MAS 863 - How to Make Almost Anything Fall 2004

Amon Millner

millner [at] media.mit.edu E15-020F, 20 Ames st, Cambridge, MA 02142
Weekly Assignments
The Claytroller Infrastructure

"Puzzle PCBs"

Design change  

 

 

Here's what happens when a board that's intended to be a card edge connector (plug in like a Gameboy cartridge) is designed with very thin traces. The Modela mini-mill lifted many of the traces off of the PDB.

I had to wrestle this card edge connector off of an old mother board to explore the idea of having 1 board connected to a computer that can have user-customizable boards "hot swapped" in an out of it for different types of controls.

 

I started to explore ways of connecting boards together without using a card edge connector (and cut material costs in the process). Because phenolic is flexible, I  was inspired by how cereal box tops close - I decided to try making boards with traces on cereal-box-like tabs. I found out that phenolic is glass fiber based and therefore not a good candidate for laser cutting.

   
 
 
 

 

 

 

 
   
Tools I think I'll need Tru-Bond 215 copper-filled epoxy
Design sketches