What's gone well for you recently? No matter how big or small.

What lives in the big plastic box  under the big monitor ?

MK

Congrats! That's awesome!! Nice results : )

In some ways I guess it's good that the exams have been pushed to operate in this way, one of the benefits of Zoom'd amateur radio exams I suppose is that potentially one no longer has to wait for the local club (or especially if people are far from a club), people could sit it anywhere virtually to a remote club, perhaps even overseas : ) I wonder if anyone has done that, and what the regulations are around that.

Eh not necessarily. A spindle motor that's a bit jammed due to wearing bearings will draw high start-up currents which can cause those chips to fail given enough start-stop cycles. Likewise, a noisy DC power supply with lots of ripple may give them enough stress.

The chip itself (ST SMOOTH) is actually a combination motor driver chip if I recall correctly - does the spindle motor and head positioning voice coil motor. It's one of the few chips on the PCB that actually deals with the ATX 12V rail and the bulk of the power running through the drive.

The EEPROM chip contains the drive parameters, sometimes even a snippet of firmware, but the bravest of souls could try desoldering it with the "solder blob" and wick method if they don't have a hot air gun - it usually works just fine presuming you're quick.

- Gough

This little guy

It's always good to have an assistant !

MK

I've just completed this:

It measures the sensitivity of a multi axis piezo electric accelerometer at frequencies between 30 and 200 Hz.

The reference accelerometer (white thing on top of the little shaker table) has a vacuum port so the device

under test can be pulled down onto the reference without glue or clamps.

The box contain all the electronics to drive the shaker and condition and filter the signals from the DUT and

the reference. It uses an STM32F407 processor which controls everything and implements tracking digital filters with

about 0.2Hz -3dB bandwidth and 20Hz -70dB bandwidth.

I had a bit of a crisis during manufacture of the reference accelerometers -  the mill died as it was machining the

accelerometer bodies (Y axis servo amplifier blew, with noise but no smoke). Haas did a good job fixing it: I emailed them

on Sunday afternoon and it was back and running the next Friday lunchtime - so only out of action for less than a

week.

All that remains to do is formal calibration and it will be off to its new home.

MK

So cute.

My job. Being from a place where there wasn't a company hub or HQ, for the function I work in, has been an issue.

Everyone likes to have direct contact to their peers, reports.

Now with everyone working remote, the playing field leveled.

I can never manage to get the technique right with solder wick, and have to resort to a plunger/sucker instead

That sounds interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing it!