I wanted something smaller than most of the designs I had seen. These are 60mm x 60mm which makes them small enough to go into the Plano parts boxes I use for storage. I also wanted them in various widths with various slot openings. I use resistors and capacitors on paper tape but I also have chips and LEDs on plastic tape which require a wider body and slot. The splitter and slot width was important because I need to be able to clip off the end of the tape and throw them in a drawer without losing parts. I wanted to avoid multi part designs with clips and springs to connect to a rail or spools to hold the tape which make the whole thing wider. The cover was important because I expect to use them individually rather than connected together. Connecting them together with the LEGO pins was a concession to the guys I work with (well, one of the guys) who tends to build a few at a time where I tend to do a lot of prototyping and repairs. The pins mean there are no clips or pins projecting from the individual cartridges.

Yes, I’ve been a LEGO builder for 50 years or so and there is lots of Technics in my office. The LEGO pins are POM and very compliant. I’ve actually considered adding a DIN mount to these using a compliant DIN latch from BUD that I can buy from Digikey or Mouser. Another thing I’ve considered is just building DIN end clips where you have one with an integrated cover and one without. You would clamp those to a DIN rail then sandwich your stack up of cartridges between them. I’m just kicking around ideas right now.

I may ultimately make up a version with a window in the little sloped part so my friend can use a pick and place pen to pick the parts up from there with a bunch of them pinned together for assembly work. I tend to just expose the one or two parts I need and dump them out into the board I’m working on. I’m an electronic slob. I do most of my work under an Olympus SZ40 binocular microscope setup for soldering.

So, nothing major and I could have used any one of the designs available for download but I wanted to tinker with the design and print a bunch of similar but different cartridges that work for me.

Sorry…flow of consciousness.

Tweezers are the bomb. I’ve been doing a lot of repairs to old gaming consoles and hand helds. That actually paid for the new soldering station. Removing the surface mount caps without tweezers is possible but not easy.

I know OpenPnP. We have talked about it but most of the work I do is very small run. I hand solder everything down to 0402s and TQFPs with 0.4 mm pitch in one to three or four units. I’ve considered buying a hand PnP unit and I may at some point. I just upgraded to a new Hakko dual head soldering station which makes hand soldering stupid easy. I’ve probably got a few years of hand soldering in me.

Most of what I do is repairs and rework with a fair amount of prototyping.

For any production runs the guys I work with have PCBWAY do the populating for them.

Thanks. It’s loosely based on a number of designs that I’ve seen online. I wanted to make improvements to meet my needs.

This is classic right wing “humor”. They get butt hurt because we make fun of them so they think that humor just means hurting the other guys. They try, and fail, and we laugh at them which makes them even more butt hurt.

Did any of the links work for you?

What about

[email protected]

/c/[email protected]

I’m still not sure what the best format is for these links so that they work everywhere.

I find it incredibly frustrating not to be able to reply to posts on other instances when I’m logged in to my local instance. That is the literal purpose of federation. Lemmy will very quickly fail if they don’t solve these basic problems.

We had a deep drought a few years ago. 15 foot deep ponds ran completely dry. The brown forest rats moved into the farms looking for food and water. They were EVERYWHERE. They got into the walls of our buildings, chewed through into the animal houses, and got into the feed. That same year we had an explosion in red squirrels and chipmunks. Then…they were gone. Not one to be seen.

I was walking toward the brooding house one day and a huge rat (for a brown forest rat) came charging out toward me, ran into my boots, turned and continued. Right behind it came a mink in hot pursuit. The mink had moved in and cleared out the red squirrels, the chipmunks, and the brown forest rats. I told it that it could stay as long as it left the birds alone.

That worked out well for us.

Another year our daughter went out to open up and found a row of 9 ducklings with their heads pulled out under the door. A mink had gotten in and killed one and not being able to pull it out under the door went back for another. It worked its way through all of our ducklings before giving up.

I caught that one. It’s pelt is in my workshop.

I have a live and let live policy as long as they don’t touch our animals.

Welcome.

Thanks. I’ve been struggling with that.

Question…how do I write the link so that it works everywhere? I’m struggling with links that work for me but not for other people.

Cool. I’ll do the same. Thanks.

Welcome. Happy to have you here.

I updated the New Communities post, sidebar, and title of the group to welcome other types of birds while their own communities gather. We’re happy to provide care and comfort for those communities until they do.

Parrots are welcome!

Those who are inter-chickened are welcome.

We’re happy to have you chicken and egg interested fediverse citizen.

Thanks for checking. I’m sure they will get this worked out eventually.

Thanks.

Damnation! None of the three work? I tried to follow the instructions but it seems to change the links depending on which instance you’re coming in from.