Week 3: Electronics Production

Assignment

Assignment Details

👯 group assignment:

• characterize the design rules for your in-house PCB production process
• extra credit: send a PCB out to a board house

PCB Milling Process

1. Clean the inside milling machine and milling platform as necessary
2. Place double-sided adhesive to a clean copper plate
3. Smooth the tape onto the milling platform until plate is maximally flat against the platform
4. Grab the necessary end mill
5. Make sure milling machine is powered on
6. Open mods
7. Gently load the end mill into the milling head until desired depth is reached
8. Align milling machine head to home/origin in mods
9. Adjust machine settings via mods until the end mill is barely touching the surface of the copper plate
10. Start milling process in mod
11. Repeat steps 10-12 as necessary

PCB Design Rules for Manufacturing

1. Measurements should be in Metric units
2. Set solder mask clearance between 0.0508 mm and 0.1016 mm
3. Do not allow blind/buried vias
4. Do not allow micro vias
5. Keep the shortest path between components
6. Group related components with test points for probing

🐇 individual assignment:

• make an in-circuit programmer that includes a microcontroller
  • mill and stuff the board
  • test it to verify that it works
  • extra credit: try other PCB processes

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🐇

So, I've never milled a pcb before. There was a lot of trial and error obv. I need to get the bit size, trace depth, and position of the substrate

Then there was the removing the copper, which I had never done.

I still have yet to solder the componens, but a hack that another student showed was that one doesn't need to peel all the copper of the substrate

Anyways, I have all my tools to start picking and placing the components on the board.