Week 3: Make-through

The first task for us with Eagle was to replicate this design of an at-mega development board.

• Step 1: First step is Drawing the schematic layout, (I had some mistakes with labelling but it was fixed easily)

• Step 2: Then the second step is doing a check for errors to make sure there's no physical or logical errors.

• Step 3: Then we go to our Board Layout ( the actual PCB we're going to fabricate soon:).

• Step 4: We have a mess of components and air wires that we have to fix right now!!. but first, to ease our process, we're going to connect grounds together in s common ground plane. (much easier huh? ;) )

• Step 5: I started by placing components connected to each other near to each other, until the end were I had some problems in connecting ground planes, so I used zero ohm bridges

I called it a Semi successful as I wanted to make a smarter board layout and use less bridges.

We had some hands-on experience with our new development boards.

• Step 1: First step was training our hand with soldering on some practice boards.

• Step 2: then we started to solder our board, we started with easier components first like the DC jack and the voltage regulator, as they had large pins and distance between pins is larger than others therefore easier to solder.

• Step 3: I completed the soldering progress without facing a lot of problems.

• Step 4: now it's time to program the board and test it. oops! looks like I burned on of the LED's while soldering (it was overheated)

• Step 5: replace the LED's using soldering Iron and a disordering pump

For PCB design, I followed same steps of the At-mega board, with trying to use smarter components placing

• Step 1: First step is grabbing a copper sheet with dimensions equal or larger (preferably larger than our board dimensions), then we put some paper tape on it's back, then Double face tape, then we place it well on our Machine. This step is very important as we have to make the board levelled perfectly as each 0.1 mm will affect our process

• Step 2:Then we connect to our machine through the terminal and open FabModules.

• Step 3: We import the PNG files that we have exported from the Gerber files using GRBVIEW and GIMP before.

• Step 4: then we choose our machine, process(drilling, traces or outline). Then we start typing in some settings according to the required process

• Step 5: Most are left in their default settings except offsets (usually reduced to 2) and tool diameter according to used drill tip.

• Step 6: Send :)

I faced some problems that made me repeat my milling process, as the board wasn't levelled well. But luckilly no traces were ruined :).

For some circumstances, I had to do the soldering job at home, but first I had to to do some shopping:

I my soldering iron tip is large and won't help in soldering SMD components, so I need to change it's tip. and this tweezer is very helpful in picking up 1206 caps and resistors.

Now we have our weapons ready? let's plug the iron and start our mission

• Step 1: First I started by soldering easiest components like the push button and the...... , oops there's nothing else easy :'(.

*SMD soldering is a bit harder, as all components are very small and light, therefore harder to control.*

• Step 2: Unlike expectations, soldering the Attiny44 wasn't the hardest and one by one I finished all components except one thing :'(.

ISP pin headers I had were SMD not through hole as I designed, and I/O pin headers were bigger than the holes in my PCB.

I tried to act smart and tried to solder the ISP pin header on the surface, I Tried with the pin headers but it was an epic fail!

So I stopped here until I find a better solution.