Share tips you have come across

Can be fashioned from three wooden tongue depressors, the smaller, thick ones work best. Can be found in craft stores in the wood aisle.

Cut the end of one to server as a spacer and glue together.

Hold the body of the device and pull towards yourself. Rotate and repeat.

Made and used these thirty plus years ago where we made military and very high end precision resistors. After burn-in and whatever else the parts needed, this is how they straightened the leads prior to shipment. Works well for tinned and gold plated leads without damaging the finish. It will also remove any oxide layer if they're old, pre-lead free leads.

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I often need to cut equal lengths of heat shrink tubing.

A 5/16" thread rod coupling nut, a bolt and a lock nut makes an effective cutting gauge.

Larry, Larry, Larry!

You Gotta print The BOOK....

I'll Buy it.

I'll give it away.

TOO many DUMMIES books out there with really crappy photos; YOURS are great.

You Gotta print The BOOK....

Unfortunately, Books with nice color photos are expensive to print :frowning:
(What a great medium the Internet is, eh?)

Jiggy-Ninja:
My vote for the champion of the "unexpectedly useful soldering tip" category doesn't go to the crooked type J, but to the type K Knife tip.

I just have to say thanks, a thousand thanks, for making me aware of the existence of this fantastic soldering tip. I have been using the nearly-needle fine ones to get in among crowded pads and pins, but they deliver so little heat (tiny area) that it's slow work. This knife tip is the bee's knees! its knife edge and point are fine enough to sneak in there, but it has real mass and I get flow almost instantly. Plus as you note, it can bridge two pads... hey, it does everything!

This is now my go-to soldering tool. The super fine tip I still keep around on a spare iron, but I'm an enthusiastic convert to the type K for just about every task. Haven't found anything yet that it can't do. I do note that it's worth the steep-ish price to get the genuine Hakko item though, as the "Hakko compatible" ones from Banggood and similar outlets are crudely made, blunt, and clumsy by comparison to the real deal.

Further to post #655.

Add a ring magnet to the coupling nut's entry hole.

To the ring magnet, add a washer with a hole slightly larger than the heat shrink being cut.

The washer gives a flat surface for the nippy cutter's blades to rest on.

We have all used a bladed screw driver to get into a press fit plastic box, scratches everywhere.

A good set of spudgers is a must have for opening electronic boxes, remote controls, hand-held devices and to manipulate wiring.

Both stainless steel and none conductive plastic are available.

64x128 char LCD fit almost perfectly into the opening in fuse boxes, resulting in a very clean case for larger projects. This one is for this project.
The PCB can be attached to the DIN rail.



Wire cutting guide using drinking straws.

Stumbled on this on YT - Rare 1973 Heathkit BUILD! Pt.3 - YouTube. Start at 18:20 timestamp.

Looks pretty nifty if you're doing a lot of wire cutting.

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Author's patreon page

Nice.

To people who uses CURA (> v3) for 3D printing and uses the same machine for programming Nano, I found out if you have Cura open and hook up your Nano, the Nano keeps restarting frequently (eventually it stops, but really annoying). Solution is to turn off Cura. Im using a Mac so dont know if this happens on Windows PC.

thought I'd share this little quark. Have a great day!

Two more.

Cutting small wires:
earring04.gif

For just a small amount of epoxy:

Wire capacitors in parallel to get a higher uf. That might not be ground breaking to pros, but to a new maker, this is mind-blowing. It allows you to use multiple ceramic capacitors for making a slightly larger ceramic capacitor, good if you don't want to buy new parts but want to use up lots of old capacitors.

Some construction techniques/tips I hadn't seen before. It didn't get interesting for me 'til 6:00.

I thought the aluminum wire hold down was pretty nifty.

8-bit guy apple II project

dougp:
Some construction techniques/tips I hadn't seen before. It didn't get interesting for me 'til 6:00.

I thought the aluminum wire hold down was pretty nifty.

8-bit guy apple II project

In that video, the method for finding the position of holes was using a piece of paper to trace them. I've used a flatbed scanner to do the same job. Just scan the board with the cover open (mind your eyes) and print in monochrome at 100% (without scaling). The holes show as black spots on a lighter background. Cut the print to shape and tape in position for drilling.

"Desoldering without hot air."

Some of these techniques work quite well.

Build a Short Circuit Sniffing Power Supply.

A handy piece of test equipment to have on your work bench is a DIY Short Circuit Sniffing Power Supply.

A small prototyping PCB, a few common electronic components and a plastic case gives a compact test unit.

The PNP transistor needs to have a gain of ~200 while the NPN needs to be ~100.

Q1 has a heat sink attached.

External wires connected to this power supply should be 18 AWG.

See discussion at this link for using this power supply.
http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=601183.0

Two versions of the power supply are offered in the attached PDF.

Root_1.pdf (11.7 KB)

Hi,
I like it Larry, just needs a LED to indicate that it is or isn't in current limit mode, and possibly a beeper.

Tom... :slight_smile:

larryd very very good i have inspired

Not really a tip but, this seems like a good place for it. I needed a template for a 1602 LCD display. This one worked best for me. I had to tweak the zoom to 151% to get it just right. Offers the option to have the display recessed or extending through the panel.

A snip image, since the forum won't show a linked .pdf