Tag: Isabel

Soldering Station

Kids soldering. One child has a traditional soldering iron, the other is at a station where the soldering iron is held in place and the components and solder are moved under the held iron.

Soldering is often a challenge when you only have two hands. Having another person offer a third hand usually just results in someone getting burned. Ben decided to not only flip the solution (a third hand to poorly hold the object) and have the soldering iron held stationary. This solution worked great but for all the parts and setup it needed to scale to be useful. Hence the multi station solder… station. Complete with lights and fume extractor.

But you don’t always need a soldering station for a group of people. Sometimes you just need a soldering station that can hold the soldering iron for you.

Laser cut wooden soldering station with fume extractor fan, fume containment dome, lights, and captured (held for you) soldering iron
Ben’s improved soldering station that doesn’t involve kids (or adults!) grabbing the wrong part of the soldering iron.

First Radio

Child holding circuit breadboard with very few wires and an earpiece

The the magic they bring and the powerful way they forever changed the world, radios don’t have to be that complicated.

Joshua Made his first radio with some wire, and earphone, and a diode. He jammed one end of the wire into the ground and a breadboard. Connected that to an earphone which was in turn connected to a diode. The diode was connected to the other side of the earphone and to one more piece of wire thrown high up into a tree… the antenna. That was it!

Radio was brought to life. He could immediately hear a trumpet playing music… on the radio. No tuning required. Actually no tuning is even possible with this simple design, you hear the loudest, strongest station broadcasting. But it’s so simple! This magical arrangement of uncomplicated stuff can pull electromagnetic waves out of the thin and turn them into music.

But the best part was that immediately after hearing sound from no where, Joshua thought of nothing other than to share it with his sister.

Boy and girl crouch low to ground to listen to very primitive radio
Upon hearing sound from the first radio he ever made, Joshua shares it with his sister