Share tips you have come across

[wilykat]

Nice idea using magnet inside finger condom to remove shavings easily.

[Henry_Best]

Rather than buying one of each length screw, buy them on the long side and cut to size.
For sizes 4-40 to 10-24 you can use a combination wire stripper and screw cutter to size a screw.

For smaller screws, make a cutting sled for your drill press and cut the screw with a 'cutoff wheel'.

REMEMBER!  Always cut with a nut on the screw!

[larryd]

Gluing items in your Arduino projects. 
For gluing, I often use water thin CA glue (cyanoacrylate adhesives) and solvents like DCM, MEK and Acetone.
These can be hard to meter out small amounts.

A disposable ½ CC syringe is great for dispensing one drop of liquid.
It seems like the small sharp tips of these syringes have a magnetic attraction to skin. Remove the tip with sand paper.

Another option is to fill a blunt needle with fibres as show below, even bamboo works well.
Depending on the fluid, you may have to discard the syringe/tip as they may plug after drying.

[TomGeorge]

Hi,
The needles look like solder paste needles.

ebay.

Tom...

[larryd]

Those are the ones.

BTW, I prefer plastic needles for solder paste application.

[larryd]

Use these to neatly cut traces on prototyping boards.
Five different, three fluted countersinks.

http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=75248&cat=1,44047



These 1/4" hex shank countersinks can be chucked into a cordless screw driver or a nut driver.

[Riva]

Haha, I thought you had somehow cut a really neat logo in the stripboard tracks and then realized it's a watermark.

[larryd]

Have you have ever had to remove 10 thou from a PCB or a bezel.
Maybe you needed to to add a taper to a bottom cover of a chassis.
Sometimes you need to square up a surface.
These tasks can be done by sanding, however success varies.

Adding Pin Routing capability to a drill press can make these tasks fast simple and gives professional results.

There are two parts to a drill press pin router.
The pin plate is attached to the drill press arm such that the router bit is centered on the pin.
A sled holds your work and slides on the pin plate.
Your work is attached to the sled with double sided tape.
The amount to be removed from the work hangs over the sled's business edge.
Moving the sled and work to the right allows the router bit to cut off any overhang.



Kitchen HDPE cutting boards are great for the sliding surfaces.



Washer #1 and #2 lock the adjustable sled surface in place after the sled has been advanced to the routing bit.



Hand holds are 6-32 nylon standoff's.



It is very important the blue edge be 'jointed' since it determines the path that the sled follows.
If there is a small imperfection in this edge this imperfection will be transferred to the work's edge.

[larryd]

The FR4 PCB material is considered sacrificial.
You may have to remove a small amount of the business edge when tuning its proximity to the router bit.



Anything proud of the business edge of the sled will be removed.



Using this method, you can easily remove small fractions from the work material, easily and safely.

[terryking228]

Gawd, Larry...

This is all making me look forward to being done (September) with making 2000+ Arduino (Yourduino) kits for schools and universities.  THEN I will unbury my workbenches.  THEN I will try to take the most relevant-to-me of your inventions to upgrade my workspaces.  Wow.

Are you capturing all this in a form that it could be published somewhere?  I'd love to host some/all of it on http://ArduinoInfo.Info but I tried a pass a while ago and transmogrifying the Web version took a long time.  Let me know if I can help with anything.

The 'New' version of ArduinoInfo is under construction. It's based on MediaWiki (What WikiPedia uses)..
Preview here:  https://arduinoinfo.mywikis.net/wiki/HOME

[larryd]

WOW 2000+     Congrats!

Mamma better be getting a some good presents for all that work.




Thought about a PDF awhile back to summarize things but that would be quite large.

This is a good summary of the images.
Posting images.

[terryking228]

Hi Larry,

Actually Mary Alice is doing a whole different "Middle School Science Kit" thing which got so big she had to rent some warehouse space to manage receiving all the stuff and build the 5 sections of the kit for each of 165 schools.  The COOL thing is the warehouse also contains cars the owner is working on or storing.

In the spirit of all the great photos YOU put up :-)  :

The cars are mostly 1920's that are immaculately restored. Here she is at work:


THEN the other day the owner brought in the grand prize: a 1927 Bugatti race car, absolutely perfect in every way:



This car was last sold for "Quite a lot more than $10,000,000 "  




So we walk very CAREFULLY with boxes of parts...

If I was to indulge my ancient Hotrodder vibes, I'd show you the engine of that Bugatti :-)


Later I'd like to try to figure out how to capture all the very, very useful work and inventions you show, so people can find things easily.. Hmmm....

[larryd]

OMG 

[larryd]

I do not like to drill holes in a chassis for mounting PCBs.
Doing so, means screw heads are visible from the outside chassis surface.
I mount PCBs using plastic nuts glued/welded to the inside surface of a chassis.
These nuts are usually made from 3mm thick acrylic plastic.
When the PCB is not meant to be removed too often, I usually thread the plastic nuts to an M2 or a 2-56 screw thread.
When PCBs are needed to be removed, I use brass inserts that are installed into the plastic nuts.
These inserts are long lasting, inexpensive and easy to use.
As an alternative to brass inserts, I use M2 knurled brass standoffs.
You can see the physical differences between inserts and standoffs below.
The inserts must be used in material that is equal to or thicker than the insert's length.
Standoffs can be used in material that is thinner than the standoff's length.
Below is the method I use to make the plastic nuts.
I show standoffs in the following images, the process for using inserts is the same.

M2 Inserts 100 for $2.00

M2 Standoffs 100 for $4.00

2-56 inserts 100 for $20.00





Note:
The 15mm and 20mm standoffs are threaded only 5mm from either end.


A = Brass standoff
B = Brass insert


 

[larryd]

Chamfering helps with insertion of the standoffs/inserts.
The plastic nuts can be cut from 3mm or thicker acrylic plastic.
Make sure you do a few test runs to get the drill bit properly sized (2.9mm works well).




Note:
You are using a 'drill press' here as an 'arbor press' !