What's the highest level electronics build you have done?

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https://web.archive.org/web/20221220093741/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72881

reserved.

I have built electronics on a breadboard.
I have drawn and ordered through-hole style PCBs online.
I have drawn and ordered surface-mount style PCBs online.
I have milled PCBs at home.
I have etched PCBs at home.
I have soldered 80-pin TQFP with regular soldering iron.
I have soldered and re-flowed SMD PCB’s on electric kitchen.
And many more :slight_smile:
Mike

But have you voted :wink: ? Yea I suspect many of us have done multiple or all of them. Just vote for the most advanced/hardest you have achieved.

Years, no, decades ago, I built a Heath/Zenith color TV. Assemble by number more or less. It worked for many years. Other than that and some Heath amps and short wave radio I have breadboarded, I have etched a few PCB’s for small stuff and in recent years reflowed assorted small parts including led’s.

Anybody here ever have a 60’s Ducati? They had real crappy boards in the headlight instead of the usual real wires everybody else used. My first self etched board was made to replace that awful OEM thing. Other than that I loved those early Ducati’s.

I would rate home made PCB considerable lower than ordered PCB’s with your own layout. It may be fun to make your own PCB’s, but the quality and complexity is rather limited, compared to a professionally manufactured PCB.
I have done a few home made PCB’s, but the quality has always been very bad. Very long time ago I got a link to a company that could do PCBs for a reasonable amount of money (<$50 for double sided, plated through) and since that time I have not done any PCBs at home.

I tried not to use too many words, but the idea was if you made it to the bottom of the list, you were also able to draw them yourself. The idea of milling a PCB you downloaded off the internet is not a choice on the list.

I updated the wording of the last two to include drawing. There is one vote each for those currently, hopefully that didn’t mess with anyone :stuck_out_tongue:

That is not really related, I have always drawn my own schematic and then layouted my own PCB’s, when I used Eagle to design the PCB’s* I mostly used the auto router. Now that I have changed to KiCad I do my own layouts without auto router.

*Very early I may have used something called Orcad, but that was on company time.

Breadboarder here, what do I win? :slight_smile:

Tweaked a lot of CB’s back in the day as well.
Yeah, I’m old.

I have drawn and ordered surface-mount style PCBs online

But in this case not more advanced than a flashlight driver

An assorted pack of SMD resistors :smiling_imp:

All of the above At collage 1993-96

Fixed modded many cbs, ham radios
Built amps from scratch With instructions for a collage project

Build Ariels
Build a music mixer from scratch
Fixed synths
Fixed all sorts really
Done board repairs and stuff that was crushed to death

Never. Do I win a booby prize? :innocent:

I just bolted some new SSDs into my ancient Mac Pro…

Then I had to run some command prompts on my ancient MacBook Pro to get it to boot again after converting the filesystem.

That’s about as fancy as I get with electronics. Last time I tried soldering, I burned a bunch of holes in my guitar and ruined the pickup switch.

Six years college for computer science, computer and electrical engineering, then over the last 8 years turned a computer/monitor refurbishing business in my basement into a small-electronics design and manufacture shop with pick-and-place, reflow oven, even some CNC metalwork machines for heatsinks and cases. All electronics designed, PCBs laid out and firmware written by myself or my co-founder who left four years ago to design rocket engines in Texas. Projects range from 200A power supply breakouts to USB devices with sub-0.5mm pitch QFN. Currently working on a family of flashlight drivers, DC motor driver for an electric go-kart, powered USB hubs and a fourth generation of hobby-scale bitcoin miners.

What’s that good for?

In ‘85, I ‘put together’ both the David Hafler DH-110 preamp and DH-220 amp. While it was only ‘soldering by numbers,’ they were both working when I sold them 15 years later.

Good stuff.

Chris

Owned the David Hafler DH-101 preamp back in the 80’s driving a Harmon Kardon 100w per side power amp into JBL L100T floor standing speakers.
Good reliable rig withstood many parties :slight_smile:

That was decades ago, as a teen in the 70’s… I started to buy kits in the UK, then went to draw boards with a special pencil that i would dip in some liquid to etch away the copper… Then i got bored with all that mess and for small projects without IC i came to use rows of screw connectors… :blush:

I have only wired / installed / repaired, electrical things like auto radio and speakers, house receptacles and switches, cnc machine spindles and proximity switches, flashlight drivers and leds. Always wanted to learn electronics, but its just too much for me. I don’t see how resistors, capacitors, diodes, transformers, can make the music, tv, computer do its thing, so I rely on you guys to help me in the dark. :wink: