Project Updates for 3/16/2014

Well I guess I lied. I got so involved making a new board, I didn't take any pictures. Sorry. Well, I went and applied a solder mask as well as a silkscreen. Unfortunately, during the drilling process, I was off center enough to ruin some of the traces. I tried fixing them, but was unsuccessful. So I went and made a third board using information I gleened from making the first 2 boards.

Even though the second board was well aligned, the third one was near perfectly aligned. I was very careful with the drilling and did a much better job and the result turned out great. When I went to tin the board, part of the directions states to submerse the board in ammonia to stop any corrosion. Unfortunately, I discovered that ammonia melts the soldermask. This was helpful for redoing the solder mask since I wouldn't need to scrub the board anymore.

Right after etching the third board, I noticed a broken race while doing electrical testing. I used my CircuitWriter pen to repair it and this was the best I ever had it work. I applied it, blasted it with a heat gun for a few minutes and cut it to the right size with an exacto knife. As I went along, I made notes of the process along with little tips and tricks to get things working consistently well. After a little electrical testing, the board should be ready to start adding parts to. We'll see how it goes.

Posted in Old Posts 16 Mar 2014