Tag: diy

Voltlog #239 – Upgrading The CR10 3D Printer With New Print Surface And Bed Insulation

Welcome to a new voltlog, it’s time for another upgrade on my Creality CR10 3D printer, and this time it’s about the print surface. By default this printer comes with a glass print surface which sits on top of the aluminium bed and that has worked fine for most prints and settings I’ve tried but occasionally I would get some adhesion problems and with glass you need to wait until the part has cooled down in order to remove it. Not such a big deal but there is this newer magnetic print surface, which has two parts, you get the bottom part with adhesive that you stick to the aluminium build plate of the printer and you get the top part which sticks magnetically to the other part.

This way, with the top surface I should get better adhesion and when the print is finished I can just remove the print surface from the printer to have it cool down faster or maybe for easier removal because I could just bend the surface to cause the part to unstick.

I’m also going to upgrade the bottom heater of the bed by installing one of these insulation sheets, this should help it reach working temperature faster and maybe it will use less power to keep it at working temperature.

Voltlog #227 – Identifying Pure Nickel Strip vs Nickel Plated Steel

Welcome to a new Voltlog, if you’re a frequent viewer of my videos you’ve no doubt seen me build this spot welding machine that I use occasionally for building battery packs for my RC planes. I use this machines to create nice welding spots between nickel strips and the battery contacts. My battery packs do not exceed 20A passing through and that’s only in short bursts but there are people building higher current battery packs and so it’s important for them to be using pure nickel strips instead of nickel plated steel strips for making the links.

Voltlog #212 – DIY Silicone Lead

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today I’m making a nice flexible extension lead for my TS100 soldering iron. I know many of you might not be interested watching me build such a simple extension lead but I think you could at least get a good tip on this type of silicone cable and where to get it.

I was searching for silicone cable with two wires that came somewhat attached in a single wire and all I was finding was double insulated silicone wire on aliexpress which was not cheap and at the same time I was worried it wouldn’t be as flexible and thin.

Until someone recommended in the comments I should try this power supply wire for tattoo machines. You can buy this stuff from ebay or aliexpress for under $3 shipped.

Voltlog #207 – Making a DIY Spot Welder From A Microwave Transformer

Welcome to a new voltlog, today I’m gonna talk about a DIY spot welder that I built, the advantages of suck a build as well as the disadvantages or the the problems I encountered. So the idea for this project started many months ago, I was actually at a local recycling center to deposit some old electronics, when I saw this microwave oven transformer sitting right there on a table, like the guy in charge of the place literally took the transformer out of a microwave oven a few hours prior to me arriving there.

So that sparked the idea in my head, I asked the guy if I can have the transformer, he said yes and that was the start.

Voltlog #198 – SUNKKO 737G Battery Spot Welding Machine Review & Teardown

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today a review video. So you know I’ve been talking about building my own spot welding machine in previous videos, that project is still active but progress is slow. In the meantime I’ve been contacted by banggood they wanted to offer something for review and I thought I’d try out a chinese spot welding machine, this way I could have something to compare with.

So I picked this model from their inventory the SUNKKO 737G, I got the 220V version for EU, if you live in a 110V country, you need to choose the appropriate model. If you’re interested checkout the links in the description below the video.

So why do we need a spot welding machine? Because it provide a safe & reliable way of connecting battery cells. Sure you could take the risk and try to solder your battery cells, I have done that in the past but I would rather avoid doing it if I can because it’s risky, the temperature of the cell will rise too much while heating it up with the soldering iron. This machine does it in the blink of an eye so the cell doesn’t get hot at all.

Voltlog #197 – Wiring LEDs Correctly Series vs Parallel

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today we’re talking about LEDs, light emitting diodes and how we can connect them if we have multiple units. This is one lesson I wish I knew from the start because back when I started tinkering with electronic circuits I built a few projects with LEDs which let’s say could have been made better if I knew the stuff I’m gonna present in this video.

So let’s start by giving you a short story about this project I built back in 2010 so, 10 years ago I saw this project made by Ladyada, I believe back then Adafruit was just starting, they were selling just a few kits. The project was called tv-b-gone and it was a small microcontroller with an IR emitting diode, and it contained power off codes for most available tvs. The purpose was to point it at a TV, upon activation it will cycle all the codes and eventually the TV would turn off. Obviously a fun project that could potentially torment those around us.

So I decided to use a bunch of IR LEDs to increase the power of this circuit. And this is where I made the mistake of having all LEDs in parallel each with its own current limiting resistor. This meant I had to drill and install a bunch of different resistors and due to variations in the resistor value, the leds were running at slightly different currents, outputting slightly different power levels.

If I were to redo the circuit today I would probably connect them in series and use a boost circuit to drive the series string with constant current.

Voltlog #183 – Building A Resistance Standard With Vishay VHP100 Resistors

Welcome to a new Voltlog, today I’m going to be building a precision reference box, using these precision Vishay resistors, they were sent to me for free by Vishay, these are from the VHP100 series and they are the ducks guts when it comes to resistors. They have incredible stability, across the entire range of -55 up to +125 degrees Celsius they will vary less than 60ppm. So as you can see they had to define the number over the entire temperature range because if they would have done it traditionally per degree C the number would have been essentially 0.

These are built using a special technology called bulk metal foil, wrapped on a ceramic substrate. Then the assembly is suspended in oil and hermetically sealed in this metal can, thus it’s immune to humidity changes. Every one of these resistors is basically custom made so you can order them in any value, but as expected they don’t come cheap. Purchasing these in some standard values carried at the big distributor will cost you around $70 a piece.

Voltlog #161 – How To Assemble SMD Parts

In this video I’m gonna show you 3 methods to solder SMD parts but before we get to the actual methods I think it’s best to talk about the type of solder to be used. And there are two main types of solder that you can use, that is leaded or lead free solder. If you are doing prototype work it’s best to stick with leaded solder or solder paste because it’s easier to get right, it has a lower melting temperature. If you are doing production work, you plan to sell those boards, than you might be forced to use lead free solder to be compliant with the regulation.

Here are links to the items shown in this video:

Voltlog #154 – Making My Own Trezor Crypto Hardware Wallet

In this video I’m gonna show you how I build my own Trezor hardware wallet. If you would like to support the voltlog channel checkout the donations page where you will find my paypal address or different crypto wallet addresses.

If you encounter this error while trying to compile trezor firmware:

Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "nem_mosaics.py", line 6, in <module>
 from google.protobuf import json_format
ImportError: cannot import name json_format
Makefile:121: recipe for target 'nem_mosaics.h' failed
make: *** [nem_mosaics.h] Error 1

It can be fixed by installing googleapis-common-protos package like this:

sudo pip install googleapis-common-protos

This fix was posted in the comments section by a viewer, I verified and it works.