FabAcademy

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Making Electronics

The possibility and opportunity to make my own electronics was quite exciting also something I've never done before. I was only quite scared of detailed soldering. As a my hands notouriously shake- just with different amplitudes, but quite constantly. Working on a new scale- micro, was an introduction to completely new components.

Generating paths

Using the online MODS tool, I succsesfully generated paths and off to milling. Remember to inver png in the Hello soldering board- as the milling paths are generated for the black of png ;)

Some printscreens from generting files on MODS

Milling

The process of milling with Roland CNC was quite delicate and time consuming. Setting and exchangin mills was very delicate operation.I didn't want to break my mill. The setup with metod "see delicate dust" was took some time to adjust, as well as understanding speeds and type of direction- climb or convrentional. First trial od USB milling seemed to have failed as smallest paths for the microchip were a little destroyed, yet I was lucky enough that the destroyed one was not functional pin. Second USB trial failed in the last cutout- outline because plate got detached. Same happened with LED board- byet in that case it was because of the hole that was drilled after the outline of the board. Because ther is no option of choosing direction of the path, the only option to safely drill holes is to make them in another file- but ound out about it only after the adventure.

Compontents

The time came to set up bill of materials and start soldering. The tape method morked quite well to organise the tiny tiny tiny components. Some of them were quite hard to find esecialy with tiny numbers on them.

soldering

AAAAnd I forgot and had coffee.That made it all quite hard. Hello Soldering board was nice introduction yet I got progressively worse - the led's were quite hard for me to solder, somehow I couldn't make the tin shiny, and trying to repare them made things worse. But the component that I was most afraid of and tried to solder one by one legs of (crazy person) but to the rescue came Rutvij and showed me the method with a copper tape that worked like magic. At first I was recuctant because my experience with LED board and copper was quite unpleasant, yet with completely new shiny copper it worked perfcetly.

DO NOT DRINK COFFEE

It Glows!

TNevertheless board worked almost from the start, only one misshap of wrong direction of LED, but quick desoldering and it was an easy fix.It glows!
After some struggle with the drivers I tried my USB on Fablabs computer- and it was detected!! Succes!