2015

TwinTeeth: The PCB Mini-Factory

    If you make your own PCBs this TwinTeeth machine might be just the thing you need for your bench.  Thanks for the tip Charlie & Victor “It includes the following functions: UV Laser photoengraving on sensitive film or presensitized boards using an ultraviolet laser. Drilling vias and holes using any mini-rotary tool like Dremel® or Proxxon®. Dispensing solder paste with precision on SMD PCB pads. Plotting circuits with

Name the Thing Contest – 271

  The prize this week is a ESP8266 Serial WIFI Wireless Transceiver Module so you can add WIFI to your next project. This contest will run for one week (Feb 28- Mar 6, 2015). Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item above and what it can be used for. Please do not give the answer in the comments. Send an email to contest @

Insane Fast Food

  These videos are cool, too bad is isn’t real food being made. Reminds me of how the Chrome browser really works. I would like to see the setup of the equipment before the take.  

Robot Cake Decorating

  Next time you see a nice cake at the bakery that looks to be custom made you might be fooled. Many of the new Cake Decorating Robots perform such a good job you would never know they were mass produced. The interface is nice since they user can simply free hand draw the design to be replicated, the robots then go to town and start pushing them off the

Homemade Electronic Drum Kit

  If you are musically inclined a cool project would be to build some of your instruments. This Homemade Electronic Drum Kit by Hyoobaloinz is a great example of what can be developed with a bit of work. It looks great and is functional.  “This first iteration is roughly modeled after the Roland V-drum. The main features I extracted were: 1. Piezoelectric pressure sensors for velocity-sensitive note triggering. 2. Mesh drum heads for quiet,

PCB Bad Solder Joint

  Product testing is very important, you can run a battery of electrical testing on your PCB but a visual inspection is also very important to spot failures that are waiting to happen in the future. Our friend Bob Davis has been busy repairing all sorts of random electronic items. The Bad solder joints seen above are from a Crown XTi 1000 power amplifier which is an amp that retails

Whiteboard Erasing Robot

  When you have a whiteboard all is good until you need to erase it.  This Whiteboard Erasing Robot will make quick work of it. “The goal of this project was to create a robot which could erase written text on a whiteboard completely autonomously, i.e. no human interface. The processes involved in this project included devising a method for the robot to search a whiteboard for text, designing a