The Dynamic Duo of Cacophonator and Mohoganator teamed up with Auditionator (I.E. Adobe Audition) to record a session for 10 minutes and 32 seconds at a blazing fast 192kHz sample rate.  This recording was then slowed down to the customary rate of 44.1kHz, thereby expanding the work to its final 45.5 minute length.  Within twenty minutes after the recording was made, Cacophonator had a profile set up on the RPM Challenge site and the piece normalized, saved as a low bit rate mp3 and uploaded.  You’ve read that correctly, in less time than it takes to listen to this piece, it was composed, recorded, processed, mastered and uploaded.  Talk about Non-Causal Audio Delight!  Check out the piece here, by scrolling down to “my player.” This all happened very fast, but Cacophonator still isn’t quite finished – it hasn’t yet mailed a CD to RPM HQ, 10 Vaughan Mall, Suite 201 Portsmouth, NH 03801.  Interested participants still have over 11 days to enter the challenge!

20 years ago I was using rub on drafting tape and stencils – slow and spotty results.

I tried to modify a plotter to plot resist directly to a PCB – no luck.

Magic markers – I’m no artist.

5 years ago I hacked a laminate router by tapping into the stepper controllers and adding a better Z axis – It can rout boards ok, but takes some tweaking.  It only does fairly wide traces.  But its great at drilling holes!

2 years ago I tried the inkjet printing systems – lots of smeared wet ink and poor registration, not very effective.

I opened up a laser printer and tried to get a board to go through it – almost worked, but the fuser was to narrow to take the board.

Although I haven’t found a fast system yet, I get by with the PNP Blue material and a good laminator.  Although I am regularly disappointed when dust, not quite clean boards, minor wrinkles and other issues leave gaps in traces that need touching up.

Which brings us to the latest attempt:

Now that the maker space has a small laser cutter I am trying to find something I can coat a board with and either burn away or melt onto the board to act as an etch resist.

Early attempts with paint had moderate results – our laser cutters on only 25W so it didn’t burn it cleanly.  I have heard that using flat black paint and a more powerful laser works.

Paste wax and markup fluid weren’t dark enough for the laser to vaporize (thinking of trying black crayons)

The latest attempt uses laser printer toner (just like the PNP only skipping the printing and iron on steps.)

The problem is how to get an even coat on a board without it blowing around.  Static electricity has potential (just like what they do inside a laser printer) but I don’t like the idea of a 5KV power supply exposed and handling powered toner is an automatic mess.

So for the first attempt I mixed the toner with rubbing alcohol (30% water).

Messy stuff!

I painted it on with the tongue depressor but it seemed to coat evenly and took only a few minutes to dry:

It mixes well and paints on fairly easily, here are some sample prints I did at various power and speed settings.  I cleaned the board fairly aggressively with paper towel and rubbing alcohol.

None are quite clean enough to become PCBs but they are getting close.

Although the toner paint looked dry, it may still have had some water in it.  I plan on trying a batch with denatured alcohol (100% – no water) and see if it works better.

2/16/2012

Updated progress

I have been trying a number of materials and methods to make my fast turn circuit boards.

I’ve decided that last toner is too messy and there are too many variables to create a repeatable process.  So now I’m trying various other masking materials:

Black and white spray paint – it works ok, but the ash left behind by the laser resists the etchant and leaves you with a poor etch.

I also tried tape:  Painters tape, electrical tape, clear and brown box tape.  The masking tape worked ok until the etch was slow and the tape started to dissolve.

I held a few of the boards up to the light so you can see how it etched:

One of the other members of the space found someone who had made the black paint work.  The process is to do 2 passes with the laser – the first burns off the paint, the second burns off the ash!  Then you wipe the board down with rubbing alcohol to clean off any residue.   Here is a set of 3 projects I lasered and etched at once:

This board turned out rather well, I had some trouble with the etchant taking for ever so lost some of the detail on the lettering, but the boards came out nicely.  I should get even better results on the next project.

In an attempt to speed the entire process up I tried to drill holes with the laser cutter from the back of the board:

   Not very good results!  After about 6 passes it still didn’t cut through thin PCB material and stunk and smoked the whole time!

So instead, I used the laser to cut wholes in a small piece of acrylic to use as drill guide:

This gives you a pattern to follow using a Dremel and the holes wind up in the right places and nicely lined up.  I drilled 2 holes in opposite corners of the board and used the leads from resistor to line up the template and board and hold them together while drilling.

This image shows the template attached to the board and about half the holes drilled.  This worked very nicely!  The only problems was small disks of acrylic getting stuck to the drill bit (you can see little craters on the left side of the board where these came from)  I had to clean the drill bit twice to drill the whole thing.  Either bigger holes or a different plastic might fix this.

This is first of the 3 boards I put together and it works just fine.  It is a level translator for the encoder you see in the holder.  The encoder will be attached to the drive motor in my electric car and feed back motor position to the controller.  The encoder is 5V and the controller wants a 15V signal.  The test bed uses a 15V power supply and LEDs on the 4 quaderature outputs.

Encoder test video

Inspired by the Chipstone Foundation’s origins in collecting furniture and decorative arts, and to gain some experience with my chosen tool (Angle grinder with chainsaw cutting disk), I created a small table (and piles of sawdust) in an hour or two yesterday.  After seeing the works at MAM and watching the videos on the website, I realized there are various interpretations for “one” tool,  including “two,” “three,” and “five.”  With this creative numerical spirit, notice that this one tool work has legs attached with wooden dowels inserted into holes made by a second(!) tool: A drill. Don’t worry though, I used the angle grinder to pound in the dowels.

Alright! We’ve covered The Pallets, The Library and The Woodshop, so here’s The Shop.

It’s a lot more empty since the reorganization, but there’s still a lot going on. Over on the left you’ll see that it’s Safety First! with goggles, masks, gloves, hearing protection, and even the first aid kit. Past that are a variety of hand tools, the pinball machine, the BADASS, and then the bandsaw, and drill presses, and the mill, and the laser cutter, and a chair, and some secret project that isn’t done yet and…

There’s a lot more, but you should probably see it yourself, in person, with your own eyes… and luckily, you can! We have our weekly meeting every Tuesday night at 7pm, and our “Builder’s Night Out” every Thursday night at 7pm. Come on down either of these nights to get a tour, meet the members, and find out if you’d like to join us.

We hope to see you at Milwaukee Makerspace soon, making something awesome!

Now that you’ve seen the Library and the Woodshop, we’ll move on to the pallets.

Even though I’m saying “the pallets” what I really mean is “Milwaukee Makerspace Member’s Project Storage Area” which doesn’t have a catchy acronym yet, but maybe “MMMPSA” could work if it’s not being used yet. (hmmmmmm and BADASS are already taken.)

I know, you’re saying “Hey! I can’t reach the top shelf!” and while that may be true even if you put the ladder on top of that rolling cart (not recommended!) you shouldn’t worry too much, because the members with the top shelves also know how to operate the forklift. Yeah, we have a forklift, and yeah, we have members who know how to use it, and can teach you how to use it.

And believe me, we take forklift safety very seriously. You don’t want to end up like Klaus or his co-workers!

(Yeah, it’s a long video, but I swear, it’s worth it!)

We’ve already seen the Library, so here’s a shot of the Woodshop.

On the left you’ll see Ron and Brant working on the CNC Router, and in the middle you might notice the “Old Milwaukee Makerspace” graphic from last year’s Beer Can Parade Float and the giant Arduinos from our other parade float.

Oh yeah! There’s also a lot of woodworking equipment! Someone said “Hey, those seem to be really close to each other!” and we said “No worries! They’re all on wheels!” So what you see here are the various pieces of woodworking equipment in their resting state. When it use, they will probably be a lot more haphazardly arranged in the space.

If you’ve seen this area of the Makerspace before, you’ll know this is a big improvement. The next step should include building a number of workbenches so we have some solid spots to work on things. We were just using tables, but we’re a makerspace… we can do better!

So this is the column, fully assembled.  I used 3M putty to fill in some gaps due, largely, to my less-than-average woodworking skills.  It is fully sanded and now it needs the one thing that the Makerspace doesn’t have time for…Primer.

In a couple of weeks, I’m going to order the sandstone textured spray paint and this first column will be finished.

On a completely different topic, the makerspace now has a fully automated buffalo-maker:

This is Barry, the “Caution Buffalo.”  I have some interesting plans for this one….

Here at Art Milwaukee’s big shindig at Flux Design. Man, I’ve done a lot of talking. Gave away the last of our complete tie pin kits. Met lots of great folk in Milwaukee’s art community. Mad props to Jason H to getting Milwaukee Makerspace more involved with this community. I really feel like there is a lot of potential for awesome interaction between makers and artists and events like this one can make that happen.

I’m looking forward to next month!

If you’re ever at the Milwaukee Makerspace and you hear someone say “It’s in the Library!” you might wonder to yourself (much like I did) why it’s called the Library.

Yes, we do have some books in there, but we’ve also got a giant wall of electronic components, as well as a sewing machine, embroidery machine, computers, projects, supplies, and miscellaneous junk.

I ran the question past Royce, and he had this to say:

It’s because we have a library of electronic components.

For example, if you are reading the Arduino Cookbook and a circuit in there calls for a 47uF capacitor or a 2N2222 transistor that you don’t have, you needn’t pay $5 shipping for a 50 cent part and wait three days to boot. It’s almost certainly in our parts library. Just go grab it!

We have most every value of through hole resistors and capacitors in a variety of working voltages. We also have common discrete silicon devices such as diodes and transistors. We are more limited on the ICs because of the colossal variations in ICs, but we have a lot of common beginner type stuff such linear power regulators, silicon controlled relays, 74 series logic, the venerable 555 timer, RS-232 level shifters and more.

So there you have it! Sure, there’s some books, but mainly it’s a “library of electronic components” which for a hackerspace, is a pretty awesome thing to have.

After I got over the initial frustration I started designing a breakout board that would allow me to use the XBee modules with a breadboard. I used Dip Trace to design my first two sided board.

After I got everything laid out in Dip Trace I etched the board using the equipment at the makerspace. I used our standard process for etching the board.

1. Print the board design on press and peel blue using a laser printer.
2. Transfer the circuit design from the press and peel to the copper clad fiberglass board using a heated press.
3. Etch the board in ferric chloride.
4. Drill all of the pads with a #65 drill bit using a Dremel.

Here is the finished breakout board.