Random Questions

As far as I know 1911s are not super hard to get, and likely a pretty appealing gun as it’s so commonly featured in media.

I would imagine ownership is relatively high in the states. If it’s not, then I’m pretty impressed.

It is. It’s practically the most commonly owned pistol in the United States. Well, there is some argument as to what constitutes a “true” 1911, but I’m speaking in the sense of 1911s and all the clones and only fractionally different variants. Though Glocks and Sigs are catching up, they’ve still got some ground to cover to get there, and with the cheaper variants of 1911, they don’t really have the advantage of a price difference to help them. Plus, unlike Glocks and Sigs, the 1911 comes in tons of different styles and variants, for basically every price point and desire, from $4-500 basic models, all the way through to fancy-as-fuck $1500-2000 high-end models that come set up out of the box with lifetime guarantees.

And honestly, it’s kind of understandable. They’re simple, reliable, comfortable to shoot, reasonably accurate. both parts and ammo are relatively cheap and trivially available, and for the folk who carry day-to-day, despite being a full-sized pistol, they’re slim enough to easily carry concealed.

This is why a lot of times it’s referred to as a 1911 pattern or action. Same basic mechanism but different features for accuracy, safety, reliability, caliber, etc…

True. For the sake of clarity, when I say “Most popular”, I’m talking about reasonably close clones(for example, like the AMT hardballer, which is pretty much identical), no major changes from the 1911 design, and in .45 caliber.

Yeah being honest 1911 owners are more stigmatized by striker-fired fans than anyone trying to tighten gun control.

They do call it fuddy-five for a reason.

Don’t expect me to argue, I’m a Hi-Power guy through and through.

You are a man of taste and refinement sir.

Is there a way to mount PCBs to a board in a temporary fashion? Like an optical breadboard, but for circuit boards:
image

Googling “PCB breadboard” gets me regular breadboards. I want a thing I can put some standoffs in arbitrary-ish positions to hold RPi/Arduino sized components in place. Is that a thing?

I haven’t seen anything like that for small boards but I could definitely see the utility of it. I end up with a bunch of lightweight boards strung together semi regularly and occasionally drag them off the bench by a power or network cable. There are systems for larger things (like laptop motherboards) which are basically standoffs in T slot aluminum rails mounted on more rails.

I use a stickvise sometimes but it only holds one thing and that would be pricey if you need several. Maybe some kind of thing with PCB fixture clips on aluminum slots? You could make dedicated fixtures for common boards assuming you use the same stuff a lot.

What’s wrong with regular old breadboards? You know, this kind?

I can’t screw in standoffs to attach e.g. a raspberry pi?

I think he means more like a mounting system for whole PCBs, rather than components - sticking a bunch of PCBs together temporarily, rather than discreet components.

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That’s a bingo.

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So what you do is make sure you have holes in the PCBs. Just like your PC motherboard has holes. Then you just attach them to a plate with screws and risers. Just like your PC motherboard.

Now that I’m thinking about it I want to build something like this:
FAN_MFM-24

It’s basically just some aluminum rails and thumb screws. Ideally the horizontal parts that actually touch the boards would be non-conductive and they need to have a little groove for the board to rest in. You could just buy one but I’m not paying $200+ for what is maybe $30 worth of rails and screws.

Yeah, I’m looking for the plate.

@Burritoad I was thinking rails as well. Is there a phrase to google for that?

Get a flat piece of metal, like aluminum. Measure and drill holes in it. Put motherboard risers into the holes.

if you want a prebuilt thing something like “adjustable pcb fixture”. If you want to DIY it there’s lots of aluminum rail standards. I don’t know what tools you have access to but it’s easily cut with a hacksaw if you can’t find the size you want.

I use 2020 (20x20mm) extrusion for other things and already have related hardware so that’s what I would use but there are probably other standards that are better suited. You can get M3 T-nuts which can ride in the slot and should accept some standard computer case standoffs as well.

I’m actually kind of surprised someone doesn’t make a plastic-clad version, or even just a straight injection molded one. I mean, I can’t see much detail, but it looks pretty trivial to make.

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