquoise F
pencil. It gets me out of my chair, away from a screen for a while. I
have a guy who enters my designs into PADS and lays out the board.

I did this all by myself recently, for a number of reasons, partly to
learn the new PADS.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/PCBs/T840_E1.jpg

But schematic entry on a screen is tedious; drawing is fun.

[Phil Hobbs]

On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>
> ...Jim Thompson
>

Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination. I haven't
used one of those since I was a teenager, though I've held my nose and
helped other people who were doing it. (They'll probably learn
eventually, if they build anything complicated enough to be nontrivial
to debug.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

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

[legg]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>
> ...Jim Thompson

Usenet's collapse predated the Arduino.

Just another layer of CAD....

CAD programs weren't originally designed with their targeted users in
mind, hence the learning curve, knowledgeable or not, from paper to
keyboard.

RL

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:01:38 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>>
>
>Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination. I haven't
>used one of those since I was a teenager, though I've held my nose and
>helped other people who were doing it. (They'll probably learn
>eventually, if they build anything complicated enough to be nontrivial
>to debug.)
>
>Cheers
>
>Phil Hobbs

I worked for a while with a guy in Alameda, service work for ships. He
did a couple of controllers for shipboard steam turbines using the
white things, and glued them inside engine room consoles. I didn't
keep that job for long.

I did design a digital synchroscope for him, but a lot of other people
did too.

[Alie...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, June 8, 2016 at 4:31:07 PM UTC-7, Jim Thompson wrote:
> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??

Gack... no.

I admit I still have a small protoboard around somewhere though. Tried it once, got pissed at the crappy connections, put it in a drawer, haven't seen it since.


Mark L. Fergerson

[krw]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:01:38 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>>
>
>Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination. I haven't
>used one of those since I was a teenager, though I've held my nose and
>helped other people who were doing it. (They'll probably learn
>eventually, if they build anything complicated enough to be nontrivial
>to debug.)

I used them for _one_ project in college. I kept burning my fingers
on '709s as they lost contact with their compensation networks. The
prof I was working with was getting pissed because I kept burning up
expensive opamps, until he did it.

[Jim Thompson]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 20:24:11 -0400, Martin Riddle

Potential customer of a client of mine... needing applications
assistance... handed off to me >:-}

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
> ...Jim Thompson

Fritzing is basically a method of doing breadboards using the worst
possible breadboard possible (stripboard), and then morphing the
resulting mess into a PCB. The resultant hardware, software, PCB, and
designs are expected to open sourced to the multitudes.
Ummm... no thanks.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=fritzing&tbm=isch>
<http://fritzing.org/projects/>
<http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/fritzing-takes-your-design-from-breadboard-to-pcb/>

Got any static sensitive parts? This should blow them up nicely:
<http://fab.fritzing.org/how-to/paperplacementTest.jpg>


--
Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:37:39 -0700, John Larkin
<jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
><To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>> ...Jim Thompson

>I'm not allowed to. It's "for non-engineers."

Fritzing seems to be all about building breadboards before committing
to a PCB. Since you don't do breadboards and go directly from the
design to the PCB, you probably don't need fritzing. Besides, I don't
think any of your designs will work on a "stripboard". My RF stuff
certainly won't.

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 19:22:52 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>

wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:37:39 -0700, John Larkin
><jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
>><To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>> ...Jim Thompson
>
>>I'm not allowed to. It's "for non-engineers."
>
>Fritzing seems to be all about building breadboards before committing
>to a PCB. Since you don't do breadboards and go directly from the
>design to the PCB, you probably don't need fritzing. Besides, I don't
>think any of your designs will work on a "stripboard". My RF stuff
>certainly won't.

Most of the projects shown on the Fritzing web site seem to not get
beyond the plastic protoboard stage.

I breadboard on copperclad FR4, or lay out a multilayer board for
complex stuff.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z382_1.JPG

You can do 100 ps/3GHz stuff this way, or maybe faster.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 19:17:03 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
><To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>> ...Jim Thompson
>
>Fritzing is basically a method of doing breadboards using the worst
>possible breadboard possible (stripboard), and then morphing the
>resulting mess into a PCB. The resultant hardware, software, PCB, and
>designs are expected to open sourced to the multitudes.
>Ummm... no thanks.
><https://www.google.com/search?q=fritzing&tbm=isch>
><http://fritzing.org/projects/>
><http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/fritzing-takes-your-design-from-breadboard-to-pcb/>
>
>Got any static sensitive parts? This should blow them up nicely:
><http://fab.fritzing.org/how-to/paperplacementTest.jpg>

Anything that gets kids interested in real electronics is good, even
if it teaches them some bad habits.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 19:40:18 -0700, John Larkin
<jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

>>Got any static sensitive parts? This should blow them up nicely:
>><http://fab.fritzing.org/how-to/paperplacementTest.jpg>

>Anything that gets kids interested in real electronics is good, even
>if it teaches them some bad habits.

Agreed, but I'm a bit old skool and prefer to show kids how to use a
soldering iron, how to make dead bug prototypes, and why stripboards
and solderless breadboards suck. The problem with these is that they
promote all kinds of bad habits and construction errors. In my never
humble opinion, stripboards and solderless breadboards are dead ends.

OfF the top of my cranium:
1. No ground plane.
2. Split power bus.
3. No consideration for lead inductance and intertrace capacitance.
4. Intermittents caused by crappy connections, usually due to shoving
oversized leads, such as 1 watt resistors, into holes made for smaller
wire diameters. Or, just too small wire diameters.
5. Excessive component lead lengths.
6. SMT parts are difficult to use and require adapters.
7. Temptation to directly transfer the layout from stripboard to PCB.
8. Layout should follow signal flow, which is lost on a stripboard.
9. Mechanical parts are awkward (pots, variable caps, pot cores, big
components of any type, heat sinks, power xsistors, etc).
10. Digital buses are messy and consume too much breadboard space.
11. Whatever else I forgot.

I've had to deal with two former techs, that learned to breadboard
everything on stripboards and solderless breadboards. It took me a
while to prove to them that RF circuits on stripboards were
impossible, and that there was little difference in time spent on
stripboard, versus various other PCB based breadboard methods. I
haven't helped get kids started in electronics for a long time, but I
suspect that an early intro to SMT parts and soldering might be more
useful than a solderless breadboard based dead end.

Incidentally, I got a phone call from a local college student with a
problem. He had been designing and modeling various digital and
analog circuits on a computah for a few years. He never bothered to
learn how to stuff a PCB or hand solder because he had his friends
available to do it for him. It was now a skool vacation and all his
friends were elsewhere. I ended up doing the stuffing and soldering
for him (for free). He seemed to believe that such activities were
beneath the dignity of the designer. I guess we may be producing a
generation of electronic engineers where fritzing is the best that
they can do, and who really don't know which end of the soldering iron
to grab.

[Tim Williams]

"Jeff Liebermann" <je...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:u2ohlbda88gm8uit0...@4ax.com...

> I've had to deal with two former techs, that learned to breadboard
> everything on stripboards and solderless breadboards. It took me a
> while to prove to them that RF circuits on stripboards were

> impossible ...

Without seeing an example, I will dare say... I can prove you wrong by
building your "impossible" circuits. ;-)

Hey, I originally developed circuits like this on solderless breadboard,
http://seventransistorlabs.com/Images/Discrete_Tube_Supply.png
Note the reduced shunt voltage drop. Ground inductance can make that tricky
(you'll easily read 50-100mV of "bounce"), but it still manages to work.
With proper layout, I mean, but it's nothing that wouldn't be "obvious"(?)
to someone who's made successful PCB layouts.

Mostly, all the crap you see on the scope probe, is an artifact of the scope
probe itself. Or, more accurately, of the common mode voltage the
breadboard is throwing off, that the circuit itself doesn't see because it's
a voltage that's not dropping across the circuit.

That one time I did a 500kHz, 100W resonant converter on solderless
breadboard was interesting. The 24AWG jumpers didn't want to stay in the
sockets, on account of their getting too hot from the reactive current.
Still worked fine though.

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

[bill....@ieee.org]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:55:11 PM UTC+10, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 19:40:18 -0700, John Larkin
> <jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
>
> >>Got any static sensitive parts? This should blow them up nicely:
> >><http://fab.fritzing.org/how-to/paperplacementTest.jpg>
>
> >Anything that gets kids interested in real electronics is good, even
> >if it teaches them some bad habits.
>
> Agreed, but I'm a bit old skool and prefer to show kids how to use a
> soldering iron, how to make dead bug prototypes, and why stripboards
> and solderless breadboards suck. The problem with these is that they
> promote all kinds of bad habits and construction errors. In my never
> humble opinion, stripboards and solderless breadboards are dead ends.
>
> OfF the top of my cranium:
> 1. No ground plane.

You can get prototyping board with a "collander" ground plane on the component side. It's a pretty effective ground plane, through not as nice as a buried ground plane in a multilayer board.

> 2. Split power bus.
> 3. No consideration for lead inductance and intertrace capacitance.

You can consider it, but doing much about it can be difficult.

> 4. Intermittents caused by crappy connections, usually due to shoving
> oversized leads, such as 1 watt resistors, into holes made for smaller
> wire diameters. Or, just too small wire diameters.

That's a general problem, even with soldered prototypes. Anything put together by a wire-man on any kind of prototyping board is a whole lot less reliable than something built as a printed circuit board. Solder-free boards are even worse, of course.

> 5. Excessive component lead lengths.
> 6. SMT parts are difficult to use and require adapters.

Not strictly true. I've cut ring pads on prototyping board into segments, and soldered some of the pins on SMD devices to individual segments, and used lengths of wire to hook up the rest - no adapter.

> 7. Temptation to directly transfer the layout from stripboard to PCB.

Not a good idea, but temptation is there to be resisted.

> 8. Layout should follow signal flow, which is lost on a stripboard.

Can be.

> 9. Mechanical parts are awkward (pots, variable caps, pot cores, big
> components of any type, heat sinks, power xsistors, etc).

They can be awkward on a printed circuit board too.

> 10. Digital buses are messy and consume too much breadboard space.

Digital buses are messy on printed circuit board too, if not quite as messy.

> 11. Whatever else I forgot.
>
> I've had to deal with two former techs, that learned to breadboard
> everything on stripboards and solderless breadboards. It took me a
> while to prove to them that RF circuits on stripboards were
> impossible, and that there was little difference in time spent on
> stripboard, versus various other PCB based breadboard methods. I
> haven't helped get kids started in electronics for a long time, but I
> suspect that an early intro to SMT parts and soldering might be more
> useful than a solderless breadboard based dead end.
>
> Incidentally, I got a phone call from a local college student with a
> problem. He had been designing and modeling various digital and
> analog circuits on a computah for a few years. He never bothered to
> learn how to stuff a PCB or hand solder because he had his friends
> available to do it for him. It was now a skool vacation and all his
> friends were elsewhere. I ended up doing the stuffing and soldering
> for him (for free). He seemed to believe that such activities were
> beneath the dignity of the designer.

There have always been people like that. Some of them don't know it, and waste time and effort putting together snarled up hardware that can never be made to work. If you can't actually use your hands effectively, it's comforting to think that what you can't do is beneath your dignity. John Larkin has a similar attitude to numerical design.

> I guess we may be producing a
> generation of electronic engineers where fritzing is the best that
> they can do, and who really don't know which end of the soldering iron
> to grab.

There have always been all-thumbs people around. I don't think that this generation includes a higher proportion of them.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 23:29:55 -0500, "Tim Williams"
<tiw...@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

>"Jeff Liebermann" <je...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
>news:u2ohlbda88gm8uit0...@4ax.com...
>> I've had to deal with two former techs, that learned to breadboard
>> everything on stripboards and solderless breadboards. It took me a
>> while to prove to them that RF circuits on stripboards were
>> impossible ...

>Without seeing an example, I will dare say... I can prove you wrong by
>building your "impossible" circuits. ;-)

I might have to scan some photographs, but I think I can find some
examples. I have photos of some rather messy breadboards that worked
nicely.

Most of what I do is RF. RF begins where signals prefer to radiate
instead of conduct. The rule of thumb is "wires radiate, components
do not radiate". The solderless breadboards are nothing but radiating
wires at RF frequencies.

Also, if done some damage control on RF designs that were reasonably
well calculated, with decent components, but which didn't work as
expected when crammed into a tiny enclosure. The usual problem was a
general failure to keep the signal path from crossing over itself,
resulting in an unwanted feedback loop, which is very much like a
stripboard, with it's crossed traces on opposite sides of the PCB.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=stripboard&tbm=isch>

>Hey, I originally developed circuits like this on solderless breadboard,
>http://seventransistorlabs.com/Images/Discrete_Tube_Supply.png
>Note the reduced shunt voltage drop. Ground inductance can make that tricky
>(you'll easily read 50-100mV of "bounce"), but it still manages to work.
>With proper layout, I mean, but it's nothing that wouldn't be "obvious"(?)
>to someone who's made successful PCB layouts.

What frequency does the switcher run? You could probably get away
with a solderless breadboard at 1Mhz switching, with harmonics to
about maybe 3MHz. Anything higher than maybe about 7MHz and the
parallel capacitance between "wires" in the solderless breadboard
might cause problems. Fortunately, your circuit avoids high
impedances, so it probably would work without coupling problems.

>Mostly, all the crap you see on the scope probe, is an artifact of the scope
>probe itself. Or, more accurately, of the common mode voltage the
>breadboard is throwing off, that the circuit itself doesn't see because it's
>a voltage that's not dropping across the circuit.

Sure, at maybe 1MHz. However, at higher frequencies, the long power
bus wires of the solderless breadboard begin to look like inductors,
which will have voltages impressed across the bus sections if there's
any current flowing through the bus.

>That one time I did a 500kHz, 100W resonant converter on solderless
>breadboard was interesting. The 24AWG jumpers didn't want to stay in the
>sockets, on account of their getting too hot from the reactive current.
>Still worked fine though.

Sigh. This sounds like you're stretching the limits of what can be
done on a solderless breadboard. Melting the plastic is not what I
would consider "working fine". Also, I suspect you could have built
the circuit using a 3D rats nest of wires and components held together
on a piece of PCB material, in less time, and with better results than
a solderless breadboard.

Messy solderless breadboards:
<https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=messy+breadboard>

From a Bob Pease book cover:
<http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/images/Bob-Pease-Breadboard.jpg>

[Jeff Liebermann]

I have a trick question that helps identify those that lack mechanical
aptitude. I ask "Do you fix your own car?" or something similar. Most
who are mechanically inclined do some of their own repairs primarily
because it saves money. My question is not a perfect method because
there are significant difference in people that can deal with big
things and those who can deal with tiny things. The skills are very
much independent of each other.

In this case, I asked the student about his vehicle. He does as much
self maintenance on his automobile as possible. Same with his bicycle
and his parents sailboat. In other words, he's not mechanically
deficient and probably qualified to stuff and solder his own boards.
My guess(tm) is he somehow decided that it was demeaning of his lofty
position as an engineer to get his hands dirty. In some cultures,
it's quite common for the upper classes to have such an attitude. At
one company where I once worked, the theoretical basis for the
company's major product was contrived by a designer from India. He
could not solder, build a prototype, or even carry his own papers. He
had assistants and a servant to do all that for him. He did what he
new best, which was communications theory.

One problem with learning to solder and build things, is that it has
to be done at an early age. I worked with a programmer that provided
a good example why this is important. He was the son of an auto
mechanic, who decided that his son would not also become an auto
mechanic. Every time the son would pick up a tool, his father would
take it from him. He had near zero childhood experience with tools.
The result was in later years, he was completely useless using any
type of hand tool. Up until that time, I had assumed that man is born
with the ability to use tools. Apparently not, as it does require
early practice to become proficient.

Again, if we're going to teach kids something about electronics, which
I assume means building something, it should be with tools that teach
manual dexterity, construction techniques, use of tools, and maybe a
little circuit theory. Poking parts into holes just doesn't strike me
as much of a challenge or learning experience.

[bill....@ieee.org]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 3:39:41 PM UTC+10, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:40:00 -0700 (PDT), bill....@ieee.org wrote:
>
> >On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:55:11 PM UTC+10, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
> >> I guess we may be producing a
> >> generation of electronic engineers where fritzing is the best that
> >> they can do, and who really don't know which end of the soldering iron
> >> to grab.
>
> >There have always been all-thumbs people around. I don't think that
> >this generation includes a higher proportion of them.
>
> I have a trick question that helps identify those that lack mechanical
> aptitude. I ask "Do you fix your own car?" or something similar.

I've been asked that - I did at the time - and am well aware that it does separate the practical from the less practical.

> Most who are mechanically inclined do some of their own repairs primarily
> because it saves money. My question is not a perfect method because
> there are significant difference in people that can deal with big
> things and those who can deal with tiny things. The skills are very
> much independent of each other.

Being short-sighted helps with tiny things. I take off my spectacles to work with SMD parts ...

<snipped sociology>

> One problem with learning to solder and build things, is that it has
> to be done at an early age.

I got my wood-working skills early, but glass-blowing and fine soldering as a graduate student, so I'm a bit sceptical about that claim.

> I worked with a programmer that provided
> a good example why this is important. He was the son of an auto
> mechanic, who decided that his son would not also become an auto
> mechanic. Every time the son would pick up a tool, his father would
> take it from him. He had near zero childhood experience with tools.
> The result was in later years, he was completely useless using any
> type of hand tool. Up until that time, I had assumed that man is born
> with the ability to use tools. Apparently not, as it does require
> early practice to become proficient.

You may need early practice to develop fine motor skills in the hands - but I got what I needed from meccano, woodwork and building model aeroplanes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano

> Again, if we're going to teach kids something about electronics, which
> I assume means building something, it should be with tools that teach
> manual dexterity, construction techniques, use of tools, and maybe a
> little circuit theory. Poking parts into holes just doesn't strike me
> as much of a challenge or learning experience.

Working out which one is the right hole can be tricky. My experience suggests that anything that develops manual dexterity is good enough - and since I'm left-handed, sinisterity seems to be good enough, though left-handers are probably more accurately described as either-handers.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Phil Hobbs]

On 06/08/2016 09:09 PM, John Larkin wrote:
> On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:01:38 -0400, Phil Hobbs
> <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>
>> On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
>>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>>
>>> ...Jim Thompson
>>>
>>
>> Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination. I haven't
>> used one of those since I was a teenager, though I've held my nose and
>> helped other people who were doing it. (They'll probably learn
>> eventually, if they build anything complicated enough to be nontrivial
>> to debug.)
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Phil Hobbs
>
> I worked for a while with a guy in Alameda, service work for ships. He
> did a couple of controllers for shipboard steam turbines using the
> white things, and glued them inside engine room consoles. I didn't
> keep that job for long.

Yikes. Of course the number of nasty kludges onboard your average ship
makes that a drop in the bucket.

[Tim Williams]

"Jeff Liebermann" <je...@cruzio.com> wrote in message

news:i2thlbp9jp8fqvjmr...@4ax.com...

> Also, if done some damage control on RF designs that were reasonably
> well calculated, with decent components, but which didn't work as
> expected when crammed into a tiny enclosure. The usual problem was a
> general failure to keep the signal path from crossing over itself,
> resulting in an unwanted feedback loop, which is very much like a
> stripboard, with it's crossed traces on opposite sides of the PCB.
> <https://www.google.com/search?q=stripboard&tbm=isch>

I never understood stripboard; it's such a mess electrically, leaving loose
antennas hanging off the end of basically every node. I'd always preferred
pad-per-hole, but even better, copper clad once I got used to it.

That's another thing, copper clad doesn't work well for ICs. Sure you can
"dead bug" them, but I don't trust myself to make sense of the pins upside
down. I usually cut and notch strips of PCB, so I have pads to solder the
IC leads to (folding them out like gull-wing SO's, except I suppose it's not
small, but a LOIC).

> What frequency does the switcher run? You could probably get away
> with a solderless breadboard at 1Mhz switching, with harmonics to
> about maybe 3MHz. Anything higher than maybe about 7MHz and the
> parallel capacitance between "wires" in the solderless breadboard
> might cause problems. Fortunately, your circuit avoids high
> impedances, so it probably would work without coupling problems.

That one runs up to a few hundred kHz (I forget exactly; it's not terribly
important as it varies with operating level, too), with harmonics into the
10s of MHz. An arguably advantageous aspect of those discrete designs:
since their loop gain is limited on account of the number of active devices,
they don't make harmonics too high. Switching speed and efficiency is still
fine, but it just doesn't push things crazily fast.

Kind of like that LT "low noise" part with all the slew rate control, except
I don't need a complicated freaking IC to do it, it just does it on its own.

> Sure, at maybe 1MHz. However, at higher frequencies, the long power
> bus wires of the solderless breadboard begin to look like inductors,
> which will have voltages impressed across the bus sections if there's
> any current flowing through the bus.

I have two advantages: I usually use the stuff with pairs of buses, so I can
get low inductance. The other is, if I've wired it correctly, then stabbing
a bypass cap in the local area will do nothing.

Most of these kinds of situations, you can clip the scope probe to its
ground lead, and prod the circuit with the grounded probe. If you see
transients, you're picking up common mode: some part of the circuit is
producing a reaction against, probably the power cable, or maybe radiating
into space.

If you're reading the same transient, but it appears on a signal, it's
illusory. For example, you'll read that transient at the ground side of a
shunt resistor, because it's not coming from the resistor (at least, not
directly and locally). You'll read it at the active end too, but it's just
as illusory.

Wherever I'm probing, if that transient changes by adding bypass, then I can
keep moving it closer to the offender and fix it. If not, I can safely
ignore it, because it's not that it's actually in the circuit, it just looks
like it's everywhere.

So, an unexpected benefit, perhaps, is becoming an EMC expert too. ;-) Or
maybe I'm just such a bizarre person that I see fields where no one else
does, and therefore my breadboards magically can work out a decade higher
than anyone else's...

> Sigh. This sounds like you're stretching the limits of what can be
> done on a solderless breadboard. Melting the plastic is not what I
> would consider "working fine".

Curious, you have such disdain for them, yet you don't consider torturing
them as entertainment? :-)

> Also, I suspect you could have built
> the circuit using a 3D rats nest of wires and components held together
> on a piece of PCB material, in less time, and with better results than
> a solderless breadboard.

In this case, you are correct, it would've taken as long. But, wires in the
breadboard can be moved around in seconds, without soldering or cutting. So
I got where I wanted to go, much faster than soldering. Then I soldered it,
http://seventransistorlabs.com/Images/Fluo1.jpg
spending less time assembling than I would've otherwise, because I already
completed the layout.

(Heh, breadboard in the frame is unrelated. Actually, IIRC it is
functionally the core of a UC3808, which I wanted to try then and there,
without having to order a tube of the real parts and wait. Curiously, the
real UC3808 produces equal alternating pulse widths, while this version had
an imbalance not unlike the limit cycle of a UC3842 in CCM with no slope
compensation.)

[Phil Hobbs]

On 06/09/2016 08:31 AM, Tim Williams wrote:
>
> "Jeff Liebermann" <je...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
> news:i2thlbp9jp8fqvjmr...@4ax.com...
>> Also, if done some damage control on RF designs that were reasonably
>> well calculated, with decent components, but which didn't work as
>> expected when crammed into a tiny enclosure. The usual problem was a
>> general failure to keep the signal path from crossing over itself,
>> resulting in an unwanted feedback loop, which is very much like a
>> stripboard, with it's crossed traces on opposite sides of the PCB.
>> <https://www.google.com/search?q=stripboard&tbm=isch>
>
> I never understood stripboard; it's such a mess electrically, leaving
> loose antennas hanging off the end of basically every node. I'd always
> preferred pad-per-hole, but even better, copper clad once I got used to it.
>
> That's another thing, copper clad doesn't work well for ICs. Sure you
> can "dead bug" them, but I don't trust myself to make sense of the pins
> upside down. I usually cut and notch strips of PCB, so I have pads to
> solder the IC leads to (folding them out like gull-wing SO's, except I
> suppose it's not small, but a LOIC).

I use dikes to gouge the bottom of the chip at the pin-1 end, which is
all you really need--otherwise it's just like debugging a board
upside-down, which we all had to do in the through-hole days.

I occasionally use Vector 8007, which has the colander ground plane and
pad-per-hole. It works OK except that the protos are flakier than dead
bug and much much slower to build. Dead bug rules.

[Tauno Voipio]

Have you thought to frame retired breadboards and sell them as pieces of
art?

I was lazy with the Dremel and used unetched copperclad FR4 as ground
plane with dead-bug mounted components on it. Of course, it is not well
suited for surface-mount components, but they are too hard for old eyes
anyway.

The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse
with age.

--

-TV

[Chris Jones]

For some things they are very handy, and they should not be dismissed
out of hand.

Things like common inductance in supply and ground lines are valuable to
learn about anyway. If you really understand these, then you can make a
surprising range of things work on a solderless breadboard. Still, for a
beginner I would avoid solderless breadboards for switching power
supplies, anything with ac signals under 10mV, anything operating above
about 5MHz, anything that needs really low capacitance or leakage, etc.
- What I usually do is build the "difficult" part (switcher, RF VCO,
sub-picoamp sample-and-hold stage, etc.) with solder on a little piece
of copperclad FR4, maybe with tinplate shielding, and then put short
wires (pins) on that stage and plug it into the solderless breadboard as
a component. The mundane, non-critical supporting parts of the circuit
(dc offset adjustment, power regulators, status LEDs, etc.) can then be
built very rapidly on the solderless breadboard.

For low frequency op-amp circuits, low-speed digital designs, PIC
microcontrollers, etc. they are great, mostly because you can try out
modifications in seconds rather than minutes.

To avoid frustration I suggest never sticking anything bigger than a 1/4
watt resistor lead into the holes (so e.g. I have a stock of power
transistors and zeners with little bits of resistor lead soldered to the
pins). It is also important to cut the leads of your resistors to get
them off the bandolier, so that the part with glue residue from the tape
doesn't go in the holes and gum them up with insulating glue. It
probably isn't a good idea to borrow or lend a solderless breadboard
unless the other person also adheres to those rules. Another thing to
watch out for is the solderless breadboards that come screwed to an
aluminium plate - had one where the screws touched the contacts inside
the breadboard causing inexplicable connections between parts of the
circuit. I think the double-sided foam tape that is used to stick down
most of the breadboards would be safer than the screws.

Chris

[George Herold]

I'll use my white proto-board once a year or so...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9qwpe68s619i8cs/white-proto.JPG?dl=0

George H.

[John Larkin]

No. I keep them for future reference. The plastic breadboards are
generally reused, so the original circuit is lost.

We assign a project number to each breadboard, and document it in the
J:\Protos folder on a server. We include schematic (usually a
whiteboard photo), pics of the actual hardware, scope shots,
measurements, notes, whatever. That can turn out to be useful years
later. If something else needs to me measured, the original board is
still around.

>
>I was lazy with the Dremel and used unetched copperclad FR4 as ground
>plane with dead-bug mounted components on it. Of course, it is not well
>suited for surface-mount components, but they are too hard for old eyes
>anyway.

I do surface-mount breadboards, but I'm a live-bug fan. I use the
Bellen adapters for most ICs.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z356_SN2.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z338_PCB.JPG

>
>The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse
>with age.

I've always had mediocre vision. I got a Mantis on ebay and it's a
miracle; 0805 parts look big to me now.

A carbide dental burr and a Dremel can do pretty detailed stuff
freehand. It takes a bit of practise to get good at it, but it's fun.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z384_1.JPG

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 08:27:47 -0400, Phil Hobbs

<pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>On 06/08/2016 09:09 PM, John Larkin wrote:
>> On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:01:38 -0400, Phil Hobbs
>> <pcdhSpamM...@electrooptical.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
>>>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>>>
>>>> ...Jim Thompson
>>>>
>>>
>>> Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination. I haven't
>>> used one of those since I was a teenager, though I've held my nose and
>>> helped other people who were doing it. (They'll probably learn
>>> eventually, if they build anything complicated enough to be nontrivial
>>> to debug.)
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>>
>>> Phil Hobbs
>>
>> I worked for a while with a guy in Alameda, service work for ships. He
>> did a couple of controllers for shipboard steam turbines using the
>> white things, and glued them inside engine room consoles. I didn't
>> keep that job for long.
>
>Yikes. Of course the number of nasty kludges onboard your average ship
>makes that a drop in the bucket.
>
>Cheers
>
>Phil Hobbs

The big ships I worked on, container and LASH and tankers, were really
pretty good.

One LASH ship throttle control (my first PID design, back in New
Orleans) was having intermittent speed runaways, not a good thing when
docking 80,000 tons. I rode it from Oakland to San Pedro, guest of the
captain. It was a really nice trip down the coast. I found the
problem, a loose screw on a terminal strip that carried the feedback
tach signal, and the fix was to tighten about 300 screws on all the
terminal strips and remind the Chief to do that annually. There's lots
of vibration and thermal cycling down there in the engineering room.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 07:31:27 -0500, "Tim Williams"
<tiw...@seventransistorlabs.com> wrote:

>
>"Jeff Liebermann" <je...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
>news:i2thlbp9jp8fqvjmr...@4ax.com...
>> Also, if done some damage control on RF designs that were reasonably
>> well calculated, with decent components, but which didn't work as
>> expected when crammed into a tiny enclosure. The usual problem was a
>> general failure to keep the signal path from crossing over itself,
>> resulting in an unwanted feedback loop, which is very much like a
>> stripboard, with it's crossed traces on opposite sides of the PCB.
>> <https://www.google.com/search?q=stripboard&tbm=isch>
>
>I never understood stripboard; it's such a mess electrically, leaving loose
>antennas hanging off the end of basically every node. I'd always preferred
>pad-per-hole, but even better, copper clad once I got used to it.
>
>That's another thing, copper clad doesn't work well for ICs. Sure you can
>"dead bug" them, but I don't trust myself to make sense of the pins upside
>down. I usually cut and notch strips of PCB, so I have pads to solder the
>IC leads to (folding them out like gull-wing SO's, except I suppose it's not
>small, but a LOIC).

Use adapters! Live bug.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z356_SN2.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z338_PCB.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/BB_Boost1.JPG

[Phil Hobbs]

Yeah, you sorta have to do that with SMT chips, because otherwise the
leads get twisted off easily.

It occurs to me that "Fritzing" is probably derived from "on the fritz". ;)

[Tim Wescott]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>
> ...Jim Thompson

If it's what it seems to be I'll occasionally make a test circuit.

I know people are dissing the white breadboards, but if you're careful to
work within their limitations and don't try anything too large, they can
be quicker than building up a PCB -- particularly if you're exploring.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

[Jim Thompson]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 13:05:31 -0500, Tim Wescott
<seemyw...@myfooter.really> wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:
>
>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>
>If it's what it seems to be I'll occasionally make a test circuit.
>
>I know people are dissing the white breadboards, but if you're careful to
>work within their limitations and don't try anything too large, they can
>be quicker than building up a PCB -- particularly if you're exploring.

I haven't used that white breadboard stuff since the early '70's when
I had trouble with a circuit running at the horrendous frequency of
40kHz ;-)

I rarely breadboard today, since chips are rather high on the device
count. When I must, I use this sort of breadboard...

<http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/BreadBoard.jpg>

[Tim Wescott]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 11:17:48 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

> On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 13:05:31 -0500, Tim Wescott
> <seemyw...@myfooter.really> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>>
>>> ...Jim Thompson
>>
>>If it's what it seems to be I'll occasionally make a test circuit.
>>
>>I know people are dissing the white breadboards, but if you're careful
>>to work within their limitations and don't try anything too large, they
>>can be quicker than building up a PCB -- particularly if you're
>>exploring.
>
> I haven't used that white breadboard stuff since the early '70's when I
> had trouble with a circuit running at the horrendous frequency of 40kHz
> ;-)
>
> I rarely breadboard today, since chips are rather high on the device
> count. When I must, I use this sort of breadboard...
>
> <http://www.analog-innovations.com/SED/BreadBoard.jpg>
>
> ...Jim Thompson

I prototyped a microprocessor circuit on one. A very long time ago.

And a radio receiver. Also a very long time ago. A guy I worked with
for a very short period of time claimed to have built satellite receiver
front-end on one -- and he was a successful consultant, so I can't
completely dismiss his story.

Mostly today if I'm going to use one it's either because I need some sub-
audio op-amp circuit for a test, or because I want to verify that some
peculiar thing I'm doing really agrees with SPICE (again, at low
frequencies). Production circuits just get a PCB.

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
<To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:

>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>
> ...Jim Thompson

Actually, the whole concept is wrong. Products should be designed, not
fiddled. We only breadboard to evaluate an underspecified part or a
bit of a tricky circuit, and the breadboard is NOT the prototype of an
entire product.

Bob Pease's classic hairball is way over the top. It shouldn't be
necessary to breadboard that much stuff. Besides, breadboarding a
hundred parts wastes too much time; it's better to do the design right
and lay out the final-product PC board. Of course, Pease hated
computers so he couldn't simulate.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

[Tim Wescott]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 12:00:24 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
> <To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>
> Actually, the whole concept is wrong. Products should be designed, not
> fiddled. We only breadboard to evaluate an underspecified part or a bit
> of a tricky circuit, and the breadboard is NOT the prototype of an
> entire product.
>
> Bob Pease's classic hairball is way over the top. It shouldn't be
> necessary to breadboard that much stuff. Besides, breadboarding a
> hundred parts wastes too much time; it's better to do the design right
> and lay out the final-product PC board. Of course, Pease hated computers
> so he couldn't simulate.

+1

Even if you can't or won't simulate, you should still be able to
breadboard the bits, and then glue the bits together after some pencil-
and-paper math.

[Phil Hobbs]

On 06/09/2016 03:11 PM, Tim Wescott wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 12:00:24 -0700, John Larkin wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
>> <To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>>
>>> ...Jim Thompson
>>
>> Actually, the whole concept is wrong. Products should be designed, not
>> fiddled. We only breadboard to evaluate an underspecified part or a bit
>> of a tricky circuit, and the breadboard is NOT the prototype of an
>> entire product.
>>
>> Bob Pease's classic hairball is way over the top. It shouldn't be
>> necessary to breadboard that much stuff. Besides, breadboarding a
>> hundred parts wastes too much time; it's better to do the design right
>> and lay out the final-product PC board. Of course, Pease hated computers
>> so he couldn't simulate.
>
> +1
>
> Even if you can't or won't simulate, you should still be able to
> breadboard the bits, and then glue the bits together after some pencil-
> and-paper math.
>

Between undergrad and grad school, I took a couple of years off to go
build satellite telecom equipment. (I got stupid lucky--I had a brand
new physics and astronomy degree, and only a hobby electronics
background, but they took a chance on me.) I built 2/3 the timing and
frequency control system (*) for the first civilian DBS system dead-bug
style on a bunch of pieces of Cu-clad held together with copper tape,
including shields with little hinged lids.

Everybody there did that in those days (1981-83), because with taped
layouts, board revs were very painful and good circuit simulators
weren't available for circuits that complicated.

(The boards worked great, eventually. First two PLLs I ever built in my
life.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(*) Spacetel, from AEL Microtel. I did the pilot tone generator (PTG)
and the master timing & frequency unit (TFU). A couple of other guys
did the pilot tone receiver (PTR).

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <8k4jlb19v778h4u5b...@4ax.com>,
jjla...@highlandtechnology.com says...

>
>
> >The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse
> >with age.
>
> I've always had mediocre vision. I got a Mantis on ebay and it's a
> miracle; 0805 parts look big to me now.
>
> A carbide dental burr and a Dremel can do pretty detailed stuff
> freehand. It takes a bit of practise to get good at it, but it's fun.
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z384_1.JPG

As just a hobby I cannot justify the Mantis, but for about $ 190 new
Amscope SE400 makes a nice scope of 10 and 20 X that makes working with
the small parts very easy for me to see at 66 years old.

I have built a few simple things using the Dremel tool and burrs. Not
too bad once you get the hang of it.

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

Den torsdag den 9. juni 2016 kl. 18.13.44 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
>
> A carbide dental burr and a Dremel can do pretty detailed stuff
> freehand. It takes a bit of practise to get good at it, but it's fun.
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z384_1.JPG
>

I occasionally fire up my homemade concoction of steppermotors and linear rails
with a spindle made from a BLDC motor and a collet holder.

a couple of minutes with a V bit:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ks27eqxzo5qwerd/P1000046.JPG
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n42mzuyj7xcgzhm/P1000063.JPG


-Lasse

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

Den torsdag den 9. juni 2016 kl. 18.24.10 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
snip

>
> The big ships I worked on, container and LASH and tankers, were really
> pretty good.
>
> One LASH ship throttle control (my first PID design, back in New
> Orleans) was having intermittent speed runaways, not a good thing when
> docking 80,000 tons. I rode it from Oakland to San Pedro, guest of the
> captain. It was a really nice trip down the coast. I found the
> problem, a loose screw on a terminal strip that carried the feedback
> tach signal, and the fix was to tighten about 300 screws on all the
> terminal strips and remind the Chief to do that annually. There's lots
> of vibration and thermal cycling down there in the engineering room.
>

When MAN B&W came out with the first fully computer controlled camless
ship engine the made an app note on ship engine electronics.

One of the things in it I hadn't thought of was that all the unused screws
on terminal strips should be tightened. In tests they had problem with lose screws creating brass dust with vibration

-Lasse

[dagmarg...@yahoo.com]

Pretty.

Cheers,
James Arthur

[John Larkin]

That was a direct-drive reversing diesel, no? The ships I worked on
were all steam turbines. Diesels and turbines both vibrate a lot.
Steam has fallen out of favor because they are complex, much harder to
maintain than diesels.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

[Tim Wescott]

I was doing contract work during my Master's thesis that was pretty
similar in looks, but operated at around 400kHz (USCG radiobeacons).

In 1992 or so I was sending circuit boards off to fabs by calling them up
on a modem and uploading files to a bulletin board -- I guess I was on
the leading edge of that.

--
Tim Wescott
Control systems, embedded software and circuit design
I'm looking for work! See my website if you're interested
http://www.wescottdesign.com

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

Den torsdag den 9. juni 2016 kl. 23.03.40 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 13:31:20 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
> <lang...@fonz.dk> wrote:
>
> >Den torsdag den 9. juni 2016 kl. 18.24.10 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
> >snip
> >>
> >> The big ships I worked on, container and LASH and tankers, were really
> >> pretty good.
> >>
> >> One LASH ship throttle control (my first PID design, back in New
> >> Orleans) was having intermittent speed runaways, not a good thing when
> >> docking 80,000 tons. I rode it from Oakland to San Pedro, guest of the
> >> captain. It was a really nice trip down the coast. I found the
> >> problem, a loose screw on a terminal strip that carried the feedback
> >> tach signal, and the fix was to tighten about 300 screws on all the
> >> terminal strips and remind the Chief to do that annually. There's lots
> >> of vibration and thermal cycling down there in the engineering room.
> >>
> >
> >When MAN B&W came out with the first fully computer controlled camless
> >ship engine the made an app note on ship engine electronics.
> >
> >One of the things in it I hadn't thought of was that all the unused screws
> >on terminal strips should be tightened. In tests they had problem with lose screws creating brass dust with vibration
> >
> >-Lasse
>
> That was a direct-drive reversing diesel, no?

yes regular diesel but with electro-hydraulic valves and injection.

> The ships I worked on
> were all steam turbines. Diesels and turbines both vibrate a lot.
> Steam has fallen out of favor because they are complex, much harder to
> maintain than diesels.
>

Diesel also more efficient, I think LNG carriers still use steam turbines
with boiler in part fueled by the gas boil off in the tanks

-Lasse

[tabb...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, 9 June 2016 19:05:34 UTC+1, Tim Wescott wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:
>
> > Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>

> If it's what it seems to be I'll occasionally make a test circuit.
>
> I know people are dissing the white breadboards, but if you're careful to
> work within their limitations and don't try anything too large, they can
> be quicker than building up a PCB -- particularly if you're exploring.

There are 2 things I particularly dislike about those push-in proto boards. First one ends up with wire links all over the shop, with any sensible work flow related layout lost. Secondly it's impractical to keep the prototype. They're overly large and hopelessly fragile.


NT

[Tim Wescott]

I have a bin just for the wire links, and manage to stay pretty
disciplined about not tossing them anywhere but in the bin when I'm done.

And I treat the circuits like scratch paper -- once I've made them work
on a real board, they get put on the shelf, and recycled when I need a
bare board.

If I really want to save the circuit, I transfer it to a permanent
"breadboard".

[krw]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 15:36:46 -0400, Ralph Mowery
<rmower...@earthlink.net> wrote:

>In article <8k4jlb19v778h4u5b...@4ax.com>,
>jjla...@highlandtechnology.com says...
>>
>>
>> >The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse
>> >with age.
>>
>> I've always had mediocre vision. I got a Mantis on ebay and it's a
>> miracle; 0805 parts look big to me now.
>>
>> A carbide dental burr and a Dremel can do pretty detailed stuff
>> freehand. It takes a bit of practise to get good at it, but it's fun.
>>
>> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z384_1.JPG
>
>
>As just a hobby I cannot justify the Mantis, but for about $ 190 new
>Amscope SE400 makes a nice scope of 10 and 20 X that makes working with
>the small parts very easy for me to see at 66 years old.

I have a Mantis at work but these are really useful (and cheap), too:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/aven-tools/26221/243-1197-ND/1992723

>
>I have built a few simple things using the Dremel tool and burrs. Not
>too bad once you get the hang of it.

I generally use an X-Acto knife.

[krw]

Very nice!

[George Herold]

Yeah circa '92 I was sending files off by email to some place
that would cut (whatever the plastic was) masks, mail 'em to me
and I'd mail (or hand carry) to the local electro-plater.
(They did nickle plated fishing lures too.)

George H.

[krw]

On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 22:39:36 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
wrote:

>On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:40:00 -0700 (PDT), bill....@ieee.org wrote:
>
>>On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:55:11 PM UTC+10, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>> I guess we may be producing a
>>> generation of electronic engineers where fritzing is the best that
>>> they can do, and who really don't know which end of the soldering iron
>>> to grab.
>
>>There have always been all-thumbs people around. I don't think that
>>this generation includes a higher proportion of them.
>
>I have a trick question that helps identify those that lack mechanical
>aptitude. I ask "Do you fix your own car?" or something similar. Most
>who are mechanically inclined do some of their own repairs primarily
>because it saves money. My question is not a perfect method because
>there are significant difference in people that can deal with big
>things and those who can deal with tiny things. The skills are very
>much independent of each other.

Not a good question. I don't work on my own car because I can afford
to pay someone else to do it. My small amount of free time is worth
much more than what I pay a mechanic (just taking it in takes too much
time).

>In this case, I asked the student about his vehicle. He does as much
>self maintenance on his automobile as possible. Same with his bicycle
>and his parents sailboat. In other words, he's not mechanically
>deficient and probably qualified to stuff and solder his own boards.
>My guess(tm) is he somehow decided that it was demeaning of his lofty
>position as an engineer to get his hands dirty. In some cultures,
>it's quite common for the upper classes to have such an attitude. At
>one company where I once worked, the theoretical basis for the
>company's major product was contrived by a designer from India. He
>could not solder, build a prototype, or even carry his own papers. He
>had assistants and a servant to do all that for him. He did what he
>new best, which was communications theory.
>
>One problem with learning to solder and build things, is that it has
>to be done at an early age. I worked with a programmer that provided
>a good example why this is important. He was the son of an auto
>mechanic, who decided that his son would not also become an auto
>mechanic. Every time the son would pick up a tool, his father would
>take it from him. He had near zero childhood experience with tools.
>The result was in later years, he was completely useless using any
>type of hand tool. Up until that time, I had assumed that man is born
>with the ability to use tools. Apparently not, as it does require
>early practice to become proficient.
>
>Again, if we're going to teach kids something about electronics, which
>I assume means building something, it should be with tools that teach
>manual dexterity, construction techniques, use of tools, and maybe a
>little circuit theory. Poking parts into holes just doesn't strike me
>as much of a challenge or learning experience.

[George Herold]

I rip out and re-solder something else on copper clad constantly,
(well if I'm doing circuit stuff.)
A few IC's to make sure this bit works right.
I only keep the really ugly ones.
(You can show 'em to lab/work visitors and they leave
you alone sooner. And then every once in a while
you find a fellow electronics geek... both attractant
and repellent. :^)

George H.

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 21:12:29 -0400, krw <k...@nowhere.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 22:39:36 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 8 Jun 2016 21:40:00 -0700 (PDT), bill....@ieee.org wrote:
>>
>>>On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 1:55:11 PM UTC+10, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>>> I guess we may be producing a
>>>> generation of electronic engineers where fritzing is the best that
>>>> they can do, and who really don't know which end of the soldering iron
>>>> to grab.
>>
>>>There have always been all-thumbs people around. I don't think that
>>>this generation includes a higher proportion of them.
>>
>>I have a trick question that helps identify those that lack mechanical
>>aptitude. I ask "Do you fix your own car?" or something similar. Most
>>who are mechanically inclined do some of their own repairs primarily
>>because it saves money. My question is not a perfect method because
>>there are significant difference in people that can deal with big
>>things and those who can deal with tiny things. The skills are very
>>much independent of each other.

>Not a good question. I don't work on my own car because I can afford
>to pay someone else to do it. My small amount of free time is worth
>much more than what I pay a mechanic (just taking it in takes too much
>time).

Please note that I asked a college student the question. In the
distant past, I also asked prospective beginning engineers and
prospective technicians. I usually don't ask experienced engineers
that question because I really don't care if they know to build their
own breadboards. Besides having sufficient funds to pay someone to do
their auto repair, they also are able to keep several technicians busy
building their breadboards prototypes, and running tests. My question
might also be construed an insult, although the few times when I did
ask such a question of more experienced engineers, the reply was
something like "I did that when I was younger but don't have time
these days". Good enough methinks.

Drivel: I just got off the phone with a neighbors middle son. He's
attending the local community college studying electronics or whatever
it's called these days.
<https://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/engineering/>
He's on his 2nd year and now needs a better computer. I'll spare you
the details, but the laptop I sold him a year ago blew up the battery.
I told him a few months ago to buy a new clone battery on eBay.
Instead, he's been running on the charger. Now, the battery just
shorted, which blew the charging circuit. Of course, he wants me to
fix it. I said I would help him fix it, show him how to troubleshoot
the problem, and supply him with parts, but he has to do the work
including teardown and reassembly. I was rather surprised when he
announce that he was too busy learning to program and that programmers
don't need such skills. I'll have a chance to pound some sense into
his skull tomorrow, when he goes shopping for a new machine in my
palatial office. This somewhat reinforces my suspicion that we're
well on our way to producing a generation engineers, that really don't

know which end of the soldering iron to grab.

--
Jeff Liebermann je...@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

[krw]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 19:54:47 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>

That's the answer I would have given, with the exception that I would
have said that I hated every minute doing it. Cars are a tool. I
don't enjoy fixing tools. I just want to use them (computers are the
same, anymore).

>Drivel: I just got off the phone with a neighbors middle son. He's
>attending the local community college studying electronics or whatever
>it's called these days.
><https://www.cabrillo.edu/academics/engineering/>
>He's on his 2nd year and now needs a better computer. I'll spare you
>the details, but the laptop I sold him a year ago blew up the battery.
>I told him a few months ago to buy a new clone battery on eBay.
>Instead, he's been running on the charger. Now, the battery just
>shorted, which blew the charging circuit. Of course, he wants me to
>fix it. I said I would help him fix it, show him how to troubleshoot
>the problem, and supply him with parts, but he has to do the work
>including teardown and reassembly. I was rather surprised when he
>announce that he was too busy learning to program and that programmers
>don't need such skills. I'll have a chance to pound some sense into
>his skull tomorrow, when he goes shopping for a new machine in my
>palatial office. This somewhat reinforces my suspicion that we're
>well on our way to producing a generation engineers, that really don't
>know which end of the soldering iron to grab.

He's in a college electronics curriculum but is learning to be a
programmer? Why doesn't he just do a CS degree? I understand why
colleges teach programming as engineering. It's cheap. No expensive
labs needed (computers are cheap and the student supplies it). he
good news is that jobs will be plentiful, as long as I want to work.

[legg]

On Thu, 09 Jun 2016 12:00:24 -0700, John Larkin

<jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
><To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>
>>Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>
>Actually, the whole concept is wrong. Products should be designed, not
>fiddled. We only breadboard to evaluate an underspecified part or a
>bit of a tricky circuit, and the breadboard is NOT the prototype of an
>entire product.
>
>Bob Pease's classic hairball is way over the top. It shouldn't be
>necessary to breadboard that much stuff. Besides, breadboarding a
>hundred parts wastes too much time; it's better to do the design right
>and lay out the final-product PC board. Of course, Pease hated
>computers so he couldn't simulate.

Pease was waiting for computers and simulations that didn't
consistently demonstrate a waste of man-hours and simple conceptual
error.

I'm not sure we're at that stage, but we're prepared to use it if the
man-hours invested can be banked and built onto, for re-use and
iteration, with increasing accuracy and reducing conceptual error.

It's basically a virtual hairball.

RL

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <4n2klbhef4anni5fa...@4ax.com>, k...@nowhere.com
says...

>
>
> I have a Mantis at work but these are really useful (and cheap), too:
>
> http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/aven-tools/26221/243-1197-ND/1992723
> >
>

I have tried magnifiers like that,but they do not have enough
magnification for the SMD for me. Also have to get the head too close
to the work to do much soldering or hot air work at the higher
magnifiction.

Then bit the bullet and bought the Amscope se400.

[Bill Beaty]

On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 6:15:58 AM UTC-7, Tauno Voipio wrote:

> The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse
> with age.

MANTIS(tm) station: giant eyeglasses used by senior engineers in denial of their advanced age.

Recently we started using 0603 for everything. No reason, just because. Now those 0805 bypass caps look like hulking ice cubes. Yet the Mantis lens is the same 20x it's always been. Just get some sharper-pointed tweezers. (Before Mantis, it was fluorescent spring-arm magnifier ringlights. Odd that the youngsters workbenches never had them.)

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 21:21:42 -0700 (PDT), Bill Beaty <bi...@eskimo.com>
wrote:

>On Thursday, June 9, 2016 at 6:15:58 AM UTC-7, Tauno Voipio wrote:
>
>> The electronic components shrink at the same speed as the eyes get worse
>> with age.
>
>
>MANTIS(tm) station: giant eyeglasses used by senior engineers in denial of their advanced age.

We have about six mantises and several video systems, one that allows
us to look sideways at BGA joints. Even the young people use the
optics. If you were nearsighted enough to solder 0603 parts without
optical aid, it wouldn't be healthy, hunching over a board, breathing
solder fumes, burning your hair on the iron. The Mantis lets you sit
up straight and work comfortably.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Mantis/Mantis3.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Gear/Escope/Escope_2.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Gear/Escope/Escope_5.JPEG

>
>Recently we started using 0603 for everything. No reason, just because. Now those 0805 bypass caps look like hulking ice cubes. Yet the Mantis lens is the same 20x it's always been. Just get some sharper-pointed tweezers. (Before Mantis, it was fluorescent spring-arm magnifier ringlights. Odd that the youngsters workbenches never had them.)
>

We mostly use 0603s, but I like a 4x or 6x lens in my mantis. I must
be a lot younger than you.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

[Phil Hobbs]

>Pease was waiting for computers and simulations that didn't
>consistently demonstrate a waste of man-hours and simple conceptual
>error.

I'm still waiting for that too. ;)

Transistor-level models are generally OK if you supply realistic strays, but manufacturers' op amp models are uniformly lousy--far less accurate than pencil and paper.

I rarely get into trouble with parts whose datasheets describe their performance accurately, but unfortunately the datasheets are now written by marketing droids.

That flybuck converter I was working on a couple of months ago simulated beautifully, but the datasheet of the converter chip was full of lies--it claimed that it kept on PWMing at light loads, and it didn't.

Dead bug breadboards are especially useful for catching that sort of problem.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

[Phil Hobbs]

In my corner of IBM Research, around then we had a ME technician type
who did boards using (I think) CADAM, believe it or not. The EEs in the
support group (Central Scientific Services) used some actual PCB
package, but usually just did their own boards.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

[krw]

This particular one comes with four lenses and is perfectly good for
working on SMTs down to 0402s, anyway. The highest magnification lens
has a pretty small field (and depth) of view, though. That's where
the Mantis shines. I'd probably get a headache if I used it for a
long time, too (PD is probably wrong).

I also have an OptiVisor. I leave it out for others to use. ;-)

>
>Then bit the bullet and bought the Amscope se400.

I don't know that model but in general I find that style impossible to
use. I guess I'm spoiled by the Mantis.

[krw]

On Thu, 9 Jun 2016 21:21:42 -0700 (PDT), Bill Beaty <bi...@eskimo.com>
wrote:

In this job we use 0402s wherever we can. We only use a 6x lens
(though I have an 8x on the other side of the turret) on the Mantis.
High magnification cuts down on the field of view too much.

[Tom Del Rosso]

John Larkin wrote:
> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 19:22:52 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <je...@cruzio.com>
> wrote:

>
>> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:37:39 -0700, John Larkin
>> <jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 08 Jun 2016 16:30:59 -0700, Jim Thompson
>>> <To-Email-Use-Th...@On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>>> ...Jim Thompson
>>

>>> I'm not allowed to. It's "for non-engineers."
>>
>> Fritzing seems to be all about building breadboards before committing
>> to a PCB. Since you don't do breadboards and go directly from the
>> design to the PCB, you probably don't need fritzing. Besides, I
>> don't think any of your designs will work on a "stripboard". My RF
>> stuff certainly won't.
>
> Most of the projects shown on the Fritzing web site seem to not get
> beyond the plastic protoboard stage.
>
> I breadboard on copperclad FR4, or lay out a multilayer board for
> complex stuff.
>
> https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z382_1.JPG
>
> You can do 100 ps/3GHz stuff this way, or maybe faster.

Is it single-sided so it doesn't form a cap with the other side?

[John Larkin]

I use gold-plated double-side copperclad, FR4, 0.062 thick. A 50 ohm
transmission line is about 100 mils wide, a little narrower if it's
coplanar waveguide.

You really need a ground plane on the bottom side to do fast stuff.

A small part, like an 0603, would have about the same tiny pad
capacitance whether the opposite side were copper or not.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

[George Herold]

OK, thanks, I heard somewhere 50 ohms was about
trace width equal to trace- gnd plane separation.

Stupid question*; (from someone who hasn't done
much fast stuff) Can you run 500 ohm traces
about your pcb, (w/ terminations?) and do
50 ohms with the outside world?

George H.
*When I say that I always picture Peter Falk as Columbo :^)

[John Larkin]

Get Appcad from Avago. Or Keysight. Maybe both. Nice little program.

>
>Stupid question*; (from someone who hasn't done
>much fast stuff) Can you run 500 ohm traces
>about your pcb, (w/ terminations?) and do
>50 ohms with the outside world?

I don't think that a 500 ohm trace is possible in this universe. A 5
mil microstrip on 0.062 FR4 is about 150 ohms, less if there's an
internal ground plane.

Whether you need to source or end terminate depends on speed and
length and whether bounces matter. In general, a minority of traces
care.

--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

[krw]

On Fri, 10 Jun 2016 19:15:01 -0700, John Larkin

Single ended? No, not unless you can find an insulator with a
dielectric constant less than 1. Free space is something like
377-ohms. It's hard to get above that in this universe. ;-) Negative
pressure?

>Whether you need to source or end terminate depends on speed and
>length and whether bounces matter. In general, a minority of traces
>care.

Yep. If the length of the wire is on the order of half a rise-time
less, then termination is needed. Sometimes less, to avoid humps in
the edges. A lot of parts these days drive some really fast edges,
though. I often over-terminate signals to slow edges down, for EMI
reasons.

[bill....@ieee.org]

The difficulty with running 500 ohm traces is getting that high an impedance in the first place.

I once managed to create a 175 ohm trace on a 1.5mm thick low dielectric constant substrate (alumina-loaded Teflon) but that meant using the narrowest trace our PCB house was game to print.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[krw]

We used the EDS system for boards. When I first started we drew
schematics by on velum and had a layout technician convert them to
netlists by hand. A few years later the Toronto Lab came up with a
logic entry system, TILES (Toronto Interactive Logic Entry System),
and we used 3277 terminals with 19" Tektronix storage displays for the
logic entry. Layouts were done on IGES systems, IIRC.

EDS was a very powerful system with a really horrible user interface.
When IBM bought a hunk of Intel, it gave them the EDS system for chip
development (80286 was done in EDS). The Intel engineers were
horrified at the UI, so wrote their own front end. The layout and
simulation tools were way ahead of their time, though.

[Chris Jones]

On 10/06/2016 21:48, Phil Hobbs wrote:
>> Pease was waiting for computers and simulations that didn't
>> consistently demonstrate a waste of man-hours and simple conceptual
>> error.
>
> I'm still waiting for that too. ;)
>
> Transistor-level models are generally OK if you supply realistic strays, but manufacturers' op amp models are uniformly lousy--far less accurate than pencil and paper.

And the really stupid thing is that the chip companies do have excellent
transistor-level models of the same chips but they think that it is in
their interest not to give you those models.

Everybody knows that everyone with the resources to copy the chip from
the netlist also has more than enough resources to extract the netlist
from their competitors' parts.

Very very stupid.

Chris

[Phil Hobbs]

>> I'm still waiting for that too. ;)
>
>> Transistor-level models are generally OK if you supply realistic
>>strays, but manufacturers' op amp models are uniformly lousy--far
>>less accurate than pencil and paper.

>And the really stupid thing is that the chip companies do have excellent
>transistor-level models of the same chips but they think that it is in
>their interest not to give you those models.

>Everybody knows that everyone with the resources to copy the chip from
>the netlist also has more than enough resources to extract the netlist
>from their competitors' parts.

>Very very stupid.

LTC seems to be a partial exception, at least if you use LTspice. The LT1028A model even has the weird noise peak at 300 kHz!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

[Tim Williams]

"George Herold" <ghe...@teachspin.com> wrote in message
news:8f7af7a9-4310-4d14...@googlegroups.com...

> Stupid question*; (from someone who hasn't done
> much fast stuff) Can you run 500 ohm traces
> about your pcb, (w/ terminations?) and do
> 50 ohms with the outside world?

It would look something like twin lead, where the ratio D/d (distance D on
centers, between round wires of diameter d) is ~32.

If the traces are edge parallel (i.e., same layer), the distance will be
slightly less. If there is no cutout in the PCB between and around them
(think ladder line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin-lead#/media/File:Ladder_line.jpg ), the
distance may be larger due to the increased dielectric constant.

Such large distances, even for very fine traces (32 * 7 mils is a quarter of
an inch), means having even greater distances to the nearest ground, in
order that the differential pair actually behave like a differential pair.

I know you didn't ask about differential pair, but now that you have(?) a
mental picture of how to make a high impedance twin lead on a PCB, suppose
how it would look if one of those traces was turned into the edge of a
ground plane. Now you get a single trace above ground, or, well, maybe not
above but beside anyway.

If you have ground on either side of the trace (coplanar waveguide), expect
to need about twice the distance, i.e., half an inch from either side of the
trace.
http://www1.sphere.ne.jp/i-lab/ilab/tool/cpw_e.htm
I get 0.15mm trace width, 140um thickness, 183mm gap, 500 ohms. So maybe
the guess of 1/2 inch was a little optimistic.

The formula used may not be terrifically accurate in such ranges, anyway.

Since the distance between conductors is greater than the PCB thickness, it
won't matter much, which layers everything is on.

Since the distance scales are so large, transmission line effects for very
high frequencies (higher TEM, TE and TM modes) will get complicated on the
order of 100s of MHz. Accordingly, the useful length must be longer than
its width (otherwise, how do you connect to it and stuff?).

The only wideband thing that comes to mind is differential probes, the kind
with loose wire leads. These usually only go up to 10MHz or so. If the
leads are roughly twisted together, we can expect their transmission line
impedance to be 100-150 ohms, which is a wide break from the ~1M you might
hope a probe has. (The common mode depends on where the cable is laying in
space, but it's probably not too much higher, 200-300 ohms. If any of that
couples unequally into the differential mode cable, you're going to have a
bad time!)

Obviously, we'll never get an actual 1M at high frequencies. We can
calculate at what frequency the dominant pole will occur. The impedance
ratio is 10,000, so the length ratio will be 10,000. If the cable is 1m
long, its electrical length is more like 10,000m, or a 1/4 wave of 120kHz.
Since Z > Zo, this will be a dominant pole (capacitive).

The probes can be made to look resistive at high frequencies, if the input
circuit (at the far end of the probe cables) has an R+C terminating it,
where R is a bit less than Zo and C is a bit more than the Ceq of the line.
Total capacitance (as seen by low frequencies and high impedances) will be a
bit over double that of the line.

If the probe cables can be braced like twin lead (or perhaps, use some flex
cable that's printed with a good, wide, high impedance pattern), the
impedance could be increased to 300 ohms, maybe a bit more, but nothing
that's really obviously useful (like a 10:1 ratio into 50 ohms, making a
perfectly terminated 10x attenuator possible).

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

[George Herold]

Oops... open mouth late at night and insert foot.

A 5
> mil microstrip on 0.062 FR4 is about 150 ohms, less if there's an
> internal ground plane.
>
> Whether you need to source or end terminate depends on speed and
> length and whether bounces matter. In general, a minority of traces
> care.

Thanks,
george H.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Phil Hobbs wrote:

> On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>
>> ...Jim Thompson
>>
>

> Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination.


They come in other colors, now. :)


http://www.ebay.com/itm/131201337781

[Phil Hobbs]

>> Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination.


>    They come in other colors, now. :)
>       http://www.ebay.com/itm/131201337781

You had to bring that up, didn't you?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

[John Larkin]

That probably makes them leakier than the white ones!

[Michael A. Terrell]

John Larkin wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Jul 2016 21:03:53 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
> <mike.t...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Phil Hobbs wrote:
>>> On 06/08/2016 07:30 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
>>>> Anyone using "Fritzing" ??
>>>>
>>>> ...Jim Thompson
>>>>
>>>
>>> Anything with a white nylon 'breadboard' is an abomination.
>>
>>
>> They come in other colors, now. :)
>>
>>
>> http://www.ebay.com/itm/131201337781
>
> That probably makes them leakier than the white ones!

They are sold for Ardunio projects,, so it wouldn't matter. Those
are small enough to stick on a prototype 'shield'. I have never used any
of those breadboards. The only type I've come close to using were a
small board with brass tacks that you soldered components to. Then I
bought chassis punches and some cheap aluminum chassis, instead. :)

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 16 Jul 2016 04:44:31 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"

When I was young and poor, I used to drive finishing nails into an old
piece of wood and solder parts (from old TV sets) to the nails. It
wasn't picosecond or picoampere stuff.

[Michael A. Terrell]

Maybe, but it did work. I started making aluminum chassis for
projects in metal shop, in the seventh grade. I just couldn't go
backwards to a breadboard, and I was working with RF that needed
shielding. So, I mowed lawns and worked part time in a TV shop to buy
tools while I was still in school. I still have some of those tools, 50
years later. :)

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

that's what how it was done when I was a kid in school, print out of schematic
glued on a piece of wood and brass nails

http://gotech.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/s%C3%B8mbr%C3%A6t-624x458.jpg

-Lasse

[John Larkin]

Brass nails? I couldn't afford brass nails.

I had a grandfather who smoked cigars, and he gave me the used cigar
boxes to build things in. Nice actually, thin wood with a paper hinged
cover. And I built some things on vinyl (asbestos?) floor tiles...
punch small holes, stick in the part leads, solder on the back.

I also built things on old radio chassis, and on various weird
military surplus stuff. Later, when I had some income from fixing TV
sets, I could occasionally buy a Bud chassis.

I like Dremeled FR4 now.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/LDP2.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z356_SN2.JPG

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53724080/Protos/Z384_1.JPG

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

I build a cnc router from assorted ebay finds, eagle can directly
generate isolation milling and drilling gcode, works ok for simple stuff

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ks27eqxzo5qwerd/P1000046.JPG
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n42mzuyj7xcgzhm/P1000063.JPG


-Lasse

[Tauno Voipio]

Elektuur / Elector / Elektor?

--

-TV

[Bob Masta]

I had an even cheaper, simpler, and cheesier method: Poke
holes in grey cardboard (from shirts, cereal boxes, etc).
Insert components on top surface, bend leads and daisy-chain
as needed to make connections. You could even draw out the
layout ahead of time on the cardboard.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v9.20
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
Frequency Counter, Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI
FREE 8-channel Signal Generator, DaqMusiq generator
Science with your sound card!

[Phil Hobbs]

30 years ago, when I was at Ginzton Lab, we had a couple of engineers
who would build circuits for folks. They used a very similar method
except with large paper stickers glued to thin balsa wood, and scribbled
the layout on top in pen. You could just stick DIPs straight through
it. They used copper tape a lot for ground integrity.

[Jasen Betts]

On 2016-07-17, Bob Masta <N0S...@daqarta.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jul 2016 07:41:30 -0700, John Larkin
><jjla...@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:
>
>
> I had an even cheaper, simpler, and cheesier method: Poke
> holes in grey cardboard (from shirts, cereal boxes, etc).
> Insert components on top surface, bend leads and daisy-chain
> as needed to make connections. You could even draw out the
> layout ahead of time on the cardboard.

I did one with parts soldered to staples in grey card this
was using recovered through-hole parts so the leads were
too short to daisy-chain them, the solder and the staples
were new, the rest was all recovered. it wasn't anything
particlarly ambitious, just an LED blinker.

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