JT's Enhanced Check Panel Thread

[mikey.antonakakis]

You guys must have way steadier hands then I do!
Sometimes I struggle with regular through-hole components.

I definitely do not have steady hands, but decent technique can overcome that issue for the most part. Same for TIG, although both get exponentially harder for me as I get to more uncomfortable positions where I can’t prop my hand.

[JehTehsus]

I definitely do not have steady hands, but decent technique can overcome that issue for the most part. Same for TIG, although both get exponentially harder for me as I get to more uncomfortable positions where I can’t prop my hand.

I would make an absolutely terrible surgeon - usually I don't start on any board assembly until at least the second cup of coffee, and it is downhill from there.

That said, proper bracing, board holders and a reasonable selection of tweezers and I can comfortably solder 0603, and even 0402 and smaller if I take my time. 0.5QFPs/QFNs are actually not bad - if placing manually I stick em down with plenty of flux then brace angled tweezers against the board at opposite corners and twist to do very fine alignment - only takes a few seconds. My hands are not steady enough to just place the part correctly.

Going beyond that though I would need a rework station - I won't be manually aligning a 0.5mm BGA with any real hope of success in a reasonable timeframe, for example (pitch is the same, but so, so much more sensitive to placement errors due to the grid, and way harder to tell when you have screwed it up).

In project related news, I plan to assemble the R0 board tomorrow evening, ideally at least get JTAG talking.

[JehTehsus]

So while I did have some time earlier this week, I got about 5 parts onto the board before I realised I had forgotten to order some easy-to-get (i.e. not likely to vanish off the market) but still rather essential parts... like the main DCDC and LDO (oops). Anyway I built up what I had earlier this week, and the other critical goodies arrived this afternoon.

All the primary power rails look OK at first pass (have not connected the display yet), and the MCU comes up and talks to the JTAG probe just fine. Idle draw with nothing happening is around 40mA - this is likely almost entirely the MCU and the Ublox (hopefully, because it is way too fucking high for sleep mode!) At some point in the near future I will be soldering the final few passives onto the board as I bring up and test their associated circuits, but overall happy with how things are looking.

Note that there are some design changes with the R1 board, the USB circuit for example is totally different because of the processor change, and the only thing I have sanity checked on this unit is the connector footprint. But the switches/dials, LEDs, display, and most of the power front end I plan to keep the same, with whatever tweaks are needed based on testing out this first prototype design.





mmm.... dirty flux residue I have not cleaned off yet



It's ALIVE!

Firmware testing wise, I think the first thing I will tackle is the LEDs. The next big one is the switchable inputs, and the biggest and best (saved for last) is the display.

[Panici]

It's ALIVE!

My thoughts exactly.

[5mall5nail5]

Extremely interested in this! Awesome updates. I'm way expired on my ee stuff but I still hand solder and rework SMT and Tig weld also!

Keep it up!