Building the Enigma-E kit

What is the Enigma-E ?

The Enigma-E is a kit to build an electronic replica of an Enigma compatible with the M3 and M4 enigmas.

This kit is made by Cryptomuseum, a virtual museum and wiki on cipher machines, spying tools and their history. The kit contains the PCB, a detailed manual, the electrical components to solder and a metal enclosure.

This post is mostly me sharing pictures of the process, nothing too interesting but I wanted to share it anyway as there wasn’t much information about the kit online when I bought it.

Required tools and level

Tools

Soldering :
- Soldering iron (I can recommend the Pinecil from Pine64)
- Lead-free solder wire
- Flush cutters
- 9V Alkaline batteries or Power adapter
- Soldering cleaning thingy
Metal bending :
- Flush cutters
- Metal file
- Pliers
I also recommend a good overhead light and a board that will not catch fire to work on.

Difficulty

I, shamefully, had never soldered before. There are a lot of disclaimers on the manual but do not be discouraged, if you are patient and follow the instructions carefully it is actually really easy (to make work but not to make look good). If you are a beginner like me trying to do your best expect a few hours of work. Still, I would recommend you train soldering and de-soldering on an old pcb you have laying around to familiarize with your tools first.

Building

Tools and opened kit

First solders

Getting the hang of it

Good ? Bad ? soldering

Breaking the board

Finished product

Bad wire job

The final product

Kit Review

Building the kit felt amazing. As a first soldering exercise it was a good learning experience thanks to the detailed and easy to follow manual. I am also glad to support cryptomuseum.com as I like their website.

While building I did a pretty bad job at soldering as I was afraid of doing too much, I damaged the front case by first mounting the fake rotors on the wrong side, the keyboard letter stickers are not straight and the sockets and cables are mounted horribly. Still, I had a lot of fun building this kit and it works. I just need to work on my woodworking skills to make a case now.

Should you buy it ? It has no use but if you have the money and like the look sure. It is significantly cheaper than a real one after all.

If you have any questions you can contact me or them.

Author:

Leet

i[a]sy.st

I’m ██████████ █████, a ██ years old working at ████████ ███████████.

Tags: hardware review soldering