5. Electronics production¶
group assignment: characterize the design rules for your in-house PCB production process extra credit: send a PCB out to a board house individual assignment: make an in-circuit programmer that includes a microcontroller: extra credit: customize the design mill and stuff the PCB test it to verify that it works extra credit: try other PCB processes
Group assignment¶
So for our group assignment we need to characterize the production process in a similar way as we did for the laser cutter. We were given a PNG file for the characterization we just ohave to get our 3018 pro to cut it which might be easier said than done.
The tools we have at our disposable for this project. The ever versitile and generic 3018 pro with some Vblades and some pcb milling tools ranging from 0.8mm to 3mm. Not the ideal toos but in skilled hands can definitely get the job done.
I love the old school skills needed to run a 3018 pro. Not everything is perfectly designed and contaned in a perfectly designed GUI. No, to get the job done with one of these you have to tinker and problemsolve and get your hands dirty. So to zero the Z axis we gotta do it the old school way and loosen the collet and manually make the tool touch the PCB.
To assist with generating the Gcode for our CNC to follow we found MODS to be extremely useful. It reminded me of using grashopper in the IAAC 3D printing workshop.
We ran a test cut to see that our settings worked and made a BOLD lab logo and it worked really well.
Next we leveled the bed the old school way by removing a layer of material to ensure it is flat.
Tada! The final product looked really good despite not having the perfect tools I think it was a really good result. Many thanks to our node instructor Mirriam for her determination.
Individual assignment¶
For our individual assignment wee will be making a SAMD11C14 microcontroller as a UPDI/UART programmer.