this week, i made a pcb. i changed the design from last week’s assignment. instead of powering a dc motor, i decided to create a pcb that would allow me to control a smart led strip without adding additional wires. i’m hoping during the input output weeks to work with lamps, so this seemed like a good opportunity to prepare for that (especially given my limited expertise with programming)

after making the new board, i made sure it followed the rules of the cnc by changing the board set up. i used a track width of 16mm, which ended up causing problems down the line. i followed bobby’s instructions (shoutout bobby) to get the cnc up and running (see below).

i then ran into a problem, which is that i couldn’t get a good cut on the cnc. the machine was sort of chewing up the wires of the pcb. we tried to adjust the depth of the cut and it didn’t realllllllly change the outcome. i decided to make the wires bigger in the pcb so that the machine wouldn’t have as much trouble cutting.

it worked all right (top left corner) except the machine crashed towards the end of the last cut. i felt really sad but then leo told me that it was fine since i wasn’t using the bottom pins anyway. by that time i had removed it from the bed so the only solution was to use a razor and pry the pcb free.