Hi, yes, it's back. Everyone's favorite segment: the Mailbag. I've got so many people complaining. when is the next mailbag segment? And if you've been following my tweets, you'll know that.

Look at this. it's been building up and building up. Sorry about that folks. I Just haven't had time with the uh Christmas and New Year break and everything else and uh, that's been happening.

So I'm going to get to it. But look at this. it's ridiculous. There are no less than 15 uh, items plus two postcards to get through.

So I'm obviously not going to do it in this video. it's going to need. um, you know I don't know three or four videos to get through all this lot. and I know what's in some of these things and they will require videos in their own right because they deserve like a little mini review or uh, something like that.

Well, there's only one thing left to do. Get to it. Let's go. Sorry if you see your package here and I'm not going to open it on this video.

it will eventually get done and rather than just open things randomly and willy-nilly here I Thought I'd Implement at least at the start, a lifeo buffer or a last in, first out buffer and this is the last one that arrived and it is addressed to: Dave Pier Boox 7949 Borham Hills New South Wales 2153 Australia not Austria And guess who it's from folks? none other than fellow blogger Mike from Mike's electric staff hey Mike and I haven't disguised his address because I'm sure he'd want you to send him stuff too. Triple 5 timer Avenue Upper Side Band SX UK Sure it would get there anyway. Thanks! Mike He's got his trademark little uh laser symbol here and it's just got card so let's crack this sucker open. I think I know what this one is because hang on! Got to get my Swiss army knife out of my pocket and uh, he mentioned this on the Forum I'm going to have a guess that it is one of his little prototyping Pcbs cuz it feels like a PCB about Yay! Big feels like 1.6 mm Flex is like a 1.6 mm board.

so I'm assuming it's one of his prototyping boards that he showed off. may not be could be wrong. but uh, let's have a look. come on, get out of here Big Scary laser.

Do Not look into Beam with remaining Ey which apparently um, that was um on The Big Bang Theory in the uh laser lab? um there apparently they used Mike's uh, that's his uh design. Yep, it is. It's one of his prototype boards. Taada Here we go.

Hi Dave a late Christmas Euro card for you a while ago I got a that nobody made a Proto board with all the stuff I wanted at a sensible price. so I made my own. Of course you do. That's what everyone does.

This is the Mark III version see: Whitewing Doco.com double-sided gum. Oh no yeah, what is it? Double-sided tape or something? Oh, that's a bit of a fail. Mike Oh yep, that's a uh I wouldn't use that again. Oh no, it does.

does peel off. it's just a bit annoying. That's all. there we go.

and here it is with a print out from Mike's website showing all of the details on this thing. This is just the details on the um. upper side. Here, it's got an upper side and a lower side with, um, slightly different? Uh, well, some extra stuff on the bottom half.

So um, if you want to check out the layout of this thing, thoroughly, check out the Mike's website because it documents this thing As he said, um, yeah, really? Um, it's nice to have documentation for a Proto board like this and this one looks incredibly flexible. I Really like it. Um, not a fan of the white uh, solder mask I've got to admit, but um, anyway, it, uh, does contain a hell of a lot of functionality. Probably more functionality than I've ever seen on a Proto board and you can see that he's got red.

uh, he's got the red silk screen around here showing you on the top side here, showing you that like those three bars are shorted together and that, uh, and this goldplated trace of course, obviously goes right around here. It shows that this bar here is all joined and common all the way up there and really is beautiful work of art, Well done Mike I Like it. And as for the features, well, there's more features than you can poke a crow Pro bat Unbelievable. We've got um uh DIN 41612 connector along this side.

Down here we've got a Um standard uh DC uh power jack up here. We've got a couple of uncommitted power rails. We've got um 1.27 mm or 50 mil SMD area so that does all your standard um SMD packages all the way down there I'll get rid of the board. There we go.

Um, two uncommitted power rails down here. We've got a 0.5 mm flat Flex cable connector down here, more uncommitted power rails ground rails. We got a A5 mm uh pin pitch uh T- 16 There we've got some um, uh, what looks like a 78 um XX regulator which then breaks in into the power rails I think great stuff I like it or you can put a So 23 regulator the microchip mCP 7x series and I use those quite a bit and they're they're brilliant. Um, we've got another DC uh Power Jack down the bottom.

here we've got uh, different pitch uh terminal blocks: 1.27 mm staggered row RJ45 rj1 um Footprints oh we got DEC connected Footprints 950, 1525 W DS We've got um 2 mm header connectors up here. Oh man. Unbelievable. it's got everything and on the bottom, we've got even more here I didn't print out the other one but uh, he's got labeled 0.65 mm uh pin pitch SMD We' got 0.5 mm pin pitch and we've got uh two 1 mm flat flexx Um connectors down here as well.

Well, so that is one Bobby desler of a prototyping board I Highly recommend you get some um great things to have lying around when the uh, proverbial brown stuff hits the fan and you need to prototype something quickly. These things are a absolute Um musthave in your toolbox. So this is great I think it's about 196 uh UK for two or um 19 UK that includes postage I Believe anywhere in the world Beauty Mike And of course you got all your standard Uh1 in uh pitch uh through holes through here with the two power rails running under the IC So You' put your IC across the power rail like that and then it breaks off into two pins. So if you had a standard uh footprint uh dip package there it was, plug in there and you get two extra pins either side.

More than enough and it's postcard time and this one is from Jersey and well, not New Jersey folks um I had to look up jersey I didn't know what it was. it is a um officially according to the Wikipedia page, it is the Uh Bwick of Jersey is the corre correct uh name of that a little um island off the coast of Uh Normandy in uh France there. if uh, you know your War history we know all about Normandy there. so um, this one comes from Brad hey Brad and and hey Dave Keep up the great work with Eev blog! I've reacquainted myself with electronics since watching your videos I'm a field service engineer by day, so keeping my hand in electronics and design since leaving Uni nearly 20 years ago has been tough.

But thanks to your blog, I'm now learning more. Excellent, Thank you very much! Brad that is awesome and let's take a look at the stamp here. We've got a stamp from Jersey from Jersey post 70 I'm not sure what their currency is I forgot to look that up and that is uh, Normont Tower by the looks of it I like that. So there you go.

J Jersey is a um British um, dependency or something like that. so it's history is very, uh, complicated. It's not, um, apparently part of the uh, the United uh Kingdom it's um, sort of separate in some way. so I don't know.

Go check out the Wikipedia article on Jersey and you've got to wonder being a field service engineer on the aisle of uh Jersey um, how much work is there Brad Please let us know in the comments how much electronics Industry is there on a small island like that? I'd love to know. Next up we have another postcard from Malaysia I Do like postcards folks, so please, uh, send them to me I'm going to have to set up like a wall with uh, postcards on it and if I can get like hundreds and hundreds of them, I'll probably try and plaster them all over my wall. That would be awesome. um I technically I've been into Malaysia but only for a stopover.

so I've never actually uh um, had a good look around Malaysia at all and it's from if I can pronounce this correctly Abdulaziz Saline, thank you very much Abdul I'll call you for short or absy I don't know got to give you an Australian nickname I guess hi Dave I Know you like postcards and I wanted to send you one. Hope you like it. Thanks for the great Channel no Walkers thank you very much Malaysia stamp we have a Bunga tiger Bolan Flower Interesting. looks very pretty I like it Malaysia Lovely country I'm sure would love to go there one day.

and of course that image on the front is the Quala Loompa Skyline It's a Vista of ever expanding high-rise buildings including the impressive Quala Loompa Tower and the Petronus Twin Towers I've seen that and uh, that. Spider-Man dude CL Find the Petronus Twin Towers I Think unbelievable and let's have a look at another one here. that crazy Aussie block I wonder what the people at the post office uh think of this. They just keep seeing this all the time.

Anyway, this is an Australian one. There we go, We' got an Australian I Don't know if that's a photo. Is that a photo? or a watercolor? Not quite sure. Probably a photo.

There we go, but uh, there is no return address on this one. So Tada Mystery envelope. Let's have a look. It looks like there's just paper in here.

It doesn't feel like there's anything else so do wonder what it is. Oh, we got schematic diagrams hi Dave I Volunteered an OP shop for school work experience and came across this schematic diagram instantly. thought I know who would like this? that crazy guy Dave from YouTube Doing a quick Google search and having a quick look at the schematic I Think it belongs to a Panasonic TV but I'm not 100% sure. Well, given that it's a service, uh uh.

well it's something from Panasonic Let's take a look at it. Oh, this is huge. big A3 size I Don't know if I can get all this into one shot. Hang on.

there's my bare feet. Well, it's one of these foldout ones. It's absolutely enormous and uh, yes, it does look like something from a TV because well, there's the picture tube. Okay, there's the drivers for the RGB Let's have a look.

We've got Chroma video parts of the circuit I Love how they have the waveforms on here and the Uh voltages as well drawn in blue. Very, very nice. There's the earphone jack sound out. Uh, what do we got down here? There's a flyback.

Transformer Yep this is a TV there's a deflection yolk. yep, certainly is a TV there's a sink. uh video? um if Stage Sound if stage, there's the antenna or the aerial. depends on what you want to call it.

Wow. a lead one lead has its own PCB with a dropper resistor. Woohoo! and uh, there's our power supply circuit. There you go.

sorry I'm just holding this thing in free air here. and um, there's the uh, there's the switches on the front. so um, let's have a look printed in Japan and I Just looked up the model number c uh 2062 and it's one of those um, little uh combo VCR uh TV thing. So this is obviously just the uh TV part of the circuit.

there's no VCR stuff here in at all I mean it's probably, you know, an entirely different uh, subassembly actually I Really like, uh, this schematic. It is uh, well laid out I might actually try and um, scan it I have to scan it into sections and I'll try and put it up on the Uh site because it is is a good example of a traditional analog Uh TV system and you know how it all works. You know, antenna in here and all the If stages and the traps and everything else. and uh, um, you know how it converts that into a video signal to drive the CRT So well worth looking into this thing.

So I'll try and scan it and have it ready in the links below when this video goes up. and next cab off the rank. Here we have one from Declear in Salamander Bay New South Wales that's just north of here, up near Newcastle not to be confused with Newcastle in England of course. So let's rip this sucker.

We'll just rip this open. don't need the knife. Okay, what do we got here? We got a note Dave and Mike from Newcastle There we go. Hey! Dave We notice that J car have added a new multimeter to the already quality range.

Uhoh folks of well engineered in Quote Marks products, It'll set you back a who in 495. So just how long a barge would need not to touch this? How many different ways can I kill it? Oh man, Thanks! Dave And Mike uh oh folks. oh that is pathetic. That is pathetic.

What a load of garbage. Oh my goodness. oh my. God Look at that.

What is that shocking? Let's open this up. Why are I have no words. It's just a piece of absolute garbage. Not even going to turn the bloody thing on.

Oh well, yeah. okay here we go. look at that. Oh yeah, look, it's got a high voltage warning.

Yay! it's got got. Oh it's got a 200 microamp range. Fantastic. You're right.

And there's no cat rating on of course. absolute piece of garbage. And it's a Max 500 volts DC 200 milliamps actually a shared volts Ohms milliamps? um Jack which is not good at all I don't like those CU you can accidentally switch it to amps and short out your Vault So let's crack this thing open a What a third? look at that one very unusual thing. I don't think I've ever seen before.

actually. um, is a 12v battery in a multimeter like this? Look at the Crusty uh, 10 amp current Shun in there. What a load of garbage. Little 200 millia fuse solded directly onto the board.

At least they got one, the calibration trim pot in quote marks, and a crusty um chip on board, and a couple of passives. Oh man, what an absolute abolute tosser. And I assume we've got our integration capacitor there, and well, that's all she wrote. We Can probably take that out, but it's just ABS going to be an absolute piece of crap on here.

I mean I'm not even going to insult my DC Voltage standard by uh, hooking this piece of garbage up to it. Just oh man. five bucks retail I mean J car would be buying that for like A150 um pops and so you know. Unbelievable.

Just no. Don't people please. Ah, just looked at the back here. Security Class: Cat 2 250 What the hell is security class and Cat 2 you blow it out your ass.

Thanks guys! Um, I'll include that with that analog meter someone sent for the mailbag. You know, like a $2 analog meter or something. Um I will add that to the pile of meters that must be destroyed in some some creative way in a future video Beauty And we got another Australian one from JP from Willby here in Sydney. So let's crack this sucker open and see what we have got.

JP Just initials doesn't have a name. Maybe there's a name in the what do we got in here? Oh look at this. oh is it a Christmas card? heyy Santa Hey Aussie Santa there you go Cocka to coup of Koala bears, kangaroo kidna cabara Beauty hi Dave just not a thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise during the year Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year As Christmas is approaching, please accept this gift. Thank you very much from George Excellent, thank you very much George Um, sorry for not opening this before Christmas By the way, it's now 2013 and by the way, Happy! New Year Everyone let's oh Pomona Oh we got some Pomona test leads W Beauty Always like test leads.

Oh oh These are the filthy porn ones folks. A thank you very much George This is beautiful. Oh look you get the pins with it. Oh man oh oh oh just feel this.

Oh hang on. Oh feel the feel the Silicon in that. Oh yeah, check out these probes folks. Absolutely beautiful they are.

Ultra Ultra tiny Pomona Not sure what the model uh number is uh model number 6341 Precision Electronic probe with stainless steel tip for fluke HP Tech Elonics and Wave Tech wave Tech jez are a bit uh, bit old there they are rated um 3 amp Cat 2 so they're not exactly um, going to set the world on fire for testing industrial um you know, electronics and U industrial electrical gear and stuff like that. but look at this. look at that. Oh beautiful.

Perfect for getting right down through the oxide coating and piercing stuff. So really, you know design for precision Electronics Getting down and probing some pin of A5 mm bastard. Um, you know, quad flat pack or something like that. So let's have a look at the uh right angled banana plugs here.

Nice strain relief in there I Like it and really ultra thin leads. very very thin and these things are just tiny. they really are I Love it. And of course the probes just pull out like that and you can replace them and you get a bag of replacement probes which is brilliant and it looks like they've got some super duper long ones in here.

I'm going to plug these in folks and uh, we'll have a look. This is just absolutely insane. This is crazy. Look at the length of that would you? That is just that is crazy.

Absolutely nuts. and you'll notice that these are actually uh Pogo ones. So the action there is not inside the Uh probe uh, itself, it's inside the pin. so they're actually Pogo pins there.

Great stuff. And if you compare the uh length and size of those to the new fluke uh tl175 probe, that's the Uh one with the you know, the rotating Cat 4 shroud on there like that. but you can see the uh, the size difference in those Huge difference. These are fantastic for getting into those really tight spaces.

I Love it! Always wanted a pair of these so uh, you know, tiny little uh Precision probes like that? They'll come in very handy thank you very much. George It's awesome. although I suspect if you're going to use this probe here I would uh, heat shrink most of that just before it goes down to the tip there so you can slide it in and then really access through very tight. Um, you know assembled products and things like that down to a specific test point, but that's that's freaky.

And I Just checked the price on these puppies. these are 40 bucks us at Digi key or a whopping 90 bucks at Fels here in Australia So not um, cheap probes at all, but sex on a stick for really, you know Precision micro Electronics work Not for electrical work, You wouldn't be plugging these things into your main sockets. These are only you know, Cat Cat 2 and not designed for measuring High currents. But for that Precision work.

All right, let's just check the all right. Let's just check the contact resistance repeatability of this thing. shall we? These All right? Let's just check. All right, we'll just check the contact resistance repeatability of these.

Pogo pin uh, tips here. So let's probe this gold pad here. 238 and I'm moving those pogos up and down so they're only as I move those pogos up pins up and down. it's only varying by a couple of milliohms there.

Not much at all that's that's very nice. I like it and I will probably and I will probably get lynched if I don't at least open the largest package in my mail bag at the moment I Think we'll make this to the last one I'm probably already up to uh 20 25 minutes or something. So um, this one is from Elector. There we go, Elector that we've seen them before.

They uh, sent us a book and well, once again, we got a book and an assembled board. I claim they're only 10 uh, us bucks each, but that's probably for Customs purposes. So let's uh, rip this sucker open. Is it another book by Uh, Vincent Perhaps like we saw last time I Don't know it could be.

Um, it was sent by Elector. So here we go. What do we got? EU Pro Former invoice mastering surface mount technology Brilliant! Hardware Kit for testing a all right master in surface mount technology should be a neat little book EV Blog: Dear Mr Jones Enclos Please find a review copy of a latest book in the Lab Work series Mastering Surface Mount Technology. We added the hardware kit for you to test a few projects yourself.

I Hope you enjoy the book and the hardware. Thrilled to see an interesting review it of it on your blog. Thank you very much Janine Excellent all right let's have a look. LAB Works it's Vincent again hey Vincent he's Vincent is free electron on the Forum the EV blog Forum that's his handle and uh, he makes some fantastic die not Vincent but this bloody plastic stuff yeah Vincent makes some uh excellent awesome contributions to the Forum and his uh website I believe is uh Silicon Valley Garage.com don't quote me on that I Have to check that companion do-it-yourself kits available.

Okay, here we go. let's have a look. Okay, let's read the forward. This book began as a collection of loose slides and notes about various aspects of surface mount technology.

The idea is to give an overview of the tips, tricks, and methods when dealing with this technology. Both production style and lab style techniques are shown in an attempt to give you a feel for what exists out there. As an Enthusiast engineer or small scale assembler that comes into contact with this technology is not always easy to figure out how to tackle the specific problems of dealing with these small scale. Parts You really don't need to break the bank or take out a second mortgage to effectively doal with these parts.

This book will show you that Service Mount Parts are nothing to be afraid of and that anyone can handle these with none to minimal investment. Excellent. No worries, thank you very much. Vincent Let's take a look at the table of contents because that is going to tell all.

Got solder and iron stations? Rework Hot air BGA Stations Reflow ovens, temperature and power, solder and tips Anatomy of a tip Oh prolonging tip life um Heat gun nozzles, all the different types probably for Qfp and things like that we're talking we're getting down into Pace Pace Dispensers, stencils, stencil printers flux Rosen Core no clean water soluble ah soldering SP Flux splattery voiding weding ah man. Flux remover ultrasonic cleaners, fume extractors all your um solder Wick exact oh sorry, it's off camera solder Wick Xacto knife magnifi Vision Systems x-ray systems Parts Placement Oh man, it's all here. Bench top of storage of all your components, stuff like that, trays, tape and reel ESD and ESD Safety covers everything commercial Solutions ESD Home Ground Solutions for EST Setting up an efficient workbench. Neat! I Like it um etching your own boards? Oh PCB Materials the F4 Mis Noma Yep, that's a common one I Use it myself I'm guilty.

um uh. Chemical processing drilling oh your multi-layer board and solder M Your silk screens pit Falls with solder M and silk screen Ah man, it's all here. Feric etching with feric chloride um, ammonium, P, sufate and all that sort of jazz sockets SMD components, power ratings value, indications, resistant networks Footprints H capacitor classifications for film Oh man. Vincent You've gone to town and we still haven't finished.

This is ridiculous man. Electrolytic caps, diodes, integrated circuits, all your different packages, scope probes, test Clips uh Z sockets C Oh man, look seriously, this is and then it gets into projects of ah, there you go and that, that's it. Full board, solder paste, stencil techniques, techniques for uh, hot air stations, blah blah blah and then yeah, we're into practical stuff now. So making your own Reflow oven controller from a pizza toaster.

Brilliant. That goes on for like eight pages or something. Great. Love it.

All right And based on Vincent's uh previous book I'm sure it is. Um, absolutely brilliant. So got some history of uh electronics there. The various tools love it.

Soldering ons fantastic I Love it. Vincent Good work. Can you please let us know uh, in the comments or on the Forum um thread where you can talk to Vincent about his book? By the way, if you jump on over to the EV blog Forum there'll be a link below in the video and uh I'm sure Vincent who is a regular there will uh answer any questions you may have about the book and I'd love to know um, how much work was involved. Well, I know the answer.

it's a lot and uh, how long it took you to uh, uh, write this thing so and and compile it. Um, you obviously had a lot of uh info as you said at the start with slides and everything but this. really? there's a lot of uh work in producing this as well, let alone actually writing it. So x-ray about, pick and place, machines and feeders, inspection, cameras, trays, bolt cassettes, pill boxes, all that sort of stuff.

it's all there. ESD Stuff Good. Excellent. It's We go into all sorts of ESD handling how to, uh, proper setup, and ESD system.

Wow. This covers pretty much everything you'd want for, uh, all the Practical aspects of um Electronics engineering, not just uh, surface mount, um, stuff. really, it's you know, dealing with all the Practical aspects of uh of setting up a lab and uh, designing boards Reflow Parts placement. all that sort of jazz, the various different uh tipes for Reflow uh, soldering your glue placement.

it's all there through liquid solder wave as well. um, and double-sided loaded boards with double-sided surface mount with liquid solder wave. All the different techniqu are there, the different dialectric constants of all your boards and your board. stack up with your preeg and your copper foils.

it's all there. and chemical processing. uh, and the stages you go through to manufacture a professional board. light source aperture the oldfashioned aperture uh, photo plotter stuff.

does anyone still use Photo plotters these days? I thought they're all raster uh base these days. not sure anyone does the old photo uh, the old uh method anymore any PCB manufacturers or film manufacturers anyway I don't know, let me know and all your yeah, all your various um, blind and varied buried vas I'm sure strip copper plating how to uh do through hole plating on your boards which of course is not easy to do yourself. So I don't think he's going to go into details of possibly you know, plating your own boards and stuff like that. but all the detail in there, all those practical specs that you never learn in uh, engineering course solder Reflow soldering um thermal profiles I've done a bit on that before and uh, tombstoning the different faure modes.

hum humidity inside a part can uh cause it to expand and crack the chip? yeah I Don't think he's missed a thing folks. this is incredibly comprehensive I Love it! That laser trimming resistors. thick film, thin film the uh differences between the different types of resistors. so oh, it's got a handy Uh table for all your Uh E ranges.

E6 E12 E24 48 96 and E 192 Woo! Oh my goodness. Electrolytic capacitors! How they all! This is a great book I Am thoroughly impressed. Wow it! I only need a quick GL through to know that it's um, it's incredibly comprehensive and uh Vincent is one smart cookie so he does know what he's talking about. He's been in the business for a long time and uh I am sure that this book is, uh, very technically, um, accurate as well.

And then we get into some projects workbench setup and that's probably one of the boards we've got in there. We've probably got one of these uh, surface mount demo boards, but anyway, that is the book that is absolutely brilliant. Vincent I'm ve very very impressed. What have I been yapping on for 8 minutes continuous there now and uh, that is great I think I'm going to highly recommend that one mastering surface mount technology even though there's more to it than just surface mount stuff.

Awesome! Vincent Let's take a look at the board now. Oh folks, look what we have here. This looks exciting. We've got a ring light where let me get this board out of here, you bastard.

That's not a thermally bonded bloody thing. Hate those. But luckily I had a knife handy and here it is. It's a ring light.

Awesome! So Eurocircuits, Tocom, Pwm Mastering Smt. It's a Pwm dimmer and all these leads, you solder them around the outside there. This is a great example of a circular board and how you uh, panelized with the breakout tabs. a circular board? In fact, you've got multiple boards in here.

You got like this. Probably a driver board I Don't know. haven't inspected that yet. but um, they've got three boards in the one panel there and that says panel two I Guess is there another panel? I'm not sure.

but uh, we've got a whole bunch of parts that go with that and they've all got uh, individual, uh, bomb lists in there, so that is terrific. They're all set. Oh, the three separate boards. Okay, that's why we got three packets to go with those three boards.

Oh, I'm going to have to build this. That's a double-sided load too. There you go: Components both sides. So that's a really good example.

And what do we have here? We've got a solder paste stencil. Folks Here is an example of a stainless steel. Looks like stainless steel stainless steel are the, uh, expensive ones. Ral Harris Wobble Board there.

Let's uh, you know, let's do some old. Ral Harris Time Me Kangaroo Down Sport Timey Kangaroo Down Timey Kangaroo Down Spot timey Kangaroo down. All right? I'll um I Won't subject you to any more of my singing But There you go. This is an example of a Stainless a professional stainless steel solder paste stencil.

These are what they I've shown um in my um. tour of um, the surface mount board manufacturing facility. Um, you've seen these, um, stencils, stainless steel paste stencils before. These are alignment holes.

here. they whack it in there. a big paste squidy comes over there. Well, your board.

your board goes under the bottom. Like that. go, this goes over the top and it applies. The squidy applies stain uh, paste solder paste through the stainless steel stencil onto your board.

and uh, they're usually done by an automated machine, but you can do those by hand of course. Um, and if you want to do your own uh, solder paste, um, stencils. you wouldn't do it in stainless steel, but you can get Myar and other Uh types available these days. And oh, there's the extra one for the Uh circular board in there.

And uh, I've done videos on that sort of stuff before my PCB manufacturing tutorial and stuff like that. So there you go. That's awesome. Um, example kit I Love it.

That is great. And here is the schematic for the Ring Light Project project number four and let's take a look at it. It uses a Uh Mcil. There you go a Mcil constant current uh uh, Pwm driver I'm sure it is if you looked it up and then a P 12f 683 to control the thing and it's got various modes power, memory mode and up and down and you can you know set various modes, you can adjust, dim the LEDs and probably turn various ones offer on and set different modes.

So there's not much to the schematic, but uh, this one goes into all the details of how to assemble this bow because it's an assembly tutorial. and uh, given that this one comes with the stainless steel stencils, then this one's actually designed. Um, for you know, a paste. It's a solder paste tutorial, how to do your own boards using solder paste and there it is.

You tape them down to the bench like that and you can apply the paste over preparing the board for the stencil application. Excellent! It's all step by step and there you go. The next step is applying the stainless steel stencil over the top. Like that, You of course put these uh two boards on the side here to make it the same uh height of course as the main board.

So if you're using a 1.6 mm board under there, it' have two 1.6 mm boards on the same so it's all even height. or if you had, you know, A8 mm board a thin one. You put thin boards on the side and then and there's the example of using a small little putty knife or squidy there to apply the paste onto it and it gives you you know advice on how to, uh you know, use the correct angle too steep of angle of attack and then the paste retracts out and forcing the paste using a different angle. Neat.

it's all there. Great little tutorial on how to apply solder pace and there it is after the So paste application. what you need to do: inspec in uh uh, the solder paste um deposition there when you know to make sure it's on every pad and then Mis prints and then we get down into Parts placement down here so tells you how to place all the parts and then go over it with the hot air gun set to yeah recommends. about 50 higher than the melting uh point of the solder that you're actually using and there it is and then doing the through hole Parts as as well and it looks like thermal pads thermal.

VES So talking about all that, it's all there. There you go, That is terrific now. I was going to uh, rush and um, assemble this thing just so I could show it working, but it's a bit of a shame if I just sold it by hand and I didn't use these stain these brilliant stainless steel um stencils. So um, really? I think I'm going to save that for an entirely separate video where I um demonstrate how to do um solder paste application using a stainless steel stencil like this on the board.

There you go. thank you very much Elector And Vincent in particular I Checked the price of this thing. it's about 42 us if you're a Elector member of whatever Elector thing it is um, or about $47 if you're not a member. So I reckon that is an absolute winner and Vincent has nailed that.

And it's not just about surface mount technology, it's about all sorts of practical. Electronics PCB Applications thumbs up! So I hope you enjoyed that uh, mail bag segment. sorry if I didn't open your mail I have a whole bunch of it left I could do another two or three mailbag videos I'll try and do those as soon as I possibly can. And if you like mailbag segment, please give it a big thumbs up.

Catch you next time.