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Purple PCBs :) Also: Assembly

A project log for IoT POV Fidget Spinner

A WiFi fidget spinner, taken from concept to ordering parts in one weekend

matthiasMatthias 06/27/2017 at 00:465 Comments

Today, a package with my PCBs arrived. Actually, it was two packages, because I messed up the orders (as you probably read in my previous log).

Armed with almost all the required parts, I started assembly. First, I cut out a stencil on my vinyl cutter. While my vinyl cutter produces fairly low quality stencils which don't work reliably work with .5mm pitch QFNs, these stencils are almost free for me. So for a single PCB, that's fine.

[I will add a video of the stencil cutting right here...]

The finished stencil applied to a PCB:

Next, I added some solder paste and all the parts. Placing 32 LEDs tends to be a bit tedious, but I got through it just fine. After touching it up a bi, the PCB now looks like this:

Since I need electrical contact on the outer bearings (they will be used for charging), I used the battery contacts I described in one of the earlier logs. They fit really well and are even able to hold the bearings in place.

Tomorrow, I plan to finally mill the back cover, upload the videos (both of stencil cutting and milling), put everything together and finally do a smoke test. Hopefully, the magic smoke will stay inside...

Discussions

oshpark wrote 06/29/2017 at 05:19 point

Very exciting!

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Ted Yapo wrote 06/28/2017 at 19:05 point

I missed the battery contact trick before - nice!

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davedarko wrote 06/28/2017 at 17:21 point

those stickers though! and also nice boards :)

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Mike Szczys wrote 06/28/2017 at 16:41 point

This is looks great, thanks for the updates!

Can't wait to see the videos :-D

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Jon Thomasson wrote 06/28/2017 at 12:07 point

Those boards look awesome! Good job!

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