Week 8: Electronics Production

This week focuses on the fundamentals of electronics production, specifically the fabrication of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and the processes involved in transforming a digital circuit design into a functional physical board. The week introduces different PCB fabrication approaches such as etching, machining, and other experimental production techniques, along with an overview of PCB materials, trace design constraints, and CAM workflows used to prepare files for manufacturing. It also covers electronic components, surface-mount assembly, soldering methods, and basic debugging techniques required to test and verify circuits.

For the group assignment, we will characterize the design rules of our in-house PCB production process and also submit a PCB design to a professional board house. For the individual assignment, the task is to design, fabricate, and test an embedded microcontroller system that we create ourselves. An additional optional challenge is to produce the board using another fabrication process beyond the standard milling workflow.

This week will be guided by our instructors Saheen, Sibin, and Revisankar.