Greetings.
Decades ago had difficulty probing with the oscilloscope and multimeters, the tiny leads in shrinking chips.
Made my own probe for use at the workplace, and today; found one behind the spider webs. Several others I made went to technician fellows at work that begged for them. Decided to make another now.

It consists of a thin sewing needle pushed into the ink-side of a ball pen tip, ejecting the ball and force-locked in. The cable used was Belden 9221-75 Ohms soldered, the shield only connected at the oscilloscope; the DUT grounded separately. We worked troubleshooting audio.

Image 1 : a ball point pen, discarded the ink tube, pushed the ball out with a needle, inserting a sewing needle in the tip and soldered to the coaxial center. The shield end just a couple of millimeters short of the tip. I used Belden 9221-75Ω . Secured in the pen body to not stress the soldered end. Can be messy if not careful to avoid ink spills.


Image 2; hard to see is the sharp needle protruding 2mm. Does pierce any tiniest place without sliding/shorting another, extremely comfortable and precise to handle. Felt to share this with you.

[Perhaps someone can trick image 2 to make it more discernible, the needle shows 2mm.]

 

I recently acquired this tea infuser (for loose tea) to be used right in the mug.



Three problem:

1. The slightest bump and it falls into the mug.
2. It gets hot to touch.
3. The handles are too short to grab it easily.

I put on my 3D printer hat and came up with this:


I first made it with ABS. On first use, it turned into a parabola. Who knew that thermoplastic with a melting point of over 200C would soften so much at less than 100C?

Doing a little research, I learned about annealing. This does not work for ABS, so I went to PLA, which softens even worse without annealing. I printed it, put it in the oven at about 95C for 1/2 hour, then let it completely cool without opening the oven.

Now it can stand the temperature, but the process shrinks it, so I had to adjust the size to account for the shrinkage. Been using it for a couple of weeks now, with no softening. Life is good.

 

Yesterday I tried to make it work. Not quite the same as building it, an OLD 146 MHZ transceiver. Not much progress.
The build project was replacing the tiny compressor on a small portable compressed air system. a 3/4 inch bore with a 1 inch stroke will not pump much air. Replacing that with a small refrigeration compressor sealed unit. Much more air flow and much quieter. But a serious mounting challenge.

 

[Perhaps someone can trick image 2 to make it more discernible, the needle shows 2mm.]

 

Removed the guts in old compact fluorescent bulbs and connected the bases to 50 Watt LED wafers. That is brutal bright !