Best self-assembly electronics kits for beginners?

[Harry Bloomfield]

I built an early 60's Sinclair amp into a record deck I was building up.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Terry Casey expressed precisely :

Maybe you will find some of my submissions in there..

[John Rumm]

last time I looked yup...

Many of the old Maplin kits had full schematic, and a good description of the operation of the circuit. So there was plenty of opportunity to learn a bit as you went along.

And yet you still do it?

Sure, I was not suggesting it was not. However if you have an electronics mag that has a project that includes a custom PCB layout, that does not stop you building the project. You either relay it on veroboard etc, or make (or have made) the PCB.

DIY PCB manufacturing of the type of thing you will find in that era of mag is easy. Typically single layer. Get a decent copy of the layout onto a transparency, UV expose a board with a photo resist coating and away you go.

However for many projects you don't need a custom PCB anyway.

Yeah well the female in this house is a engineering graduate who still likes to remind me she scored higher than me on digital circuit design!

Actually a decent ziploc bag is not a bad way of doing etching. Keeps it mostly self contained.

If you don't fancy doing your own boards (and for anything modern with plated through vias or more than two layers there is not much point), then there are plenty of places that will make boards relatively cheaply if you send them a layout.

[Andrew]

Did you keep the 16K dynamic ram board cool with a carton of milk ?

[Mark]

well yes but in the 70s no access to them or an internet and the Babani books explained how and why the components and circuit worked all very simple stuff but invaluable start to electronics the first thing I ever built was a intermittent windscreen wiper control for an Austin Cambridge ;(

-

[Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp]

I put together a Praccy Electronics one using an SCR and a few other components.

I didn't have a car at the time :-(

I gave it away, but the recipient couldn't get it to work. Not sure if it was the recipient or the circuit that was the problem, but I went on to build far more complex none working projects :-)

AB

[tabbypurr]

Small Tesla coils are useful if you can adjust the output power.

Other than that I'd look at non-kits, ie projects described online.

NT

[Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp]

?????

Go on, what the hell would you want to limit the wallymitts for, mobile phone charging?

Unless you are setting up in a sauna, I was of the impression that the main practical use of Tesla coils was to impress the youtube fraternity without the expense of "lighting the blue touch paper".

AB

[tabbypurr]

It isn't sense day for you is it.

[Brian Gaff]

Actually they used to be sold as violet wands and all sorts of pseudo health clamed were made about running then over the bare skin. Soon the fetishists were using them as sensual toys as well. A good working vintage one is still worth quite a lot of money I gather. However one does need to be a little careful about sparking, burning and ozone generation in a poorly ventilated area. Brian

[tabbypurr]

The '51 court case concluded they were quack devices on the ground that no study was brought forth proving their effectiveness. However this was a fundamentally flawed conclusion. When violet rays were introduced at the turn of the century, it was not normal to conduct any studies into effectiveness or toxicity before releasing a new medical product, if it worked for a couple of people the manufacturer tried selling it, and that was all there was to it. Once any patent period expired, a drug or machine was then impractical to do such a study on, as the studies are expensive and there would be no means to recoup the costs. Any such study would simply be a recipe for bankruptcy. Thus no formal study could reasonably be expected.

There's a lot more to the story. Suffice it to say I found a lot of people for whom a VR resolved various conditions and I tried one. It is very effective for what I've tried it for - I've no experience of its use on the other conditions the early manuals discussed.

Sparking, burning & ozone are not a problem. Their widespread use by physicians in the 1920s & 30s found them to be extremely safe.

NT

[Terry Casey]

How do you work that out? The Mullard 5-10 and the 3-3 (amonst others) were ideal for use with a crystal cartridge.

You'd need a pre-amp for use with a magnetic one!

Why not refresh your memory?

[Terry Casey]

OK if you've got the UV unit.

I used to do mine completely manually. If a full size layout wasn't available, draw it out on 0.1" squared graph paper them temporarilly wrap it round the board and tape on the non-foil side.

Go round with a sharp scriber to transfer the hole positions to the board, then very carefully draw the tracks on the foil using nail varnish - something dark to show up well on the polished copper.

Etch then remove the varnish with acetone.

Time consuming, of course, but there was always a very satisfied feeling when you could hold the finished article in your hand!

Usually a much more compacr result that possible with other construction methods, particularly if the inter-strip capacitance of Veroboard ruled out that method for the particular application.

[whisky-dave]

Kits are all very well but will you actually learn anything from putting together a kit, well a bit perhaps. We run a skills course to get our students up to speed on the more practicel side of things and use this book picking out certain experiments and telling them to do them.

It's not bad I've been suggesting the 'department' should write its own version but no one seems really interested.

I do have a copy of the previous version as a PDF you could borrow, of course then you'll go and order the second edition above :-}

[tabbypurr]

There can't be many folk here that don't have access to the sky

NT

[Tim+]

Well yeah, I do recognise that.

Couldn?t wait. Just ordered the book. ;-)

Thanks for the heads up.

Tim

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Hmm. I've made a fair few PCBs over the years, and both the quality of the blacks on the transparency and the exposure time with a pukka UV box are critical. And then my printer broke, and the new one didn't give as good a black for stopping the UV - dunno if it was different ink. And my cheap B&W laser, useless.

[Tricky Dicky]

I recall reading somewhere that using a laser printer on old glossy magazine pages allows you to transfer the print directly onto plain copper clad board by applying heat with a domestic iron. (As long as SWAMBO does not find out). I think it was on one of the maker sites.

Never tried it myself having till recently had access to a UV box and Tri Tank etcher. I agree that the timing of the UV exposure is critical but the concentration of the developer is what we found most problems with which rapidly degraded unless kept in an air-tight container.

Richard

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You can buy sheets of stuff you print to then iron on to the PCB. Never had much success with them either.

Those who say the whole process simple haven't ever done it, IMHO.

[Harry Bloomfield]

I have vague recollections of some sort of high voltage discharge being used on me, to promote a bone fracture repair. This was in the 1960's, in hospital as an out patient, a fractured left arm.