Supercon 2023: Jesse T. Gonzalez Makes Circuit Boards That Breathe And Bend

Most robots are built out of solid materials like metal and plastic, giving them rigid structures that are easy to work with and understand. But you can open up much wider possibilities if you expl…

3D Printed Engine Gets Carburetor

3D printed materials have come a long way in the last decade or so as printers have become more and more mainstream. Printers can use all kinds of different plastics with varying physical character…

Reshoring Vacuum Tube Manufacturing, One Tube At A Time

For most of us, vacuum tubes haven’t appeared in any of our schematics or BOMs in — well, ever. Once mass-manufacturing made reliable transistors cheap enough for hobbyists, vacuum tube…

Curve Tracer Design For Power Vacuum Tubes Testing

Regardless of the mythical qualities that are all too often attributed to vacuum tubes, they are still components that can be damaged and wear out over time. Much like with transistors and kin, the…

Antique Beat Box Showcases 1950’s Engineering Prowess

Before you could just put a drum machine app on your phone, or fire up Garage Band, there were breakthroughs like the Roland 808 drum machine. But that’s not where it all started. In 1959 a c…

Semiconductor Shortage? Never Mind That, There’s A Vacuum Shortage!

As those of us who work in electronics are grappling with a semiconductor shortage making common devices unobtainable and less common ones very expensive, it’s worth noting that there’s…