Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Soldering Safety

If you are working on an electronics project, you are probably soldering. Soldering can be dangerous: solder produces toxic fumes, your soldering iron is extremely hot, the solder gets very hot as well, and you may get air pockets or impurities that can pop as you heat the solder, sending molten solder flying unexpectedly and unpredictably. Because of these potential hazards, you need to follow some rules while soldering.
1) Wear goggles to protect your eyes. You must be careful when you trim leads or solder dross because a flyaway could injure you and others working in the vici
nity.
2) Never inhale fumes while soldering. Always work in a well-ventilated space, preferably with a fume extractor.
3) You must return the soldering iron to its stand (if you have a soldering station, it will be built-in) when you are not using it — do not leave it sitting on your workbench for any amount of time. The soldering iron tip is around four hundred degrees Celsius, so be careful; avoid touching wire insulation, plastic, and all other nearby flammable materials with the soldering iron. If you won’t be using the soldering iron for a few minutes, switch the soldering station to standby or turn off your soldering iron. Once you have finished soldering, turn off the unit and/or unplug it.
4) Another important way to avoid nasty burns is to use helping hands, clamps, pliers, tweezers, or a circuit board vice to hold your components. Ensure that your arms and legs are covered to avoid being burned by splashed solder.
5) Keep food and drink away from the working area. Traditional solder is a tin/lead alloy, and the lead is toxic. Flux is used to help metal pieces stay soldered together, and it is both acidic and toxic: flux will damage clothing and cause acid burns to your skin which, if they occur, you should immediately flush with water. If you spill any flux, clean it up immediately. Be sure to wash your hands after soldering.
6) Always thoroughly wash your hands after you have handled flux or leaded solder. Use lead-free solder — if you can — to reduce potential hazards.
7) After you’ve finished soldering, completely clean the area and discard any leftover lead and silver solder as well as dross in a lidded container, and then label the container (e.g. “Solder Waste”). Contaminated rags and solder sponges should be discarded as hazardous waste.

Monday, June 3, 2013

A Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) for under $70.00

The Hantek 6022BE  Digital Oscilloscope is a fully functional Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) priced at less than $70.00. This unit is designed to operate with a personal computer which greatly reduces the cost of manufacture by using the Computer Screen as the display and the keyboard as the function controls.

The Hantek 6022BE  oscilloscope features a 20 Mhz bandwidth with a 48 MSa/sec sampling rate, which is suitable for general electronics use. This provides sufficient capability for viewing a multitude of waveforms encountered in design, servicing, and educational environments.

Although this model does not have external triggering c
apabilities, it does not limit the usefulness since Channel 2 could be used as an external trigger input. The oscilloscope features various trigger modes and settings, including auto, normal and single.

Even though this is a low cost unit, it still features various mathematical operations that may be performed on the waveforms applied to the two channels. The operations available are Addition (CH1+CH2), Subtraction (CH1-CH2 or CH2-CH1), Multiplication (CH1 * CH2), Division (CH1/CH2 or CH2/CH1), and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The FFT operation is useful for observing the frequency content of the waveform.

The Hantek 6022BE  Digital Oscilloscope was found to be easy to use and included features not normally found on units in this price range. The unit performed at or better than the published specifications through all of the available functions. If higher Bandwidth is required, Circuit Specialists offers models ranging from 20 Mhz up to 200 Mhz.