copperclad FR-4. Patterns can be cut with a Dremel or an X-acto knife into double-sided copperclad.
 | Breadboard high-voltage boost converter, on double-sided FR4 epoxy-glass. Slots were cut with a Dremel. After cutting, a good rub with Scotchbrite and soap+water will deburr the cuts and shine up the copper. The TO-92 is a Supertex LND150 depletion-mode mosfet, an output current limiter. |
Internals of a Tektronix SD-24 20 GHz TDR/sampling head for the 11801 oscilloscope.
This hybrid construction must have been a nightmare to engineer and manufacture, but it works great.
Mark Kahrs has a lot of cool stuff about sampling http://www.kahrs.us/~mark/electronics.html
And, of course, wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-domain_reflectometry
Internals of a Mini-Circuits VAT-20 20 dB RF attenuator. It's a thick-film hybrid, so is only medium-fast.
In the scope shot, the upper trace is TDR (reflected step) and the lower trace is TDT (transmitted, attenuated step response.)
I should hack a really good, fast attenuator some day, I suppose.
Proximity fuze stuff... vacuum tube circuits that were shot out of guns at 20,000 G's
The tubes are a gift from Bill Wagner. Thanks!
Teardown of a CUI V-infinity VASD1-SIP DC/DC converter. Great little gadgets, about $4 from Digikey This is rated for 1 watt output but seems happy at 2 watts.
Just don't short the output... it will blow up in about 100 milliseconds. An LM317L in the input will protect it nicely.
 | Some linear position sensors used in aircraft. The little ones are Bourns wirewound linear pots. The big one is a Schaevitz 2000HR LVDT. |
Visible and thermal images of a piece of copperclad FR-4 epoxy-glass with a patch of kapton tape. The copper is almost a perfect mirror
at thermal wavelengths, but the kapton emissivity is almost 1, the equivalent of almost black. The Flir thermal imager reports the
kapton temperature accurately, but sees my hand's warmer image (and the ceiling of my office) reflected off the copper.
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