One of the more unusual workplaces for an engineer to be. Plugging something you designed and built into an obsolete avionics system that would cost more than your entire net worth to replace is... one of the feelings of all time, for sure. The jet is a Cessna Citation Bravo.

Built a small optical coordinate measurement machine and wrote a basic but mostly feature-complete software for it. Telecentric optics, so no perspective error. Resolution ended up at ~4µm for this ~30mm FOV. Would you want a nicer version of this(housing, lights) for ~2.5k? 🧪

Sipeed sent me their new SLogic16U3 USB3 logic analyzer to review(free, no obligation). Inside is just a tiny Gowin GW5AT-LV15 FPGA doing softcore USB3(!!!), which is how they made it so cheap. 800MHz@4ch is quite impressive. My verdict? Definitely going in the tool box. 🧪

Have you ever wanted to see a 90 second abridged explanation of how diode lasers work? Here it is. I took some pictures of a laser under my SEM, and it kind of just scope crept into a whole video. Not perfectly accurate, but it's hard to squeeze 100 books of info into 90 seconds.

Ever wondered how infrared thermometers work? By connecting over 100 thermocouples in series, all on a MEMS chip, floating in a vacuum! The cold side is connected to the base, thermal radiation is focused onto the hot side, and the Seebeck effect gives us a proportional voltage. 🧪

First handheld laser welds, cuts, some cleaning. What the internet says is true this time - compared to regular welding(MMA/MIG), this is, no exaggeration, a point&click tool. 10 minute learning curve. Some nuances like penetration and fillet size, but overall just spectacular.

Design, reality. Looks pretty accurate :) High speed imaging will be affordable, and hopefully soon.

I've made a big step and finally touched an FPGA on a personal level. Fighting the development environment was 90% of the effort and only 10% was learning how this whole HDL/constraint thing works. Now to draw the rest of the owl. In my case, a high-speed camera shaped one.

Who needs Boston Dynamics and Unitree when you can have Soviet Dynamics? This 45 YEAR OLD(!) film shows the exact thing techbros have been parading around for the past few years. LIDAR, SLAM, multi-core mainframes, live trajectory and path planning, IK, simulation, all from 1980 youtu.be/_klAzHoI7S0

Did I *need* to create an extremely detailed 3D model of an image sensor, down to the bond wires, overlaid sensor structure and modeled pads, just to put it on a PCB design? No. But did I spend quality CAD time doing that and then rendering it out for fun? Absolutely.

Some incredibly cool pre-production silicon just showed up in the mail: >2K resolution at >600 frames per second, >10kfps with windowing, global shutter, HDR. This may be the first image sensor to make high speed cameras truly affordable for *everyone*.

Do we have anyone with contacts at Xilinx/AMD? I want to get some samples of the new Spartan UltraScale+ chips. Specifically XCSU65P in CMVB529. And ideally a dev/evaluation board(SU65P or higher, need PCIe). My DMs are open, email works too - see my site.

Got some 1.5kW and 2kW air cooled laser welder+cutter systems in to try a distribution model(EU & US). Very clean builds inside - DC PSU, nameless laser source, OEM control panel, minor gas handling. Simple, but affordable and effective. Also going to mod cleaning mode into it ;)

Helped with a bit of repairs on a Mooney M20M(Bravo) recently, then went up in it! General aviation is really fun, and if you ever get the chance to go flying, you should definitely say yes!

Anyone out there with access to a research fab at reasonable rates? I want to test a relatively simple and potentially groundbreaking semiconductor device, but with a very exotic stackup. I need ALD, PECVD, and likely DRIE. Low res maskless litho is fine. Preferably in the EU.

Is there any commercial interest in a desktop-ish full-cycle PCB "printer"? I proved out all the processes for fully automated, mostly chemical-free production of 2-layer PCBs with trace/space/via as small as 75μm. It could be relatively affordable, but not quite hobbyist-priced.

Ever wondered what TIG welding with neon gas would be like? No? Anyway, here's TIG welding with pure neon instead of argon. Video from Zerg Labs' archive.

Got this very neat radiometric 640x512 thermal imaging core. Miniaturization is wonderful, it's just the WLVP image sensor directly wire bonded onto the board, with an ASIC on the back to crunch data. There are no affordable phone dongles with this resolution, so I'll make one.

Silly computer peripheral idea: would you want an ultra-lightweight(world's lightest?), completely battery-free, permanently wireless 8kHz polling rate mouse, if it was confined to a special powered mousepad(~0.6mm thick, goes under your actual mousepad)?

Is it safe to clean ball bearings in an ultrasonic cleaner? Turns out, it isn't! I investigate this with a scanning electron microscope in this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g6g... 🧪

Someone asked whether it's possible to build a DIY backscattered electron detector for a SEM. Yes, it's pretty easy! You just need bare PIN photodiodes, a trаnsimpedance amplifier, and a signal input. S=SED, R=BSED. Sample: rock section, ~nm of Au on top. Some charging visible.

Here's a soviet K573RF2 EPROM under the newly repaired SEM.

Oops! All electron microscopes. I have another patient in the lab, this time it's a Keyence VE-7800 from the early 2000s. Let's dig in and take a look at the insides to bring it back to life! Lots of pictures in the thread.

Here's a reconstructed CT scan of a SEM filament. The disk on top is the Wehnelt... disk, I suppose, that serves to create the crossover pinch and adjust emission spot size. The four screws are used to center the filament within the cartridge.

Loud vacuum pump, air compressor, or similar device that drives you crazy? Build a suspended vibration & noise isolation box! All you need is wood, rebonded sound absorbing foam(not cheap low-density sponge!), bungee, and fans. Sound levels drop by as much as 12dB! Video below.

If you use rotary vane vacuum pumps, here's a neat trick: you can use 0.1-0.5um polypropylene water sediment filter cartridges(not wound rope!) as dirt cheap oil mist eliminator filter replacements. Optionally some activated carbon around it, to stop any smells. Works great.

And, of course, being in FA-FO's lab, we had to test the Gardena High Vacuum System for performance. The results being good makes it just that much better.

I didn't just get the helium leak detector to play around with, so let's put it to use. This whole repair ordeal happened in the FA-FO lab(fa-fo·de), where the goal was to test their JEOL JSM-T330A SEM. This video shows the same eyelash, and a massive travel time through the SEM!

After very jankily connecting my new helium leak detector to the forepump using the world's most inconveniently sized bellows hose, I was presented with a very unhappy device - incorrect operation, max pressure shown. Which meant a teardown investigation was in order! (thread) 🧪

In my search of a suitable forepump, I managed to acquire this Ecotec 500. I didn't actually know what it was - it turned out that it's a sniffer-type gas analyzer for some kind of industrial process. But I got the pump that I really wanted out of it, and an RGA/turbo as a bonus! 🧪

So I managed to acquire this Leybold UL100 Plus helium leak detector through a happy accident. It's old, made in the 2000s, but it was supposedly in good condition, just missing the forepump. Last service date shows 2021, and it has a 1993 test leak, refilled in 2021 as well.

Do I have any wine/linux experts following me? I think I want to throw out a small $ bounty for anyone who can get a particular piece of CAD software running under wine. 99% of it works, but the 1% makes it unusable - SVG icons don't render. Complicated problem. DMs open.

You know, with how ambitious my current projects are, every time I interact with MCAD tools I get an overwhelming urge to put all of that on pause and start a brand new CAD/CAM/CAE company to completely upend that market by starting from scratch. Anyone have a few million spare?

Playing around with a low-cost helium stirling cryocooler. Not sure what to make of it yet, performance is... interesting. But it does make cold.

Spent the day at the #electronica2024 expo(combined with Semicon 2024). Wow, what an event. They really do not exaggerate that you're going to walk 26km. Felt like a kid in a candy store the whole time I was there. Highly recommend going in 2026 if you can make it.

Just noticed that a few people followed me on here. Hi, I'm not dead, just working on stuff. I'll post a fun teardown soon-ish.

I've always wanted to make a charging-free, perpetually running 96%-size wireless keyboard, and the first step towards that is to figure out if solar cells can be cut into intricate shapes, to be fit on the backplate, all around the keys. The answer: yes, with lasers of course! youtu.be/ioT79EGXvYY

I decided to try making my own wireless headset, mostly because very few of them out there meet my highly specific requirements. To start, I made a kevlar headband with integrated wiring and antenna. Here's the process(🧵). I cut some fabric and threaded all the wiring through.

I needed to have more than 2 SIMs on standby to receive important notifications, but all solutions on the market were, at best, very shady. So I made my own using a cheap Android smartphone. It's opensource, and very low quality! github.com/Spirit532/SM...

This is the best Privacy Policy. And it's from a screensaver for Android! That doesn't need one! But Gооgle forced them to! www.jwz.org/xscreensaver...

Seems like the first wave of... something is upon Bluesky. I've been seeing hundreds of these zero-post, many-follower(botted) accounts popping up and asking for follows, most seem to be targeting a non-English-speaking audience. Looks like people get caught up in it too, but not unexpected.

Found an entirely real part that totally looks like something @nanoraptor.danamania.com would make. The IDT QS34X245, packaged in what they call Millipaq(props to them, good pun), but I'm just going to call it SOIC80 because that's more cursed.

Here's another random tidbit. Using a fiber laser, you can modify regular scissors into finely serrated ones, which lets them grab onto annoying to cut ultra-strong fiber bundles, such as the ones in Kevlar(aramid) fabric, fiberglass, or carbon fiber.

Here's how an incandescent light bulb behaves when you remove it from its protective argon-filled bulb, and run it in air. The white cloud is various tungsten oxides, which form as hot tungsten reacts with oxygen and moisture in the air. Filmed at 1000 frames per second. youtu.be/DVgcfYKeCTc

While working on simulating a scanning electron microscope, I remembered that I had a broken x-ray tube sitting on my shelf for a while, and thought it would make an interesting study subject. I made a short video showing the results - check it out! youtu.be/trLmcATU9zY

After 3 months of sailing across the Eurasian continent, this little gem finally arrived. It's an NSK MegaTorque direct drive rotary actuator, capable of delivering up to 30Nm of torque(peak). What's interesting is that it's using a 3-phase resolver(selsyn!), for feedback.

New tool day! One of my projects requires brazing metals to alumina, and to other exotic materials. My own vacuum furnace is being manufactured, so when this tube furnace showed up I had to snag it. Soon it's going to get a quartz vacuum tube, to control the (lack of) atmosphere.

Someone put this idea in my head when they saw the LEMO multi-concentric connector and I couldn't not do it. I hope @nanoraptor.danamania.com approves.

Pulsed fiber lasers are such a useful tool. Making front panels for devices is just a breeze, and the results look really nice even if looks are not a priority. Also, fun tip: you can just run parts underwater. Eliminates all(ish) fumes, keeps the mess contained. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ER3...

Sometimes science requires viоlеnсе. The secret project I'm working on involves an epoxy granite frame, which means materials testing is in order. Here's some clips of samples getting pulled apart, bent, and crushed: youtu.be/3DBAwTRWfSI - results TBD - not quite ready yet.