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Process
Initially I started with a test board to review my soldering skills, with which I had no problem, with the exception of forgetting my safety glasses once. After I had created 4 successful solder joints, I moved onto the final project, the starlight water design. I started soldering initially with the power supply, the variable resistor, the 10k resistor, and the 3 capacitors. A crucial step I learned when learning to solder was to trim thew wires in the back of the board, this greatly helped my manage my board. I also bent the wires, so I could turn the board upside-down without the components falling out while I used a vice to steady the board.
After that step, I soldered all the triodes, which I ensured were all facing the right way. I had no issues with this step.
Next, I began fitting the IC's into place, which gave me a slight issue since one of the pins on the larger IC was slightly bent. An Issue I noticed others having with this step was that they were fitting the IC's backwards, which was something I personally didn't have a problem with as I made sure to line the notches up with the board.
Then, I moved onto the 200 ohm resistors, of which there were nine. A trick with this step was that there was one spot that looked as though there should be a 200 ohm resistor (R1), but that was actually a 1k resistor. I had no issues with this step.
Next, I was onto the 1k resistors, of which I dealt with the falsely labeled resistor slot mentioned above. I had no issues with this step.
Now, all the components with the exception of the LEDs were on the board, so I finished up, paying close attention that the long leg (+), went into the square shaped hole (+). I hit a slight snag on this step where in my quest for a near perfect looking display. I tried to fix an LED that I soldered slightly crooked, where I then burnt the inside of the LED. I had to remove the LED ad replace it, which only took 5 or so minutes. The harder part was putting the LED back into the slot after there was a little extra solder in the hole. An important part of this step that I needed to make it look pleasing was the alternation of the LED colors.
To the left is an image of the final design (partially) lit up. To the right is an image of the back of the board, showing off the solder joints I created.
Below is a video of the final product, showing the pulsing lights. I demonstrate how the variable resistor works here, in which I turn it and the speed changes.
IMG_0090.MOVPage updated
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