Electronics production week

## Electronics Production I decided to mill the PCB I made for electronic design week. Here is the design for recap: ![pcb](../media/week_4/pcb_file.jpeg) I followed the following workflow to mill the PCB: - Export the kicad pcb design as a gerber file. - Convert the gerber file to a png file using Quentin's tool ![gerber2image](https://quentinbolsee.pages.cba.mit.edu/gerber2img/). - Import the png file into the mods program to mill 2D traces and edge cuts. - Use the UGS platform to mill the PCB. First manually determining the x=0, y=0 coordinates and then running the macro function "probing and zeroing z". Little did I know that this was not going to be so straight-forward. I ran into issue with the "probing and zeroing z" on the pcb milling machine not working. After talking to a few people in class, I realized that this was a shared problem so I posted an issue [here](https://gitlab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.23/CBA/cbasite/-/issues/12). After manually determining the z=0 coordiante, I tried many times to get the PCB to mill correctly. The first time I ran 4 passes to get the traces on the right hand side. Here is the first time I ran the mill going over the passes over 4 times to get the right hand side: ![pcb_try_1](../media/week_5/pcb_mill_try_1.jpeg) I then decided to start afresh on Tuesday to mill my PCB and again the same thing happened. Office hours were super helpful and I got Alfonso's help to fix the level bed issues. He came up with a super useful mechanism to fix the copper boards on top of acrylic board and double-tape the copper board on to another sarcrificial board. Here is the new process detailed in this [issue](https://gitlab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.23/CBA/cbasite/-/issues/14). ![fixing bed issues](../media/week_5/new_level_bed.jpeg) The second failed try - I considered using a knife to mill the remaining traces but faced another issue with the edge cuts not lining up with the milling traces and this made my board unusable :((((( I had followed the workflow of exporting my kicad pcb_design as a gerber file. When converting the gerber to a png file using Quentin's tool ![gerber2image](https://quentinbolsee.pages.cba.mit.edu/gerber2img/), I kept the x and y origin coordinates the same. My best guess for why this could have happened is while inspecting and debugging the curved copper stock issues, we disturbed the origin coordinates. ![pcb_try_2](../media/week_5/pcb_mill_try_2.jpeg) Thanks to Alfonso, a lot of failure boards were saved and I could finally mill my PCB on early Wednesday morning! How it is going: ![pcb_try_3](../media/week_5/pcb_mill_try_3.jpeg) Ah what a wonderous day it is today! ![pcb_finally](../media/week_5/pcb_mill_finally.jpeg) Soldered the board which proved to be harder than I thought. Miana was super helpful in helping me learn how to solder the board and Alan provided me with hands-on help by checking my traces and showing me how to solder small parts. Soldering the board: ![soldering](../media/week_5/pcb_soldered.jpeg) I finally have a working PCB.