A 'simple' assignment this week. I like it when the assignment consists from "Make this, here are the parts, this is how you do it" I started out milling the hello.array board. I like LED's! A funny thing happend with the modela. First I zeroed the thing and then when it started cutting it would not go through the copper. Somehow the board did not lay flat on the machine. This resulted in a very shiny but still copper milling path. When I ordered the same route through the fab module somewhere a variable had changed and it started milling 1mm offset of the original. This resulted in a ruined board. Even with the deeper path set the milling bit still did not go all the way through at some points.



While I was setting up the machine to mill out a new board while zeroing I pushed down on the board so the bit would actually begin lower than the board would be. This poorly executed idea and the fact that I was not paying attention resulted in a broken milling bit. I went from 'view' mode to 'operation' mode to fast and the bit got stuck in a formerly milled out board hole.

Third time is a charm. I still used the push-down method but not as much as before. The end result was a nice although a bit deep path. Groovy.

While soldering this baby together I managed to solder the Tiny44 in a wrong position. All 14 legs... I used the heatgun and a piece of coppermesh to remove the chip from the board and while doing so I ripped one path off completely. I tried glueing it back down with solder, with superglue and other sorts. Eventually I 'cheated' and used a piece of copperwire to connect the missing connection. Works like a charm. I also alternated the rows with red and green LED's.


You can easily see the piece of copperwire!

Programming the board went smooth. Everything worked the first time. I don't know what I did wrong :p



Second I made the hello.stepper board. I did not know what to expect with this one. I used a new board to mill this one out. The modela worked like it's supposed to. No weird stuff. I managed to mill 2 boards at once so that my classmate and I could together make the same board. While soldering I decided that I wanted to use a clamp to stabilize the board on the table. My soldering connections on the led.array board are very messy and I blame the ever shifting board. Using the clamp the board could not slide around on the table and my soldering connections immediately straightend out.



Programming the board was a pain for 5 minutes. Then I realised that the fab isp controller was not plugged into the laptop at all. After plugging it back in. Uploading the program was easy. Because I used the 'wave' programm I wanted the world to be able to see that the motor actually worked. I lasercut a small hand with a 6mm hole and plugged the stepper motor in the hole. Voila! Waving hand!







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