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A project log for NeuroBytes

Build your own nervous system!

zakqwyzakqwy 03/08/2016 at 15:016 Comments

Panels arrived from Gold Phoenix. Everything looks excellent--silkscreen is readable, solder mask seems accurate, etc.

I depanelized, pasted, placed, and reflowed a panel of NeuroBytes v0.8 yesterday; everything seems to work! I made the pads a bit elongated so the boards can be hand-reworked; since I based my stencil on this pattern too, I occasionally get solder bridges on the QFN ATtiny and the resistor networks. Easy enough to fix with an iron.

The bottom mounted RGB LEDs look GREAT. Plating the through-hole (and making it a wee bit larger than the LED datasheet spec) was a great choice.

Discussions

davedarko wrote 03/08/2016 at 15:55 point

can't you place more boards on one panel if you turn every second by 180 degrees?

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zakqwy wrote 03/08/2016 at 15:59 point

Totally--the tessellation isn't as efficient as it could be, but I was in a bit of a hurry so I had Gold Phoenix take care of panelization (I just sent them a single board gerber file). I'm hand-assembling all of these so it's not a huge deal; my stencil only covers one so I depanelize 'em before placing components anyway. Good call though, definitely something we'll do before we get into the world of pick-n-place.

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Jarrett wrote 03/08/2016 at 15:54 point

That looks like something created with PCBModE. You should totally take a look at it, though it looks like you've already got a decent workflow for rad looking boards :)

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zakqwy wrote 03/08/2016 at 16:01 point

whooaa, I just found this searching for PCBModE: 

That's definitely some next-level stuff. My workflow is reasonably effective for basic stuff (KiCad +Inkscape) but getting shapes in is still quite clunky and time-consuming.. I'll take a look at this tool for the next iteration. Thanks for the tip!

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Peter McCloud wrote 03/08/2016 at 15:38 point

Wow, those boards look slick

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zakqwy wrote 03/08/2016 at 15:52 point

Thanks! KiCad + Inkscape.

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