Share tips you have come across

I've never had the solder stick to the brass and it's softer than stainless steel so I guess that's a pretty good material for the purpose, though less readily available for making a DIY tip cleaner. I bought a pre-made one on eBay from China for <$2USD w/ free shipping. I pull the brass out of the can every so often and all the little bits of solder fall out with a couple taps.

I didn't realize the purpose of the plastic insert. That would have come in handy a couple times with my old flux bottle. I ended up gluing the thing to a piece of steel flat bar to give it a stable base.

If you've got some thing you need to use frequently that requires a complicated wiring arrangement, make a jig on some protoboard so you will know it works every time and not have to fiddle around with troubleshooting it every time you wire it up.

I made jigs for reprogramming chips outside of an Arduino board.


Above are two examples of programming jigs I made. One is a ZIF socket soldered onto a protoshield that lets me use the ArduinoISP sketch on an Uno to program a chip (in this case, an ATtiny4313).

The other is some male headers soldered onto a 6-wide protoboard. The 2x3 header on top lets me plug in the standard programmer ribbon cable, and the headers on bottom are spaced just wide enough to be able to plug this over a DIP package in a breadboard. You just need to grab the right jig and plug it over the chip to reprogram it in circuit. The one pictured is made for an ATtiny85.

I have one of each jig made for ATtiny85, ATtiny84, ATtiny4313, and ATmega328P.

Which reminds me, I need to whip some up for the ATtiny10 and various PICs I bought.

1 Like

@Jiggy-Ninja
That is a great idea.
I purchased 10 of these boards to do something similar.
eg: I plan on making these: IR remote control, Temperature, RTC, ultra sonic distance sensor and RFID.
Once made up, I will be able to just plug and play :wink:

2017-01-08_15-20-55.png

WARNING the PCB linked to here has a circuit error.
You Must corrected this error before you plug it onto an Arduino.

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For projects requiring motor mounting or to temporarily mounting other components to prove a design, consider using copper clad PCB material.
This material is: very strong, easily drilled, filed, hole punched and cut.
It solders well and conducts electricity.
Common thicknesses of copper clad board are 1/32 1/16 and 1/8”.

It does oxidize :frowning:

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Hi,
Spray lacquer on the front and look really good bit of retro.

Tom.... :slight_smile:

Yes spray lacquer does work nicely.

When you need to solder a small PCB on one of the panels it gets a real mess with the lacquer .

This is the second time I built this unit as the old one looked like hell after 2 years of soldering.

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Use an old heavy coffee cup to hold your small hand tools.

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WOW. I gotta catch up on these!!

This all points out that mechanical stuff like mounting and connecting devices and acquiring and using tools is one of the hardest things, especially for newbies.

I've spend more time and effort on the mechanical considerations of This Project than I have on code. SO FAR..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321985115125

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Sealing plastic bags.

Anti static bags.
Take your least used (crappiest) soldering iron tip, adjust temperature to 500'C, clean tip.
Lay a bag (to be sealed) on a flat surface with a silicone baking sheet under the bag.
Place a metal ruler at the point of required sealing.
Draw the iron tip at ~1 second per inch along the straight edge.

For zip lock freezer bags, turn the temperature down to ~400'C.

You will have to experiment with speed for your conditions.
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No measuring.
Making inserts, panels etc. to fit the inside of a box or enclosure.

Attached is a PDF which discusses the process of making an inside template.

Attached is the PDF file with all the instruction images.

You can use 3Ms correction and cover-up tape in this process.

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Making inserts.pdf (580 KB)

I guess there are others who have the same crappy soldering iron holder.

Attached is the 1:1 PDF for the sides and the back which you can use to cut out your own inserts.
I just eye balled the front piece.

Soldering Iron side pieces.jpg

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SolderingIronInsert.pdf (1011 Bytes)

Hi,
At work I have to calibrate a device that requires its Program ROM to be removed and a calibration ROM fitted, just to cal the device.
The Cal ROM is plugged and unplugged about 100 times a year, so to protect its bendable/breakable leads we have it fitted into a machined DIP socket and we then plug the machined socket into the ROM socket.
150120173140rr.jpg
150120173141rr.jpg
Unfortunately we cannot do it to the Program ROM due to PCB clearance problems so the Program ROM is removed and fitted with the appropriate tools

So if you do not have ICSP provision on your custom PCB and need to swap out your 328 to a UNO PCB to program it , fit it with a machined DIP socket to protect its bendable pins.

150120173143rr.jpg

Tom... :slight_smile:

Tom
The sacrificial socket is a good idea.

I remember getting EPROMS back from the field with #22AWG wire soldered to broken pins ???
Good old days.

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I'll catch up soon....

Attached is a PDF discussing making holes for mounting components in panels.

Attached is the PDF file with all the instruction images.

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Round Holes in Panels.pdf (580 KB)

Links to previous threads:

Test Lead Stuff

Small Wire Segments

Heat Shrink Ideas

Making up DuPont connectors

IDC Cables

2016-03-27_19-15-05.png

Managing Your Wiring

1 Like

LarryD:
Test Lead Stuff

I was meaning to post the dupont multimeter probes I made like that to this thread. Mine are dedicated leads instead of having the connectors like yours. I find those super useful and like how easy they are to use when breadboarding a circuit, rather than having some large probe handles with thick wires getting in the way.

pert:
I was meaning to post the dupont multimeter probes I made like that to this thread. Mine are dedicated leads instead of having the connectors like yours. I find those super useful and like how easy they are to use when breadboarding a circuit, rather than having some large probe handles with thick wires getting in the way.

In some situations, I use connectors made by the JST people.
Doing this helps keep the number of dedicated cables down to a minimum.

Using the male header end, it's great to plug your cable into the test equipment then straight into a breadboard.
Not having to hold test leads or use alligator clips on breadboards is very convenient.

https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=444118.msg3062937#msg3062937

Hi Larry,

PDF discussing making holes for mounting components in panels.

Where did this come from? Any sources for those tools?

I just bought a step drill to make 7/8" holes for large pilot lights. A greenlee chassis punch is now up to $50 or so :frowning:

I'll grab some of the rest of this!