SnapCircuits Transistor

Description

There are a couple really nice custom Snap Circuits models that use the Dritz "Anorak Snaps". That was pretty slick, but those snaps are a little pricy and somewhat hard to get. I tried making mine with sew on snaps that you can get at Hobby Lobby or JO-ANN fabrics. They are the size 2 sew on type, either Dritz or Sew-ology. This involves a bit more gluing and soldering, but seems to work really well. I had initially intended to use epoxy to glue the snaps on, but it turned out that CA glue worked fine. The design requires supports to create the recesses for the top snaps (it prints upside-down). I just used a drill bit to route those out, but you don't need to make them perfect because they are covered by the snaps. I figured rough texture would give the glue more to grab onto. To assemble it, I soldered a piece of bare wire to each snap half (6 wires total for three terminals). Then I glued the top snaps on, making sure the wire fed through the small notch. After letting that harden, I glued the bottoms on, using a generous amount of fairly thick CA (I used Bob Smith Industries Maxi Cure), around the edges and near the hole. After letting the glue cure for a while, I twisted each pair and trimmed excess from one of the two wires and added a bit of solder to keep them together. Finally, I trimmed the longer wire to length and soldered each leg of the transistor to the wire. The result won't win any soldering beauty contests, but worked fine. I had initially thought that I'd have a lot of trouble with the plastic melting, but it didn't melt unless I accidentally poked it with the iron. You'd probably have more trouble with PLA, though.

Statistics

Category

Tags