Merging modern software development with electrons and metal

My Sakura Gelly Roll Gelato Pen

I still haven’t found another Sakura Gelly Roll Gelato pen.  I spent more time and money than I intended on my quest — but I learned a bit, too.

Why do I like the Gelato?  Because it’s at least a bit better than other good pens (e.g. Pilot, Uniball) with a very fine line (Sakura claims 0.26mm line width for the 04 model I have), wonderfully smooth ink flow, comfortable grip, and retractable design.

My Gelly Roll Bonanza (L->R: Pigma Micron, Regular, Metallic, Gold Shadow, Stardust, Moonlight)

Basically, what’s available at retail are the “artsy” Sakura pens, such as the metallic Gelly Roll models.  The Gelly Rolls are nice pens, but they  are best for fun; for writing, I prefer the feel, thinner line, and retractable design of the Gelato.  My results:

• Michael’s had a few packages of various Gelly Roll types and Pigma Micron pens.  They did not have any individual pens.
• Jo-ann Fabrics had a similar, but larger, selection of Sakura Gelly Roll and Pigma Micron packages.  They did not have any individual pens.
  • Jo-ann does have a much wider range available on-line, including individual pens.
  • Jo-ann’s web and retail selection is much better than Michael’s.
• Aaron Brothers is changing: they had individual Gelly Roll and Pigma pens, but were closing them out.  You can see in the picture that I went a little crazy buying Gelly Rolls.  (It’s for my kids, of course.)
  • Aaron Brothers did not have any multi-pen packages.  It appears they are closing out their more technical and artistic products (e.g. Sakura pens, Faber Castell pencils) in favor of a greatly expanded children’s selection.  The children’s area is pretty nice; I’ll check it out again when it’s close to my kids’ birthdays.

I haven’t had a chance to visit the stationery stores in San Jose or Palo Alto.  But I did find a very nice (but pricey) stationery store while having fun in San Francisco: Maido Stationery.  Actually, the Japantown store is called Kinokuniya Stationery, but it’s run by Maido.  Their other stores are in downtown San Francisco, Santana Row in San Jose, Los Angeles (with Kinokuniya) and New York (with Kinokuniya)

Pilot HI-TEC-C 0.3mm Pen

Basically, Maido is a JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) store — everything is direct from Japan.  They have good selection of Sakura products, including individual pens, along with Pilot, Mitsubishi (Uniball), and such.

If you like pens, you should definitely visit sometime.  They have a wide variety of pens I’ve never seen before, down to 0.25mm width, in all kinds of cool colors.  I ended up buying the finest-line pen that I felt wrote well, a 0.3mm blue Pilot HI-TEC-C (and was lucky I didn’t spend a lot more).  Maido has the hard to find 0.3mm and 0.4mm mechanical pencils — and leads.  I was intrigued by them (I had a Staedtler 0.3mm pencil many years ago), but they were quite pricey, the  real world results weren’t much finer than a 0.5mm pencil, and it’s very easy to break the leads.

But Maido doesn’t have the Sakura Gelato.  The saleslady said it looked like an export model meant for Western countries.  The Sakura America web site says the entire Gelly Roll line was originally intended for export to the US.  In Japan Sakura sells a lot of normal writing pens, but Sakura decided it would be very hard to compete with the US market leaders, so they created a new market with the Gelly Rolls.

Apparently, Sakura was right; in 2003, they introduced the Gelato, and in 2004 some additional models, but it looks like all Gelatos have been discontinued, which is a shame.  The Gelato 04 model has a claimed line width (0.26mm) almost as fine as anything in Maido (0.25mm, 0.28mm) but it writes much more smoothly than any of the super-fine models I tried; I’d say it even writes better than my 0.3mm Hi-Tec-C.  Also, I prefer the retractable pen design; however, if Maido’s selection is any indication, I’d say Japanese prefer pens with caps over retractable models.

So it looks like I won’t get any more Gelatos.  Oh, well, I had fun — and ended up with a lot of cool pens.

I’ve been very busy the last month or so with family matters, so I haven’t had much time for blogging.

But new posts will be becoming this week, and I have a practical, automation focused series planned.

The China Law Blog recently highlighted an article about boutique law firms and why they have been doing well during this recession:

1. Better expertise in the areas they serve (international law in the case of China Law Blog’s firm, Harris & Moure)
2. Better customer service
3. Better pricing (for example, Harris & Moure will do many jobs for a fixed fee).

I feel the same way about many of the smaller automation suppliers; I feel the products are better, the service is better, and the pricing is better than  I get from the automation giants.  OK, they aren’t covered as well by the press (or many bloggers), but that’s never concerned me.  The ones that have been around a while (such as Galil) are going to be in business just as long as the biggies, with a lot fewer strategy changes.

And, when these firms get bought out by big companies, they do seem to get at least just a little bit worse (and sometimes much worse — I can think of a couple cases where I’d find it difficult to buy from them again).

In summary, I do often feel that small is beautiful.

Silicon Valley is filled with stores; I’d say retail is still overbuilt, despite some store closings.  But recently, I had a lot of trouble finding some definitely non-exotic items.

First, I went looking for a 4″ Crescent wrench.  I looked at four stores, including Lowe’s and Orchard; the results weren’t pretty.

I bought a 4″ Craftsman wrench at Orchard about a decade ago, but now Orchard has nothing.  At least Orchard has some good hand tools, such as Bondhus hex wrenches.

I wasn’t impressed with Lowe’s hand tools; about half seemed to be private labeled made in China specials.  They didn’t have any 4″ Crescent wrenches.

Fry’s actually has some nice hand tools, although their selection was better a few years ago.  For example, I bought some really sweet Wiha screwdrivers there, but they don’t sell those now.  And they don’t sell 4″ wrenches.

I finally went to the local Ace hardware store, and found a sweet little 4″ Crescent wrench (made by Crescent).  It wasn’t cheap, but the quality is excellent, and I expect it to last a decade or two.

The second item I wanted was a pen (Sakura Jelly Roll) someone gave us; I really like the way it writes.  So I looked at the Office Depot, Staples, and Target, didn’t find it, gave up, and then found the Sakura web site.  Apparently, their pens are only sold by specialist stores (e.g. art and technical drawing stores).  Sometime I’ll make a trip to one of those stores; they have some really cool sounding products, including pigment ink pens and embossing pens.

Recently, I had what seemed like a simple task: select a DAC (digital to analog converter).  There are hundreds of models, so it should be easy, especially since most of my requirements were not demanding (1 channel, 12-bit or better, 1KHz output rate, 0-10V, low jitter output, and reasonable cost, hopefully <$500).   Even my low jitter requirement wasn’t demanding; I’d be happy with 100 microseconds of jitter; basically, any unit with a decent FIFO buffer and a hardware timed DAC update should work.

But finding candidates was a lot of work.  Early on, I concentrated on USB DAC models, because they have sufficient speed, are self-powered, tend to be reasonably priced, and don’t need a PCI or PCIe slot.

I’ve used Measurement Computing before, so they were one of my first stops.  It was really hard to find exactly which models have FIFO buffers and hardware paced outputs.  I had to do a lot of searching — and reading the full manuals.

The cheapest Measurement Computing model that met my requirements is the USB-1208HS-2AO, which is overkill ($599, high speed USB 2.0, 2 12-bit analog outputs at 1MHz, DAC has 4K FIFO buffer).  As far as I can tell, nothing cheaper has a FIFO buffer for the DAC.

Data Translation wasn’t much better; I had to dig through the detailed specs PDF to discover that the DT9812-10V meets my requirements, and has a 2K FIFO buffer.  It’s $375; DIN Rail mounting is an extra $60.

The final contestant is the Accesio USB-DA-12-8A, which has a 128K samples buffer.  It’s $525; DIN Rail mounting is an extra $19.

For my application, the Accesio looks the best fit; it more than meets all my requirements, I like the large buffer, andI like the DIN Rail mounting option.

SolidWorks World 2010 just finished.  Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s not, but at the start of SolidWorks World Alibre announced “permanent” lower prices (no guarantees they won’t change prices again, but I suspect they’ll stay the same for a while).  And VX has just about everything 50% off until March 1.

Alibre’s prices now include Alibre Translate (which was $499).  (Alibre pricing info via World CAD Access).

VX’s current sale (through March 1, 2010) is VX Innovator for $495, VX Designer for $2000, VX Mold & Die for $3000, VX 3D Machinist for $4000, and VX End To End for $5000.

VX definitely looks more capable than Alibre, but it’s significantly more expensive (including, I’m sure, the annual maintenance fees).  So far, I’ve been able to do some things in VX Innovator I can’t do in Alibre, but Alibre has very few license restrictions.  For example, VX Innovator limits assembly creation to 40 parts maximum (it can import models with more), while Alibre Design Standard does not have any hard limits.  Also, Alibre lets you install Design on up to three computers, which is very nice for those of us with multiple PCs.

I think that if you do anything with 3D solid modeling (not surfacing), then Alibre is definitely worth a look due to its low price, lack of artificial limits, and good import/export options (especially now with Alibre Translate).  If Alibre can improve the ease of use, maybe it can become what SpaceClaim originally claimed to be: MCAD for the rest of us (non-designers), people who need to occasionally work with 3D, but aren’t designing complex parts all day long.

Right now, I’m still sticking with Alibre Design Standard V11 and VX Innovator; if I do a lot of CAD this year, I’ll look at upgrading to Alibre V12.

NOTE: Updated 2/4/10 to reflect Max Freeman’s comment.

When I look at my traffic stats, I see there’s a lot of interest in affordable mechanical CAD.  I think that interest is good: I do not believe in pirating software, and I believe there is a place for affordable MCAD (and affordable CAM for desktop CNC machines), especially for personal use and as a tool for people who aren’t primarily mechanical designers.

I own licenses of Alibre Design Standard V11 (which I bought during the $99 sale) and VX Innovator V14 (which I bought on sale for $195).  I also have free licenses for DoubleCAD XT and CoCreate PE.

I mainly plan on using Alibre and VX Innovator, and reporting my experiences here.  They are somewhat complimentary; Alibre is a pretty standard history-based parametric modeler (with some nice features such as Acrobat 3D output), and VX is a hybrid modeler (solid and surface).

DoubleCAD looks very capable for 2D CAD, but I don’t expect to use it a lot.  I mainly use it for viewing and experimenting with DXF files created by Eagle PCB.

I do like CoCreate PE, but don’t plan on using it much now that I have Alibre Design and VX Innovator.  It’s limited to 60 parts per assembly, which I could easily exceed when modeling a PCB, and cannot export STEP files.  PTC has offered some very big discounts in the past to upgrade to the full version, but the annual maintenance  cost is way too high for my budget.

However, this is not a MCAD blog; my interest in still primarily in automation software and system integration (including PCBs).  OK, I do plan on writing more, but mostly I want to write about my experiences with affordable MCAD.  I do not have the time or interest to keep up with all the latest deals.  But I still might mention deals or MCAD news occasionally.

If you want to keep up on the latest special offers, you should visit MCAD sites such as Deelip.com and World CAD Access.  Also, if you register for the free versions (e.g. Alibre Design Xpress, CoCreate PE, DoubleCAD XT) you will receive e-mail offers.

Alibre has had a lot of good deals (maybe too many).  I’m currently sticking with V11 because I haven’t used it enough, and the improvements in V12 aren’t compelling for my uses.

VX had another sale on VX Innovator around Christmas, but they aren’t as good at marketing as Alibre; if you’re interested in a deal on VX, you should check their web store frequently.

Kubotek has had some sales, too, such as Kubotek Spectrum for $99; current deals include $700 off KeyCreator.

My latest MCAD news is here.

My blog plans for 2010 are my blog hopes for 2010 because it will  be challenging to do them all.

What I’d really like to do:

1. More software development posts, including real world examples of what can go wrong (and right — but wrong is more funny)
2. Finish my current PCB series
3. Start a series on real world system integration using CANOpen and AMC DX15C08 servo drives
4. Improve the site, including adding a blogroll and maybe changing the theme

Other hopes include:

1. A bit more on mechanical CAD software
2. More automation product posts
3. Embedded development experiences with my new toy (and how it could be useful in a factory environment)
4. Get rid of my backlog of draft posts (currently > 30)

Stellaris Eval Kit box

I now have a TI Stellaris LM3S8962 evaluation kit.  Specs include a 50MHz Cortex M3 core, 64K on chip RAM, 256K on chip flash, 10/100BaseT Ethernet with IEEE-1588 support, CAN, a 128×96 OLED, a virtual serial port (via USB), and JTAG (also via USB).   It’s pretty amazing that a commodity (<$10) MCU is much more powerful than the first personal computers such as the Apple II, Commodore 64, and CP/M systems.  (I’ve always thought it would be interesting to see how CP/M would run on a 50MHz Zilog eZ80, which should be about 200 times faster than a 4MHz Z80).

I like TI’s packaging: they stick everything into the box using two-ring CD-ROM holders.

Unboxing LM3S8962 kit

Below is a picture of the board running an eLua demo program.  eLua is a reduced size version of the Lua scripting language that can run on many MCUs.

eLua on the LM3S8962 kit

I like automation software because the end result is visible, not just “in the cloud” with no clear connection to anything physical.  Furthermore, I’ve found it’s very good to experiment and prototype first; I do not rely on virtual designs (living only in CAD software on a computer) to be 100% correct.  Even if we had and knew how to use expensive simulation software, it’s still not real.  Toyota, which does make extensive and valuable use of simulations, is moving back to make more physical prototypes and do more testing with those prototypes.

First, it’s hard to get all the details right.   After I assembled my CO-DB9-RJ45-2 adapter board, I plugged it into a AMC DX15 servo drive and then I finally realized: oh, no, the power plug is on the wrong side and will hit the next connector!  (BTW, the simple solution is to use a fixed terminal block instead of a header and plug).

Second, there’s no substitute for actually trying to use, first, the components, and second, the whole machine.  You can’t simulate the feel of quality components.  And there are lots of little things that can bite you later.  That’s why I now prefer to get samples of connectors I’m interested in before using them on a PCB.

I really like the concept of IDC (insulation displacement) terminal blocks: all you have to do is insert the wire and clamp down.  There’s no wire stripping, no ferrules to crimp, and no screws.  So I used a lot of Phoenix IDC terminal blocks in one of my first PCBs.  They worked great for many wires, but one set had problems: one component had wires with really thick insulation (for no good reason IMNSHO), so we really had to cram the wires in, which isn’t a good thing.

So while I still like IDC connectors, such as the eCon style connectors (3M MiniClamp, Tyco RITS) I only use them when I know what the wire gauge and insulation diameter will be.

I’ve also started using a lot of spring clamp connectors.  They can handle a much wider range of wire (and insulation) sizes than IDC, but can still be quicker to assemble than screw clamps.  However, they have their quirks, too:

1. I have a bunch of used early Wago DIN rail spring clamp terminal blocks which are significantly harder to use than the newer models.
2. Large spring clamps can take a lot of force.  I realized that when using some 4.0mm 32A Phoenix DIN Rail spring clamp terminal blocks.  I’m not sure I’d want to use anything larger.
3. It can be hard to get the wires into a spring cage plug: it takes one hand to hold it, one hand to operate the screw driver, and one hand to insert the wire — but I only have two hands.  When the plug is in its header, it’s easy to operate.