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What is San Antonio Solder and Circuits?

S&C is a Pre-Engineering, educational opportunity for middle-school to college.  The topic is transistor circuits and electronics.   Project work, building real transistor circuits and etching custom printed circuit boards, is a motivational factor.  Learning how transistors work can be an educational outcome, and poise and politeness to adults are goals.  Math and crafting skills are used for projects.  A low, hourly contribution is collected when participants center their activities at 12311 Culebra Road #6104 in San Antonio, but most activities are conducted by participants on their own and Mr. Engelbrecht consults as needed.  The Linux and networking track is described below at the link The Networking Stack. 

Web site unregistered copyright 2011 John Engelbrecht

More about learning electronics

The Maker Movement

TOBC Tech for Students

As you read about S&C, you will see that it will appeal to about 3% of a school population.  (This is comparable to the 2% of students that are attracted to Cisco Networking Academy.)  S&C seeks to interest a segment of students in one of the fields of electrical engineering.

Would you like to build electronic circuits with a soldering iron?

Do you like science?

Do you need consulting for the electrical part of your Science Fair project?

Are you in EE or ME at college and need practice on real electronic circuits?

Should your student try out electical engineering,

one of the highest paid professions?

Would your student gain motivation using real

math and science to build projects?

Would your daughter and her friend gain confidence and

technical skills by learning and doing electronics?

Do you want American designers to compete with Chinese designers

making the next generations of electronics?

Students & Parents may come to see the lab and what they can do

Contact Instructor for appointment, johnenge@earthlink.net             12311 Culebra Road APT 6104    512 773 9266

Photos: 

The Laboratory

The Networking Stack and networking/Linux/Microsoft Windows 8 activities              

Partial Site Map

Networking, Linux

    Six towers in the lab

            Windows 8 tips & security

                    speech recognition

                    samples of viruses

                    data backups

            ANODE new file server, RAID, LVM, Linux mdadm RAID, Storage Spaces, BitLocker, secure boot

    Basic PC knowledge

    Linux sometimes is hard

    Network Milestones and some hardware, a blog of progress

    Port Reference & TCP/IP Stack, private IP addresses like 192.168.1.1

    The big things in the Internet--the big iron of routers, traceroute, hacking

    Linux commands at the command line, "real men do the command line"

    Partitions on hard drives

    How important is Linux for IT jobs?

Portable Activities (not tied to 12311 Culebra Road #6104 San Antonio)

Boy Scouts Astronomy Merit Badge   July 2014

Qualifications for Students

Teachers: topics in common with your teaching, support for your classes from Solder and Circuits

    A.R. Johnson CTAE career day 2015

    A.R.J. 2016 15" speaker & amplifer engineering

        midrange interference nodes

        flow charts

        D.C. supplies & control logic

        low-level audio circuits

        Woofer

        protection

            cone overtravel

Project building in these topics

    Atmel CPLD programmable logic

Instructor bio

Examples of electronic projects

Progress Using Switches and Lamps, some basic electric knowledge

Ten Transistor Rules, refresher of what you can learn

Six Amplifier Schematics, the innards of amplifiers

Voltage Divider, the easiest circuit

Mysterious Op Amp, but only up to 100kHz

More circuit design, lots of detail web pages

    Intro Knowledge about electronics

        ground

        resistors

        watts

        sine waves & harmonics

        graph practice

    Capacitors and Inductors Have Ohms

    Ground and AC Ground

    Alternatives to Etching Boards

    Corrosion on your meter probes

    Part Values should be in these ranges

    Keeping the Vendors in Business, please buy $6 of each part number

    Resistor Color Code

    Signal Flow in Schematics

    Save Your Meter

    Electrical Shock

    Mysteries -- a long blog about parts

    fT & GBW Are the Same--transistor & op-amp

    Example of Logic Design & a Two-Phase Clock

    Example of Homemade Sound System, a project that was finished out

    Audio, harmonics, clipping

    STEM education reality check

    Physics time line, 2500 B.C. to present

    Essays about the important things in life

    Instructor's Project Blog

Tales of Real Electrical Engineering

Buy Some Parts cheap at 12311 Culebra Road #6104 San Antonio;  tools you need

Agreement (expectations)

Circuit Board Artwork

    Double sided PCB fabrication tour so you know what you are getting into

Portable Activities for home schools, scouts, and other groups

Scouts Astronomy Merit Badge

Qualifications for Middle- and High-School Students

Science and math interest exceeds athletic interest

Able to solve for N in the algebra formula L=.8r2N2/(6r+9l)

Metric prefixes:  p pico 10-12  n nano 10-9  u micro 10-6  m milli 10-3  k kilo 103  M mega 106  G giga 109

A plus:  able to multiply out (5-i3)(-3+i2)

Willing to use tools safely, including X-Acto knife and soldering iron

Comply with safe practices, as instructed, for using 120 Volt outlet power

Refrain from practical jokes

Respect adults

Teachers: topics in common with your teaching   and the portal to the 15" speaker amplifier project, Spring 2015

Project building in these areas

analog circuit design such as audio amplifier and light/temperature sensing

digital design at the gate level and with registers (flip flops) Atmel photos & guidance

advanced design:  state machines

implementation using nylon breadboarding sockets ($10), custom-etched printed circuit boards, and Atmel digital CPLD programming

elementary RF circuits

power supplies

simple metalwork and plastic crafting to finish out projects

presentations to adults to gain poise and practice politeness (growing up doesn't come from being around young people, it comes from working with adults)

circuit simulation using Excel

custom computer assembly, licensed software installation, file backups, networking (for students who purchase their own parts and need guidance)

Linux

HTML

Elementary programming (QBasic, Visual Basic, C)

photo editing using Corel PhotoPaint

(no game playing during class)

(not designing the next consumer gadget)

 The program outputs a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file onto CD-R.  The file is printed onto a transparency at Office Depot.  A "presensitized," UV-A-sensitive, printed circuit board is exposed by UV light through the transparency and is etched in the process described at http://mgchemicals.com/products/600.htm. 

More about PCB artwork

Double sided PCB fabrication tour

This process is a rewarding endeavor for detail-oriented people and people who are artistically inclined. 

Note to self:  once every couple of years, I find it hard to get into the editable version of this Google site.  On Aug 31, 2018, it requires that I do this   https://sites.google.com/site/?usp=sites_home, and there is something about classic sites.