Electronic production

assignment

group assignment:

characterize the design rules for your in-house PCB production process
send a PCB out to a board house
Link to this weeks group assignment

individual assignment:

      make and test a microcontroller development board
      extra credit: personalize the board
      extra credit: make it with another process

So for this week we are making circuit boards. I began by downloading the Quentorres pcb files and opened the traces file through Inkscape and added my eye logo along with a little heart in the corner♥♥

Next I saved the file as a png and used mods to prep it for the machine. I went to modsproject.org

Files in correct row

TRACES (uses thinner tooth)
DRILLS (thicker tooth)
INTERIOR (THIN)

Steps for prepping file:

Go to modsproject.org
right click
go to programs
select Roland MDX mill
Select PNG file
Set PCB defaults (mil traces or mill outline depending on what u wanna do)
go to Roland MDX/ iModela
set the origin of x and y to 0mm
Then change the edit delete buttons and select them like shown on the image below:

After this its safe to press calculate and the file will be automatically downloaded into your computer
Put into desired file location

Next I milled the board. The machine refused to work at first, we didn´t understand why. Eventually we realized the magnet for the safety of the front cover had been moved around so we fixed that and then it managed to work!ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Loosesafety

Here are the steps for the machine

Prep the board by using double sided tape at the bottom and glue it onto the protection layer
Turn on milling machine
Press view
Go to Z0
set the XY
Put the needle down until its 1,2cm from the board.
Unscrew the needle and put it down gently until it touches the copper.
Fasten the screw
open the software
press Z up around 10 times.
And then go to open file and find your file
Switch the tooth to the 1/32 for cutting the outlines

VIDEO:

After washing the circuit board with water and soap it was ready for soldering.

We used tin and the soldering process went all in all pretty smoothly. Unfortunately after having almost completely finished it we realised we do not own the parts required for the v2 version of the board. So this version is a FAILURE

OR SO WE THOUGHT!
Turns out we were not missing key parts and in fact the thing we thought we lacked, had simply not been unpacked.
We are still missing one part but other than that everything seems to work :D

Failed second version

I wanted to try making the other version. First I put a heart onto it through Inkscape and then I prepped it like the previous file on mods

and doing random squiggles and lines.
I checked the previous file and realized i had not resized the page to fit the selection and there was a random white object i had previously made next to the lines for the board. It is also unclear whether I selected the 1/64 operation or not. This corrupted the file leading to the machine not working (whoops)
We managed to

Here is a cat

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Files

traces
Quentorres