Woody's Workshop – Keeping the Grey Matter active

September 28, 2026September 28, 2026

Library Part Creation Hassle in Fusion

Not Fusion’s fault, just my ineptitude

I am in the process of creating a PCB that uses a PC mounted 3.5mm jack socket. The part is readily available and low cost but I could not find a downloadable library part to match.

With a new part I dread the footprint creation. Footprint creation is where you formalise the pad geometry that will represent the locating connections of the component on the PCB. If I get it wrong the resulting board will be useless other perhaps as a hacked prototype.

This particular part as you can see has five connections, ground or ‘body’,(usually the screen connection on a jack plug), tip and sleeve with associated normally closed contacts for the tip and sleeve connections when no mating plug is inserted.

When I have created a new pad footprint I print a 1:1 drawing of the pad layout. I stick the 1:1 print to some laminated corrugated cardboard with SprayMount. I align the component over my printed footprint image and push it through the sketch so it penetrates through into the cardboard backing. This leaves me with a clean presentation of the hole locations and lets me see if I have got it right. This method of checking works reliably.

The pain with creating library parts in Fusion is that you have to specify the X and Y coordinate of each pad for each contact pin on the part. The X and Y values will relate to the zero reference you have chosen on the part. This zero reference point will be the ‘handle’ that you use for moving and placing the part while creating the PCB layout. The X/Y coordinates values can be in Imperial or Metric. Fusion lets you flip seamlessly between standards when specifying a dimension.

Back to the plot. The jack socket was not responding to my measuring accuracy. After three poor iterations I realised my ability to measure the geometry of the pins with a vernier caliper was not looking impressive.

Light bulb moment – as mentioned elsewhere on my blog I have a PC linked microscope. The software supplied with the microscope has the ability to scale measure items on the connected computer viewing screen. I regularly use the microscope in this mode for measuring the profile of clock wheels. My library pad creation now took a new approach.

I created a centred referenced rectangle that was dimensionally correct for the socket body. The outline dimensions were measured accurately with the microscope. The sketched rectangle was centred at 0,0 (which would be my ‘handle’ point) but there was no feature to measure where the zero position was on the component so nothing to measure against. What I did have was an ability to measure where all the terminals sat relative to each other.

I drew five terminals to roughly match their locations in the rectangle. (Note that these have to match the view looking down through the socket not as seen on the bottom face). Using the microscope viewing software I measured the location of the terminals all referenced to the body/ground terminal (red circle) and transferred these dimensions to the Fusion sketch. This locked the X/Y positions of the four terminals to the fifth one. Once dimensioned, this array of five holes could all be moved en bloc as one sketch locked to each other and could be made to sit anywhere within the outline sketch of the socket body.

In order to lock the array to the body I needed to lock just one of these terminals to the sketch of the body outline. This would lock all the terminals to the body outline and in turn to 0,0 centre. The locking dimension I chose was the ground terminal. The body/ground terminal sits on the centre line so this gave me a Y=0 value. The X position of the ground pin could be measured relative to the edge of the socket body (0.06) circled in blue With the ground pin now locked relative to 0,0 the other four terminals would also be locked to the connector centre point. Fusion would automatically give me the secondary dimensions for each terminal position referenced back to 0,0. These values appear in brackets. (The brackets are Fusion’s way of indicating that the sketch would not normally need these secondary dimensions as they simply constrain the geometry).

I now had the X and Y coordinates for each terminal referenced to each other and also to the centre of the body. No maths needed as Fusion automatically gave me the primary dimensions and secondary constrained dimensions.

Here is the resulting sketch. It worked like a dream.

Sorry that was a bit boring and perhaps a bit obvious but having now adopted this technique it has dramatically improved the speed and accuracy of my library part creation in Fusion.

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August 9, 2026August 9, 2026

Machine Vice Tramming Jig

A simple jig to make vice alignment quicker

We all recognise how we put off having to take the machine vice off the mill table to accomplish a job. The hassle of tramming it in again is a pain.

I’m not sure where I picked up this idea but it is worth propagating. The jig consists of a rigid plate with two spacer bars of equal length fastened to it. The plate is held in the vice and the two spacers are aligned with a surface on the mill column. The mill vice is fastened down and then allowed free reign to rotate as the two rods are gently brought to bear on the mill column. If your jig rods and plate are symetrical then the vice jaws will natually align parallel to the column. (My rods and plate thickness equate to 150mm).

If you want to be very fussy you can then use a dial indicator or a Haimer running against a parallel in the jaws but in my experience there is little to choose in the accuracy achieved.

Clearly not so useful if your mill has bellows fitted ….

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August 9, 2026August 9, 2026

Hearing Aids and Bees

A salutary warning

As previously mentioned on my blog I do keep a hive of bees as my pollinating team. I don’t raid them for honey, I just let them do their own thing. Their ground rent is to pollinate my vegetable production.

I recently got stung by one of the team and then started to wonder why sometimes they ignored me and sometimes they got narky. My correlation conclusion was it was when I was wearing my hearing aids. A quick online search revealed this is not uncommon. It seems to not be just hearing aids but any modern tech that potentially emits a high frequency sound or similar. This attracts them and you get a very close and loud buzz in your ear followed by an ‘ouch’.

Moral to the story is in the solitude down in the veg plot, add to your solitude by not wearing your aids.

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June 22, 2026June 22, 2026

JST-XH connector cable testing

A simple frustration easing test jig

I have taken to using JST-XH connectors for my projects. They are available in both straight and right angled mounting formats and are 2.54mm (0.1″) pin spacing. The spacing allows me to also use SIL discrete pins as an option. The JST mating connector uses crimp inserts for the cable terminations. The correct crimping tool is essential.

The crimping is a bit fiddly but once you get the knack they are not too difficult to fasten to the cable. However it is possible to not crimp them correctly leading to intermittent connections and the resulting frustration. Trying to jiggle a continuity tester to check out a multiway cable is not much fun.

After one particular session of ‘where is the fault’ I knocked up a very simple test jig that will allow any crimped JST-XH connector lead to be tested. Rather than have a jig with all pin count versions of socket, I used two 6 way versions (the maximum size I have ever used) and cut away the latching side of the connector so any pin count could be inserted. The continuity check is visibly shown with LEDs. I used 1204 and 0805 SMD resistors and LEDs as these nicely bridge across the through holes on matrix board. The completed jig and associated 9V battery is housed in a 3D printed enclosure. Here is the circuit and the matrix board build.

Note that 2mm pitch JST connectors are not quite so simple to modify for universal fitting so any jig for these would need a pair of each pin count socket. I have to admit that the 2mm ones are even more fiddly to use.

A handy tip for handling crimp inserts is to have a darning needle pushed into the end of a wine bottle cork. This can be pushed into the insert for ease of manipulation when positioning in the crimping tool.

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June 10, 2026June 10, 2026

Granddad where do stars go during the day

One of those many left field questions that put you in a spin

While in France we decided to try to answer this question with a meaningful investigation. Each evening we had a visible very bright sighting of Venus and close by was Jupiter. These and other planets are following the Sun’s track across the sky.

Go to the Heaven’s Above website and enter your Lat and Long location and the current time where you are located. From the menu listing go to the Sun’s data and log the Right Ascension (5hr 14m 7s currently for my location). You now need to look up Venus’ RA (7hr 55m 25s, again at my location). If you subtract these you get a value of 2hr 41m 18s. This is how long in time Venus’ position is behind the Sun’s current position.

A simple way to check this is to use a stick or something similar to point at the Sun and then go away and have a cup of tea. Come back in 2hr 41m and 18s and visibly search the sky where your stick is pointing to look for Venus (this assumes there are no clouds obscuring your view). Venus in daylight is going to be a pin prick of light so you’ll need to use peripheral vision around where the stick is pointing to see it, but trust me Venus will be there.

On this basis you could try to convince your grandchildren that the stars are always there but you just can’t see them because the Sun is so bright and only the brightest ones like Venus are possible to see in the daytime.

A more convincing demonstration is to use a telescope with auto-tracking. Set the telescope up with the tracking switched off. Using the star guider reflecting onto a piece of paper manually aim the telescope to point at the Sun. (NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN THROUGH THE GUIDER OR THROUGH THE MAIN TELESCOPE LENS OR YOU WILL SUFFER IRREPRABLE EYE DAMAGE). Once pointing correctly I suggest that you cover the telescope with a dust sheet to protect it’s optics from the heat of the Sun. You can now go for another cup of tea.

When you return in 2hr 41m and 18s the Sun will have moved away and you will be safe to look through the guider for the tiny spec of light that will be Venus. Once centred in the guider, you should be able to see Venus in the main telescope lens. Manually adjust the telescope to have Venus at the centre of the lens view and immediately enable the auto tracking. This will not be a high accuracy tracking fix with only the one planet as the reference but it will be good enough for a GOTO auto track to objects close to Venus such as Jupiter. You will now be able automatically flip the telescope view between both Venus and Jupiter in broad daylight. Depending on the time of year you might be able to auto guide to other sky objects but as mentioned, the auto guide fix you have made using just a single planet will become less accuate with larger movements in the telescope’s aiming direction.

Finding and showing two objects will hopefully have a bit more clout in convincing the grandchildren that Granddad really knows what he is talking about. You could also slip in the old saying that ‘granddad and grandma are like stars – you may not always be able to see us but you know we are always there’.

USING A MAGNIFYING DEVICE SUCH AS BINOCULARS OR A TELESCOPE IN SUNSHINE IS A HIGH RISK ACTIVITY UNLESS GREAT CARE IS TAKEN TO AVOID LOOKING DIRECTLY AT THE SUN. NO RESPONSIBILTY IS ACCEPTED BY THE AUTHOR FOR EYE DAMAGE EITHER ACCIDENTALLY OR OTHERWISE INCURRED.

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