Here's a first idea: double sided tape to bench, some extra boards around the one, usual kapton tape hinge design.

It's close enough I'm willing to paste it up and see how it goes

Hmmm. How do you get paste on a board this size....

It's always a fun time when a hardware pentest involves an angle grinder lol

Early testing, just getting a feel for settings.

If you dial the aperture all the way open the DOF is incredibly small. But the images look great.

Proboscis get!

It's... Bigger than I thought it would be

We ran four boards, each with 200 0402 placements (100 E/W and 100 N/S oriented, in a 1cm pitch grid).

Variables we did NOT change this lab session:

* All boards had deliberate thermal imbalance on one side of the part
* All boards used framed 1:1 stencil with no reduction
* All boards used ChipQuik TS391SNL10 paste
* All test components were Stackpole RMCF series 1K ohm

First round of kibbyshop SMT process optimization done. Some good data, some fixes, and some open questions.

Now that I'm almost done with my switch revamp (I have one more legacy Cisco to replace with a new switch that is physically in the lab but not deployed) the next step will be to finish rolling out managed PDUs and other instrumentation around the lab.

I have a 3-phase power meter (couldn't find a 240 split phase version for what I want so I'm just gonna leave the third phase CT input measuring nothing) that I want to set up on the lab HVAC and get good data on how much that's pulling.

And then maybe over the Christmas vacation I will have the time to do a lab-wide maintenance shutdown and try swapping some breakers with newer generation ones to see if I can fix the "GFCIs pop when the big lecroy scope boots" issue. If I can solve that I can remove ~600W of ongoing load, which at this point is like 16% of my lab consumption and would be a massive savings.

For comparison: in January 2024 I paid $645.60 for 4595 kWh, an effective rate of $0.141/kWh. That's as far back as I have numbers readily available.

And in years past there's usually been a ~10% instantaneous rate hike early in the year (last one was in February 26, going from 0.190 to 0.208/kWh after taxes and fees) in addition to a slow creep up over the year. So I'll probably be close to $0.25 by late 2027, if not worse.

Got my power bill and... ouch. $947.05 for 4.303 MWh at the meter (not counting the ~400 kWh of solar generation I wasn't billed for.

My rate is up 1% from last month and about 20% from this time last year. Despite having solar and my recent aggressive demand reduction measures, I'm still paying more than this time last year.

November 30 bill (due date) this year: $947.05 for 4303 net kWh, effective rate after taxes/fees $0.220/kWh

December 1 bill last year: $920.16 for 4896 net kWh, effective rate $0.188/kWh.

Throw in colder weather and there's a good chance I'll break the $1K barrier over the winter. Lovely.

If you rewrite an application in rust is that a form of carcinization?

@gsuberland you see what i mean about space being tight now?

So here's my bench setup. If i wanted to fit a micro hot air station here, where TF can it go?

The thorlabs curing controller can maybe get stacked on top of the soldering iron power stations to buy a bit of space but I'll need somewhere to store the hand piece and probably move the tip cleaner elsewhere

It looks like it's about four inches wide, plus I would need space for the handpiece next to or in front of it. That's going to be *really* tight.

I really want a Hakko FR-850 micro hot air station (https://hakkousa.com/fr-850-micro-hot-air-station.html).

It looks like it would be so much better for really small under-microscope work than a normal full-sized hot air system, but unfortunately would not replace it, i.e. I'd still need to keep the full sized one around.

And there lies the problem: My bench is *very* full. I'm not sure how I could possibly fit another piece of equipment in the soldering arc around the microscope.

Update: So far the winner is the PI7C9X3G1224GP from Diodes INC. It's a 12 port 24 lane PCIe gen3 switch, so slower than I would ideally like, but is in stock at digikey in qty 1 for $100 and also has a 324 page datasheet (i.e. probably reasonably thorough) available without any NDAs or restrictions.

Grrrr.

Are there any PCIe gen 4 switch ASICs that are a) purchasable in single units from a distributor like digikey and b) I can get a datasheet for without an NDA?

All I'm finding is ultra locked up Microchip/Switchtek and Broadcom parts.

Random swords-into-plowshares thought: plants like bioavailable nitrogen. Most explosives are jam packed with nitrogen.

Is there any overlap in the two? ANFO is literally fertilizer but I imagine the diesel bit isn't good for plants. But the combination is close enough to working that it got me thinking, are there any common explosives that a) plants can metabolize fixed nitrogen from and b) are not otherwise toxic to said plant?

The input stage consists of some common mode chokes and reverse protection diodes then an ADM1270 input protection controller driving an AO4447A high side PFET.

The gate drive of the ADM1270 is pegged at 19V (Vin) so the FET isn't turning on.

The output does not appear shorted at DC (about 6.5K ohms to ground on my meter).

None of the MOSFET pins are shorted to each other and all show plausible protection diode leakage resistances.

I already replaced the ADM1270.

Dug up a long shelved project and spending a few hours on it. Analog Discovery ADP3450 that isn't turning on.