The cool kidsTM like to use toaster ovens with thermocouples to bake their own surface mount boards at home. I've been exploring doing that using boards that I make on a CNC locally. The joy of designing in the morning and having the working product in the evening. It seems SOIC size is ok, but smaller SMT IC packages currently present an issue. This gives interesting fodder for how to increase precision down further. Doing SOIC and SMD LED/Resistors from a sub $1k CNC machine isn't too bad though IMHO. And unlike other pcb specific CNC machines I can also cut wood and metal with my machine :-p
Time to stock up on some SOIC microcontrollers for some full board productions. It will be very interesting to see if I can do an SMD usb connector. Makes it a nice complete black box to do something and talk ROS over USB.
Showing posts with label PCB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PCB. Show all posts
Saturday, July 16, 2016
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Through hole PCB Making -- Same Day
I initially thought that removing the multiple week wait for a board would be the true joy of making PCBs locally. It turns out that quick iteration is the best part. Version 2 and 3 of a board flows quickly and you end up with something unexpected after only a few days of tinkering.
I'm still at the level of making through hole stuff. Hopefully I can refine the process to allow some of the larger SMT stuff too. Throwing some caps, leds, resistors, dc jacks, and regulators on for a first cook round will cut down on the soldering phase.
My hello world PCB was an ESP8266 carrier with an mcp23017 muxer and a bunch of buttons. This is an MQTT emission device which I will be using to assist in the controlling of a 3d printer. While web interfaces are flexible, some tend to put buttons too close and you can fairly easily crash the bed by clicking down instead of up in some cases.
Today's iteration is an esp8266 breadboarder. This allows 3v3 intake, has a TTL serial header (on the left) and a resistor + led combo on pin 14 for blink testing. The button at top right toggles into flashing mode and the bottom of the board breaks out 7 gpios onto the breadboard. The 3v3 and ground also have a header under the hot glue to the power rails on the breadboard. Very handy for testing a breadboard layout before designing the next PCB to have an ESP8266 pressed into it.
The breadboard side needs a little trimming back. Turns out the older breadboard I used to measure was wider than this one :o
I'm still at the level of making through hole stuff. Hopefully I can refine the process to allow some of the larger SMT stuff too. Throwing some caps, leds, resistors, dc jacks, and regulators on for a first cook round will cut down on the soldering phase.
My hello world PCB was an ESP8266 carrier with an mcp23017 muxer and a bunch of buttons. This is an MQTT emission device which I will be using to assist in the controlling of a 3d printer. While web interfaces are flexible, some tend to put buttons too close and you can fairly easily crash the bed by clicking down instead of up in some cases.
Today's iteration is an esp8266 breadboarder. This allows 3v3 intake, has a TTL serial header (on the left) and a resistor + led combo on pin 14 for blink testing. The button at top right toggles into flashing mode and the bottom of the board breaks out 7 gpios onto the breadboard. The 3v3 and ground also have a header under the hot glue to the power rails on the breadboard. Very handy for testing a breadboard layout before designing the next PCB to have an ESP8266 pressed into it.
The breadboard side needs a little trimming back. Turns out the older breadboard I used to measure was wider than this one :o
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