The process
Group assignment
The group project was documented in detail by my colleague Aisha Alshehri.
Individual assignment:
Make and test an embedded microcontroller system that you designed. Because of the geopolitical situation in the Gulf region, our shipment was delayed and we did not get the copper fiber sheets to produce our PCBs nor the milling head we requested. I strated with Vinyle and 3D print PCBs. By week 12-13 we strated recieving the PCBs and Ends mills.
01: Vinyle PCB using copper tape
01 | I tried to use 1-inch copper tape to cut the main routes of my PCB
02 | I first had to redesign my circuit in KiCAD to fit 1 inch in height in the schematic editor
03 | Then I created the routes in the PCB Editor and made them 1mm thick to make sure the machine could cut them, and exported as SVG
04 | Then I found that the routes were taken as strokes and not as shape paths, so I had to import the SVG into Adobe Illustrator and expand the lines into paths
05 | I tried to cut the circuit on a piece of tape, but it was a failure
06 | The cutter went too deep and creased from the back of the tape
07 | Then I tried changing the settings, making the cut force the lowest and the speed the lowest
08 | The results were better than my first attempt
09 | I tried cutting the copper tape after placing it on a hard surface and got much better results
10 | I was able to solder different componenet making a Vibrator Moter moduler. The full process is documented in Week 10- Outputs
- Feedback: Copper vinyl cut is not an easy process, but I believe it's worth making work based on the examples I saw. I would love to create a cubical PCB one da ^_^
- Challenge: Balancing between the shapes the cutter can cut and the max size the PCB can be designed in is not easy — there is always a risk of creating short circuits, and it also makes soldering the parts to the board harder
02: 3D print PCB
01 | I tried the 3D PCB in week 15 and documented here in more details.
02 | I first designed the PCB in KiCad including all the compenet I'm planning to add in my final project. i made the routes Track size 0.8 mm to make sure they will be big enough for the 3D printer
03 | I Ploted the PCB design to an SVG file and imported it to Adobe Illustrator to switch teh stroke lines to shapes.
04 | I imported the SVG fileto tinkerCAD and strating working on it. I made the routes then strated to add holow shapes to reach my final designed PCB
05 | This is the final design I printed on the 3D printer
06 | This is how It lookes. So cool . and now I will strat adding the copper tap on topf it, clean the routes.
07 | I aligned teh component here but still didn't solder them for testing.
- Feedback: I can thin of endless shapes and 3D PCB that I want to try and make.
- Challenge: I keep feeling im behine the schedule becuase I'm trying everything except a copper PCB. I really feel overwhelmed in this stage and I'm not sure if I will ever get a PCB!!! But this looks like a good alternative.
03: Finally, Copper PCB
01 | The first think I tried to do when I recieved the PCB and the End mills to to run a test run with different rounts. Trying to follow instruction from the one and only Adrián Torres but we could not execute that as we where not using Mods and I counot tranfrom this PNG file to Gcode file to be used on our CNC
02 | I created a PCB testing file on KiCAD with Tracks in different width from 0.2 mm to 0.9 mm
03 | I imported the file to FlatCAM and generated the G-code file to be used on the CNC with differnet settings of depth from 1mm to 0.35 mm, and 0.2mm end mill with 30 degrees to 15 degrees.
04 | I checked the routs connectivity using a multimeterand found that the best setting for me would be to design PCBS with routs 0.7mm+
05 | Then I designed a universal PCB with 3 ports that can be used for input and output. The design was made on KiCAD and this the Schematics Design and this is a link to complete file
06 | in the BCB designer, I tried to aligh all the ports in a way to allow attaching the different inputs and outputs with a track wide of 0.5 mm and shaped the PCB to an airplan
07 | This is the 3D design that shows that I can even change the Microcontrolled and retest things. This. is also very useful becuase I dont have access to the huge quantity of PCBs
08 | and this is how it looks. I also trying soldering and testing the routes with a multimerter.
- Feedback: huge releafe to be able to complet my upcoming assigment and bigger chance to be able to gradute in the first cycle.
- Challenge: We ordered PCB borads from two different sources, and the setting for each board was different. running the test file helped a lot in defining the setting to be used on each diffferent brand.