Yet another use for Altoids Tin

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uoip
 
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Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:48 pm

Yet another use for Altoids Tin

Post by uoip »

Here's my latest Saturday morning hardware hack. A universal "this to that" adapter. I took one of each kind of chassis mount connector from my junk box, and wired them together in parallel.

Image


It's got a pair of banana jacks spaced at the standard 0.75", a 1/8" phone jack, a BNC jack, an RCA jack, a power jack (not sure of the size), and over on the side, mounted on the bottom, a 1/4" phone jack.

Here's the inside view:

Image

Some of the black wires aren't strictly necessary, because electrical connection is made through the metal of the box. But the lid and bottom should be connected by a good soldered wire, because the hinge isn't designed with electrical connectivity in mind.

Before someone beats me to the obvious, this probably isn't so great for really high frequencies. No way do those wires qualify as controlled impedance signal paths. This is not a thing of beauty, but it's designed to improve on my previous habit of hooking things up with alligator clips. It should do fine for DC and audio, and maybe even composite video.

I already have a bunch of short cables with plugs on one end and stackable banana jacks on the other. The combination lets me adapt most of my common connectors to any other, and the stackable banana jacks let me insert a meter to measure voltage and/or current. The BNC jack let's me connect a scope.

This isn't a new idea. I got the inspiration from a 1960 article in Electronics Illustrated
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2011/12/ ... e-adapter/

Enjoy, copy it, and improve on it as you like.

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chuckz
 
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Re: Yet another use for Altoids Tin

Post by chuckz »

What are the best ways to cut the tin? What ways are bad? What tools do you suggest to use?

uoip
 
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Joined: Wed Sep 23, 2009 5:48 pm

Re: Yet another use for Altoids Tin

Post by uoip »

I used an ordinary handheld cordless electric drill with high speed steel bits. I centerpunched first, to keep the bit from wandering. The biggest problem I had was that when the bit would "break through", it would sometimes do so pretty spectacularly and suddenly, and it would try to twist the altoids tin and pull it in toward the drill, and bend the metal instead of cutting it. For some holes, I used a vise to hold the tin, but other times, a firm hand on the tin and a careful gentle hand on the drill were all I used. I used a Dremel tool with a small grinding stone bit to de-burr the holes and clean them up after drilling. For the neatest holes, I recommend drilling holes a little bit small and enlarging them a little with a Dremel.

Note that I used a big flat washer for my BNC connector. That's because the screw threads on my BNC connector were such that it couldn't mount properly to something as thin as the Altoids tin. It needed a thicker gauge metal. The washer was what I had handy.

When you screw everything into place, those connectors and washers cover up minor sloppiness on the hole edges pretty well.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Yet another use for Altoids Tin

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

It helps to have a block of wood or other firm backing under the tin as you drill.

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