So I had troubles properly naming title of this post. So as a short explanation my passion also includes electronics 🙂 and today I felt like playing with USB and RS232 ( reason for that will be obvious in one of later posts ).
Now in order to get this working I could most probably just get USB port and solder some cables into it but I think this would totally miss the idea of fun – especially in my case.
So where do we start ? We need to make a design ? No problemos 🙂 using Eagle CAD I have created board schematic ( as in my case schematic for electronics is not needed 🙂 )
The final design after a moment looked like this :
So that was the easy part right ? Well yes 🙂 However I do not forget that “sharing is caring” thats why you can download the project here
Ok so how do we get our project from digital world to our matrix 🙂 ? There are several available methods :
- Chemical etching
- UV
- CNC
- Order your PCB at professional services
In my experience I have already been through chemical etching and though it works nice – yeah….. at certain point you get tired of all that action you need to execute . UV I have not yet played with ( but it also includes chemical toys ). Professional services is also not an option as this project is so small and I need it kinda … now 🙂 so we are left with cool one …. CNC
Now with help of a bit of machine software and some PCB material I got the board ready in like 7 minutes. Machine is capable of faster operations but with PCB I would be risking damage to reallllyyyyy small drill bits ( talking from expensive experience here 🙁 ) so thats perfectly fine with me. After machine was done I was presented with the following view 🙂
hey ya! That is what I wanted 🙂 However for next version I will need to ditch that outline margin as it was nice enough to connect all points of my board which for USB is not so good !
From there only a bit of soldering and some hot tube to isolate remains and we got this :
As it may not look sooooo super PRO 🙂 but this is a POC prototype to make sure when I need more and order from professional services I get exactly what I expect.
If you are using CNC for PCB – leave a comment – interested in your approach