Designing, Milling, & Soldering my first PCB

And naming it...

When I first set out to do this task, it was certainly daunting. But thank goodness for the kindness of others! Sam was essential in helping me calculate the correct Ohms per resistor for both the LED & the button, as well as figure out how to navigate Eagle software. I initially designed my board in the schematic and connected my pieces based on Neil's board and examples of other board.

After connecting all the parts and indicating the correct quantity of Ohms, I transferred my schematic to a board layout. Only then did I realize I would have to connect all the pieces once again manually... and spent the next six hours fiddling with the layout.

I realized I would need a couple jumpers for this design - two 0 Ohm resistors - in order to ensure all the parts were connected properly.

Then I got to milling. I realized that all the board were too small, as my height exceeded the height of the copper lined boards provided. I went on a frantic search throughout the architecture shop and finally found the last larger copper board to fit my design. I realized size of the board was something I should have considered when I initially set out to create it!

I milled the majority of my first board until I thought the bit broke off. I paused it only to realize that it hadn't broken and I was unable to return to the part where I paused... I would have to remill the entire board, much to my chagrin and the annoyance of the rest of the students waiting for me to finish. Finally I came out with a nice clean (and named) board with a seemingly ok design. It only took me 30 minutes to solder, using tricks I had learned from the previous class.

After extensive programming issues, I was finally able to make my light turn on... pressing the button would turn it off. While I'm not sure how my experiment turned out completely backwards, I am happy nonetheless. I'll probaby try to claim it was in fact on purpose for morse code, for people who are afraid of the dark, for people protesting their energy bill, etc.