I'm working on replacing the Schneider SmartRelay on an Atlas Vista 613 wheelchair lift that I bought for my dad. The Atlas technician agrees that the SmartRelay is probably shot and the replacement is $1,000 wholesale. I built a replacement using an Arduino Nano, a UNL2803A Darlington array, a switching 7805, a bunch of Zener diodes, and a handfull of Schneider industrial relays.

Unfortunately, I let the smoke out of my very last Nano and needed to keep the project moving. So...I took a small piece of protoboard, an Arduino ProMini 168, and some jumper wire and created this Frankenduino. It's the same pinout as the Nano with none of the nice supporting stuff like an ICP port, USB, voltage regulators, etc. It will keep the development moving while I'm waiting for the 10 Nanos I have on order to arrive.

We were invited friends house for dinner last night. My wife brought potato salad. I like lots of eggs in my potato salad. We had a couple of dozen duck what in the fridge so my wife boiled up a dozen and added them. It's about half by volume hard boiled duck eggs and it's delicious.

Pork, rice, onions and herbs rolled in Savoy cabbage leaves and poached in tomato juice.

I vacuum sealed them individually for the freezer.

I do a lot of soldering and for the last few years have been using SMD components. Up until recently I was buying short pieces of tape with a few dozens or a hundred components. The amount that I do has really increased and running our of components began to irritate me so I started buying them on commercial rolls of 4,000 or 5,000 components.

The full rolls are unwieldy so what I really wanted was a cartridge that was small enough to have a bunch of them in a drawer or plastic storage box but big enough to hold a fair number of components.

So...I designed this.

It's 60mm x 60mm x 11mm and is designed to dispense standard 8mm x 1mm component tape. I've got other versions for wider and thicker tape. It will hold a good 2m or tape which is around 1,300 components. The paper tape with the components comes out the straight slot while the clear plastic cover tape turns back out of the curved slot. The little tab holds the cover tape back so it doesn't get in your way. The splitter between the straight slot and the curved slot keeps the components from falling out until the tape emerges from the straight slot.

I think that the coolest feature of this design is the holes around the corners of the cartridge. They allow you to gang cartridges together into stacks using standard LEGO Technics connector pins. The cover also uses connector pin like projections to attach to the cartridge. With the cartridge being only 11mm thick you can't put two pins end to end so I needed two holes so that the pins in adjacent connections can alternate which hole they use. On 16mm and wider cartridges I could have used a single hole but will keep the two holes for compatibility with the narrower cartridges.

This is a rough prototype to test the fit of the tape. It seems to work quite well.

With maple syrup season fast approaching (4 months ish) my thoughts have turned to working on the Sapmaster once again. I'm going to design and build a new top and bottom board this year to fit in the BUD DMB-4774 DIN case that I use for the SapMaster controller. That's going to involve a bunch of SMD soldering which reminded me of the irritation that soldering with loose pieces of SMD tape causes me.

To that end, I went looking for an SMD dispenser cartridge that would meet my needs. I couldn't find one so I decided to design my own.

This is version 4.1 of the design. It holds around 5 feet of standard 8mm paper tape which is around 1,000 components. The tape comes out the straight slot at the upper right. The clear cover tape goes out the curved slot and can be hooked under the little pin upper left. The point of the splitter between the straight and curved slots holds the components in place so they don't fall out before you pull the tape out of the slot.

I will generally use single cartridges with a cover but the friends I work with say that they want them to connect together. I considered a number of options but they all involved pins and holes or tabs and slots and I wanted the individual covered cartridges to be nice and clean. What I settled on are the holes you see around the corners of this cartridge. The accept a standard LEGO Technics connecting pin and allow you to gang together any number of cartridges.

I'm all setup to make versions for different widths and thicknesses of tape as well. The cover has four LEGO Technics like pins to plug into the holes in the cartridge.

I expect to start printing some to actually use in a few days when the magnetic base plate for my 3D printer arrives.

French fries and homemade roasted turkey gravy topped with our own roasted Bronze Orlopp turkey, homemade bread dressing, and fried eggs from our backyard chickens.

Thanksgiving poutine!

Yum!

I know it sounds dumb that the butter chicken kit contains neither butter nor chicken but trust me, they're awesome.

I've posted a few videos now of myself soldering header strips and some SMDs with my good quality soldering tools and with an inexpensive soldering iron that I bought at Walmart. I sent a link to the friends, the hardware designed and programmer, who I often work with. One designs the boards, the other programs them. I do some of their fine soldering work for them.

They were amused by the Walmart soldering iron videos and remarked that they were surprised that soldering QFPs was even possible with that iron.

That got us to talking and me to thinking. What is the difference between the tools and materials and the technique used by someone who makes it look easy and the tools and materials and the technique used by beginners who struggle?

I would like to propose that the biggest issue that beginners have is flux management.

Electronic solder isn't a solid metal wire. The solder we use for electronics most often includes flux. The flux is included in one or more cores inside the solder wire.

Multicore solder, which I use, even has these cores in their logo.

Here is the Multicore solder I have sitting on my desk.

I believe that many of the problems beginners run into involve not understanding the role of flux or how short lived it is. If you apply solder to your soldering iron the flux is gone in a second or two. The solder will them oxidize and refuse to stick to anything. Effective soldering, soldering that looks easy, involves getting the heat into the parts, applying the right amount of solder quickly and smoothly, then removing the heat before the flux has burned off. This is my going back and touching up your joints causes so many problems. The solder is dry (no flux) and oxidized and doesn't cooperate.

If you've watched my SOIC-8 or QFP-32 soldering videos you will see that I apply liquid flux. This is because I apply the solder to my soldering iron then drag solder the pins. The flux has all burned off of the solder and it will not stick to the pins without the liquid flux. I also used liquid flux in the Fixing Bad Solder video.

So...I believe that a good understanding of the role and short lifespan of solder will help beginners to make better solder joints.

What was I thinking?!?

In this video I take a crack at soldering a QFP-32 with the inexpensive Walmart soldering iron and the mystery Chinese solder.

Will it solder?

In this video I used the $15.88 Walmart soldering iron and the unknown Chinese solder that came with it to solder a DS1307 real time clock in a SOIC-8 package.

Will it solder?

In this video I used the $15.88 Walmart soldering iron and the unknown Chinese solder that came with it to solder 2.54 mm header strips onto a small adapter board.

In this video I go back to the beginning of my more than 45 years of experience soldering and buy a $15.88 Chinese soldering iron from my local Walmart store and compare it to a Weller PES51 pencil iron connected to my WESD51 soldering station and a Hakko FM-2027 connected to my FM-203.

I have said that you can use the cheapest soldering iron to solder SMD devices like SOIC-8s and QFP-32s. In subsequent videos I will attempt to solder pin headers, a DS1307 real time clock in a SOIC-8 package and a LGT8F328P MCU in a QFP-32 package.

The goal of these videos is to make clear that even beginners can solder modern SMD devices using basic soldering equipment that is readily available locally to most people.

Hakko FM-2023 station with MF2027 handle and T15-D16 tip

Weller WESD51 with PES51 handle and ETA tip

Workpro CA310 (Hangzhou Greatstar Industrial GS-30W)

Unknown Chinese solder