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6. Electronics design

Overview

The goal of this week was to learn how to design a PCB board, mill the board itself, and learn how to use my lab’s tools.

Group Site

KiCad

Overview

I was given the choice between using KiCad or Eagle or both in my lab, and I choose to use KiCad as I already have much previous experience with creating PCBs on KiCad

Process

A. Fist Step I needed to download KiCad from the KiCad website.

B. Then I needed to go download the KiCad Fab Library found on the Fab Repo

C. After waiting 20 minutes and KiCad finally downloaded, I went to Libraries where I downloaded the Fab Academy one with all the components that I needed for this week to create my PCB

D. Next I created a schematic where I added in the components of a Seeed Xiao Esp32-S3, two SMD 1206 Resistors, one SMD button, and one SMD 1206 LED. I had to use the footprint library to fix some problems with the LED. Then I connected all the ports to the necessary spots.

E. I opened the PCB editor tab and clicked bring in Schematic which then proccesed to import all my copents withs the nessasary footprints. From here I created the outline of the PCB including where the traces would run, the diameter of the traces, and how big the board would be.

F. Finally I needed to export the edge cuts and F.Cu. I did this by going to file, plot and then selecting edge cuts and F.Cu. From here I sent the files to the school gmail.

Milling

Overview

Milling was decently easy once I went through the workflow provided by Amalia

Process

A. Step one was to upload my F.Cu file and my edge cuts file to the Fab Lab drive so I could open them on Bantam tools.

B. Next I needed to take a piece of metal copper thingi and tape it using double sided tape into the milling machine

C. I grabbed both my edge cuts file and my F.Cu files and create the Gcodes for both of them by uploading


Last update: March 19, 2025