assignment 4
Electronics production
4rd week
The asssigment for this 4th week was to create, solder and program our own fabTiny board.
I chose the Valentin one, to avoid solder and de-solder the board.
PCB & Roland
In our Lab, we have the Roland MDX-40A milling machine.
We generated the file with the proper presets for milling the board trough fabModules.
It was "quite easy" to use, calculate the Z coordinate with the sensor and position the milling head. The main problem was that the boards were bended (even using A LOT of double-sided tape), the milling wasn´t uniform, as is seen on the picture:
We had to execute more than one milling file, being careful with the depth, for avoid breaking it, to be able to mill all the surface properly; increasing 0.10 mm in each pass; depending on the area of the board and the bending.
First, the traces with the 1/64 head and then the outline cut with the 1/32.
But, after a lot of suffering, we got them milled and cutted!
Soldering
I´ve never soldered on-board components (only perfored boards), everything is smaller and smaller! But we have a great magnifying glass with light to avoid join paths and mess it all.
I only made the mistake of soldering two resistences in the wrong way, I messed it up a little bit because some components go on vertical and others on horizontal way; but I desoldered it quickly:
This is the good one:
Programming
We had at the lab an extra fabIsp programmed board, it was really easy to program following the tutorial; but the only problem I found is that the boards doestn´t fit properly on the USB connector. It is super tricky to find the right angle and position for the computer recognize it as a device.
It was almost a miracle being able to program it; my colleague Jose made the Andy board and he didn`t have this problem like me (it doesn´t fit properly too but It wasn´t so so tricky to plug it to the computer)
4 hands were needed to program a fabISP.
But I swear, I could program it, but now is very hard for the computer to detect it. On a Windows computer, it makes the classic USB Plugged in sound alert, but is not readable. I need to figure it out how to fix it, for next assignments. I´m going to try with an USB Extension cable.
**UPDATE
I chose to made a new fabIsp, the fabISPKey model, Nuria gently gave us two already milled and cutted and I soldered it with sucess and It was my working fabISP programmer for all the upcoming electronics assignments.
ELECTRONICS PRODUCTION |
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Shown how you made the board |
X |
Explained any problems and how you fixed them |
X |
Included a ‘hero shot’ of your board |
X |