Hackaday Newsletter 0x21

When can DIY beat the fab? [HACKADAY]( The Astronomical Promises of the Fisher Space Pen [Read Article Now»]( Embrace the New, But Don't Forget the Old By [Elliot Williams]( We were trading stories of our first self-made PCBs in the secret underground Hackaday bunker, and a couple of the boards looked really good for first efforts. Of course there were mistakes and sub-optimal routing, but who among us never connects up the wrong signals or uses a bad footprint? What lead me to have a hacker "kids these days have it so easy" moment was that all of the boards were, of course, professionally fabbed with nice silkscreens. They all looked great. What a glorious time to be starting down the hardware path! When I made my first PCB, the options were basically laying down tape, pulling out the etch resist pen, or paying a bazillion inflation-adjusted dollars for a rapid prototype board. This meant that the aspiring hacker also had to have a steady hand and be at least casually acquainted with a little chemistry. The ability to just send your files out to a PCB house means that the barrier to stepping up your hardware game from plug-them-together modules is lower than it's ever been. But if scratching or etching your own PCB out of copper plate is very hands-on, very DIY, and very low-tech, it's also very fast in comparison to even the most rushed service. Last weekend, I needed a breakout board for some eight-pin SOIC H-bridge chips for a turtle robot project with my son. Everything was hand-soldered and hot-glued in a Saturday afternoon and evening, so there was no time for a PCB order. A perfect opportunity for the Old Ways™. We broke out a Sharpie, traced out where the SOIC pins would land, connected up the grounds, brought the signals out to friendly pads, and then covered the rest of the board in islands of copper just in case we'd need any prototyping space later. Of course, some of the ink lines touched each other where they shouldn't, but before the copper meets the etchant it's easy enough to scrape the spaces clear with a pin. The results? My boards look like they were chiseled out by a caveman, but they worked. And more importantly, we got it done within the attention span of a second grader without firing up a computer. So revel in your cheap offshore PCB factories, hackers of today! It's a miracle that even four-layer boards come back within a week without breaking the bank. But I encourage you all to try it out by hand as well. For large enough packages and one-offs, full DIY absolutely has the speed advantage, but there's also a certain [wabi sabi]( to the hand-drawn board. Like brush strokes in residual copper. From the Blog --------------------------------------------------------------- [Hacking When It Counts: Surgery Fit to Save a Future King]( By [Dan Maloney]( Travel back to a time when surgeons made their own tools, and wounds were packed with honey. [Read more »]( [Astro Pi Mk II, the New Raspberry Pi Hardware Headed to the Space Station]( By [Tom Nardi]( School kids will soon have their science experiments running on the ISS. Read how! [Read more »]( [Mechanisms Behind Vaccine Side-Effects: the Science that Causes That Sore Arm]( By [Maya Posch]( Why did your arm hurt after you got the shot? [Read more »]( [Hackaday Podcast]( [Hackaday Podcast 137: Maximum Power Point, Electric Car Hacking, Commodore Drive Confidential, and Tesla Handles]( By [Hackaday Editors]( What happened last week on Hackaday? Editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams get you up to speed. [Read more »]( If You Missed It --------------------------------------------------------------- [Firmware Find Hints At Subscription Plan for reMarkable Tablet]( [Electric “Radial” RC Aircraft Motor]( [Up Close and Personal With an Unusual 3D Printer Kit]( [Cooking Up a Batch of Homebrew Welding Gas]( [Continuous Resin Printer Shows The Speed]( [Hackaday]( NEVER MISS A HACK [Share]( [Share]( [Share]( [Terms of Use]( [Privacy Policy]( [Hackaday.io]( [Hackaday.com]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update preferences]( Hackaday.com · 61 S Fair Oaks Ave Ste 200 · Pasadena, CA 91105-2270 · USA