Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’ll have just a short video talking about label printers, I’m gonna show you this heat shrink type of label that you can get and it’s pretty useful to label wiring and how the manufacturers of these prevent you from using certain types of label cassettes in lower end printers.
In my case I am using a Brother PT-H107, this is a bottom of the range label printer, it was practically the cheapest I could find around here.
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time.
In a previous Voltlog I reviewed this KSGER T12 soldering station, it was the first station I got my hands on from this manufacturer, it’s version 2.1S and I was pleasantly surprised by the features it has. If you haven’t seen that video I will link it on screen right now. Since then I’ve been using it as my main soldering station and I’ve been pretty happy with how it works but some of my viewers who have been using these for longer have pointed out a few things I missed in the video so this will be a quick update video to show the things I’ve missed previously.
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re gonna start with this double insulated silicone wire. I’m not even sure if it’s the right name to use but both the outer black insulation and the inner insulation are silicone they can take the soldering iron at 300 degrees Celsius without any issues, no melting. The one I got is 26AWG and it has 7 strands inside each wire. It seems to be tin plated copper because I did the flame test and the individual wires just glowed red. I also measured the resistance and it is 0.132 ohm/meter. I would recommend getting the 24AWG for a bit more strands inside each wire.
Out of the three T12 stations that I have, this is now my favorite and will be the one I use daily. I’m not sure if the performance is higher or similar to the other I have, I’ll probably do a separate video to compare them but it’s just the user interface, the menu options, the nice handle that make me wanna use this instead of the others. Yes it has a few disadvantages regarding this handle, it does get warm and it doesn’t really fit that well with a regular stand but I can go past those disadvantages for how nice this station is. If you’re looking for a T12 station this is definitely the one to get.
I also did a second video where I showed the problems I found with this soldering station and if they can be fixed by the user or not.
Welcome to a new Voltlog, if you’re a frequent viewer of my videos you’ve no doubt seen me build this spot welding machine that I use occasionally for building battery packs for my RC planes. I use this machines to create nice welding spots between nickel strips and the battery contacts. My battery packs do not exceed 20A passing through and that’s only in short bursts but there are people building higher current battery packs and so it’s important for them to be using pure nickel strips instead of nickel plated steel strips for making the links.
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re gonna start with this set of tweezers from Vetus. A few months ago I was considering buying some more expensive electronics tweezers but the good ones are really expensive when you include shipping as well so in the end I decided to give these a try. I’ve had Vetus tweezers in the past and some were good some were bad. This time I asked multiple sellers on Aliexpress if the tweezers are original Vetus or not, some responded and promised their goods are original. Coincidentally or not those who said their products are original also had higher prices. In my experience with suppliers, they never lie about the origins of a product if you directly ask them so I tend to believe that what I have here are genuine Vetus tweezers
Welcome to a new voltlog, today we’re doing a teardown of an automotive ECU which stands for engine control unit. Every car has one of these, unless it’s very old and doesn’t have electronic control of the engine. This is a small computer that reads a bunch of sensors like air temperature, air pressure, fuel pressure, rpm, crank shaft position, pedal position and various others and then based on these inputs will calculate various parameters and control outputs like the fuel pump, injectors, spark plugs, etc.
I’ve never opened one of these up but we should find something interesting to see in here, at least from the point of view of construction methods because these things need to run smooth even in the hardest conditions like very hot weather or very cold weather as well as endure water pouring right onto them all while withstanding high levels of mechanical shock and vibrations. So it’s likely we will see a nice seal on the enclosure, as well as conformal coating on the inside.
What we find inside might differ a lot depending on the generation of the ECU, older ones having to use more discrete components, while newer ones are integrating a lot of components into a single chip. I’ve worked briefly for Freescale which was building such a newer chip in partnership with BOSCH and it was amazing the level of integration they had: everything from multiple mosfet drivers, differential amplifiers for current sensing with programmable gain, dc-dc boost converter as well as a multi core processor was all integrated on the same chip, as you can imagine this can save quite a bit of money on the final build so that’s the direction things are heading.
The one I have here is from an Audi A6 model C5 which was manufactured between 1997 and 2004, this one is likely made in 2001, judging by a date code I see on the label and it’s from a 2.5 liter TDI engine. I got it from one of these auto dismantling businesses from ebay, I don’t know if it’s ever been opened before, but we will find out soon.
Welcome to a new InTheMail, the series that will touch both your passion for electronics and your bank account at the same time. We’re gonna start with this small and modern looking remote control. I actually like how this feels, even though the cost was just $3 shipped it just feels well built, the quality of the plastic is nice, the buttons have a nice click and it comes pre-loaded with batteries.
You can then use this remote control to open the garage door or whatever you like to control. But do note that this will not work with all 433MHz remotes, because some remote controls employ some form of coding, to protect the signal from being easily cloned. Take for example the automotive key fobs, some of those work on 433MHz but you won’t be able to clone them with this remote. Nonetheless, useful for creating a copy of your garage door remote control or even better, you could hack this remove and integrate it into your car dash console on some of those unused button slots. That would be a cool project.
Today we’re going to discuss methods for protecting a circuit from the environment and this applies in general to printed circuit boards but you can take these tips and tricks and use them in other applications as well.