After using the Keithley 236 SMU a lot in the last months without any problems, it suddenly showed the message "IOU Cal Checksum Error" and "IOU EEROM Failed" after power on. Additionally, while booting, it strangely showed a GPIB address different to the one set in the menu. It also was not possibl...
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Measuring Cell Capacity
As the previous repaired 6632B Power Supply is able to sink current up to 5A, I tried to characterize some Li-Ion cells by discharging with constant current, while getting the measured Voltage and Current back from the supply over GPIB using remote sensing. A fuse has been added in series for safety...
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Mechanical IC Decapping
Until I saw this YouTube video last week, I was not aware that it is possible to open IC packages with just mechanical force and a hot-air station. As you can see from the attached pictures, this method works fairly well. Only if the package is filled with epoxy, you have to go the old way with fu...
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ADF4351 Frequency Synthesizer
Signal Generators are usually very expensive and not easily affordable for the average user.
A cheap generator can still be built using a Wideband Frequency Synthesizer like the ADF4351, which can output frequencies from 35-4400 MHz. The internal VCO runs from 2.2 to 4.4 GHz, the range from 35-2200...