Week 5 Recipe: Electronics Production

From PCB design to a fully soldered dish

Serves: One ambitious electronics chef

Total Time: Several hours of milling, soldering, and debugging

Course 1: Milling the PCB

This week I took my PCB design from Week 4 and milled it to create the physical board. After preparing the PCB, I collected all the necessary components and began soldering the device together.

PCB milling step 1 — 1️⃣ Preparing the PCB for assembly

PCB milling step 2 — 2️⃣ Milling completed board ready for components

Course 2: Soldering and Troubleshooting

I soldered all the components carefully. During testing, I discovered a very small break in the copper that was causing a short. After manually fixing this tiny connection, the device worked perfectly!

Before soldering — 3️⃣ PCB before soldering components

4️⃣ Fully soldered PCB, ready for testing

For more details on the input and output functionality, see Week 7 and Week 8.