Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast

By MacroFab, Inc.

Dive into the electrifying world of electrical engineering with Circuit Break, a MacroFab podcast hosted by Parker Dillmann and Stephen Kraig. This dynamic duo, armed with practical experience and a p... more

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FAQs about Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast:

How many episodes does Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 448 episodes available.

Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast episodes:

December 25, 2019MEP EP#204: Forth Annual MacroFab Star Wars Christmas Special – C3PO Steals the Show
Spoiler Alert: This podcast contains HEAVY SPOILERS for Star Wars Episode 9 and The Madalorian series up to Episode 7. If you do not want spoilers turn back now.
Josh Rozier
By day, Roz is a spreadsheet slinger for the Umbrella Corporation

When he is not wasting way too much time playing Star Wars RPG with your gracious hosts, he is typically doing his best not to burn down his shed with whatever project his ADHD allows him to focus on
Hyr0n
From 9 to 5 Hyr0n is security researcher, systems engineer, and corporate advisor of First Order security policy via Corellian power points

From 5 to 9 he is a hardware hacker, designer of AND!XOR embedded system puzzles, and Shyriiwookian voice over of droid holiday VR porn
Topics
Episode 9 Thoughts
This became the majority of the podcast somehow

Why does it seem that all the power in the ship flows through the control panels?
When ships get damaged, control panels explode
This is more obvious in Star Trek if anything

Lack of proper human to machine isolation

Poor supply chain risk management

Hardware hacking C3-PO

Does StarWars have HeathKits for droids?
Anakin supposedly built C3PO but there are lots of protocol droids like him so is C3PO a kit?

C3PO is a protocol Droid, essentially a logic analyzer with ML

The Mandalorian
What are your thoughts so far (Storyline, length, fan service)?

IG11 vs IG88

Fan Service Differences

Thoughts on manufacturing Mandalorian Armor

Mando Rifle Scope

Data Pad Security
Resistance Reborn book

New Disney EU meant to bridge EP8 and EP9

The Energy of a Lightsaber
How much total energy does the power source in the hilt need to hold?

How fast does the energy need to be delivered (what is the wattage)?

What is the total energy needed to cut darth maul in half?
...more
1h 44min
December 18, 2019MEP EP#203: Lizard Brain Information - David Gunness of Fulcrum Acoustic
MEP EP#203: Lizard Brain Information - David Gunness of Fulcrum Acoustic
David Gunness
Vice President of R&D at Fulcrum Acoustic

Lead Product Designer

Photographer

Copy Writer

Ambassador to Italy

Facilities Maintenance

Director of Calculus

Technical Writer

Lead Coffee Maker
Fulcrum Acoustic
Who are they and what do they do?

What does it take to get into sound design?
Education?

Frequency Theory

Passive Cardioid Technology
Technology to eliminate rear low frequency radiation
Where is this an issue?

Active solution

Passive solution

Patent 10,123,111 B2 “Loudspeaker with passive low frequency directional control”

Building a better coaxial speaker
What is a coax?

Beamwidth

How is this validated/tested?

Manufacturing enclosures with wood
Why wood?

Sourcing materials

General Design

Tolerancing considerations?

Finishing and Covering
Sanding

Painting

Spraying materials
...more
1h 4min
December 11, 2019MEP EP#202: Not Into The Meat Loaf
MEP EP#202: Not Into The Meat Loaf
Parker
PinoTaur Revision 2 is ordered!
Should be ready early January

Cable construction and design

Electrical Components where do they come from?
COO or Country Of Origin

Mouser has a new API

Arrow has an API but...

Brewery Update
Electrical box needs wire management

Majority of the fittings arrived

Tube straightner

Parker's house will end up being half tools and half projects
Stephen
SMPS design with polygons
Another Ti Webench design to the rescue!

12V down to 3.3V

Need to test the temperature performance

Power up testing - overshoot?

Watch out for clearances between components with PCB manufacturers

JLC PCB multiple design requirements?
Learn more is blank...
R.F.O.
Ben’s Single Chip Atari 2600 Portable
Parker helped figure out how the chip works

Werma multicolour LED beacon displays 200,000 colors
The colors duke...the colors
...more
1h 6min
December 04, 2019MEP EP#201: The Wheels Are Finally Off
MEP EP#201: The Wheels Are Finally Off
Parker
Air Raid Siren Update

Ordered Power System for Badge Testing
Will post the design when it is verified to work

Looking for IC’s for the lithium battery version

Type-C USB and power delivery would be nice features

Brewery Building
Soldered some stainless steel

Electrical Box almost completed

Need to wire up the pump switches

The joke is that brewing is 90% cleaning and 10% paperwork
Stephen
How easy is it to make a game console?
Had the idea from the pi touchscreen

Only solder. No electronic design

LCD Screen

Power boost 1000

Lipo Battery

Raspberry pi zero

Aluminum - $30

Buttons and dpad?
Tactile buttons dont feel right

I dont like the idea of sawing up a SNES controller pcb

Adafruit ideas
R.F.O.
DeepPCB: Pure AI-Powered, Cloud-Native Printed Circuit Board Routing
24 hr turn around

The hardest part of PCB routing is Placement

Solder mask color clearance?
Check with your pcb manufacturer!

Has the water analogy gone too far?
...more
58min
November 27, 2019MEP EP#200: Rotary Alarm System
MEP EP#200: Rotary Alarm System
Parker
Air Raid Siren Completed

Working on the power sub system for a D.C. Badge
Based on the successful DOOM SAO power system

USB Type-C for “cable” power

5.1K on both CC pins
Gives us 1.5A at 5V which is plenty of juice

Alkaline Primary Cells

TPS2113 for switching between cable power and the batteries

SAO connector implementation with proper current limiting

Gonna try a small little buck switcher
TLV62568 to knock the USB and battery voltage down to the 3.3V we need.

Going to design a lithium powered version that can recharge over the Type-C

Brewery Building is next project

MacroFab has guided tours in the platform. Let me know how they work.
Stephen
Multi Layer PCB
Finishing up a 6 layer PCB with mixed signal
Top

GND

Inner1

POWER

POWER

Bot

Multi Transformer solution for preamp power supply
Should I just go with my already proven SMPS instead?
R.F.O.
Cheating At Bowling, The Hacker Way
Star Wars BB8 style robot inside a bowling ball

Controlled by leaning your body!

Digikey - Now with more Vacuum!
Tube Depot - stock on digikey

NOS

Matching

Toshiba TCKE8xx eFuse ICs
Datasheet is tough to find atm

Parker has used the Ti TPS25926 in previous projects which is similar
...more
1h 22min
November 20, 2019MEP EP#199: High Voltage Gyrators and KiCad Plugins
MEP EP#199: High Voltage Gyrators and KiCad Plugins
Parker
50V power pack update
Managed to safely remove the cells

Protection circuit is functioning correctly

One of the 4 banks is “bad”

Scrapping all the 18650’s for future projects

Helping Ben debug the Atari Junior 2600 Single Chip system
Atari 2600's typically have 3 main ICs
6507 CPU

RIOT (RAM and I/O)

TIA (Graphics and Sound)

Air Raid Siren all printed
Needs final fitment and assembly to be completed!
Stephen
Rackmount case
Designed a rackmount case for a 1u preamp

New v-score bend method that works great on aluminum

A mixture of chamfer and cut relief

Can be bent by hand

Back to Gyrators
300V 4 band EQ using high voltage Mosfets as gyrators

Gyrators first mentioned on Episode 173 of the MEP

Wanted to solve the issue of not having to make more power supply rails

About +/- 12is db per band

80hz, 220hz, 750hz and 2k
R.F.O.
KiCad Action Plugins
Run your KiCad Python scripts direct inside the UI now!

RF tools - a very cool curved trace plugin

Parker's major complaint about Zoom Centering in KiCad hasn't been an issue for atleast 2 years now
Why did no one tell Parker :(

EE Web - now with more TOOLS!
All about Arrow

More EDA tools then you can shake a stick at!

Apple H1 Chip?
Silly marketing wank

Its just a custom MCU
...more
1h 13min
November 13, 2019MEP EP#198: Digital Razorblades
MEP EP#198: Digital Razorblades
Parker
Pinotaur REV 2
REV 1 is being tested inside of a pinball machine

ABC (Automotive Butt Cooler)
Idea for DEFCON?

Lithium battery pack fix?
Mother’s electric bicycle

50V pack all 18650s

The pack is good but no output

Carburetor rebuilding trick?
Stranded copper wire as a "brush"

4 wheeler

Generator
Stephen
Beer monitor
Still need a name

Parker's parts have arrived

Need to get solid state relays in
Mount to or case? Need to look further into heat transfer

Going to machine the cases soon
R.F.O.
Check Your Halloween Candy For Malicious Payloads
USB sticks instead of razor blades and drugs in your kids candy

Yageo buying KEMET?
1.8 Billion Dollaros

USI MT7697H Development Kit for Alexa Connect Kit
Custom hardware for Alexa

Arduino Zero Compatible

$196.98

192 MHz Cortex-M MCU and a WiFi/Bluetooth module

Plea deal for man who sold fake chips to US military
He instructed suppliers in China to repaint and remark “old, used and/or discarded ICs” to make them appear as new.

He also told a testing laboratory in China to provide two versions of test reports – one to Vasquez with all the test results, and another “sanitized version” that had could give to the purchaser.

60 years in prison

RPI 4 issues fixed?
July 17th - RPI Forum

Released an update package that “solves” a lot of the initial rpi4 launch issues.

Lower USB power consumption

Booting over network is now a possibility

Hat reboot fixes
...more
1h 5min
November 06, 2019MEP EP#197: Designing in Color – Greg Paulsen on 3D Printing
MEP EP#197: Designing in Color – Greg Paulsen on 3D Printing
Episode 200 is Coming Up!
Question / Answer setup like Episode 100

Send them via Audio Format to [email protected]
Greg Paulsen
The leader of the Application Engineering team at Xometry an online instant quoting platform for custom manufacturing projects, which utilize a professional network of thousands of manufacturers

His background is in applied additive manufacturing, having experience as an engineer, running machines, and ultimately using the parts

Was last on the podcast for episode 181 where we talked Xometry, Pizza, and digital manufacturing
3D Printing as a Service
What is 3D printing, what makes it different from CNC, molding?

Specifications for 3D printing

How does the designer give the specifications/tolerance?

Screws: 3d printing threads, self tappers, inserts

Does and don'ts of designing stuff for 3D printing

3D printing in scale - how do you scale up?

The pros and cons of running your own 3D printer versus say using a service to order things
...more
1h 1min
October 30, 2019MEP EP#196: Foamy Power Factors - Electrolytic Capacitors with KEMET
MEP EP#196: Foamy Power Factors - Electrolytic Capacitors with KEMET
Episode 200 is Coming Up!
Question / Answer setup like Episode 100

Send them via Audio Format to [email protected]
Ivan Quiroz
Over 19 years of electronic design and development experience in different industries ranging from aviation to industrial automation

His technical expertise surrounds the intrinsic requirements and detailed development of circuits

In his down time, he likes to develop escape room puzzles, sensors, and anything he can 3D print
Suzana Jankuloska
Is an electrical engineer from Macedonia

Has been with KEMET for 7 years and as a Product Manager of Electrolytic Capacitors for 3 years

Loves solving problems and sudoku and is a fan of martial arts and the movie Ip Man
Electrolytic Capacitors
Discuss ESR, ESL, Dissipation factor, Tan Delta, Ripple current, and life span

How to read the datasheet for an electrolytic capacitor beyond the value/voltage/dimensions
impedance at a known switching frequency

Brief introduction to a new type of electrolytic capacitor (polymer)

Link the electrolytic capacitor to the need for a bank capacitors

Signals through electrolytics

Leave on forever vs. multiple inrush cycles preferred for lifetime?

What drifts out of spec first?

The wear-out failure mode is loss of electrolyte
It is possible to measure this by weighing the capacitor before and after operating it at elevated temperature

When the capacitor loses a certain amount of weight, it is likely to fail

In the old days, the rule of thumb was to predict failure at 50% of the initial weight

What's the point of those orange SMD tantalum capacitors?

On large screw terminal caps, are the screws themselves typically intended to carry current, or just to mechanically tie the cap to the mounting surface (bus bar, PCB, etc.)?
Is it important to use aluminum screws to match materials to avoid corrosion from dissimilar metals in high current applications?
...more
1h 20min
October 23, 2019MEP EP#195: Mach 5 Sandpaper - MIT Rocket Team
MEP EP#195: Mach 5 Sandpaper - MIT Rocket Team
Episode 200 is Coming Up!
Question / Answer setup like Episode 100

Send them via Audio Format to [email protected]
Charlie Garcia
Attended space camp as a kid every year he could and became one of the counselors

Enjoys sharing his love of space exploration with people of all ages and walks of life through various mediums

In 2018 he lead the MIT Rocket Team as President to launch Project Hermes to 32,400 f

Now, as the Publicity Chair of the MIT Rocket Team, Charlie hopes to inspire others to explore the heavens

When Charlie isn’t building rockets, he is using his telescope, tinkering with his 3D printer, or enjoying a fantasy novel
Luka Govedič
Is a 20y old sophomore from Slovenia

Majoring in Electrical engineering and Computer science

Joined the MIT Rocket Team last fall

Currently the leader of the avionics subteam

Also part of the MIT varsity soccer team

Likes to play frisbee, drums, and compose music
What is the MIT Rocket Team?
History

Goals

Current Projects

Rocket Design
Staging

Important things to remember

Testing

Approvals? Who do you let know that you are launching a rocket?

Accidents?

What kind of electronic hardware do you run?
Design considerations

Microcontrollers

Power? Batteries?

YouTube Channel

Twitter Account
...more
43min

FAQs about Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast:

How many episodes does Circuit Break - A MacroFab Podcast have?

The podcast currently has 448 episodes available.

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