Internal Heating Element Makes These PCBS Self-Soldering

Internal Heating Element Makes These PCBS Self-Soldering

Surface mount components have been a game changer for the electronics hobbyist, but doing reflow soldering right requires some way to evenly heat the board. You might need to buy a commercial reflow oven — you can cobble one together from an old toaster oven, after all — but you still need something, because it’s not like a PCB is going to solder itself. Right?

Wrong. At least if you’re [Carl Bugeja], who came up with a clever way to make his PCBs self-soldering. The idea is to use one of the internal layers on a four-layer PCB, which would normally be devoted to a ground plane, as a built-in heating element. Rather than a broad, continuous layer of copper, [Carl] made a long, twisting trace covering the entire area of the PCB. Routing the trace around vias was a bit tricky, but in the end he managed a single trace with a resistance of about 3 ohms.

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Natural Phenomenon Affects Radio Waves and Helps Science

Natural Phenomenon Affects Radio Waves and Helps Science

Scientists have captured a faint radio signal from the most distant galaxy yet - a signal they believe created a chance to look back 8.8 billion years in time when the universe was 4.9 billion years old.

Arnab Chakraborty, a post-doctoral researcher at McGill University, said the signal was received at a "record-breaking distance."

A news release from McGill university said the signal, which was received by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India, had a wavelength called the 21 cm line.

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Mysterious Antennas Are Appearing in Utah's Hills and Officials Are Stumped

Mysterious Antennas Are Appearing in Utah's Hills and Officials Are Stumped

Strange antennas have appeared in the foothills around Salt Lake City and authorities have no idea what they are or who put them up.

As first reported by KSLTV 5 in Utah, people first began noticing the antennas a year ago. They’re simple machines made up of a LoRa fiberglass antenna, a locked battery pack, and a solar panel to power it. The Salt Lake City public lands department has been pulling them down as they find them, and told KSLTV that there have been as many as a dozen.City officials have found around a dozen of the antennas and no one is sure what they're for.

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