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Maker Pro

Beginning electronics, understanding whats actually happening

Hopup

Jul 5, 2015
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I think you should only build something when you understand how the circuit operates at least on basic level. You have to study and read many books etc if you want to gain truly good knowledge on any electrical field or subject, radios for an example. You cant learn what has taken 100years to develop with just experimenting yourself.
 

CTP4500

Mar 3, 2018
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Really scientific here. Transistors; NPN type has five valence electrons, when an added phosphorus is added. PNP type, 3 valence electrons in the outer shell. Boron is added. Silicon crystals are formed with an arrangement that looks like a fabric strands. p-n junction. Forward bias electricity. On the collector, base, negative on the emitter. The components act as insulators or conductors. Depending on their polar connections. (-) polarity, emitter, base, collector (base, collector are +) forward bias. Transistor. In radio digital circuits. Can you picture the electrons moving in the boards? electrons.
 
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Ratch

Mar 10, 2013
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Really scientific here. Transistors; NPN type has five valence electrons, when an added phosphorus is added. PNP type, 3 valence electrons in the outer shell. Boron is added. Silicon crystals are formed with an arrangement that looks like a fabric strands. p-n junction. Forward bias electricity. On the collector, base, negative on the emitter. The components act as insulators or conductors. Depending on their polar connections. (-) polarity, emitter, base, collector (base, collector are +) forward bias. Transistor. In radio digital circuits. Can you picture the electrons moving in the boards? electrons.

Just about everything you said above is either wrong, disjointed, and confusing. Where did you study semiconductors?

Ratch
 

dante_clericuzzio

Mar 28, 2016
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Really scientific here. Transistors; NPN type has five valence electrons, when an added phosphorus is added. PNP type, 3 valence electrons in the outer shell. Boron is added. Silicon crystals are formed with an arrangement that looks like a fabric strands. p-n junction. Forward bias electricity. On the collector, base, negative on the emitter. The components act as insulators or conductors. Depending on their polar connections. (-) polarity, emitter, base, collector (base, collector are +) forward bias. Transistor. In radio digital circuits. Can you picture the electrons moving in the boards? electrons.
You have read and don't know how it works...and that's why you comes up with all sort of ideas that doesn't have a point...don't compare PNP and NPN but first go try to make a simple circuit like joule thief using NPN transistor ...and then comeback here you will have question which is more focus and straight to the point.
 

Bob Johnson

Feb 19, 2018
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I have answered this type of question several times. Here we go again.

Make yourself a crystal set, this will teach you about tuned circuits, their Q and ways of getting energy and out.

Repair electric and electronic equipment. This will teach you logic, sadly often lacking and enhance your manual skills.

Contact the RSGB for details of their Foundation courses. You may have one in your area. The examination is for the first stage of the amateur radio licence but you do not need to go for this. It will tell you what the components are and what they do. Some practical construction will be involved.

I would not recommend a valve amplifier until you know a lot about the dangers of high voltage.


I started off with a crystal set and started selling them at school. The school flagpole was the "test antenna" Used to compare different circuit designs! Then a Three transistor radio from the TV Radio and Hobbys magazine. THEN!! I found an old 7mHz crystal and with a scrapped valve radio, I built a an amplitude modulated transmitter running 15 watts into my Dads' favorite TV programs!!
Sixty years later I am still playing around with things I don't understand?
 

(*steve*)

¡sǝpodᴉʇuɐ ǝɥʇ ɹɐǝɥd
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Jan 21, 2010
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My general advice for anyone reading H&H is to ignore chapter 1 on your first skim through it.

Chapters 2 to n are interesting, informative, and maybe even inspiring. Chapter 1 is really dry and a great read if you can't sleep.

However, you really need to understand what's in chapter 1, so you will have to come back to it if you don't already understand it.
 

Wayne Phillips

Jan 7, 2018
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Agree there...we all had to learn the trade..

These day's with the likes of youtube and how to clips..folk seem to forget the hard part of being trained to work with electronic items and just board change!

That's not electronics engineering in my book!..
 

dante_clericuzzio

Mar 28, 2016
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Have to disagree with post #18. You have to do the basics first. If you are not prepared to go to classes to learn then buy the Horrowitz book. You do not need to read the entire publication before you start playing but, you must learn the basics first.

Actually my point it took hundred or more years to develop a lot of electronic devices, appliances, components on this planet....but china took only 20 years to copy cat them all and they already parallel with Japan, USA, Europe in terms of technology advancement.

The reason very simple they don't read too much but copy cat all they can and they learn. 1 Circuit could take thousands pages to read and don't understand but the chinese copy cat the circuit and they learn it in 3 days

So which one do you prefer? You could have lost so much time reading until you grow old but don't understand a thing in reality. The young Chinese is already busy selling their electronic while everyone else is still experiment according to the books.

If anyone want to dispute my claim look into ebay, Amazon, wallmart, etc there are prove who sell the most electronic items.
 
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WHONOES

May 20, 2017
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Actually my point it took hundred or more years to develop a lot of electronic devices, appliances, components on this planet....but china took only 20 years to copy cat them all and they already parallel with Japan, USA, Europe in terms of technology advancement.

The reason very simple they don't read too much but copy cat all they can and they learn. 1 Circuit could take thousands pages to read and don't understand but the chinese copy cat the circuit and they learn it in 3 days

So which one do you prefer? You could have lost so much time reading until you grow old but don't understand a thing in reality. The young Chinese is already busy selling their electronic while everyone else is still experiment according to the books.

If anyone want to dispute my claim look into ebay, Amazon, wallmart, etc there are prove who sell the most electronic items.

Sorry. but I don't think you understand the concept of learning. Look up the metaphor "Dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants".
 

Ratch

Mar 10, 2013
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Actually my point it took hundred or more years to develop a lot of electronic devices, appliances, components on this planet....but china took only 20 years to copy cat them all and they already parallel with Japan, USA, Europe in terms of technology advancement.

The reason very simple they don't read too much but copy cat all they can and they learn. 1 Circuit could take thousands pages to read and don't understand but the chinese copy cat the circuit and they learn it in 3 days

So which one do you prefer? You could have lost so much time reading until you grow old but don't understand a thing in reality. The young Chinese is already busy selling their electronic while everyone else is still experiment according to the books.

If anyone want to dispute my claim look into ebay, Amazon, wallmart, etc there are prove who sell the most electronic items.

Just copying something does not engender learning. OtherwIse, the secretary who works at the Xerox machine all day would be the smartest person in the office. You have to understand what you are duplicating or your knowledge will be superficial. The Chinese take shortcuts in applied engineering, but not in learning knowledge.

Ratch
 

dante_clericuzzio

Mar 28, 2016
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Sorry. but I don't think you understand the concept of learning. Look up the metaphor "Dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants".

Whatever the concept maybe i am not interested...the end result is way far superior even if it is not the best at first time. As you go along things getting better.

Just copying something does not engender learning. OtherwIse, the secretary who works at the Xerox machine all day would be the smartest person in the office. You have to understand what you are duplicating or your knowledge will be superficial. The Chinese take shortcuts in applied engineering, but not in learning knowledge.

Ratch

"The Chinese take shortcuts in applied engineering, but not in learning knowledge" ??? --> This statement is fake...The israelis simply copy cat AK47 and improve it to make it better and now they produce the best machine gun AK47 made in Israel ...how did Israelis learned?
 

Ratch

Mar 10, 2013
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"The Chinese take shortcuts in applied engineering, but not in learning knowledge" ??? --> This statement is fake...
How? In what way is it false? If you declare something to be false, you have an obligation to show why. Everyone knows that the Chinese are spying on other peoples' trade secrets and knowledge in order to study and better learn how to do things.

The israelis simply copy cat AK47 and improve it to make it better and now they produce the best machine gun AK47 made in Israel

OK, now we switch countries. How can the Israelis "improve" the 1945 designed AK-47 if they simply "copied" it. By the way, the AK-47 is an insult rifle, not a machine gun. What is your point, by the way?

...how did Israelis learned?

Incoherent sentence fragment that cannot be answered.

Ratch
 

dante_clericuzzio

Mar 28, 2016
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Sorry guys this is no insult i was getting it in the first place when i see the chinese copy cat a lot of things especially in electronics...but as the day gone by i starting to swallow it and get use to it..and now i've realized the chinese have the rights as long as they are not penalized for anything...and it makes some money for them. It will keep goes on and on till the end of time
 

hevans1944

Hop - AC8NS
Jun 21, 2012
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This thread seems to have wandered off-topic and degraded into argument rather than enlightenment. Here is a re-print of most of the original question:

If I sat down with a pen and paper and nothing else, how would I go about working out what was needed and how it all works to build...
Belaying for a moment a consideration of the dimensions and depth of "nothing else," there have been a few good comments that all seem to boil down to this: learn the fundamentals first.

You need tools to design anything, including the design and manufacture of more advanced tools. A blank sheet of paper (often a paper napkin or the back of an envelope) is they way I begin any design. But I don't use "nothing else". Instead I use more than sixty years of education, practice, and experience to put meaningful marks on the paper. At some point I will trade a napkin sketch for a real engineering drawing, sometimes constructed with the help of computer-aided design software.

In the end, I will probably make a prototype, using any of various construction techniques picked up along the way. But I started this journey small. Reading biographies of Edison, Franklin, Faraday and Bell inspired the younger me. Reading and doing experiments described in The Boy Electrician encouraged me to learn more. Having supportive parents and grandparents was a huge help, but I sold Christmas cards; washed and waxed cars in customer's drive ways; delivered newspapers; cut lawns and performed various other small tasks that grownups would entrust to a youngster to earn enough money to purchase electronic test equipment and (sometimes) electronic parts. My first purchase was an RCA vacuum-tube voltmeter (VTVM) in kit form.

In those early days, I visited the alleys behind Radio and TV Repair Shops to salvage complete chassis of parts from radios, record players, and televisions that cost more to repair than it cost to replace with new. (The same is true today of course, except there are no repair shops left from which to salvage parts.) There were also discarded vacuum tubes that often had some life left in them, although they could not meet the same performance specifications that "as new" versions did. All this "stuff" made for a great set of learning tools in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Today there is so much inexpensive electrical and electronic "stuff" available to "play" with, there is virtually no reason not to learn electronics if you just add a little ambition and interest. But you must start by learning the fundamentals, the basics. I am not saying you must perform the same experiments the Greeks did with amber and dust bunnies to learn about "elektrons" but at least read about it and learn where we came from. The human race has built on the shoulders of giants throughout recorded history. There is no need to re-invent all the wheels in order to learn how to use what is available.
 
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