Week 8: Electronics Production

Planted March 17, 2026

This week is electronic production. As for people who has seen my previous weeks I have had some experience with this hence I wanted to have a well done and proper best pratices pcb manufacture experience week.

Group assignment

Link to our group assignment

CAM

To focus on the workflow the first time around I decided to manufacture the hello board of a controller I wanted to work with for some time the T412.

First I went into inkscaped to resize page to selection, which wasn’t required in this case, but was a part of the workflow so I included it. Inkscape: resize page to selection Then it was onto mods for the preprocessing Mods: preprocessing I chose the SRM 20 PCB for the workflow as that is my machine Mods: SRM-20 PCB preset First I selected the front cu to process Mods: select front copper Then I entered the appropriate bit information into the v-bit calculator

V-bit calculator

next I adjusted the milling machine settings mainly making the origin zero and adjusting the speed

Mods: milling settings finally before getting to the path calculation I inverted the SVG since that is required in the program as well Mods: invert SVG I followed similar steps for edge cuts and got the rml’s and then emailed them to the PCB milling computer for fabrication

Manufacture

Let’s meet our cast: Double sided tape, tape measure, brush, bits, copper fr1 plate, sandpaper. Tools and materials pre-processing: I sanded the FR1 plate with the sandpaper to get rid of the protective layer on top of it.

It was onto the machine first I fetched my double sided tape and placed it on the back of my FR1 Tape on the back of the FR1

Now it’s time to greet the machine the Roland SRM20!

Roland SRM-20

A close shot of the plate and the inside of the machine

FR1 inside the SRM-20 It was onto getting the FR1 and placing it on a secure location on the bed FR1 mounted on the bed

next I inserted the v-bit into the given slot by pushing it in there and then fastening it with the allen key

Insert and tighten the v-bit

next it was onto setting the x y and z I used the program below to do that

SRM-20 control software

The v-bit in the machine

V-bit mounted

first I lowered the bit to an appropriate height right above the FR1 plate

Lowering to safe height

next using the allen key I unfastened it and using one finger carefully lowered it to just above touching the FR1 and then re-fastened it. Then set the XYZ there

Setting Z height

next it was onto cutting, small note: don’t forget to raise the v-bit slightly before the spindle start spinning.

Cutting vid the edge cuts came out perfectly, to check I slightly removed the debris on it using the brush Cleaning debris

next it was onto the edge cuts where I followed similar steps in order to position the 2.0 mm edge cuts tip as below

Preparing edge-cuts tool

since in the first cut the plate wasn’t stabilized quite correctly, this fail occured

First attempt fail

below is a remanufacture and successful result

Successful remake

out of the machine

Board out of the machine

then it was onto washing the board to remove what might be in there

Washing the board

now we are done with the manufacture and onto solder

Soldering

An overview of the station, let’s meet our cast again! Soldering iron, air filter, flux, rosin, solder and gloves for safety Soldering station Before soldering I prepared a paper with the components per my mentor Sedat’s advice since components are small and can be easily lost dropped etc