The Amp Hour

• We’ll be interviewing Øyvind Janbu, the CTO and co-founder of Energy Micro next week! We’ll have a separate post for asking him questions.
• Chris will be speaking at the Bay Area Maker Faire. If you’re going to be there, find a comfy chair and prepare for a snoozefest
• Second reminder for applying to the Lemnos Labs hardware incubator program, which will be closing soon.
• Our friend Alan Wolke did a really fun tour of his shop…through the screen of his oscilloscope! Lots of fun!
• Dave has finally figured out his MakerBot…with some help from his friends and by reading the (friggin) manual.
  
• Chris brings up a fun direct ink resist print using a vintage Epson printer. Great quality!
• Sometimes process adjustments are necessary to get more life out of a process node. Chris mentioned an Engineer Blogs post about Photolithography, but that actually doesn’t talk about the interference. There is a slide set from the University of Waterloo that does a good job explaining this process.
• Intel continues to win by being the bleeding edge process company. Will be interesting to see if they get into the foundry business.
• Dave mentioned the recently announced scandal involving Silverbrook in Australia, who have failed to produce output for many many years.
• Apparently it’s possible to print super caps with a Laser Scribe DVD burner:
  
• DigiKey instituted a visual catalog…online! Finally! Have they been listening to the show??
• LEDs that are going to be lighting up homes and workplaces almost were not possible. A researcher in the field explains the small margin on the bandgap required.
• Dave mentions Gazumping, which Chris had never heard of.
• Relays are a simple and yet crucial part of electronics. Chris was looking for cheap and small ones and was shown these from Omron. However, they didn’t fit the bill. Instead, we found out about new research into relay-like devices….on silicon! Wow!

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