Sunday 28 February 2010

Schoolboy Error

In my last two boards, I made a schoolboy error:
Both boards (due to different reasons) ended up being reversed left-to-right.
Now, during the transfer from paper to the board, it does mirror/reverse the image. I had 'overcompensated' and flipped the board twice, i.e. the wrong way.

Also, the stepper driver experiment was for the brand new 3.0 version, not the tried and tested 2.3 version (as noticed in the comments).

I've knocked together a version of a single sided board for the stepper driver v2.3 here - you want the v2 for the 2.3 board (eagle and .brd files provided). I dropped the ethernet connections (too many holes) and reverted back to the RepRap 3-pin connectors for the max/min endstops.

Here's a couple of etched boards, using the laserprinter/laminator/dab etching method:
From PCB
From PCB
I had to tidy a couple of edge tracks with a CD pen, but they came out well.

Here's my temperature controller (0-100 degrees C, controlling a relay) for another project:

From PCB
I bought some more copper board today from Maplins, so I should be able to make them a bit larger next time and avoid the issues with the transfer at the edge of the board.
Now to drilling several hundred holes with my new dremmel...

5 comments:

Murray said...

The way I prevent this happening is by placing some text on the board. On double sided boards it also helps with the top bottom layer identification, as long as the bottom one was flipped.
Murray Horn
http://www.opend.co.za

Unknown said...

I wanted to add exactly the same as Murray. Put some text on it, and you can forget the mirroring problem.

Best regards,
Laszlo

http://blog.arcol.hu

Unknown said...

Yep. Good tip, although since I mirrored some of the components from top to bottom some text was alreaty mirrored :-)

The main problem wasn't simple, it was me double-guessing myself (on one, I assumed the pdf was from the bottom up, so I carefully reversed it. It wasn't, and on the other, I unticked the 'mirror' flag in eagle after double-thinking the top to bottom flip).

:-) Thinking too hard.

laszlo said...

Renoir: Yepp, but before etching, you can check, if everything is right. (on the real pcb)

Best regards,
Laszlo

http://blog.arcol.hu

Unknown said...

Oh yeah.

Measure twice, cut once.

Tough lesson

:-)