One of our favorite things is seeing the transformation of our customer's designs to a finished product. Sam aka "THE Awkward Engineer" prototyped some boards through CircuitHub for his recently launched Kickstarter campaign.
The Model AWK-105 Analog Voltmeter Clock is his take on what a desk clock would be in a world that isn't overrun by flashing LCD screens.
The clock features:
We especially love the WWII inspiration behind the clock:
"The look and feel of the Model AWK-105 Voltmeter Clock is heavily inspired by my grandfather's WWII era telegraph keyer. The sheet metal construction and the instrumentation knobs were so solid and substantive, it left no doubt as to the durability and quality of construction. For me, old analog equipment like that has a functional beauty and aesthetic quality that I really tried to capture with my Clock design."
As for the technology inside the clock, it started off as an Arduino prototype. It was later upgraded to a custom circuit board built around an ATtiny microcontroller and was optimized to draw microamps of power from a battery.
Sam also shared a little bit about his experience using CircuitHub:
"Using CircuitHub to manufacture circuit boards was a huge help as a turnkey service. Being able to go to one place to select components, specify alternates, generate Gerbers, source parts, and manufacture and assemble boards was a big time saver, freeing me to focus on higher level design activities."
The project has already more than tripled its funding goal in only a few days. Congrats Sam!
Intrusive Soldering, also known as "pin in paste," is a lesser-known technique that uses a reflow oven to solder through-hole components and can offers advantages over traditional soldering approaches.
At the end of our episodes we've been asking you to send in any questions you had...and we're finally answering them. In this grab bag episode we discuss topics like what happens to excess parts, the ISO certification process, the shrinking size of resistors, and more! In honor of spooky season, we also share some scary stories from production.
In this episode we welcome back NCAB Group Field Application Engineer Ryan Miller. The first time we had him on the show he gave us a lesson on what impedance control is, in what situations is it necessary, and more.This time we recorded a video demo going through how he would create a stackup the requires controlled impedance.
