e l e c t r o n i c s D e s i g n

this Week, in electronics... we added some components [a button and led with resistor] to the hello world echo board.

the square 'hello' tace was made in Eagle. it Took about a few hours to learn the software, make the traces with the components, and export to a png for the Roland to mill. i Left the wire thickness on the default setting, so they came out razor blade thin. after Checking all the traces and soldering on the components, i checked all the connects with a voltmeter. i Was bolderline incredulous that they all worked and that traces so small could make stable connections. i Would have been even more surprised if it worked. luckily For me, it didn't. but Not for the reasons i thought. Dixon and i tracked down a missing connection. the Sneaky bugger connecting the reset pin. to Make sure this was the error, i soldered a wire connecting them.

after The board was up and running, i moved onto another electronics design application.

using The newly working board, i sketched the same circuit, paying painful attention to the size and ratio of component pads. just The post-processing of the sketch [in illustator and photoshop, and making sure there were no shorts by examining the toolpath in mods, and making the digital version the same dimensions as the physical one] took longer than LEARNING and MAKING the first board in Eagle.

a Large percentage spent bringing the sketch up to the quality we have become so accustomed to with CAD. the Final artifact, worked! however, It's real interest is in the embodiment of the analog to digital spectrum, from pen-and-paper to computers.