Archive for November, 2013

Triad-finishedAs promised, the second part of the build showing the finished project.

Transistor-tester.zip First of all the Cadsoft Eagle schematic and boards. The schematic is not my own but from Mats Engstrom. He posted the schematics on github, I only modified the board to be single sided. Well actually there are two single sided boards on top of each other so that make it semi double sided.

The small board was attached by 3 wires that were soldered on both PCB’s. I had two additional via’s planned on the PCB’s but instead of soldering wires I opted to use small screws of 1.2 mm width 4mm long. Mainly because I have a kit of various sizes lying around waiting for a project and it also looks nice.

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traidAn article in hackaday.com triggered my interest in the Traid project originally featured in dangerousprototypes.com

“Matseng started a challenge for himself where he intends to post a PCB project a week.” Check out the PCB a week tag for all his projects.

Now when I use a transistor I find myself always going back to the datasheet to double check the pin layout and orientation. If you’ve been there you know that you have to be really careful since sometimes it’s the top view of a package and sometimes bottom view. That’s when I decided that having a transistor test a.k.a. a Traid would be very helpful. It looks like a fairly simple design with a nice touch of having a a single CR2032 battery.

If a project like the Traid has to appeal to a wide audience it has to fit on single sided pcb. That’s what I set out to do, and am sharing here with you.

traid-bare-boardsThere is a small challenge here since I do need a place to sample the transistors. With a single sided pcb using through hole components that would imply using the bottom of the board. Since that would be awkward and very impractical I decided to sandwich a second, small and single sided, pcb on top of the other. This provides me with the sample space and attaching the boards was planned for with soldering a few wires through both board and maybe a dab of glue.

 

 

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