On Saturday Oct 25, 2008 (In Edmonton AB of course) there was some snow and record winds. I figure it’d be fun to post some pictures from that day as well as some of the damage from afterward. Click on the pictures to make them larger and see a description.
Posted on October 27, 2008 October 27, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories MiscellaneousTags alberta, edmonton, hail, snow, storm, wind, wind stormLeave a comment	
Well, For the last week or so I’ve been developing a new viscometer board. Sloppy as it is, it’s a jump ahead from the last board in terms of overall inputs allowed. I used the 68PLCC package PIC18F6680 in this one because it had a sufficient number of IO and because it looks cool in it’s socket. 🙂
All in all, it’s gone smoothly, I’ve double checked a number of the traces, let’s hope all of them are well when they come back from AP Circuits later on. 🙂
Posted on October 27, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, WorkTags electronics, pcb, pic18f2620, pic18f6680, Stormer, Stormer viscometer, viscometerLeave a comment	
What’s an abraser you ask? Well, it’s a device that has two abrasive wheels that are pressed against a plate with paint on it. The idea is to determine the wear a certain coating or paint will get with a number of revolutions on this device.
Anyways, it was acting up the other day and the guys at work asked me to fix it since the numbers were jumping into the thousands quite quickly. Since this device counted revolutions via an interrupted beam of light, I simply stated that it was dirty. I was right, it was just a bit dirty and after blowing the head out and looking at the signal, it was fine. What surprised me though was it’s electronic construction.
Surprisingly it was nothing more than a PIC-based protoboard with a transformer and a gearmotor, I was surprised that it was so sloppily put together. Here are some images of it in case anyone is interested or in case I wish to refer to them later.
As is evident, they used a PIC16C71 for their little project and soldered it together on a protoboard, very strange for company that’s been in business for so many years. They even used cables that didn’t have the correct number of wires in them, they simply trimmed the excess wire, sloppy!
Posted on October 26, 2008 October 27, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, WorkTags Abrader, abraser, electronics, fix, Taber, Taber Abrader, Taber abraser2 Comments	
I was perusing about today and found a helpful document about OP-Amps. It’s distributed by Texas Instruments and it looks really good even though I haven’t read it for the most part. You can get it here:
Posted on October 23, 2008 October 23, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories ElectronicsLeave a comment	
Well, I’ve been thinking about deleting the gallery that’s been installed since I started this site. So far I haven’t even paid any attention to it since it recieves very little traffic and frankly, I don’t pay any attention to it.
I was thinking about deleting it… Instead, I’ve decided it’d be better to revive it, keep all the images that are on there and use it as a backup for all of my raw images. I’ll keep anything sacred close to the chest but other than that, I’m gonna make it public.
Posted on October 21, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Miscellaneous, PhotographyTags gallery, Photography, pictures, siteLeave a comment	
Yesterday I started playing around with a solid state viscometer. This viscometer differs from other more physical methods in that it simply vibrates to determine viscosity. What I did was the following
Took the whole thing and cast it into epoxy as to seal it and make it rigid between the tow piezo elements.
This is a closeup of the solid state viscometer prototype. You can see I had some problems trying to solder the unit to the aluminum.
This is the solid state visc in the water. The Epoxy keeps it sealed from the outside and provides rigidity for energy transmission.
So far, it seems to provide useful results. I’ve tested it with water and oil. Oil tends to dampen the signal more than water which is a good sign since oil is more viscous but less dense, thus iy’s not functioning (entirely) as a densometer.
Well, there we have it, a prototype vibratory viscometer. I guess the next step will be to do these three things.
Well, I took the plunge and built an RS232 output device so that I can track the values over a longer term than whatever my memory can hold. I’ve started with a series of tests designed to test the speed control or the encoder. So far my results have been poor. I’m not exactly sure why, perhaps the motor is hooped, maybe the encoder or perhaps even my logic with timing the pulses, I don’t know as yet. I’m going to purchase some different motors to try out.
Click on the pictures to enlarge them, there is a good description of each. There is also a zip file of the analysis data and the program so far.
Posted on October 9, 2008 October 9, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, WorkLeave a comment	
For a while I’ve been looking for a decent freeware terminal program. Oddly enough, it’s been sitting right under my nose through a simple google search. I figure I’ll record it here for my own edification and file storage, just in case I can’t find it again… 🙂
Later tonight I’m going to try and post some of the results of the tests from the viscometer. So far, not so good. 🙁
Posted on October 9, 2008 October 9, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, ProgrammingLeave a comment	
So, I’ve been playing with simulating the output of the viscometer at a specified power output. When the real unit runs it seems to output noisy but patterned values. I’ve found that the output has a sinusoidal output with anomalies at the upper and lower value ranges. So, I’ve made a simulation of the outputs so I can find the best way to smooth out the sample sets.
In my simulation I generate 2000 samples and divide the samples into 10 sets. These sets are each 200 samples, the amount that’s being generated on the laboratory viscometer. The idea behind this is to make all of the value sets almost exactly the same, so far, I’m close with the average, but not close enough. Here’s a screenshot of the output
Posted on October 8, 2008 October 8, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, Other/misc, Programming, WorkTags viscometerLeave a comment	
I purchased a lens off Ebay to test out. It was fairly cheap, like $25 all told and it looks great and feels great in the hands. I’ve taken a few test shots with the lens and I’ll post them here if anyone is interested in seeing what this older 3rd party lens is/was capable of.
Here are some shots from the lens. I’m not going to edit them in any way. This is how they came off the camera. Sorry ’bout the extra shot of the lens, the gallery doesn’t allow removing images, weird.
So far it’s a really nice feeling lens. The aperature ring opens and closes smoothly and the focus bezel moves like a dream. It’s gonna take some getting used to, but I don’t mind manual focus too much.
Posted on October 3, 2008 October 3, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories PhotographyTags lens, Star-D3 Comments	
Well, as far as viscometers go, I could be considered an expert by now (no, not really). Today my new board arrived and I assembled it, I’m kind of proud of it, it works real slick just like the last one. This one has the following changes
Posted on October 3, 2008 October 3, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, WorkTags electronics, pcb, viscometerLeave a comment	
I suppose I should post a picture of my new office. Despite the fact that nobody reads my blog, I’ll post a picture for posterity.
Posted on October 1, 2008 October 1, 2008 Author Steven MackaayCategories Other/miscLeave a comment	
It’s been well over two months since I last posted. Frankly, not a lot has happened in the meantime anyways. Work is going well and life is pretty good. That said, I’ve begun to regain my inspiration for electronics again and I’ve been going hog wild building stuff in the evenings. Just some stuff to touch on I guess…
Well, again I have a secluded labratory in the shop I work at. It consists of 2 desks, two shelves and all of my equipment. It’s nice to hang around and listen to music and stuff while having access to all of the manufacturing facilities I could ask for!
Not really a project per say, however, somebody might want it. It’s for printed pcbs from PCBIran which have a ground loop on the outside and sets of rows and columns. Somebody may find it useful. I dunno.
The shop I’m at is investing in new technology (IE. CNC mill and CNC Ram EDM) and I figured it’d be neat to take an overview picture. Sure is crowded though. 🙂 The mill, as was stated earlier, is a Haas VF-5 with a 40 taper and the Machine is a large CHMER EDM, more on that thing later in the post
So now I have to monitor the outrush current of the pump, turn it on and off a prescribed number of times and then the rotary table can index. I’m still kind of in shock that nobody has ever presented CHMER with this problem. Weird!
I have just ordered the TI launchpad for $4.60 or whatever it cost. TI is attempting to break into the hobbyist market something fierce. unfortunately, after looking at the development tools available, they are all way overpriced.
While they do provide a code-size limited version, which is useful for most things, I think people like to have unfettered access to their chips and what kind they use from a particular vendor. When the development tools that allow this are in the $500 range, that’s simply too much.
Perhaps there will be some good 3rd party support like Atmel and Microchip has and they can really take their MCU’s to the next level. It’d be very cool. 🙂
Well, there is probably still more to say after such a long hiatus but I can’t think of it now. I do have some other ideas banging around in my head like a new design of the coolant refractometer which won’t foul. A robot that is machined beautifully and function on sonar. And a new coolant nozzle design that will kick Spider Cool’s ass from here to main street (I’m actually pretty stoked about this one).
Posted on March 3, 2011 March 3, 2011 Author Steven MackaayCategories Electronics, Personal Projects, Programming, WorkTags coolant, coolant nozzle, edm, general stuff, lab, refractometer, spider coolLeave a comment	
A bit ago I got the idea of trying to determine the mixture of coolant vs. water by detecting both light occlusion of the mixture and the wavelengths blocked / passed. This initial device is just a rough prototype that will assist me in determining a course of action in regards to overall design.
The idea behind the device is to have the sensor fitted on to any pipe attached to the machine where coolant goes through and give a live measurement of coolant mix and alert the operator if the mix gets too high or low. Also I’d like it to detect tramp oils that have been beaten in to the coolant.
The board itself is pretty simple, just a PIC16f690 hooked up to an rs232 driver and using three analog channels. I may in the future build a more sophisticated ADC board, but for now, this will do. The mcu is linked to the two rail to rail opamps, 7014D’s to be exact. they were needed to condition the signal from the LEDs.
The sensor area is basically a cup with a white LED as a light source for the sensor LEDs. The three LEDs are IR, Orange-red, and Green. The LED’s respond to wavelengths more energetic than the ones they emit, therefore, the selections I made. I did try a blue LED but the response wasn’t good at all. Hopefully it will provide useful data, hopefully.
In order to make data easier to collect, I put rs232 communications on it. I can store and track data this way. Above is some of the terminal output. Notice that I’m taking 10000 samples… this has the effect of increasing, to a very limited degree, the resolution of the device. It is however fraught with error thus far…
Anyways, any data collected and the design of this is extremely preliminary. I’m not even sure it’s a valid or useful idea yet.
Posted on March 15, 2010 Author Steven MackaayCategories ElectronicsTags coolant, electronics, pic16f690, refractometer, sensor5 Comments