Making PCBs with Acetates?

[Yorkie]

Thanks for that Nick - very useful, especially the track width calculator, and you're right about having the ink side to the PCB so that the tracks aren't undercut when etching. All to easy to get the artwork the wring way round, and of course, for 'iron-on' techniques it must be reversed so as not to print a 'mirror image'.

Most of what I've done over the years has been based on magazine articles so I've lifted their artwork. To save space in the magazine, EPE place the artwork in the 'library' section of their website, but I find fewer and fewer magazine articles of interest. Most constructional articles in EPE are sourced from Silicon Chip - an excellent Oz mag, but they use parts which aren't easily sourced in the UK, and are also invariably PIC based. Jaycar sometimes puts kits together, but as with Elektor, often the projects are so esoteric that they're of little practical use - well not to me anyway. The only other UK mag - Practical Wireless - has for years been exclusivley about 'Posh CB' (AKA 'amateur radio') and though I've had a full licence for 38 years, I couldn't be less interested in the few 'practical' articles PW publishes. I flick through it in WH Smith, but am never tempted to buy it.

Basically, I'm living in the past, often falling back on old articles or stuff I find on 'tinternet, but I'm happy in my own skin, and that's what matters most!

[ed731pdh]

Inkjet printing onto tracing paper is literally one step up from using bronco, and with the same results. I use A4 tracing paper on the laser printer, using the direct feed port in order to ensure that the sheet does not crinkle when going through. An alternative method is to attach the tracing paper to a sheet of plain A4 with a laser friendy adhesive but to be honest the first method does it all with little grief. I also maximise projects on a single sheet to get the best economy, printing twice the same project for doubling up purposes.

Last time I picked up a copy of Elektor was over five years ago, and to be honest I was not that impressed with the offerings. Some of us do not dabble in microchips and when you see a project using a micro controller, E(E)prom and two and a half tons of fancy gubbings just to drive a set of christmas tree lights (that you can get for a fraction of the price at Homebase) then quite frankly they have lost the plot and the contents of my wallet. Same with EPE (I remember then they were two seperate publications, Practical and Everyday Electronics) that have gone down the road of chucking a bucket of chips at it to make it work. Remember the heady days of working with nothing more than a 555 timer or a 741 op amp, and producing some really serious kit in the process? Same old problem, I can give a child a pile of parts and some plans and tellthem to get on with it, but do they actually learn the fundamentals in the process? You could up to a point with basic projects but when it comes to chips with everything all they glean is it goes in here, comes out there and god knows in between.

[Nick]

I feel you might be being a bit harsh

Elektor is not for everyone for sure - it does a bit of the retro stuff (nixies and valves etc.) but its geared towards contemporary electronics. As it happens, they've been running an introduction to electronics theory course for some months, and are currently running an FPGA primer, complete with its own dev board, which I'm finding very interesting as my VHDL is rusty. They've also had extensive coverage of SDR and other radio technologies.

I find EPE tedious and repetitive, and the others pretty worthless with the exception of Circuit Cellar. Having said that, I do a lot of uP stuff, mainly with AVRs, so I'm completely happy with hybrid digital/analogue stuff. They do full analogue too, e.g. a recent series of articles by Doug Self on a new ultra-high specification HiFi pre-amp. Its disingenuous to suggest its all uP-based - it certainly isn't, but the hard facts are that hybrid is the way of the world now, and has been for a good while, so that's what they do. Look upon it as an opportunity to learn C or C++ (or BASIC or whatever) and play with a bit of digital micro-electronics... it's actually quite fun!

Of the current crop (those that are left, anyway), for me, apart from the trade rags, Elektor is the most informative followed by Circuit Cellar.

[ed731pdh]

Harsh, no, realistic, yes. I once had an engineer who worked for a simulation company state that "Nothing works out of the Elektor magazine, it's all just badly designed stuff". For an electronics engineer to make that sort of statement it does make you wonder what the criteria is when choosing projects to publish. Do they actually build one first before saying "yes, lets go for that", I doubt it.

I also remember the Modern Amateur Electronics Manual when it was available, made up of multiple parts over several months or years that never seemed to get anywhere. They went down the road of dodgy projects as well, one year out came a spoof april fools detector, WTF was my reaction, and due to other dissapointments, again another publication that was disconnected from my wallet.

[Nick]

Harsh, no, realistic, yes. I once had an engineer who worked for a simulation company state that "Nothing works out of the Elektor magazine, it's all just badly designed stuff". For an electronics engineer to make that sort of statement it does make you wonder what the criteria is when choosing projects to publish. Do they actually build one first before saying "yes, lets go for that", I doubt it.

I also remember the Modern Amateur Electronics Manual when it was available, made up of multiple parts over several months or years that never seemed to get anywhere. They went down the road of dodgy projects as well, one year out came a spoof april fools detector, WTF was my reaction, and due to other dissapointments, again another publication that was disconnected from my wallet.

Well, everyone has their opinion. Whilst I'm not a currently practising EE, I was a professional designer - bits of various aircraft radar systems etc. Now I mainly run projects rather than design, but I hope that I can still spot a ringer

All of Elektor's projects are built and tested in their labs and are often redesigned & tweaked before publishing - this can be for straight technical reasons or for component availability etc. They make mistakes, but so does pretty much every technical publication I've read. Note that Elektor's engineers are also "professional engineers" whose stock-in-trade is ensuring that the projects work as intended - their jobs depend on it. According to the December 2012 issue, 266,277 audited subscribers for their mags at the moment. What's the circulation of ETI or whatever its called today?

That's a point - you mention "The [Modern] Amateur Electronics Manual" - wasn't that an ETI publication - I'm pretty sure Elektor had nothing to do with that... http://www.epemag.wimborne.co.uk/acatalo...__MEM.html. ETI published a PIC-based spectrum analyser that was so wrong I wrote them a detailed explanation of why it was rubbish, and laid out in words of one syllable the underlying theory of FFTs. I had a nice letter back from the editor saying that he hadn't understood my letter, but they then printed a butchered version of it !

The one place that stuff might not be so rigorously tested is in their Summer Special edition of 100 projects.

Generally, I don't build their projects - I use them as a source for ideas and I prefer to design my own stuff. Many of the projects are authored by universities and EE companies and, for me at least, can be thought provoking. Their 300-series annual compendiums are also a useful reference as are their projects around new uPs, analogue devices and audio - I'm currently enjoying the FPGA series. Its made me pick up my VHDL manuals and refresh that part of my knowledge...

The blanket statement "Nothing works out of the Elektor magazine, it's all just badly designed stuff", is, to put it politely, absolute rubbish. A sweeping generalisation which is demonstrably untrue and manifestly unfair to the engineers in Elektor's labs.

DISCLAIMER! I have never worked for Elektor or written for them (though they have asked); I am however a long-time subscriber and they have used some of my rarer valves in articles...

[ed731pdh]

I have MAEM listed as a WEKA publication, possibly German I think.

[Nick]

The only book that really matters, IMHO, is "The Art of Electronics" - the 2nd Edition (1989) is now rather out of date, with the 3rd Edition long anticipated. In late 2011, Winfield Hill said it'd be out in late 2012 (not much time left there!) or early 2013 - http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-ar...aed55bac97

Now there's a book worth buying!

[ed731pdh]

Success In Electronics by Tom Duncan was my first book, I have a very old copy sitting on the shelf here, £5.95, 1983 edition.

[AlanBeckett]

Right, to get this Thread back within striking distance of its origins I've bought some film.
I failed to get any of my contacts to produce any. OHP Presentations appear to have almost died out.
I have layouts for David's ESR Meter. However, I don't know the actual size without taking mine to bits.
The next to last version looks to be about right but the latest version is A4
Get a grip David and come up with some numbers.

Alan

[Joe]

Mine's 2.421" x 3.676"

If the holes for the DIL are 0.1" apart all's well.

- Joe