new cheapest #microcontrollers: Cypress CY8C4045FNI-DS400T, 1.5¢ in quantity 1000. It purports to be a 48MHz Cortex-M0 ARM with 32KiB of Flash and 4KiB of SRAM in a 1.6mm x 2mm package, 0.31-0.37 mm thick, with nine GPIO pins. I think that’s 4000 Dhrystone MIPS per dollar. #electronics #hardware #pricing
laser-guided mortar #weaponry "Iron Sting" has 1 meter CEP
#video on "quadrupolar" #3D-printing with four nozzles on radial arms over a polar bed, almost a meter in diameter. Still seems like it has a dead zone in the middle. He used mostly stepper motors and aluminum 8020 extrusions. He’s limited to making things that are fourfold symmetric by the Clipper firmware he’s using. #manufacturing
#video on #manufacturing #titanium features on glass with #photolithography with 20μm resolution with vacuum coating by magnetron argon sputtering. He tried using a photographic enlarger in reverse without success. His setup is about 2 meters tall and made from 8020 aluminum extrusions, with a Minolta camera zoom lens (35–70mm, DSLR?) focusing onto the photoresist on his microscope slide, after a Fresnel-lens illumination stage similar to an overhead projector (and possibly actually taken from one), converging the light onto the camera lens. He’s using a 395nm LED behind two diffusers from LCD monitors for the light source, which make the light more homogeneous on the focal plane than just focusing from the LED. He’s using a transparency film intended for screen printing to get more opaque masks, laser-printable maybe, sandwiched between two sheets of glass to keep it flat. Previously he was using this blue dry film photoresist, but couldn’t get consistent results. He tried spin-coating Mungolux R1000 liquid photoresist. Finally he used a Merck MicroChemicals AZ LNR-003 positive photoresist designed for lift-off techniques, spending US$170 on a 100mℓ bottle. He 3-D printed his spin coater, built around a drone motor. Because the slide is transparent he can put a USB microscope behind it to focus the camera lens. The undeveloped photoresist is washed off with lye and the developed photoresist lifts off the titanium with acetone. His sponsor PCBWay manufactured the magnetron he designed for sputtering. His Minolta setup gives him 14× reduction, which is how he gets to 20μm.
#video of double-distilling a truly terrifying amount of cesium, 139.13 grams, into an ampule.