Week #3: Make-through
ATTINY44 PCP design and fabrication
ATTINY44 PCP design and fabrication
This is my make-through for the week's assignment.2 Grab a cup of coffee!
HELLO, my friends, it was a great weak to talk about the development which has been achieved in. This weak its required to implement an ATtiyY44 PCP board .it's my first time to design and fabricate a PCP city .it was a great adventure to walk inside a PCP contains a building of electronic components. I used to use a breadboard to test my circuit with some wires (jumper ).but its was has some complexity to get a well-connected diagram and the shape of the circuit with breadboard doesn't look good as well as not stable as there is always interruption in the signal which transmitted through wires .but all these issues has been solved by the PCP as it makes the circuit small, look good and can be embedded in any system
I will use the ATtiny44, so I will use the ATtiny44 core to configure the pinout of the chip into my design. I'm looking for the pinning of ATtiny44 because I'm going to need it to know where the pins are. which will make it easy for programming the chip.
I downloaded eagle PCP designing software from Autodesk site which helps me to create my PCP schematic. after downloading it I didn't find the component with the same footprint which we will use in the lab. I downloaded the Sparkfun library and the fab library as they have the same component footprint that we will use .you can download Sparkfun and fab library from the following linkes
After downloading the library I put them in the directories path to enable to use them in the design. then I started to add the component to the schematic and make a neat to connect the component together with labels to make my schematic clear and easy to recognize .
I'll move on to build the PCB once I have the scheme. Click on the icon next to the printer called Board to do this. All the components that I'm going to use are loaded automatically and tiny yellow lines appear which are the tracks of the tracks. I look at what layer I am, the TOP and red before I start joining components (if I made a through-hole plate, I would have to place myself in the blue BOTTOM layer). Ahmed told us that we must also mark the design rules (DRC), that is, the values of the track width and the size of the mill, before starting to join the components.
I start positioning the components when I have the design rules, more or less as I wanted them in the drawing and to make the plate smaller. When I position the bits, I realize that it will cost me to connect the button to the corresponding pin. So I'm changing it from Pin PA7 to PA3 in the scheme.
I have to make a polygon layer around the dimension layer to allocate all the PCP layout as GND to combat the ground signal together once I have all the components positioned and the tracks together. I face a problem as the route cut the ground from the ISP header so I make through-hole vias (blue coloured wire in the layout ) to overcome this problem and reconnect the ground to the isp header again as shown in the PCP layout.
After routing I start to export a zip file contains all the used layers as Garber files to show it in garber viewer to convert all the layers to black colour then export the profile with the top layer and the profile with the drills a pdf to import them in GIMB to make some edit
I downloaded GIMB editor to sprit the traces, drills and profile as png files format which is the supported format in fab module machine (MODULA MDX-20)
To start using Mods, I use the following tutorials:
http://fabacademy.org/2019/docs/FabAcademy-Tutoria...
From the terminal I open Mods, I connect the Modela to the computer using the USB cable. In Mods, I import the traces png files which I had prepared then selected Roland and mil, PCP traces (1/64) which define the thickness of the endmill tool after that I selected the model of the machine MDX-20 and define the parameters of the machine as shown in the picture. the software will generate all the working paths which the machine will follow.
After putting all the parameter in the mods I prepared the cooper plate and put it in the working bed to start the milling process of the traces.
when the machine finished the process I import the png file of the drills to start drilling all the holes in the PCP I select all the previous parameters except changing the endmill tool number to be PCP outline (1/32) for drilling and finally import the profile png to finish my PCP.
traces path output
After that i put the cooper plate in the working bed for making the traces of the pcp.after the machine finshed i send the png of the drills then the png of the profile to cut it .
components:
1- ATtiny44
1- Capacitor 1uF
1- Button
1- Resistors 1k
1- Resistor 330 Ohm
1- Resistor 0 ohm
2- 7 head Connector Pin
1- Red LED.
1-0 ohm resistor
All in SMD 1206 footprint except the isp and pin header are through_ hole.
I face some problems with the EAGLE to find the exact components I need
after positioning all the components in the board layout some traces cut the ground traces so that I needed to make vias to reconnect it.
there was a problem in the profile layer as it didn't appear in Garber viewer but I found that the dimension layer didn't connect probably because of the grid setting wasn't correct
sodering the ic in the reverse direction so it gives me an error during uploading the code but finally, I recognize the problem then I use hot air device to mount it in the right postion.
What I learned this week is...
1-how to use eagle software to design my PCP
3-exporting Garber files and prepares png using GIMB
4-using ATtiny core and how to program it as Arduino
5-using SMDcomponents and soldering it in my board