Andrey

Screenshot of a work-in-progress charged particle optics simulation software, showing traces of electrons being emitted from a narrow bar's surface, traveling between and being deflected by two charged squares, accelerating into a cylinder at high potential.

Tinkering with electron optics simulation this evening, came up with a little test software for boundary element method simulation and particle tracing. So far so good, and I think it has potential as an educational & low-complexity pro design tool. Would you want to use this? 🧪

Neat paper I missed in 2024 - these guys took an ultrasonic wedge wire bonder - the kind that's used to attach wires to chips - scaled it up by 15x, and used it to 3D print aluminium! Pretty cheap to implement, not much to it. Pretty cool. Open access, DOI: 10.3390/ma17102188 🧪

It's not really collimated, it's just a basic flat panel backlight for machine vision. It wouldn't work as well without a telecentric lens.

An overview of the cockpit of a Cessna Citation Bravo in the middle of an overhaul, with a custom diagnostics instrument attached to the avionics.

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.

An optical CMM based on a telecentric lens and a high resolution camera, mounted on a large and high precision vertical translation stage. Flat backlight visible below.

General macro overview of the scene being measured by the CMM. 0.5mm pitch connector, M3 screw, glass calibration scale.

Screenshot of the user interface with feature recognition enabled and a few measurements added.

Second screenshot of the user interface, measuring thread parameters.

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? 🧪

They did warn me that with Windows the USB3 driver is a little unstable and can't quite reach 400MB/s(stops at 396MB/s), but so far it's been... fine? For a price of $69(nice) it's very good either way, and it should be stable on Linux/Mac.

Sipeed SLogic16U3 USB3 logic analyzer

Inside the logic analyzer. Gowin GW5AT-LV15 FPGA.

Underside. Power supply and miscellaneous.

Sigrok PulseView software showing 800MHz sample rate on 4 channels.

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.

This image shows an infrared thermometer, also known as a pyrometer. Inside is a small hermetically packaged metal can containing a thermopile. There are two images showing the thermopile as a general overview and up close. A reference thermistor that measures the base temperature is visible on top.

Two scanning electron microscope images of the device, much closer in magnification. Top shows the positive and negative wires, and the bottom shows the structure of multiple thermocouple junctions around an absorber.

Two scanning electron microscope images, showing a closeup of how the thermocouples are connected in series around the cold side, the substrate.

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 weld between 2.5mm thick square tube and 5mm thick plate. Both carbon steel.

Triple pass weld with the same settings to fill out the joint. Needs more filler wire or a slower run.

Aluminium tube cut freehand at 1.5kW power with a ~250µm wide kerf and near zero dross. Incredible maneuverability, like butter.

Closeup of the cut pieces, seen from the inside. In the background, a laser cleaned section of the plate, shiny finish.

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.

Custom C&CS lens mount attached to the board

Lens mount with lens, nicely fitting directly on the sensor

And of course, we need a little lens mount to test with.

An image sensor test board, designed in KiCAD. 3D render.

The same board, but manufactured and assembled in real life.

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.

WalkingMachinesNIITransmash1980 YouTube video by Spirit

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

Accurate, realistic 3D render of a high speed CMOS image sensor in its package. Bond wires, pads, and clear chip outlines are visible, as well as some of the PCB layout.

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.

A brand new high speed image sensor, up close macro photos.

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.

A 1500W air-cooled laser welder, hand next to it for scale. Wire feeder in the background.

Inside the 1500W air cooled laser welder. Power supply visible in front, big laser source in the back, small power supply below and control electronics above. Also some gas handling hiding behind the small power supply.

Inside the 2000W unit. Same thing, except bigger, and slightly more advanced gas handling. Notable is the Huawei cell tower equipment power supply.

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 ;)

A Mooney M20M(Bravo) single-engine, 4 seat, low-wing airplane.

Inside the Mooney M20M in flight. Modernized glass cockpit.

View over the right wing while flying low over a city on a clear, mostly cloudless, hot day.

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.

Nope, it's a cool new-ish process, the only resins involved are solder mask and legend ink :)

My process does not involve any 3D printing, the whole point is to produce boards that are identical to factory spec, using industry standard materials. Polymers you can plate are cool and all, but they're just not the same. Multi material resin is cool though.

: )

Standard FR4(maybe FR5) with regular copper :)

Probably around $15k retail to start with.

Any coating variation is possible with extra chemical steps, Ni/Au is relatively easy(but 10-50g of Au is $$$$). Copper thickness adjustable, but targeting regular 1oz/35um. Any composite substrate except PTFE, FR4 as standard. There is a path to 4L+, but 4x machine cost when jumping from 2 to 3+

Maximum size depends on system cost, for something low-ish end I'd limit it to 100x100mm. Through holes are fully plated at the end of the process. Mask, silk, etc. More or less a factory quality board.

Complete single-layer PCB without silkscreen, made by a fully automated system.

A relatively large plated copper via made by a fully automated process.

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.

Everyone posts videos from these at infinity, so here's something you'll rarely see: thermal macro! The phone dongle will have manual focus, so you'll be able to do this out of the box. No denoising or post-processing applied, so it's a bit fuzzy.