3D CNC FDM and resin printer stuff.

The summer looks like a few fun projects will keep me busy. Going to enhance some of the 3D printer setups with klipper (got a few Raspberry PI to use), a tool head swap (wham bam's Mutant V2) so will try direct drive, flexible and liquid filament. Perhaps some pen plotting and going to be making a bigger bed on a donated Ender 3V2. I have an old K8200 will look swapping the head for a cyclops head running 1.75mm PLA and dissolvable PVA. The CNC2418 will not be ignored either, after seeing a new threaded rod added to the Z carriage to stop binding at the edges and have a new spoil board added (the bed board was for a 3018 but might cut it down) and I will use this to mill a couple PCB for use on the workbench. The resin printer wanting to try some water soluable resin and make a few antenna parts. The 'toy' EasyThreed K9 printer I have used for TPU will see some upgrades https://www.printables.com/model/906114-easythreed-k9-max-ultra-pro-plus-upgrade/ Might use Nema 17 steppers though (as have them). Also following one of the projects from Tom Salander https://www.printables.com/model/1079858-3d-printer-emission-sensor-array-sensorbox-v2 I had looked at this a while back with sensors using Arduino after coming across bag of different gas sensors. This will not just cover 3D stuff but soldering too as we all know there are oll sorts of nasties on the workbench. I'll be getting some PCB made up with PCBWay. The larger bed CNC I have made will also see a few updates. (I found this good for making front and rear panels to enclosures). Built a Pi4B into it's own mini tower and then added an OLED diplay, 500GB M2 SSD, Klipper and Mainsail this will control a few of the setups. One of the Bigtreetech S2DW V1.0 accelerometer boards is looking to get tried out (pretty sure have a bare ADXL345 board as well used with Arduino before) so will look at input shaping on the different printers too. For those that don't know these look at resonances in the printer that cause all sorts of artifacts and make some suggestions to values that could be changed to Klipper configuration files to negate the effects. I'll add posts as I go through.

Translation ear buds

On recent C5 trip I travelled via Morocco and despite speaking a bit of Arabic thought it might be interesting to try a pair of the new translation earbuds as I had a long stop over. The ones I used get your own ones here

They also have nmber of other functions, the most useful as flying was noise cancellation but they act as mormal blue tooth ear buds too. The ones that I was recommended to try were these but they were not available when I looked.

Travelling with Radio Kit, add a GPS luggage tag

First time had to use it in 100's of flights but definitely worth doing. I added a GPS tag to my bag that got checked. Was one of these.

New Electric Screwdriver

I had to open a few boxes and adjust jubilee clips and 1000 other tasks... rather than use mix of screwdrivers I treated my self to one of these. https://amzn.to/4bUhd7X

Cheap enough and had enough attachments and good enough to leave in the bag.

Sadly no operations from C5

 The licence was not granted, in time.

Solar Powered from C5 in March 2026

 

 

Back to C5 again next March 2026 and will be low power and solar powered.

 

Not got call sign just yet but will be C5/M1KTA or ??? 

 

Power will be off solar panel, 100W 12V Foldable Solar Panel Kit Monocrystalline with Solar Controller (2 USB Output) for 12V Battery Charging plan on getting one or two motor bike batteries or one bigger car one (depends what available) and will charge it. will run the radio off it.

 

Radio will be KX3 backup Ashan's Raspberry Pi SDR radio, Antennas, various verticals right by the sea.

Locator should be:

Maidenhead Gridsquare: IK23gl

CQ Zone: 35

ITU Zone: 46

Whilst there used this power bank to recharge phone etc.

I had taken this anti mosquito spray with me too.

https://amzn.to/4v2u28T

Finally had time to build the VM I wanted.... To use the 2418 to make PCB

 

Analogue Display Digital VFO

Following the original by JF3HZB (PW October 2022 p56) I have bodged mine sort of based on the original

https://github.com/tjlab-jf3hzb/Digital_VFO_with_analog_dial

https://tj-lab.org/2019/02/17/vfo5/

I will use for bench signal source and an older direct conversion radio setup I have.

The ESP32 I used seems to be a bit different.

The upload speed 115200, 240MHz, 40Mh flash, 4MB flash

Anyway programmed it.

I used a 2" rotary controller as per the PW article. Ruler and JLCPCB squeaky duck for size comparison.

TE-2101 antenna analyzer

 This is tiny.

Amazing bit of homebrew.

The manual is in Japanese but the block diagram explains how it works

 

nifty bit of engineering with the case (3D printed and bent acrylic sheet). The PCB doubles up as support of the OLED and the uPC and battery charger are on separate PCB underneath. The components are gnat shite size though! This is some nice homebrew.


Looks like they are building some more...

Just fitting battery.
Mine is 180mAH so lot smaller than original.

Small battery fitted

working

at just 80grams, this will be a good one for /p operations for sure. It doesn't work without the battery inside but it will work (and keep recharging from USB if it is) so I suspect one of those USB power packs might be useful.

Cores for baluns

 I have this printed out as I refer to it often enough so I reproduced it here (I cannot recall the original source tbh but all the values are in several reference books anyway) I got loads of torroids from GQRP club sales and W8DIZ.

The  different material works at different frequencies. These are often used in common mode chokes and wide band baluns.

Material	Common mode choke frequency range (single turn)	Common mode choke frequency range (multiple turns)	Impedance transformer	1:1 Balun (Choke)
#31	3,5 - 100 MHz	1,5 - 50 MHz	-	1,5 - 30 MHz
#43	25 - 600 MHz	2 - 60 MHz	2 - 50 MHz	2 - 30 MHz
#52	150 - 1000 MHz	4 - 150 MHz	1 - 60 MHz	1 - 60 MHz
#61	200 - 2000 MHz	5 - 200 MHz	15 - 200 MHz	10 - 100 MHz
#77	200 kHz - 10 MHz	100 kHz - 10 MHz	0,5 - 8 MHz	1 - 8 MHz

31 Material

Property	Symbol	Value	Unit
Initial Permeability	µi	1500
Flux Density @ Field strength	B H	3900 5	Gauss Oersted
Residual Flux Density	Br	3200	Gauss
Coersive force	Hc	0.28	Oersted
Loss Factor @ Frequency	Tan δ/ µi	20 1.0	10^-6 MHz
Temperature Coefficient of Initial Permeability (20 -70°C)		1.6	%/°C
Curie Temperature	Tc	>130	°C
Resistivity	ρ	3000	ohm-cm

31 Material

Property	Symbol	Value	Unit
Initial Permeability	µi	1500
Flux Density @ Field strength	B H	3900 5	Gauss Oersted
Residual Flux Density	Br	3200	Gauss
Coersive force	Hc	0.28	Oersted
Loss Factor @ Frequency	Tan δ/ µi	20 1.0	10^-6 MHz
Temperature Coefficient of Initial Permeability (20 -70°C)		1.6	%/°C
Curie Temperature	Tc	>130	°C
Resistivity	ρ	3000	ohm-cm

43 Material

Property	Symbol	Value	Unit
Initial Permeability	µi	800
Flux Density @ Field strength	B H	2900 10	Gauss Oersted
Residual Flux Density	Br	1300	Gauss
Coersive force	Hc	0.45	Oersted
Loss Factor @ Frequency	Tan δ/ µi	250 1.0	10^-6 MHz
Temperature Coefficient of Initial Permeability (20 -70°C)		1.25	%/°C
Curie Temperature	Tc	>130	°C
Resistivity	ρ	1×10^5	ohm-cm

52 Material

Property	Symbol	Value	Unit
Initial Permeability	µi	250
Flux Density @ Field strength	B H	4200 10	Gauss Oersted
Residual Flux Density	Br	3300	Gauss
Coersive force	Hc	0.6	Oersted
Loss Factor @ Frequency	Tan δ/ µi	45 1.0	10^-6 MHz
Temperature Coefficient of Initial Permeability (20 -70°C)		0.75	%/°C
Curie Temperature	Tc	>250	°C
Resistivity	ρ	1 x 10^9	ohm-cm

61 Material

Property	Symbol	Value	Unit
Initial Permeability	µi	125
Flux Density @ Field strength	B H	2500 15	Gauss Oersted
Residual Flux Density	Br	1000	Gauss
Coersive force	Hc	1.1	Oersted
Loss Factor @ Frequency	Tan δ/ µi	30 1.0	10^-6 MHz
Temperature Coefficient of Initial Permeability (20 -70°C)		0.1	%/°C
Curie Temperature	Tc	>300	°C
Resistivity	ρ	1 x 10^8	ohm-cm

77 Material

Property	Symbol	Value	Unit
Initial Permeability	µi	2000
Flux Density @ Field strength	B H	5100 5	Gauss Oersted
Residual Flux Density	Br	1800	Gauss
Coersive force	Hc	0.25	Oersted
Loss Factor @ Frequency	Tan δ/ µi	15 0.1	10^-6 MHz
Temperature Coefficient of Initial Permeability (20 -70°C)		1.2	%/°C
Curie Temperature	Tc	>200	°C
Resistivity	ρ	100	ohm-cm