Electronics Design
Designing my own PCB
Eagle is a program for electronic design- it takes a while to get your head around it. The following tutorials were useful:
I used the following Fab tutorial to design my board. My advice if you are new to electronic design like me- follow the tutorial down to a tee. (a British expression meaning follow it utterly and completely!!!)
Some useful tips for Eagle Board Design
- In move button -left-click to move and right click to rotate the component
- Need to make hole?- draw with the route tool on the top layer, switch to bottom layer and eagle will automatically make the hole for you.
I took a photo of for future reference of the settings for cutting on the milling machine
Tracing way too deep
Now I know if the milling machine is looking like this during the trace milling that the drill bit z has been set too low down by me manually on the machine, there is way too much snow.
I started to scrape out the dust with a steak knife during a dinner meeting... later I switched to the appropiate tool- some tweezers. In any case I decided to remill the board. This time with very careful attention to how I set the z-depth.
N.B Milling Machine
Third try on the milling machine and I managed to break the drill bit. Note to self- MUST RESET z-axis after changing the drill-bit for cutting. Also when traces the outline use offset one so it makes only one path to test the drill depth of the bit before making the interior trace. At any point View can be hit to put the machine in pause and resumed again with View button.
Soldering the board
Getting the components together and soldering the board and of course not forgetting to document as we go!
