Category: DIY

This category will hold everything DIY related.

Voltlog #183 – Building A Resistance Standard With Vishay VHP100 Resistors

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today I’m going to be building a precision reference box, using these precision Vishay resistors, they were sent to me for free by Vishay, these are from the VHP100 series and they are the ducks guts when it comes to resistors. They have incredible stability, across the entire range of -55 up to +125 degrees Celsius they will vary less than 60ppm. So as you can see they had to define the number over the entire temperature range because if they would have done it traditionally per degree C the number would have been essentially 0.

These are built using a special technology called bulk metal foil, wrapped on a ceramic substrate. Then the assembly is suspended in oil and hermetically sealed in this metal can, thus it’s immune to humidity changes. Every one of these resistors is basically custom made so you can order them in any value, but as expected they don’t come cheap. Purchasing these in some standard values carried at the big distributor will cost you around $70 a piece.

Voltlog #181 – Installing Stepper Motor Vibration Dampers On The CR10

In this video you will see step-by-step how I installed a set of vibration dampers on my Creality CR10 3D printer. They feature two metallic parts and a compliant rubber part in the middle that connects the outer two. This will reduce vibrations coming from the motor, stopping them from passing through the frame.

Here are some links to places where you can get the parts shown in this video:

Voltlog #180 – Vishay VHP100 Foil Resistors With Zero TCR

If I get this built correctly, with the performance of these resistors, once the box is finished and calibrated it should be good for life. Because I would only be using it in the lab which regarding the temperature varies from 20 to 30 degrees C maximum.

The construction video will follow soon after I receive the aluminium enclosure, until then thank you for watching this and don’t forget to subscribe and hit the small bell icon to be notified of new uploads.

 

Voltlog #179 – How To Solder Through-Hole Parts

In this video I’m gonna show you how to solder through hole parts. I’m gonna take you step by step through the procedure as well as give you several tips & tricks that should bring your soldering skills to a new level.

Links for all the tools and parts shown in this video are placed in the video description.

Voltlog #177 – Installing BLTouch Auto Bed Leveling On The Creality CR-10 3D Printer

Today I’m gonna show you how I installed a bltouch sensor on my creality CR10 3d printer. But first to give you a bit of info, if you are a frequent viewer of the channel than you know I have tried a bunch of different sensors, inductive, capacitive but they either didn’t have enough sensing distance to cover the glass I’m using on top of the aluminium bed or they weren’t giving me repeatable results so they all ended up disconnected.

I had a bunch of adhesion problems because I couldn’t level the bed properly, my bed doesn’t look very good, in fact I’m gonna overlay a picture of my bed after the auto bed leveling has been installed and you’ll see it’s far from being flat so it was really difficult for me to print something that was bigger than a couple of cm’s because the bed wasn’t flat.

Then I found this bltouch sensor or more correctly a clone of the bltouch sensor on aliexpress for just $14 and I said why not, let’s try this one as well and ordered one. And boy was I impressed how much better the printing got after installing it.

Voltlog #171 – XFS5152CE Speech Synthesis Module Example Project

Welcome to a new Voltlog today we are taking a closer look at this inexpensive speech synthesis module. The part number is XFS5152CE and we do find a datasheet for this chip but unfortunately it is all in Chinese. The datasheet contains schematic examples, they show you how to wire a microphone pre-amp, how to wire an audio amplifier, they also give you some code examples but most of the text is in Chinese.

I found this online doc translator service which worked surprisingly well, it translated my document and kept most of the formatting intact. So now I have a translated datasheet which I will link in the description below and I will also place a link to places where you can buy this module and also where you can buy just the chip.

 

 

Voltlog #161 – How To Assemble SMD Parts

In this video I’m gonna show you 3 methods to solder SMD parts but before we get to the actual methods I think it’s best to talk about the type of solder to be used. And there are two main types of solder that you can use, that is leaded or lead free solder. If you are doing prototype work it’s best to stick with leaded solder or solder paste because it’s easier to get right, it has a lower melting temperature. If you are doing production work, you plan to sell those boards, than you might be forced to use lead free solder to be compliant with the regulation.

Here are links to the items shown in this video: