DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

Announcing the fourth PCB Order!

!!

The next PCB order will occur on March 1st, so submit your designs by 11:59PM on February 28th.

Now's your opportunity to have your design fabricated by a professional board house in the USA!

New this order:

• Silkscreen on both sides of the board is now official. The board house has been giving it to us anyway, but we were only quoted for single-side.
• 7mil minimum annular ring. This is the width of the copper pad around a drilled hole.
• Faster turnaround. The boards should be mailed to you within a week of the order deadline.

The Eagle CAM file has been updated:

• The "Milling" layer has been removed from the board outline, since that's not actually supported in our order.

The Eagle DRU file has been updated to include the new minimum annular ring size.

What you get

• Three 2 layer boards (see design rules below)
• Soldermask on both sides
• Silkscreen on both sides.

The Costs

$5 per square inch for three copies of your board. So, a 2 square inch design would cost $10, and you'll get three copies of your board. Shipping by US Mail is included, and there are no setup fees.

=== Announcing the third PCB Order! ===

Now's your chance to get that design you've been working on professionally fabricated in the USA.

This is open to DorkbotPDX dorks, Make:PDX makers, OpenTechSpace hackers, and anyone else that wants in on it. Orders must be received by February 2nd, and will be distributed by mail by February 10th or at the DorkbotPDX meeting on February 15th.

=== What you get ===
- Three 2 layer boards (see design rules below)
- Soldermask on both sides
- Silkscreen on the top side only.
- Optional Mylar solder paste stencil ($5 extra)

=== The Costs ===
$5 square inch for three copies of your board. So, a 2 square inch design would cost $10, and you'll get three copies of your board. Shipping by US Mail is included.

Scott Dixon has agreed to make Mylar solder paste stencils (for easy application of surface mount componants) for $5 a board stencil. If you'd like to take advantage of that, just include the "tcream" file the CAM file below produces, and tell me you want a stencil.

With the inclusion of a functional AVRISP MKII (and PDI!) programmer in LUFA, I thought it would be fun to make a programmer board to take advantage of it.

This is an programmer "shield" for the Teensy2. Solder on some headers, plug in your Teensy, flash it with the LUFA AVRISPMKII code, and you have a functional ISP programmer.

So, you've designed a circuit board in Eagle, gotten it fabricated, and you just got it back. Now you see that the parts which looked so big in Eagle are actually REALLY DANG SMALL. What are you going to do? How are you supposed to solder that?!

Working with tiny Surface Mount parts is challenging but can be done in the comfort of your own home. Come to Dorkbot's Surface Mount Soldering Workshop, presented by Jim Larson, held at OpenTechSpace at TechShop, on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 from 1pm to 5pm.

When you're done, you'll have a step-up voltage module to take a AA battery up to 5V.

To sign up, email smd-workshop@denizen.org.

Cost will be $35, payable at the class.

Please bring:

• A soldering iron
• A pair of tweezers
• A pair of wire cutters

Class will be held at:

OpenTechSpace at TechShop
10100 Southwest Allen Boulevard
Beaverton, OR 97005

I've set up a wiki page for publishing our circuit board designs and linking to others around the net.

I threw in a couple of my own, a few of Ladyada's great designs, and Leah Buechley's LilyPad. Help build this resource by adding your own!

http://dorkbotpdx.org/wiki/creative_commons_licensed_circuit_boards

=== Announcing the second PCB Group Order! ===

Now's your chance to get that design you've been working on professionally fabricated in the USA.

This is open to DorkbotPDX dorks, Make:PDX makers, OpenTechSpace hackers, and anyone else that wants in on it. Orders must be received by December 10th, and will be distributed by December 21st.

=== What you get ===
- Three 2 layer boards (see design rules below)
- Soldermask on both sides
- Silkscreen on the top side only.

=== The Costs ===
$3 square inch for three copies of your board. So, a 2 square inch design would cost $6, and you'll get three copies of your board. Shipping by US Mail will be $2 extra.

If you're part of the workshop (see below!), you'll receive your order at the December 21st DorkbotPDX general meeting.

Come one! Come all! To the DorkbotPDX Open Lab, generously hosted by the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

As the name suggests, this is an open lab for working on whatever projects you want to work on. It's a great place to show off works-in-progress, get help with a troublesome project, or to lend your expertise to someone doing something cool. It is also an opportunity for people who have attended workshops to follow up with anything that needs more work.

Bring your art projects, that could use the spark of electricity! Bring your electronics projects, that could use a touch of art!

Bring your Arduinos! Your Dorkboards! Your PICs! Your ARMs!

Bring your soldering irons, your protoboard, your motors, your sensors! your passives, your actives, and your power supplies and power strips. Bring your imagination, and the stuff to make it happen.

Time: 1pm to 5pm, Sunday, June 28th Place:PNCA, Room 205

I made a test pattern to determine what my etching capabilities actually are:

(PDF)

This one is a bit better than my last one. It's smaller (2x2 inches vs. 5x4 inches) so you don't waste as much board, has test points, and a bunch more common surface mount components.

(results inside)

I spent some time over the weekend trying to see what my board etching capabilities actually are. I use toner transfer, and I thought that kind of limited my options, as far as how fine of detail I could get. I made this test pattern with a variety of surface mount components and line sizes, then tried to transfer them to copper with a couple of different methods.

First, I used a clothes iron, several different temperature settings and applying differing amounts of pressure. This is the one that turned out the best:

(Full resolution)

I just got these beauties from Mouser today:

This is one of the first of the ATXMega line of chips, and _boy_ what a beautiful chip:

* 8 USARTS.
* 4 i2c busses
* 4 SPI busses
* AES and DES Cryptoengines
* 2 eight-channel, 12-bit ADCs
* 2 two-channel, 12-bit DACs,
* a built in 32kHz factory calibrated oscillator for the Real-time Clock