Week 5 we were asked to build the Fab ISP programmer. The Fab ISP programmer can be used to program the Integrated Circuit (IC) chips on circuit boards. Programming is loaded onto the ISP programmer and then transfered to the IC chip on another board.
We began the project by milling out the board on the circuit board milling machine. Black and white images are fed into the milling machine which are then translated into a tool path. The tool path is then carved out of the circuit board using 1/64" milling bits.
Here is a picture of the circuitboard image that is fed into the milling machine. All of the areas that are in black will be milled out while the white areas will remain to act as leads to conduct electrictiy.
Once the board has been milled out, it will look like this.
From there the board is then assembled. Capacitors, resistors, an IC chip, a 6 pin male connector and a mini USB port are soldered onto the board. The mini USB port allows for programming to be added to the boars as well as power to run processes on the board. The 6 pin male connector allows for other boards to be connected to the Fab ISP in order to program them.
Here is a picture of the finished Fab ISP.
I am hoping to use the Fab ISP to program another board that I intend to use as the control unit for a 3D printer. For now though there are issues with the coding that intended to go on the 3D printer board. Once the code has been corrected it will be loaded onto the 3D printer board through the Fab ISP.
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