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Vaporized copper stiction

MacroFab Engineering Podcast #291

Vaporized Copper Stiction

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August 25, 2021, Episode #291

Stephen starts to finialize the hardware of his tube amp bias test system and Parker looks into Jiva Materials, a new type of PCB substrate.

Bias Test system update

  • Happy with the two A/D Converters. Got *all* channels running
  • Made a simple breakout board to be able to access all the pins easier
  • 16 pin IDC cable is holding up to 450V seemingly ok – real test will be with all signals
  • Resistor measurement was adjusted slightly
  • Checked against 4 multimeter and getting values “in range”

  • Next steps

    • Finish a first version of the arduino code
    • Merge the skipi communication with my code
    • Solder into an actual amp to get real world values
    • Schedule next python thing

Jiva Materials

  • “The World’s First Fully Recyclable PCB Substrate”
  • See more information
  • PCB board that when soaked in hot water starts to delaminate
    • Jiva is in the process of ensuring that Soluboard® is compatible with aqueous PCB fabrication processes. Jiva is also engineering Soluboard® to be resistant to high humidity environments.
  • No technical specifications yet
  • Circuits/metals are applied in traditional ways (plating and etching)

Relay Dissection

  • Had a relay stick closed during some “experimenting”
  • Cut off the top to find out what happened

Fixing circuit boards

About the Hosts

Parker dillmann
  Parker Dillmann

Parker is an Electrical Engineer with backgrounds in Embedded System Design and Digital Signal Processing. He got his start in 2005 by hacking Nintendo consoles into portable gaming units. The following year he designed and produced an Atari 2600 video mod to allow the Atari to display a crisp, RF fuzz free picture on newer TVs. Over a thousand Atari video mods where produced by Parker from 2006 to 2011 and the mod is still made by other enthusiasts in the Atari community.

In 2006, Parker enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin as a Petroleum Engineer. After realizing electronics was his passion he switched majors in 2007 to Electrical and Computer Engineering. Following his previous background in making the Atari 2600 video mod, Parker decided to take more board layout classes and circuit design classes. Other areas of study include robotics, microcontroller theory and design, FPGA development with VHDL and Verilog, and image and signal processing with DSPs. In 2010, Parker won a Ti sponsored Launchpad programming and design contest that was held by the IEEE CS chapter at the University. Parker graduated with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Spring of 2012.

In the Summer of 2012, Parker was hired on as an Electrical Engineer at Dynamic Perception to design and prototype new electronic products. Here, Parker learned about full product development cycles and honed his board layout skills. Seeing the difficulties in managing operations and FCC/CE compliance testing, Parker thought there had to be a better way for small electronic companies to get their product out in customer's hands.

Parker also runs the blog, longhornengineer.com, where he posts his personal projects, technical guides, and appnotes about board layout design and components.

Stephen Kraig
  Stephen Kraig

Stephen Kraig began his electronics career by building musical oriented circuits in 2003. Stephen is an avid guitar player and, in his down time, manufactures audio electronics including guitar amplifiers, pedals, and pro audio gear. Stephen graduated with a BS in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University.

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!

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