HackSpace #48

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) are almost ubiquitous in the modern world. They are cheap to make and easy to assemble. For a long time, though, they’ve been seen as the preserve of professional manufacturers and only the more dedicated hobbyists. However, in the last few years, they’ve become more accessible than ever before. There’s a wealth of beginner-friendly design tools, and getting PCBs made is both simple and cheap. In this issue, we’re looking at how to bring your builds up to the next level, with custommade PCBs that look great and hold your components securely. It’s much easier than you might think. There’s a wealth of beginner-friendly design tools, and getting PCBs made is both simple and cheap If all this talk of PCBs feel bit modern for you, take a…

jivamaterials.com PCBs, as you’ll know from our cover feature this issue, are currently constructed from epoxy resin and fibreglass. To extract the metals used in their construction, they need to be shredded and incinerated, which is an inefficient, time-consuming, and energy-consuming process. Electronic waste is a growing problem, and with the current squeeze on semiconductor prices, it makes sense to have a PCB substrate that makes it easier to reuse components without chucking a load of waste in a landfill. Enter Soluboard®, from Jiva Materials. This PCB substrate is based on natural materials, which delaminates when it’s soaked in warm water, allowing the natural parts to be composted and the metals to be recycled. We like the thinking behind this product, and we also like the woody aesthetic. Here’s how it looks when…

hsmag.cc/T-APE Forget what you think you know about synthesizers: this, from mayojaster, is something (as far as we’re aware) completely new. Instead of using samples, or square waves generated by something like a 555 chip, it uses what the maker calls a ‘bytebeat’, which is software that generates a fractal that the synthesizer can use to generate sounds. We can’t vouch for the maths behind the sounds, but we can tell you that we like the way it looks, and we like the way it sounds. If you want one, buy it from Tindie, unless you’re in a recently post-Brexit country, where you’re best off ordering from mayojaster’s own website so they can calculate the VAT properly.…

hsmag.cc/DigitalPictureFrame We’re big fans of upcycling old hardware here at HackSpace Towers, but there is some tech that’s just too far gone to rescue. One approach to this is to rip out the guts, but keep the vintage-looking shell of the old kit. That’s what Instructables user Democracity did with this Sony Micro TV. In place of the old CRT that the TV originally used, there’s a TFT LCD screen, behind a bezel made out of black acrylic and the original glass of the TV. Images are served up by a Raspberry Pi 4, and the whole thing is held together with a lot of hot glue.…

hsmag.cc/MetalHorse Since Magdelenian people drew on the cave walls at Lascaux, we’ve felt an artistic connection to horses. Now Reddit user Rickdadick450 has added to the long tradition of horse-inspired art with this scrap-metal sculpture. According to the maker, this took 20 hours of work, and is made entirely of scrap. It’s the attention to detail that gets us about this work; the way that the hard angles of the metal come together to suggest the natural shape of the animal’s face. Brilliant stuff.…

hsmag.cc/TubeCutter If you’re soldering wires together in an enclosure that’s going to live outside, or as part of a machine that moves, you’ll probably want to protect the bare wires from the elements (and from each other) with something nonconductive that will wrap around the exposed wire. That something is usually heat shrink tubing. This machine, made by YouTuber Mr Innovative, has been built to cut heat shrink tubing to consistent, pre-programmed lengths. The machine feeds tubing into two lengths of metal pipe, while a blade passes up and down in a narrow gap between the pipes; it looks like a guillotine, but for plastic rather than decadent aristocracy. Mr Innovative used an Arduino Nano, two stepper motors to drive the moving parts, and a 2.8-inch touchscreen, held together with a custom…