24½ - Parts #
When thinking about electronics, it’s easy to focus on the bits that electricity actually flows though. This chapter is for everything else
Part Codes #
Okay, sort of still electrically relevant, but as your peruse your options for parts you’ll see some patterns in how things are named, such as diodes starting with a 1N prefix. If you want to know more about that, these links are decent:
Potentiometers #
including sliders, motorized, dual, linear, exponential, logarithmic, etc.
Knobs, Key-Caps #
Enclosures & Environmental Protection #
There are a few standardized case sizes I like.
http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Sick_of_Beige_compatible_cases works well for custom PCBs of a variety of predefined sizes,
Guitar peadals often use enclosures of standard sizes that you can get with really nice powder coat finishes: https://stompboxparts.com/enclosures/
Weather Proofing #
Coatings #
Wax, conformal, etc.
Adhesives (And other bonding things) #
Bondic (or other UV-cure resin that isn’t crazy expensive per fl oz) Is not glue, but I’m putting it here first explicitly because if you’re banging your head against a wall trying to figure out what to use to repair/bond something, it might be what you need.
Similarly, Sugru is, uh, “Adhesive Silicone Rubber” according to Wikipedia. Basically, starts out roughly like thick PlayDoh dries to flexible but well cured rubber. It’s very nice for repairing wire strain relief, making grips for things. It bonds to almost anything reasonably well.
As for glues, some are sorta obvious: Wood glue for wood↔wood.
Usually, the hard part is dealing with very smooth materials (glass) or mixed materials (wood↔plastic, mixed plastic, etc.)
I am not skilled enough to tell you what glue to get or make a big matrix of what bonds to what using what. BUT, I can give you some advice:
- Clean your surface well. Isopropyl alcohol is your friend.
- Roughening up (Or “Surface Texturing”) a surface first is good, but irrelevant if you use a glue that’s chemically incompatible with the material.
- (1.) still applies, clean after roughening
- Not all plastics are the same. ABS≠PLA≠PVC, etc. Try to figure out what you have first and search what’s best. If you can’t tell, be prepared to have to either test (If you have spare materials to try on) or to have to try multiple times.
- If in doubt, test. The gluing stage is usually late enough in a project that screwing up would cost much more time than testing a bond on scrap material.
Hot glue should always be a last resort. It’s bulky, makes shit bonds, and will always fail at the worst possible time. If it needs to be fast, doesn’t need to be pretty, won’t be supporting weight (So, stationary crafts) Sure. Be aware there’s two types of hot glue: Low and High temp. High temp bond much stronger (Still, please don’t), but the higher temp will probably melt fabrics.
Adapters #
+ PCB footprint adapters, like SOP to DIP
Wires #
Stranded, enamaled, etc.
Buttons #
Graphite Buttons aren’t hard to DIY or fix.
Switches #
SPST DPST etc
Encoders #
vs a pot, w/ a button