The last month of my life: BreakingTTAPs This is a custom transport-triggered, 32 bit processor that will be fabricated by GlobalFoundries on their 180nm process (via of wafer.space) I'll make a video at some point, but some high level details here:

I made a video about this! Laser deposition of aluminum, silver, copper, titanium, invar 36, niobium ITO and (sorta) zirconium. Pretty nifty little technique. Not perfect, has some major disadvantages... but easy and reasonably robust! youtu.be/J0NNO91WyXM

Am I west coasting correctly?

This thing is pretty impressive in person 😯

Had a long flight and finally got around to fully reading @benjaminreinhardt.com 's essay on DARPA, why it works, where it struggles, and how it might be replicated: blog.benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw Very thought provoking read. Been on my todo for ages, should have read sooner!

RIP NASA science missions 😢

The optimization field has the best names -Artificial Gorilla Troops Optimizer (GTO) -Remora Optimization Algo (ROA) -Polar Bear Optimization (PBO) -Red Fox Optimization (RFO) -Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) -Marine Predator Algo (MPA) -African Vulture Optimization Algo (AVOA)

Oh hai there, look what I found in the bin of childhood stuff my parents dropped off 👀

Probably the two best things I've ever purchased

Yay done

Shoutout to bad decisions that past BreakingTaps let future BreakingTaps sort out 😑

brb starting a new channel called Breaking Bones

Getting ready for my $5.50/hr reindustrialization sewing job at the textile factory. 👊🇺🇸🔥

Lol futures for S&P, NASDAQ, Dow etc are like a vertical cliff. So much winning! jfc

The annual urge to build a modern letterpress has sidled into my brain yet again. 🙃 Hand-fed platen press, ballscrew/linear rails/servos to actuate press and inking rollers. Resin print the plate. Load cells to automatically tune the printing pressure, etc etc.

Large area deposition ends up being quite easy, but does require a spacer between metal and glass which limits ability to pattern. Ag is great, Cu is tricky (oxidizes easily). Ti, Nb and Invar 36 seem good. Can make TiO2 easily too. Zr seems to oxidize immediately

Playing around with a laser thing today and accidentally found a good set of parameters for transferring aluminum onto glass. Neat!

mood

Shameless shilling: I'm selling some esoteric equipment! Want a 200 femtosecond IR laser, or a 532nm picosecond laser? How about a linear motor stage with 10nm resolution? Or an XYZ wafer stage with 250nm steps? I gotchu: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_...

I own a lot of tripods apparently 😅

🔭 Athena to the Moon Image Credit: Intuitive Machines apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25022...

Designing hardware for space is, unsurprisingly, hard! Join me for 35 minutes of discussion about all the considerations that go into designing and manufacturing a tiny little hinge.

Have some external deadlines popping up in my life so need to stop messing around and finish a video or two. First up: space hinges! Yell at me if you see me on social media before a video is posted plz k thx 🙏

Academic paper pet peeves: - "Facile" 🤬 - "Wearable" or "Flexible" as justification for importance - "Green process" because it uses a slightly less-bad solvent

Saturday optical alignment vibes

SIGH. Aligning optical assembly today and huh weird, red beam isn't passing the UV dichroic beamsplitter. Oh right that's because it's actually a UV bandpass filter 🤦

Waiting on a few components, but the rough layout is starting to look like a thing Litho v3 soon, hopefully? 🥺

I'll be at OpenSauce again this year! Had an absolute blast last year, and for some reason they decided to let me come back 😊 Looking forward to seeing all the cool exhibits and chatting with attendees!

If you search each one of those keywords followed by 'starter pack' you should get some results. If you're not familiar with starter packs, they are user curated lists of users of whatever subject you are interested in. Very handy for finding your crowd.

In theory there is also a website for that, like: blueskystarterpack.com/manufacturin...

I want to use bsky more! Who should I follow in: - optics - photonics - semiconductors - material science - manufacturing, machining - space, astronomy Or anything similar. Academic labs, startups, hobbyists, whatever!

hey mom can we have an optical breadboard? mom: no, we have an optical breadboard at home optical breadboard at home:

Today we triaged and repaired some andor deep cooled cameras. This four-stage tec camera was scrapped but we managed to save three cameras

New day, new hinge! Figured I should make a plain bearing version, since that's likely the right solution (and lots of feedback saying the same). Uses a carbon/PTFE-filled PEEK plain bearing A little concerned about thermal coefficients but that can shake out in testing

New hinge iteration! This one is a bit longer but half as tall (which is important to the application). Happier with this design, although it needs some alterations too. Does not include a latch either, but I think a separate latching mechanism is better anyway.

Need to tweak a bunch of dimensions, and adjust some geometry, wind my own double torsion spring... but this little guy just might work. Won't know for sure until torture testing later 😈 (it's a wee little self-latching hinge)

RIP m2 form tap, I hardly knew ya 😢🪦

Curious what the inside of a nylon SLS 3D printer looks like? Or how additive material properties are tested and optimized? I've got good news for you! I filmed a lab tour at Formlabs and they let me poke around engineering, testing, machine shop and chem labs 😊 www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7r7...

If you see this post, quote with a bridge from your gallery. 😇

gonna stream in a few minutes! we're doing chip reverse engineering: gate arrays! www.twitch.tv/tubetimeus

Spent the day designing a wee little hinge 🥺

Fun setup from earlier this week: 3D printed tray around a glue fixture, clamped in a vise. Trying to contain the fallout from machining silica. Not perfect, but caught most of the fines. Rest will get scrubbed by my coolant filters.

This was a fun little build! I made a satellite reaction wheel using liquid metal and the magnetohydrodynamic effect. No moving parts other than the liquid metal, which has some unique benefits for space applications. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiRM...

I should not be allowed near soldering irons 🫣

Hey internet, this is how you make PCBs right?

Making a quick'n'dirty phosphor screen. Just a 4% solution of PMMA in anisole, and a bunch of phosphor powder. Probably a better way to do this but oh well 🙃

A little afternoon decapping of some inverters. Just exposing the internal leads for some failure analysis. Funny thing, I was in the fab that likely produced these, but for something completely different just before Xmas. And this decap work is for a different end customer.

Nanodiamonds! 🤩 *Probably. And also nano-graphite. And lots of other carbon junk. But at least some of that film is nanodiamond!

The big magnetohydrodynamic reaction wheel seems to work well. Think that'll be good enough for a video, was a fun little build! Some _very_ rough calculations from an overhead view works out to 6.2 mNm of torque and 1.2 mNms of angular momentum.

Today in neat electro-optical detectors: hybrid photodiodes! Photocathode on one end, photodiode on the other, electrodes in between, pump to high vacuum. Photocathode emits electrons, which are accelerated and slam into the photodiode generating a "photocurrent".