Day: July 21, 2020

Apollo Missions Get Upgraded Video

July 21, 2020 by 31 Comments

July 20th marked the anniversary of the first human setting foot on the moon. If you were alive back then, you probably remember being glued to the TV watching the high-tech images of Armstrong taking that first step. But if you go back and watch the video today, it doesn’t look the way you remember it. We’ve been spoiled by high-density video with incredible frame rates. [Dutchsteammachine] has taken a great deal of old NASA footage and used their tools to update them to higher frame rates that look a lot better, as you can see below.

The original film from the moon landing ran between 12 frames per second and as low as 1 frame per second. The new video is interpolated to 24 frames per second. Some of the later Apollo mission film is jacked up to 60 frames per second. The results are great.

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Die Lapping For Better CPU Performance

July 21, 2020 by 59 Comments

CPUs generate their heat in the silicon die that does all those wonderful calculations which make our computers work. But silicon conducts heat fairly poorly, so the thinner your CPU die, the better it will conduct heat out to the heatsink. This theoretically promises better cooling and thus more scope for performance. Thus, it follows that some overclockers have taken to lapping down their CPU dies to try and make a performance gain.

It’s not a simple process, as the team at [Linus Tech Tips] found out. First, the CPU must be decapped, which on the Intel chip in question requires heating to release the intermediate heat spreader. A special jig is also required to do the job accurately. Once the bare CPU is cleaned of all residual glue and heat compounds, it can then be delicately lapped with a second jig designed to avoid over-sanding the CPU.

After much delicate disassembly, lapping, and reassembly, the CPU appears to drop 3-4 degrees C in benchmarks. In overclocking terms, that’s not a whole lot. While the process is risky and complicated for little gain, the underlying premise has merit – Intel thinned things out in later chips to make minor gains themselves. Video after the break.

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Hand Depanelizer Gets Pneumatic Upgrade

July 21, 2020 by 14 Comments

In high volume production, smaller PCBs are often “panelized” so that multiple copies can be shuffled through assembly as a single piece. Each board is attached to the panel with a few strategically placed tabs, not unlike the sprues in a plastic model kit. If you only have to separate a few boards you can simply cut them with a hand nipper, but when you’re doing hundreds or thousands of boards, it quickly becomes impractical.