NU-LED is an open access instrumentation facilty where students, postdocs, faculty, and staff can come and utilize the test and fabricating equipment maintained by the NU-LED staff . We have an ever growing library of electrical components (fuses, resistors, switches, etc.) and tools that are available for use. Generally speaking, inexpensive electrical components are available free of charge, while more expensive equipment can be purchased at retail value with a slight restocking fee.
In addition to the component library, we also have electronic assembly and testing stations as well as two computer workstations with professional software (LabVIEW, Eagle) for instrument automation and PCB design projects, respectively. Currently, there is no charge for using any of the equipment in the shop. We realize, however, that much of the time, test equipment is required for in-situ use. Therefore, many of the instruments maintained by NU-LED can be rented for use outside of the facility for a small daily fee.
This 160 W professional level soldering station has two units that can be simultaneously utilized with independent temperature control (150-850°F). This unit is for standard sized soldering tips. Temperature control is highly accurate and the soldering irons only take a few moments to reach the set temperature. Thus, the unit can be turned on/off as many times as required without waiting or unnecessarily oxidizing your soldering tips.
Like the unit above, this two channel soldering station only takes moments to reach set temperature. This unit, however utilizes smaller and more precise soldering pencil tips as well as a set of desoldering tweezers. The former gives higher positional accuracy and the latter is useful for desoldering components that have two contact points (e.g., resistors, capacitors). Used in conjunction with the soldering microscope (see below), soldering of very small components can be achieved with this station.
With a very large working distance and variable zoom, this microscope is perfect for viewing, manipulating, and soldering small components as well as scanning for defects in your devices. With a ~20 cm working distance, large devices can fit into and be viewed with this instrument. It's 3.5-225x variable zoom allows for both tight and wide field imaging.
This vacuum powered desoldering unit makes removing unwanted solder a breeze! Particularly useful for removing solder from components with multiple "through-hole" connections. With set temperatures up to 940°F even removing a large amount of solder can be done quickly and easily.
Useful for heat shrink tubing, melting solder, or anything else that requires hot air temperatures, we have several hot air units capable of reaching temperatures up to 1350°F.
This high end oscilloscope has a large bandwidth (1 GHz) and high sampling rate (5Gs/s). With 4 analog inputs and 16 digital logic inputs, this device is makes it easy and fast to debug even the most complicated designs.
NU-LED has two computer stations that each have full LabVIEW 2016 academic site licenses installed. Not only can you use the basic LabVIEW development environment to interface with your instrument, but the majority of the expensive add-on packages are also available. This includes, VISION, myRIO toolkit, robotics module, sound and vibrational measurement suite, digital filter design module, and many more.
NU-LED offers a license to use the PCB design software EAGLE. This software enablies printed circuit board (PCB) designers to seamlessly connect schematic diagrams, component placement, PCB routing, and comprehensive library content. Note that currently, NU-LED has to outsource PCB designs to be printed, although this may change in the future as plans for a PCB printer are in the works. Stay tuned!
Vivado Design Suite is the design environment for FPGA products from Xilinx. This software by Xilinx is used for synthesis and analysis of HDL designs. NU-LED has two computers with Xilinx Vivado installed. Students can use development environment to do electronics designs, develop the firmware, implement and program Xilinx FPGA. Development kits are available for students use, to program and validate the firmware functionality.