Category Archives: Projects

Pictures from the Scanning Electron Microscope

April 9, 2013 11:12 pm /

A few nights back, Brian and I took some images from the SEM. We exported them into TIF format, and then copied them via Sneakernet, a.k.a. using 3.5″ floppy disks and a portable USB floppy reader. I converted them into .png files. Click them for full 1024×768 resolution, the limit of the Leica image capture board. I’m very happy with how they turned out.

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This is the top of a metallic pin or electronic contact, showing what appear to be machining marks as well as what looks like a good deal of surface contamination. Note the scale showing 100 microns.

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Scanning Electron Microscope

April 3, 2013 11:46 am /

Ryan with SEM and 10th Doctor
Back in January, I got word that Philip Strong, a past member of PS:One, worked for a company that needed to get rid of a working scanning electron microscope and was considering donating it to PS:One. While PS:One has an existing SEM in the space (a Leica S440, owned by JP, a member), this one supposedly was fully functional, had documentation, and we could get some help from the microscopist, Susan Young, who used it. Of course we were interested!

On Monday the 18th, I learn that yes, the donation was approved, but with a catch: It had to be moved on Saturday the 23rd!

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Tube Amp

March 19, 2013 8:28 am /

Several years ago, I acquired an Epiphone Genesis electric guitar. It was free, but needed repair. The neck had snapped, but the amazing people at Specimen Products did an even more amazing job restoring it for far less than what that guitar was worth. So I figured it was a sign that I need to learn to play. (Now the cats knocking over my guitar stand and snapping the neck a second time, that might have been a sign too….)

Being an electronics geek, and having an interest in retro technology, of course the only way to go would be a tube amp. And a friend moving out of town conveniently had a tube amp kit she built, but it didn’t work. She’d part with it for the sum of $20. Sold! The chassis was clearly homemade, but I figured that if I could get it to work, I could always rebuild the amp on a new chassis at a later date. And Pumping Station: One recently acquired a finger brake for bending sheet metal, which will be ideal.

First, about the circuit design. Most normal single-ended amps work by having a power transformer that takes 120V on the primary winding, and at least two secondary windings. One provides a low AC voltage to powers the tube heater filaments. The other steps the voltage up so it can be rectified into DC, which becomes the B+ voltage that the tubes use to amplify signals.

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Chillmon Board

March 14, 2013 11:13 pm /

A first for me: designing a circuit board!

One of the more noble uses of electronics: enabling the production of beer. Chillmon is a concept originally created by Eric Stein to use a Raspberry Pi to control the fermentation temperature of beer at Pumping Station:One. It began life as a breadboard that used TMP36 sensors to record the temperature in the cabinet where we ferment, with Python code that graphed the output on a web page and responded to IRC queries with the beer temperature.

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